Lives of Scripture

Shemaiah the Nehelamite was among the Judean exiles Nebuchadnezzar had carried to Babylon. After Jeremiah sent a letter to the exiles urging them to settle in for a long stay -- to build houses, plant gardens, and seek the welfare of the city, because God's plan for them there would take seventy years (Jeremiah 29:1-14) -- Shemaiah wrote back to Jerusalem in anger. In letters sent in his own name to the priest Zephaniah and the people, he demanded that Jeremiah be put in stocks and a neck-iron for "acting like a prophet" and telling the exiles their captivity would be long (29:24-28). When Zephaniah read the letter aloud to Jeremiah, the word of the LORD came against Shemaiah directly: because he had "prophesied" without being sent and "counseled rebellion against the LORD," he would be punished -- none of his descendants would remain among the people, and he himself would not live to see the good God would eventually do for them (29:30-32). Shemaiah's opposition is one of several episodes in Jeremiah where rival prophets contradicted his hard message of a long exile, insisting instead on false hope, and each is answered in the text with a specific, spoken judgment naming the false prophet by name.