The Daily Office · Jeremiah 29:11–13
Plans for your welfare
Jeremiah 29:11–13
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What's happening here
These are the most quoted words in the book of Jeremiah, and they have been torn from their setting so often that it is worth putting them back. Jeremiah is writing a letter to Israelites who have been deported to Babylon — not the survivors still home, the exiles. Before verse eleven he tells them to build houses in the place they hate, to plant gardens, to pray for the city that destroyed their temple. Only then comes the promise, and it is a promise for a people who are not going home any time soon.
The word that matters
Hebrew · peace, but peace as wholeness, not quiet
Shalom is not the absence of noise. The shalom of a city is its whole functioning — the streets safe, the markets fair, the tables full, the courts honest. When God tells the exiles his plans are for their shalom, he is not promising a feeling. He is promising that the entire arrangement will one day be made right, and in the meantime they are to work for the shalom of Babylon itself.
Where else this shows up
Jeremiah 29:7
The verses people skip: "seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its shalom you will find your shalom."
Psalm 122:6
"Pray for the shalom of Jerusalem" — a double pun, since the city's name (Yerushalayim) contains the same root.
John 14:27
Jesus' farewell in Greek but Hebrew in its bones: "shalom I leave with you; my shalom I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you."