Remember how Abraham cut the animals for the covenant Yahweh made with him?

“He said to him, ‘Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.’ And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half.

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,’”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭15‬:‭9‬-‭10‬, ‭17‬-‭18‬ ‭ESV‬‬

This was old-school covenant cutting.

When men would do this, they were effectively saying, “If I break this covenant, may I be hewn in half like these animals that I walk between.” Very serious stuff. It is to invoke a binding oath with a consequence of death for breaking it.

This is what the leaders (and apparently even the citizens) of Jerusalem have done, perhaps in some last ditch, Hail Mary attempt to get Yahweh to rescue them from the Babylonians.

They cut a sacrificial calf in two, nose to tail, and then had a solemn procession between them, vowing to release their slaves. And these weren’t slaves from other lands. These were their fellow Hebrews who were destitute (probably because of the Egyptian and Babylonian invasions). Rather than be homeless and on welfare, the Israelite system allowed for indentured servitude and working off debts through one’s labor. But the Law limited it to 7 years.

So the people put on a big show of being righteous by VOWING with a covenant that all the slaves are freed. And then they turned around and figured they could exploit a legal loophole by then buying them back.

👳🏽‍♂️ Ok, I set them free. I did what the Law required. It never said you couldn’t buy them back!!

By so doing, they have all doomed themselves to a very nasty death.

“And the men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts— the officials of Judah, the officials of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf.”
‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭34‬:‭18‬-‭19‬ ‭ESV‬‬

By the mercy of God, Zedekiah is going to be spared. Sort of. He will be captured and taken to Babylon to live out his days.

In the next chapters, we’re going to “time travel” (yet again) about 20 years back to the reign of Jehoiakim.

😎 🎸Did someone say time travel?