Jeremiah 34:8
This is the word that came unto Jeremiah from the LORD, after that the king Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people which were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty unto them; This is the word that came unto Jeremiah from the LORD, after that the king Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people which were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty unto them;
The event belongs to the reign of King Zedekiah during the last two years before Jerusalem fell, while Babylon's army was fighting against Jerusalem and the remaining fortified cities of Judah. In chronological order it stands late in Jeremiah's work in Judah, after Jeremiah 21 and before Jeremiah 37, followed in time by Jeremiah 32 and 33 and then Jeremiah 38. The chapters of Jeremiah are not arranged strictly by date because the prophecies after Jeremiah 20 were displaced from chronology as the manuscript rolls were gathered into one book, but this makes no change in its teaching and its own chapter makes its time clear.
The proclaimed liberty meant freeing Hebrew men and women held as servants, releasing servants and others who were in debt or oppressed, so that no one would continue to make a fellow Jew serve. The covenant of liberty was made with a sacrifice divided into pieces, with the covenant parties passing between the pieces. The proclamation was a right act connected with the Jubilee, an attempt under Jeremiah's direction to carry out the Scripture concerning the Jubilee, a practice that had not been observed since the time of Moses.
Zedekiah and the people failed to carry out that liberty, and the Lord condemned him for breaking the covenant and profaning God's name. Oppression and enslavement of the people were among the principal charges against Judah before its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar. The Israelites had adopted slavery despite laws requiring freedom, and God condemned this disobedience through Jeremiah and brought judgment on the state through destruction by Nebuchadnezzar and the captivity. Permission to own slaves was a temporary civil allowance, not a practice pleasing to God, for it violated the moral law and was among the special precepts later set aside when Jesus applied God's moral law strictly.
The covenant ceremony helps explain Abraham's sacrifice as part of God's covenant of liberty, where the liberty represented is freedom from the bondage of sin, which is found only in Christ as the great Sacrifice. The verse is biblical support for securing the blessings of liberty for people and their descendants.