Jeremiah 44:15-19

Why do the people defend the worship Jeremiah condemns?

Berean Standard Bible

15 Then all the men who knew that their wives were burning incense to other gods, and all the women standing by—a great assembly—along with all the people living in the land of Egypt and in Pathros, said to Jeremiah, 16 “As for the word you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you! 17 Instead, we will do everything we vowed to do: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and offer drink offerings to her, just as we, our fathers, our kings, and our officials did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and good things, and we saw no disaster. 18 But from the time we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been perishing by sword and famine.” 19 “Moreover,” said the women, “when we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands’ knowledge that we made sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?”

What is the context?

Men who know of their wives’ offerings and the assembled women answer together that they will not listen. The refusal is explicit rather than merely implied by ignorance.

They defend vows to the Queen of Heaven by appealing to ancestral and royal practice and to remembered abundance. They interpret later hunger and war as the result of stopping those offerings.

The women also say their husbands knew about the cakes and drink offerings. The account therefore includes shared household responsibility rather than assigning the whole practice to secretly disobedient wives.

The central dispute is how to interpret prosperity and disaster. The next reply will challenge the causal story by which they defend their worship.

How is this passage commonly understood?

Wesley suggests some husbands may not have known what was happening. The BSB’s speakers instead emphasize their husbands’ knowledge, so that explanatory guess should not override the argument actually made in their speech.

What is our position?

We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.

Where can I study this further?

No deeper study linked yet.

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