Jeremiah 44:20
Then Jeremiah said unto all the people, to the men, and to the women, and to all the people which had given him that answer, saying, Then Jeremiah said unto all the people, to the men, and to the women, and to all the people which had given him that answer, saying,
Jeremiah 44:20 introduces Jeremiah's reply to all the people, to both the men and the women, who had given him their answer in refusal to obey. It belongs to the account of the Jews who fled to Egypt after Zedekiah's captivity and rejected Jeremiah's counsel to remain in the land. The chapter is not arranged in strict chronological order with the surrounding chapters, and in the suggested chronological sequence chapter 44 comes after chapter 43 and before chapter 46.
The people had said they would continue offering incense to the queen of heaven, and the verse begins Jeremiah's response to their defense of idolatrous worship. His reply connects their idolatry and refusal to heed his warning to the desolation of their land, as Judah reaping the consequences of its idolatry in being taken into exile. In its wider context the verse shows the sad result of false worship and false education among Judah's own people and kings, whose evil sowing bore fruit in captivity and enforced exile with beloved Zion lying in utter ruin.
Verses 20-23 prove that with the close of Josiah's reign in B.C. 607 the Jews ceased to obey God's commandments and statutes, so that afterward neither their kings, nobles, people, nor lands could be redeemed and no year of release or Jubilee was ever kept. That ends the Jewish Jubilees after no more than 21 Jubilees kept, lacking 23 of the great Jubilee. It fixes B.C. 607 as the starting point for the Jubilee of Jubilees of 49 times 50 years, or 2450 years, reaching to A.D. 1843.