Jeremiah and Hananiah: True and False Prophecy in Israel

The encounter between Jeremiah and Hananiah, two prominent prophets with different views of Yahweh’s work, must have divided the people listening to them. Who spoke the words of Yahweh? Both prophets used the prophetic formula “Thus says the Lord” to proclaim their message. Both prophets employed their knowledge and understanding of the prophetic tradition. This confrontation between Jeremiah and Hananiah raised a problem which must have perplexed their audience profoundly: how could one tell which prophet was speaking a message from Yahweh? When two prophets speak in the name of Yahweh and present contradictory messages, the audience must decide which message is the true message from God.

Both prophets presented true aspects of God’s work in the history of Israel. While Jeremiah spoke of Yahweh’s coming judgment upon Judah, Hananiah spoke of God’s faithfulness in delivering the nation. However, only one of them was delivering the right message, a message that was directly related to the historical situation in which they lived.

An analysis of the background of this prophetic encounter in the temple helps us understand the theological presuppositions each prophet brought to the situation.

It is evident that both Jeremiah and Hananiah were well versed in Israel’s ancient religious traditions and were familiar with the many stories of Yahweh’s mighty deeds done in the history of the nation. Out of their understanding of these ancient traditions came each prophet’s view of reality.

Prophecy can be defined as the prophet’s self-understanding of what Yahweh was doing in accomplishing his purpose in the history of Israel. For this reason, in formulating the right relationship between faith and history, the prophets addressed themselves to foreign and domestic policies, applying their understanding of the faith of Israel to current events. This application of faith to historical and political events generally was manifested by the prophets’ affirmation of Yahweh as creator, redeemer, and judge, and in their perception that Yahweh was involved in current events.

In the case of Jeremiah, while Hananiah and the religious and political leaders of Judah saw Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion and the deportation of the people to Babylon as a national tragedy, Jeremiah saw the invasion as Yahweh’s exercise of divine sovereignty in judging his people. While Jeremiah saw Nebuchadnezzar as Yahweh’s servant, doing Yahweh’s will, Hananiah saw the Babylonian invasion as a gross injustice which Yahweh would reverse by punishing Nebuchadnezzar. While Jeremiah saw Yahweh as a sovereign God over the nations, free to use whomever he desired to accomplish his purpose, Hananiah saw God as the guarantor of his promise to protect Judah notwithstanding her behavior. Jeremiah saw Yahweh as a God who in his righteousness would judge the nation but who in his great mercy would forgive the wayward nation and restore her by establishing a new covenant which would motivate the nation once again to know him and call on his name alone.

Jeremiah understood that if Judah was to be restored, she had to recognize and confess her violation of the covenantal relationship with Yahweh. Israel’s relationship with Yahweh was based on the covenant, not on natural or ancestral kinship. This concept was unique to Israel’s self-understanding and it was a major theme of Jeremiah’s preaching.

During the confrontation between Jeremiah and Hananiah, the people present in the temple were unable to make a clear decision on who was proclaiming a true message from Yahweh because it was impossible to tell the true from the false prophet. The fulfillment of the prophet’s words proved that the prophet’s oracle was true (Deuteronomy 18:22). In fact, apart from fact that the people knew that God revealed his will to the prophets, the people had no immediate objective criterion by which the claim of a prophet could be proved. The claim of who was proclaiming the true word of Yahweh, of who was right and who was wrong was subjective and only the fulfillment of the prophet’s words could prove the validity of a prophetic claim.

There was no firm set of criteria for distinguishing a true prophet from a false one. Ultimately, only the prophet himself could judge another prophet’s message to be false and then only on the basis of a fresh revelation from God. This is what happened in the confrontation between Jeremiah and Hananiah.

While Jeremiah appeared confident that he was proclaiming God’s will to the people, the strength of Hananiah’s conviction about Yahweh’s plan to restore Jehoiachin and the sacred vessels temporarily caused Jeremiah to hesitate in view of the possibility that maybe Yahweh had changed his mind about the Babylonians and their role in the domination of Judah.

