Глава 24

“The Lord showed me, and behold, two baskets.” The Lord shows Jeremiah in a vision two baskets: one full of “good figs”, and the other “evil figs”. And when the prophet said that he saw both good and evil figs, then there came to him “the word of the Lord... speaking” (Jer. 24:1-2, 4), that one basket represents King Jehoiachin, and the other - Zedekiah, who reigned after him; Jeremiah receives a command to the first to proclaim good, and to the second - evil, because King Jehoiachin heeded the threats of the Lord, was afraid of them and, according to the word of Jeremiah, betrayed his soul to King Nebuchadnezzar; but this was not what King Zedekiah did, who, out of the pride of his heart, retreated from the king of the Chaldeans and did not agree to betray himself and the people to the Chaldeans, although he heard from Jeremiah that resettlement was determined for him and the Jews who remained in his land. For such disobedience, the prophet, under the image of a coffer filled with thin figs, predicts destruction, destruction, famine and captivity for the city, the king and all the remaining Jews, even those who escaped to Egypt; The great leader Moses had threatened the stubborn people with such disasters before. In a mysterious sense, this vision indicates the difference between the good and the evil that will happen at the end, and makes it clear that the lot of both will be different: the lot of some is very good, and the lot of others is very bad. This is expressed by the strengthening of the prophet’s sayings: “good figs are good, and evil ones are very bad” (Jer. 24:3). It goes without saying that the prophet does not observe the order of time here, for the events he describes further, which relate to Jeconiah’s father Joachim, were many years earlier than the events now depicted by the prophet. You might be interested in: