Jeremiah 34:22, commentary and pictures

Jeremiah 34:22 belongs to the history leading up to Jerusalem's fall, foretelling that the enemy forces would return to the city, fight against it, capture it, and burn it with fire, while the cities of Judah would be made a desolation without an inhabitant. It stands in the section of Jeremiah that records events during the two years before Jerusalem fell.

Within Jeremiah 22-39 the prophecies are not placed in chronological order because the manuscript rolls were gathered together into one book, which makes no change in the teaching, and the chapter itself nearly always clearly indicates its chronology. The chronological place of this verse is after chapter 21 and before chapter 37. By the Lord's command the Chaldean or Babylonian enemy forces would return to Jerusalem, fight against it, capture it and burn it with fire, and the cities of Judah would be made a desolation without an inhabitant. This was fulfilled in Judah's destruction and captivity under Nebuchadnezzar.

That return and destruction came as God's judgment after Judah disobeyed His commands. Enslaving others and adopting slavery was charged as one of the principal offenses, specifically the failure to keep the covenant to release those they had enslaved. The attempted release of the enslaved was connected with the law of jubilee, but carrying it out did not avert the announced judgment. The taking and burning of the city and the making of the cities of Judah a desolation without an inhabitant also describes the condition of the earth during the thousand years after the second coming of Christ, when all wicked men have been destroyed at His coming and the immortal righteous have ascended with their Lord to the eternal city to reign with Him in the judgment of the wicked.