As mentioned above, there are no clear set of criteria to distinguish true prophecies from false ones, primarily at the time the prophecy is uttered. There are several reasons for this problem. First, one cannot necessarily evaluate a prophecy by the theology presented in an oracle because a false prophet can often use good theology and apply it at the wrong time, as Hananiah did. Rather, it is in the fulfillment of the prophetic words, often many years later, that true prophecy can be distinguished from false prophecy.

Second, one cannot tell when a prophet is mistakenly identifying the voice of his own heart for the voice of God. Third, one cannot tell whether the right prophetic tradition is being applied to interpret a specific event or situation.

False prophets prophesy about “wine and beer” (Micah 2:11), they fill the people with false hopes, they speak visions from their own minds (Jeremiah 23:16), they commit adultery and live a lie, they strengthen the hands of evildoers, and their message does not turn the people from their wickedness (Jeremiah 23:14).

The true prophet, the one called and sent by God is filled with divine power, with justice and might to speak by the Spirit of the LORD and declare to people their transgression and rebuke them for their sins (Micah 3:8).

The people at the temple, however, could draw on past prophetic traditions to find help in deciding who was speaking the true word of God. First, true prophets proclaimed that Yahweh was sovereign over the nations and the redeemer of Israel while false prophets recognized Yahweh only as the redeemer of Israel. False prophets were exclusivists: they believed that Yahweh would protect Israel from her enemies but they could not accept Yahweh’s freedom to choose a foreign nation to serve as a rod of punishment for the sins of Israel.

Second, false prophets preached a message of peace, giving the people false hope when there was none (Jeremiah 23:16). According to Jeremiah, the true prophet of Yahweh preached about God’s judgment through war, destruction, and famine (Jeremiah 28:9). Third, true prophets challenged the status quo and made the people feel uncomfortable while false prophets supported the status quo and made the people feel secure. For these reasons true prophets and their messages were rejected by the people and as a result, most true prophets were loners and alienated from the community.

There is much to learn about true and false prophets from the encounter between Jeremiah and Hananiah. In the twenty-first century the church is being challenged by people who claim to speak a message from God but who preach a message that does not reflect the teachings of the New Testament. Christians must be aware that even today there are people who speak on behalf of God but who were not sent by God (Jeremiah 23:21).

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: False Prophet, Hananiah, Jeremiah, Prophet

Jeremiah and Hananiah: The Confrontation in the Temple

Little is known about the prophet Hananiah except what is told about him in the book of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 28:1-17). Hananiah appears to have been one of the nationalistic prophets who proclaimed a message of salvation and deliverance. Hananiah apparently was well known in Judah and respected by the people and the religious and political authorities. Hananiah was the son of Azzur and a prophet from Gibeon (Jeremiah 28:1). Gibeon is the modern el-Jib, a village five miles northwest of Jerusalem.

Hananiah was an optimistic prophet who proclaimed a message of hope for Judah. Optimistic prophets promoted the welfare of their communities by proclaiming Yahweh’s legitimation for the existing social order and by providing divine sanctions for long-held religious, political, and social views. Hananiah declared that in two years Yahweh would bring back to the temple all the vessels of the LORD’s house which Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had taken away and carried to Babylon (Jeremiah 28:3).

Optimistic prophets also supported the ruling dynasty and defended royal theology. However, while Hananiah likely was welcomed in the royal court because of his favorable message, he probably was not a court prophet in the same way the prophets employed by Ahab were (1 Kings 22:1-28). These court prophets were generally categorized in the Old Testament as false prophets because they proclaimed a message of prosperity and guaranteed military success unconditionally and without repentance.

Hananiah probably was not a court prophet nor a cultic prophet. Rather, he appeared to have a legitimacy as a prophet that was not derived from the court nor from the temple. Thus, it is in his role as a prophet of Yahweh that he challenged Jeremiah. Jeremiah and Hananiah appear in the temple as two legitimate but opposing prophets, confronting each others over what Yahweh was doing with the deportation of Judah and with the future of the nation.

