Today’s Passage: Jeremiah 29:4-7
Jeremiah is a prophet in Jerusalem, and many of his people are no longer there, having been marched off to Babylon as prisoners of war. In Babylon, other voices are busy telling the exiles exactly what they long to hear, that they should pack light because the whole ordeal will soon be over. Jeremiah sits down and writes them a letter instead, and it carries a word they do not want to receive.
As you read, hold this: Seek the peace of the city where God has sent you.
Context Taken from everything they knew
None of these people had chosen this. Soldiers had driven them out of Jerusalem and all the way to Babylon, a foreign land full of foreign gods, and everything they had known, their temple, their own streets, the families who had lived next door, was now impossibly far away. Some of the prophets in Babylon were promising a swift rescue, saying that God would shatter Babylon at any moment and send them all home. Jeremiah, writing from Jerusalem, tells them something far harder to bear. Settle in, he says, because this will not be short.
Jeremiah 29:4 (BSB)
⁴ This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles who were carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon:
God does not stay silent about their pain, and He does not speak to them as though they were still safe at home. He names exactly where they are, carried away and set down in Babylon, and He meets them in that very place rather than pretending it away.
Jeremiah 29:5-6 (BSB)
⁵ “Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat their produce. ⁶ Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease.
What follows is a handful of wonderfully ordinary commands: build a house, plant a garden, marry, and raise children. Not one of them says a word about Babylon’s king or its idols, because they are simply the ordinary stuff of a settled life. God is telling His people to go on living real, rooted, fruitful lives in the very place they never wanted to be.
Jeremiah 29:7 (BSB)
⁷ Seek the prosperity of the city to which I have sent you as exiles. Pray to the LORD on its behalf, for if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
That same word appears twice more in this single verse: if the city shalom, pronounced shah-LOME. Strong's H7965, peace, wholeness, well-being, flourishing. This word means far more than quiet peace. It means whole, healthy, flourishing in every part. God wanted the exiles to want that flourishing even for Babylon, the city that conquered them. , they too will prosper. Their good and Babylon’s good have been knit together now. God is not asking them to feel nothing about their defeat, but He is asking them to want good for the place that defeated them, and even to pray for it.
Study notes One command across the ages
Hundreds of years later, Paul writes to a young pastor named Timothy whose people also live under a government they never chose, and what he tells them sounds a great deal like Jeremiah’s old letter.
"First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be offered for everyone—for kings and all those in authority—so that we may lead tranquil and quiet lives in all godliness and dignity." 1 Timothy 2:1-2 (BSB)
Paul is not asking his readers to seize the levers of Rome, and he is not telling them to hide away from the world either. He simply calls them to pray, even for rulers they would never have chosen. The command first written to the exiles of Babylon had not expired at all.
The exiles had wanted an escape, and what God gave them instead was a mission. Build and plant, marry and pray, and seek the good of the very place where He has set you down.
Personal Application
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Has worry about far-off fights taken more of your attention this week than the people near you?
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What would it look like this week to seek the good of your street?
Today’s decision: Do one real act of care for the place you live today. Text a neighbor. Bring food to someone who is sick nearby. Or pray out loud for the good of your town, by name.
Pray to Close
The central truth: Seek the peace of the city where God has sent you.
Bring: bring God any anxiety you have carried about things you cannot control.
Ask: ask God for real peace, right in the middle of the place He has put you.
Give thanks: thank God that He ruled over Babylon then, and He rules over the world now.
Worship for Today
God of This City · Bluetree
Bluetree, a worship team from Belfast, wrote this song while on a mission trip to Pattaya, Thailand, a place that was not their home at all. The song never asks God to help anyone seize control of that city; it simply declares that He is already Lord over it. That is exactly the note Jeremiah’s letter strikes. The place may not be yours by birth, yet God is already present within it, so you are free to love it and to pray for it.
Listen: