The Bible Says
Jeremiah 24:4-7 Meaning

As always, Jeremiah highlights in Jeremiah 24:4-7 that what follows is not his inference but divine interpretation: "Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying" (v. 4). The prophetic sign as delivered in Jeremiah 24:1-3 (the baskets of figs at the temple gate) must be decoded by revelation; Judah will not grasp God’s ways by political instinct alone. By signaling this transition formula, the text teaches Judah to reframe their crisis-exile is not hopeless but the arena of God’s purposeful work.

The setting heightens the surprise. Jeremiah’s ministry unfolds in Jerusalem-perched on the ridge between the Kidron and Hinnom valleys-while Babylon’s power spreads west under Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BC). In that geopolitical squeeze, “the word of the LORD” (v. 4) insists that meaning lies not in might but in God’s covenant governance. The coming interpretation will invert Judah’s assumptions about who is blessed and who is doomed.

God’s verdict upends popular sentiment: “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’” (v. 5). In Jerusalem’s imagination the exiles looked cursed and the remnant looked favored. The LORD, however, reverses the optics: the early exiles-the people carried off in 597 BC with King Jehoiachin/Jeconiah (2 Kings 24:12-16)-are the “good figs.” They are “whom I have sent out” (v. 5); exile is not Babylon’s victory so much as God’s careful work. The land of the Chaldeans locates them in southern Mesopotamia along the Euphrates canal network-flat alluvial plains far from Judah’s limestone highlands.

Calling the exiles “good” does not canonize their past; it identifies them as the group God will choose for restoration. The temple crowd might have assumed that staying near the sanctuary guaranteed safety. Instead, the LORD esteems as “good” those He has removed, because judgment mixed with discipline positions them to receive mercy (Jeremiah 29:10-14). God is not abandoning His people; He is transplanting them for future fruit.

The promise deepens: “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” (v. 6). The phrase “set My eyes… for good” reverses prior warnings that God’s eyes were on them for harm (Jeremiah 21:10). Divine attention is covenant care; in Babylon, God sees to their welfare. The pledg, “I will bring them again to this land” (v. 6), anticipates the return beginning under Cyrus’s decree in 538 BC, when caravans retraced the great rivers back to Judah’s hills.

The paired verbs “build… not overthrow” and “plant… not pluck up” invert Jeremiah’s original commission “to pluck up and to break down… to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10). What judgment tore down, mercy will raise; what discipline uprooted, grace will set again. Geography will mirror theology: ruined walls will be rebuilt (Nehemiah), and fallow fields will be replanted (Haggai), because God’s gaze has changed from indictment to restoration.

The restoration’s heart is, literally, the heart: “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” (v. 7). External return without internal renewal would only repeat the cycle. Therefore God acts within: He gives what He commands-a knowing heart. To “know” here is covenantal (relational loyalty), not mere cognition. The result is the classic covenant formula-“they will be My people, and I will be their God” (v. 7)-now anchored in wholehearted return.

This promise anticipates Jeremiah’s new-covenant oracle (Jeremiah 31:31-34) and Ezekiel’s gift of a new heart and Spirit (Ezekiel 36:26-27). In Christ, the Son of David, God secures this inward work: through His death and resurrection the Spirit is poured out so that people truly know the LORD and walk in His ways (Luke 22:20; Acts 2; 2 Corinthians 3:3). The “good figs” thus prefigure the gospel’s paradox: God often begins renewal among those who are displaced or diminished, forming a people whose rebuilt walls rest on renewed hearts.