The encounter between Jeremiah and Hananiah occurred in the fifth month of the fourth year of the reign of Zedekiah, King of Judah (Jeremiah 28:1), after the first deportation of Judah, which had occurred in 597 B.C. Jeremiah had been preaching disaster for Judah for some time before his meetings with Hananiah. According to Jeremiah, this disaster had come because Judah had tried to live a life independently of God, had engaged in unnatural sexual practices common in the worship of Baal, had ignored the covenant relationship, and did not heed the warnings of the prophets sent by Yahweh.

The first meeting between Jeremiah and Hananiah took place in the temple in the presence of the priests and all of the people (28:1). Jeremiah was well known as a prophet of Yahweh. Because he often was accused of stirring up trouble in the city, Jeremiah was disliked by many because of the message of doom he proclaimed.

On the other hand, Hananiah, seems to have been well liked by the people and the religious officials because of his optimistic message. His message was said to have come from Yahweh and he claimed to have the same authority Jeremiah had.

The issue confronting Judah and which was the focus of the confrontation between Jeremiah and Hananiah was whether Yahweh was going to deliver the nation from the oppressive yoke imposed on Judah by Nebuchadnezzar, thereby allowing the royal family and the deported people to return to Judah with the vessels of the temple or whether the people of Judah should submit to Babylon as Jeremiah had been preaching. If Hananiah was right, Babylon would be defeated within two years, King Jehoiachin would be restored to the throne in Jerusalem, and the vessels of the temple would be brought back with him. If Jeremiah was right, Judah would continue as a vassal of Nebuchadnezzar and face seventy years of vassalage under Babylon (Jeremiah 25:11-12).

In 594 B. C., ambassadors from Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon gathered in Jerusalem to establish a treaty with Judah and plan a coordinated effort against Nebuchadnezzar. Yahweh told Jeremiah to make a yoke and put it on his neck and declare that he had given all the lands the ambassadors represented into the hands of his servant Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon (Jeremiah 27:6).

Jeremiah pleaded with Zedekiah not to revolt against Babylon. Rather, he urged submission to Nebuchadnezzar whom he insisted Yahweh had chosen to subjugate the land. Hananiah, on the other hand, probably was among those optimistic prophets who urged Zedekiah not to submit to the king of Babylon. These prophets were recommending the ratification of the treaty and open rebellion against Babylon because they believed Yahweh would favor Judah against Babylon (Jeremiah 27:14).

When Jeremiah confronted Hananiah in the temple, Jeremiah came wearing the wooden yoke on his neck. The yoke symbolized the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar which the king of Babylon would impose upon Judah and the other lands in the Ancient Near East (Jeremiah 27:8).

In that encounter, Hananiah was confident that he was bringing a message from Yahweh, a message that reflected his views that Babylon would soon be defeated. He predicted that within two years Jehoiachin would return from exile bringing with him the temple vessels taken by the Babylonians. So sure was Hananiah that he was speaking for Yahweh that he removed the wooden yoke from Jeremiah’s neck and broke it as a symbol that Yahweh would soon break the yoke Nebuchadnezzar had imposed on Judah. He said: “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon” (Jeremiah 28:2).

In the past Jeremiah had been very critical of other prophets because of their false message. However, Jeremiah does not criticize Hananiah for his optimistic oracle. It is possible that Jeremiah recognized God’s freedom to change his mind or that God had a different purpose which he now was revealing through Hananiah.

Jeremiah’s reticence may be due to the fact that he probably believed Hananiah to be a true prophet, one capable of speaking a genuine message from Yahweh or maybe because he genuinely wished that Hananiah’s message was correct, for he disliked his own. In response to Hananiah’s oracle, Jeremiah said: “Amen! May the LORD do so; may the LORD fulfill the words that you have prophesied, and bring back to this place from Babylon the vessels of the house of the LORD, and all the exiles” (Jeremiah 28:6).


Jeremiah did not challenge Hananiah and his optimistic message. Rather, he left the temple quietly, without saying a word. The reason for Jeremiah’s silence was because he had no word from Yahweh at that juncture. For Jeremiah, to speak when Yahweh had not spoken, was to place himself among those who had been identified as false prophets.

