Jeremiah 43:3
But Baruch the son of Neriah setteth thee on against us, for to deliver us into the hand of the Chaldeans, that they might put us to death, and carry us away captives into Babylon. But Baruch the son of Neriah setteth thee on against us, for to deliver us into the hand of the Chaldeans, that they might put us to death, and carry us away captives into Babylon.
The verse belongs to the account of Jeremiah's personal experiences and his going into Egypt. Chapters 40-44 belong to a sequence that follows the earlier chapters in an approximate chronological reading order, though the book's present arrangement is not fully chronological. The verse falls within the book's historical section, which covers the two years before Jerusalem fell. It concerns the remnant left in Judea after the captivity who inquired of Jeremiah and then went down to Egypt contrary to God's direction through him, rejecting his advice to remain in the land under Babylonian protection.
The verse records the leaders' false accusation that Baruch the son of Neriah had set Jeremiah against them, influencing, prompting, or turning him against them, to deliver them into the hand of the Chaldeans to be put to death or carried captive to Babylon. Those who held the other reading understood it as recording the accusation that Baruch was inciting the people against their leaders in order to hand them over to the Chaldeans to be killed or deported to Babylon. By the accusation they denied that the warning against going to Egypt was from God, meaning that Jeremiah was speaking what Baruch wanted while professing to speak the word of God. Baruch was intimately connected with Jeremiah in the work of God.
They had already decided to go to Egypt and sought God's approval rather than his guidance. The episode shows their insincerity, illustrating people who sought God with their words but did not mean what they said. It exemplifies how people who claim they will obey God can reject his message when tested. Their accusation exposes their refusal to accept a plain divine message delivered through a humble prophet. The charge was a way to avoid facing that they were resisting God's message, discrediting and abusing his chosen messenger and justifying themselves rather than obeying unwelcome prophetic counsel.
The charge was a great sin of suspicion and unbelief that rejected Jeremiah as a true prophet and supposed that a human and contrary influence could step in and palm itself off as God's direct speech, which God never allows. God punished those wicked men with utter destruction for this charge. The same charge made today against those intimately connected with the manifestation of the spirit of prophecy, when its decisions go contrary to expectations and wishes, is just as serious and absurd. The verse belongs to the account of Jeremiah's rejection by his own people and his subsequent refuge in Africa, in Egypt.