24 After Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and the officials of Judah with the craftsmen and smiths from Jerusalem and had brought them to Babylon, the Lord showed me: behold, two baskets of figs set before the temple of the Lord! 2 One basket had very good figs, like first-ripe figs, and the other basket had very bad figs which could not be eaten due to rottenness. 3 Then the Lord said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” And I said, “Figs, the good figs, very good; and the bad figs, very bad, which cannot be eaten due to rottenness.”
4 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 5 “Thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the captives of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans. 6 For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will bring them again to this land; and I will build them up and not overthrow them, and I will plant them and not pluck them up. 7 I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the Lord; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.
8 ‘But like the bad figs which cannot be eaten due to rottenness—indeed, thus says the Lord—so I will [a]abandon Zedekiah king of Judah and his officials, and the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land and the ones who dwell in the land of Egypt. 9 I will make them a terror and an evil for all the kingdoms of the earth, as a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse in all places where I will scatter them. 10 I will send the sword, the famine and the pestilence upon them until they are destroyed from the land which I gave to them and their forefathers.’”
As God gives this word picture to Jeremiah, it doesn’t quite turn out the way one would expect. Or certainly not the way the “remnant” in Judah might have expected. One would think we have good people represented by the good figs and wicked by the rotten figs. That may very well be, but how is it that the folks who were already carried away are the good figs?
It probably didn’t seem very good to them to be carried away as prisoners, forced to live and work in a land far from home. Yet those still living in Judah, Zedekiah the king and his officials, and all those that still remained, they had a choice to make. Many had already been carried away captive, and those left behind could have heeded the warnings of impending judgment.
Sadly, they didn’t, and so God tells us that they were indeed the rotten figs, in contrast to those who would preserve the future of Israel. God would indeed use them for good things, like Daniel who served multiple kings, interpreted their dreams, and got thrown in a lion’s den. There were also his friends who were set apart for work in the palace, but got thrown in a fiery furnace.
Life wouldn’t be easy or comfortable for those in captivity, but God had promised to set His eyes on them and bring them back home once more. Mostly, it was their descendants who would return, but God would be with them wherever they were. There are times we might feel like we’ve gotten the short end of the stick, like we must be the bad figs. But God will not abandon those who choose to follow Him, despite any appearance to the contrary.
God’s actions don’t tend to fit inside our nice little boxes, nor does He follow our (flawed) human logic. God operates on a scale we cannot fathom, with wisdom and love we cannot comprehend. What I do know is what He says in this passage. Just as He told the captives who were carried away, He has His eyes on us for good, and He is faithful–the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, and the next, and a thousand years after that.