Shortly after Jeremiah left the temple, Yahweh spoke to him and reaffirmed that his message was the true interpretation of what he was doing to Judah through the king of Babylon. Yahweh ordered Jeremiah to make an iron yoke, put it on his neck, and then confront Hananiah again. The LORD told Jeremiah: “Go, tell Hananiah, ‘Thus says the LORD: You have broken wooden bars, but I will make in their place bars of iron. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I have put upon the neck of all these nations an iron yoke of servitude to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and they shall serve him’” (Jeremiah 28:13-14).

After receiving this fresh revelation from Yahweh, Jeremiah returned to confront Hananiah again, confident that his message was the right message from Yahweh. Jeremiah rebuked Hananiah for prophesying falsely in Yahweh’s name. Jeremiah told Hananiah he would die that same year. Hananiah’s death would show that he was a false prophet, that his punishment was just punishment because to prophesy falsely was a capital offense punishable by death. (Deuteronomy 13:1-5; 18:20).

The severe sentence was meant to protect the people from the problem of false predictions of impending disaster or false hope of deliverance. As Jeremiah had predicted, in the seventh month of that same year, Hananiah the prophet died (Jeremiah 28:17). The death of Hananiah vindicated Jeremiah and his prophetic ministry.

Previous posts in this series:


Jeremiah and Hananiah

Jeremiah and Hananiah: The Historical Context

Jeremiah and Hananiah: Jeremiah's Ministry


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tag: False Prophet, Hananiah, Jeremiah, Prophet

Jeremiah and Hananiah: Jeremiah’s Ministry

Jeremiah carried out his ministry during a very difficult time in the history of Judah. The latter part of the seventh century and the beginning of the sixth century was a period of constant political uncertainty in Jerusalem and the rest of the nation. Jeremiah had supported the reforms of Josiah, but during the reign of Jehoiakim, Josiah’s son, Jeremiah saw that the people were reverting to the old religious practices that existed prior to the reforms.

The deportation of part of the population of Judah to Babylon caused great anxiety among the people, a situation that resulted in a profound division among the political and religious leaders of Judah concerning the future of the nation. Judah enjoyed a brief time of independence under Josiah, time enough for the nation to believe that Assyria’s decline would lead to long term prosperity and stability for Judah. Although there is some debate among scholars whether Jeremiah began his ministry in the thirteenth year of Josiah, internal evidence seems to indicate that Jeremiah was an early supporter of the religious reforms that occurred under Josiah.

Jeremiah was the son of Hilkiah. He was born in Anathoth, a village in Benjamin, about three miles northeast of Jerusalem. His father was probably a descendant of Abiathar, the priest from Anathoth banished by Solomon because of his support of Adonijah in his bid for David’s throne. Thus, it is probable that Jeremiah and his family were descendants of a very influential family of exiled priests.

Jeremiah probably was born around 742 B.C. and was called to the prophetic ministry in the thirteenth year of Josiah’s reign (627 B.C.). He was a young man when King Josiah began his reforms in 622 B.C. According to 2 Chronicles 35:25, Jeremiah composed a song of lament at the occasion of Josiah’s death.

Although Jeremiah supported Josiah and the goals of Josiah’s reforms, he realized that the results of the reforms were superficial and inadequate to produce real changes in the religion of Judah. For this reason Jeremiah condemned the superficial commitment of the people and their lack of true repentance.

Jeremiah was shocked at the apostasy of the people. His oracles warned the nation about Yahweh’s displeasure with the religious behavior of the people. Jeremiah proclaimed that God’s punishment upon the nation for her apostasy would come from the north: Judah was under God’s judgment.

Jeremiah’s ministry occurred mostly in Jerusalem, where he remained even after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. until after the death of Gedaliah, the governor of Judah, in 582 B.C., when he was taken by force to Egypt, where he died.

Jeremiah’s relationship with some of the Judean kings was turbulent. Jeremiah was opposed to the policies of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah to the point of open hostility. Jehoiakim had abandoned the religious reforms of his father and reinstituted some of the pagan practices Josiah had eliminated. Jehoiakim also abandoned the covenantal commitment the nations had made to serve Yahweh alone. Jeremiah believed Judean servitude to Babylonia was the judgment brought by Yahweh as punishment for the people’s rebellion and for their violation of the demands of the covenant. For this reason, Jeremiah criticized Jehoiakim’s repudiation of his fealty treaty with Nebuchadnezzar, emphasizing that his violation of the treaty was as a sign of his disloyalty to Yahweh. Jeremiah also criticized Jehoiakim for his oppression of the people. Jeremiah’s relationship with Jehoiachin and Zedekiah was no better.

Jeremiah, like the great prophets before him, was distressed by the infidelity of the royal house and the people against God. The people had no sense of guilt for their sins; they had no feelings of shame for their actions. The people of Judah said: “I am innocent” but the LORD said: “'Behold, I will bring you to judgment for saying, ‘I have not sinned’” (Jeremiah 2:35).

Jeremiah heard Yahweh’s voice calling him to proclaim to a rebellious people what he was about to do. God’s action was intended to bring Judah back to the traditions of the covenant. Jeremiah urged the people to submit to Nebuchadnezzar whom he saw as the Lord’s servant who came to exact retribution on behalf of Yahweh. Jeremiah proclaimed: “If, however, any nation or kingdom will not serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon or bow its neck under his yoke, I will punish that nation with the sword, famine and plague, declares the LORD, until I destroy it by his hand” ( Jeremiah 27:8).

For Jeremiah, complete submission to Nebuchadnezzar was the will of Yahweh for Judah. Submission to the Babylonian yoke was the prelude that would motivate Judah to return to the demands of the covenant which required the nation to recognize Yahweh as the only God of Israel and which required obedience to his words: “If you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples” (Exodus 19:5).

A major role of prophets of the Old Testament was to serve as intermediaries between Yahweh and the people. The prophets’ words impacted themselves and their societies in two ways. First, when the prophets spoke, they spoke as Yahweh’s representatives. Their message was Yahweh’s message. They augmented their authority as messengers by following the tradition of the prophets who preceded them. Secondly, their message sought to have a positive effect on their society by bringing about religious reforms and social change.

Like many of the prophets who preceded him, Jeremiah was considered an outcast in Judah. Jeremiah was on the fringe of society, disliked by many, including some members of his own family, and he became a source of great irritation to the ruling class in Judah. Prophets like Jeremiah, generally operated on the edges of society, usually preaching a message of doom. They spoke of Yahweh’s anger, his judgment, and his freedom to act as he wills. They also proclaimed that Yahweh was a gracious God and the Redeemer of Israel. Any prophet who proclaimed a message of doom provoked the hostility and outrage of prophets who preached an optimistic message. Jeremiah was no exception in being the recipient of much hostility because of his message of submission to Babylon.

While Jeremiah was proclaiming the coming judgment and submission to Nebuchadnezzar, other prophets in Judah were soothing the people’s consciences by proclaiming a message of salvation and declaring that Yahweh was their faithful protector. One such prophet was Hananiah.

To be continued.

Previous posts in this series:

Jeremiah and Hananiah

Jeremiah and Hananiah: The Historical Context

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: False Prophets, Hananiah, Jeremiah, Prophets

Jeremiah and Hananiah

Early in Israel’s history, at the beginning of the monarchy, a group of prophets arose in Israel whose primary function was to challenge the policies of the king. The emergence of the state in Israel brought great changes to the social and religious life of the nation that greatly affected the tribal structures of Israelite society.

Within the development of the prophetic movement in Israel, there arose two types of prophets. The first type was a group of independent prophets who claimed to speak on behalf of Yahweh and who warned the people to return to the old traditions of the covenant. The second type were those prophets who were paid by the temple or the court and who proclaimed the kind of message their patrons desired to hear. The Greek Bible, the Septuagint, called them pseudo prophetes (Jeremiah 14:14 LXX), “false prophets.” These professional prophets came to be known as false prophets not because of their desire to mislead the people, but rather, because they misinterpreted Yahweh’s intentions at times when the nation was facing great dangers.

