Jeremiah 33:24

Jeremiah 33:24, in plain English

God points out that the people around Jeremiah are saying God has abandoned the two kingdoms of Judah and Benjamin, and they're treating these kingdoms as if they're done for.

Why it's here

During the siege, rumors and despair spread like wildfire. People are saying God has given up on His people, that the nation is finished. This kind of talk spreads hopelessness and makes people stop resisting, stop believing, stop trying. God is directly addressing the propaganda of despair.

Who's speaking

God, showing Jeremiah what people are saying about Him

Where it sits in the story

This is the human response to crisis—we lose faith, we assume God has abandoned us. But God uses Jeremiah to show that these assumptions are wrong. The whole book of Jeremiah is God refusing to let His people believe He's gone.

The scholarly reading

The people are claiming God has rejected the two northern and southern kingdoms, viewing them as no longer God's chosen nation.

Language and setting

Jeremiah reports a despair-driven theology circulating among his contemporaries. The 'two families' most likely refers to Israel and Judah, though some commentators (e.g., Lundbom, Holladay) suggest the royal house and the people, or Judah and Benjamin. The verb *masa'* (notice/see) carries forensic weight—these are not idle musings but publicly articulated doubts about God's fidelity. The audience facing exile would naturally adopt such logic: military defeat = divine abandonment. This verse captures the crisis of faith that exile engendered.

Voice

The LORD, through Jeremiah, reporting the people's own words back to them

Significance

This represents a pivotal moment in Israel's theological history—the testing of monotheistic faith under existential threat. Similar despair appears in Psalm 89 and Lamentations 5. The people's reasoning was not illogical given their circumstantial evidence, yet it contradicted the covenant promises. This becomes the crux of faith: trusting God's word when circumstances deny it.

22As the hosts of heaven cannot be counted and as the sand on the seashore cannot be measured, so too will I multiply the descendants of My servant David and the Levites who minister before Me.”

23Moreover, the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah:

24“Have you not noticed what these people are saying: ‘The LORD has rejected the two families He had chosen’? So they despise My people and no longer regard them as a nation.

25This is what the LORD says: If I have not established My covenant with the day and the night and the fixed order of heaven and earth,

26then I would also reject the descendants of Jacob and of My servant David, so as not to take from his descendants rulers over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For I will restore them from captivity and will have compassion on them.”

Read all of Jeremiah 33 — Call to me and I will answer you. If you can break my covenant with the day and the night, only then can my covenant with David be broken.