Jeremiah 34:7
When the king of Babylon’s army fought against Jerusalem, and against all the cities of Judah that were left, against Lachish, and against Azekah: for these defenced cities remained of the cities of Judah. When the king of Babylon’s army fought against Jerusalem, and against all the cities of Judah that were left, against Lachish, and against Azekah: for these defenced cities remained of the cities of Judah.
Jeremiah's word to King Zedekiah was given while the army of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and against the cities of Judah that were left, when Lachish and Azekah were among the few fortified cities of Judah still remaining. It belongs to the account of Jeremiah's experiences in Judah during that siege, setting the events in their historical place amid the Babylonian assault on Jerusalem and the remaining strongholds. It stands in Jerusalem's final crisis under Zedekiah, within chapters 34 to 39.
It falls within the section of Jeremiah covering the history of the two years before Jerusalem fell. In chronological order the chapter belongs to the events of Zedekiah's reign, coming after chapter 21 and before chapters 37-39, within the order running from chapter 20 onward. The chapter is not placed in chronological order in the book because of displacement when the manuscript rolls were gathered together into one book, which makes no change in the teaching, and the chapter itself clearly indicates its own chronology.
It stands as part of the readings from chapters 22 to 39 that contain Messianic prophecies carried forward through the restoration from Babylon to the more glorious restoration under Christ Jesus the Lord. The passage teaches the lesson of heeding God's message and the humble instrument through whom it is given. It points to the same prophetic time as Ezekiel's promises of Israel's gathering and deliverance and return to the land under God's covenant of peace, when God gives His people a new spirit, placed just before the resurrection of the righteous. The chapter shows that Israel's owning of slaves was never pleasing to God, since permission to own slaves was only a special temporary law for the Jews under their theocracy because their manners and morals were corrupted and their hearts were hard, not part of the moral law or the ceremonial law, and slavery violated the moral law which Jesus with greater light set that permission aside to test every act by.