C. E. Schenk, writing in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia wrote: “In times of moral darkness the false prophets, predicting smooth things for the nation, independent of repentance, consecration and the pursuit of spiritual ideals, were honored above the true prophets who emphasized the moral greatness of Yahweh and the necessity of righteousness for the nation.”

True prophets proclaimed a message of God’s judgment against the rulers and the people because of their violation of the religious and legal traditions of the nation. On the other hand, false prophets preached a message of peace and salvation and predicted the nation’s deliverance from the hands of their enemies. In the end, true prophets were distinguished from false prophets by the outcome of their respective prophesies: “A prophet who predicts peace must carry the burden of proof. Only when his predictions come true can it be known that he is really from the Lord” (Jeremiah 28:9 NLT).

Two prophets who represent these styles of prophetic ministries were Jeremiah and Hananiah (Jeremiah 28). Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah, was a peripheral prophet who proclaimed God’s judgment against Judah and the exile in Babylon. Hananiah, on the other hand, proclaimed an optimistic message in which he declared that Jehoiachin, the exiled king of Judah, would be restored and that the vessels of the temple which were taken to Babylon, would be returned to Jerusalem within two years.

The ministries of Jeremiah and Hananiah occurred at a time of great crisis in the life of Judah. In 597 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar had come to Jerusalem, deported Jehoiachin, the royal family, political and religious leaders, and had taken many of the vessels of the temple as trophies of war to Babylon.

The confrontation between Jeremiah and Hananiah, the son of Azzur and a prophet from Gibeon, took place in the temple (Jeremiah 28:1). The confrontation was a dispute between two prophets who were guided by different understanding of what God was doing in Judah’s conflict with the Babylonians. On one side was Jeremiah, a prophet whose ministry was based on the old covenant traditions which the Lord had established with Israel at Sinai. Jeremiah was profoundly touched by what he perceived to be Judah’s lack of obedience to the demands of the covenant. Jeremiah, who had been called to preach a message of judgment (Jeremiah 1:10), urged the people to return to Yahweh and avoid the total destruction of the nation. Jeremiah saw the coming of the Babylonians and the deportation of Jehoiachin as the beginning of a long exile that would last seventy years (Jeremiah 25:11).

Jeremiah’s message to Judah was that the nation should submit to Babylonia and not oppose it, for submission to Babylon was ordained by Yahweh and that out of the humiliation of defeat and servitude, a new covenant would be established with Israel and the nation would be renewed for service in the world.

On the other side of the confrontation was Hananiah, a well-known and popular prophet in Judah. Like Jeremiah, Hananiah probably knew the history of Yahweh’s mighty acts of salvation on behalf of Israel. Hananiah was probably a firm believer in the so-called Zion theology, a view that proclaimed the inviolability of Jerusalem. On the basis of this belief, Hananiah proclaimed that God would not allow the Babylonians to destroy the people of Judah.

These conflicting theological traditions became the reason for the confrontation between the two prophets. The narrative of their encounter in the temple is the story of two men striving to hear God’s voice and interpret contemporary events in terms of divine will.

The encounter between Jeremiah and Hananiah is a classic example of a dispute between a true and a false prophet and how they interpreted God’s will for the people and for the nation. Further, the confrontation between Jeremiah and Hananiah provides a window into the problem of discerning a true prophet.

In their effort to interpret what God was doing through the coming of the Babylonians, Jeremiah used a legitimate hermeneutic in the right situation and Hananiah used a legitimate hermeneutic in the wrong context. When the people were confronted with two different understandings of what God was doing, how was the audience in the temple to recognize what God was doing in the midst of the anguish caused by the Babylonian invasion? Faced with two contradictory views of God’s work, which one should the people accept as the legitimate interpretation of God’s will? Which prophet was applying prophetic tradition properly to determine what God was doing in the current situation?

In future posts I will study the confrontation between Jeremiah and Hananiah and will introduce the historical background of the confrontation between the two prophets, the theological perspectives each brought to the confrontation, some biblical characteristics of true prophets, and the outcome of the confrontation.

To be continued.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: False Prophets, Hananiah, Jeremiah, Prophets