Trading Yokes

Jeremiah crashed the international convention wearing a yoke & delivering an unpopular message in chapter 27. And now in chapter 28 we find that GOD had evidently directed Jeremiah to continue to wear the yoke & parade around the Temple. So, several months pass, & Jeremiah is still wearing the yoke. He was without question quite a spectacle around Jerusalem. Seeing someone wear a big yoke around his neck is hard to ignore. Even if you do not want to look at it or talk about it, you know it is there. And that was the point. Jeremiah’s yoke was supposed to attract attention. “OK, Jeremiah,” people would say, “what is it this time? Tell us what the yoke is for.” Then the prophet would explain that the people of Judah must bow their necks under the yoke of Babylon if they wanted to live (v. 12). They must come under the yoke of captivity, or they would be destroyed. Eventually, everyone in Jerusalem had seen & heard Jeremiah. And Hananiah, for one, had seen & heard enough. And he wanted to put an end to this.