When we take Jer. 29:7 in the broader context of Jeremiah and the entire biblical canon, we quickly see that Babylon is not meant to present to the Christian today a warrant for loving the city, far from it. Rather, Babylon represents the City of Man, that is the world system, and we are not to love the world…Then it follows, that in whatever respects our modern cities embody the spirit of Babylon, the City of Man, that is, the world, we are not to love them.  

For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. (Heb. 13:14)

Part I: Understanding Jeremiah 29:7 for today.

There is a great deal of emphasis in our day on loving the city. If you search the websites of new church plants you will often find the phrase, “A church for the city.” How did we come to such a place? The argument has been made for years that Jer. 29:7 teaches us to love the city where God has placed us: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” God is speaking to the exiled children of God in Babylon and the point seems clear: love the city, seek the welfare of the city, pray for the city, your welfare is tied to the welfare of Babylon.

There is certainly some truth here. We are told to love our neighbors: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). So, wherever we find ourselves, village, town, or city, we may rightly be called to love our neighbors in seeking their welfare. With this in mind, our cities offer us the possibility of having millions of neighbors to love.

In another way we may rightly be called to love a city. Since the command to subdue creation and rule over it may be demonstrated in the creation of cities, we may rightly enjoy the many benefits and blessings that cities afford. From convenient public transportation to a vast array of cultural offerings, from jobs to recreation opportunities, from the many relationships to great architectural beauty, our cities have much to offer.

I have lived and worked in some wonderful cities: Jacksonville, Boston, Atlanta, Amsterdam, Orlando, and Charlotte. I vividly recall walking to my downtown office in Boston on a beautiful spring day, a jet overhead taking off from Logan Airport, the throng of the city around me, a fresh cup of coffee from the corner store in my hand, and deeply appreciating all that Boston had to offer at that moment.

But loving individual neighbors or appreciating the good that may be found in a city is different from loving the city as an institution, or loving Babylon in particular.

A better understanding of Jer. 29:7

There are at least two major problems with using Jer. 29:7 as justification for loving our cities. The first is simply the accurate historical interpretation of this situation. In the book of Jeremiah, the people of God refused to believe that they would be held long in captivity, so they did not want to settle down in Babylon. The false prophets assured God’s people that they would soon be home. God denies that rosy hope through Jeremiah: “So do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your fortune-tellers, or your sorcerers, who are saying to you, ‘You shall not serve the king of Babylon’” (Jer. 27:9).

Jeremiah is telling God’s people that they will be stuck in Babylon for a long period, seventy years, so they had better settle down. This becomes clearer when we read the previous verses for context, where God is saying, in effect: “Settle down, you will be in Babylon for a long while.”

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.  (Jer. 29:4–6)

A few verses later it becomes yet even clearer that God is essentially saying: “You are stuck there so get comfortable for a while, you will not soon be out of Babylon.”

For it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the LORD. “For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.”  (Jer. 29:9–10)

But then the actual hope of Chapter 29 is offered. The hope is not that God’s people will help human flourishing in the city of Babylon, but that they will endure there, and then finally return to the City of God: Jerusalem.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. (Jer. 29:11–14)

Interpreters of Jeremiah have long understood that the point of Jer. 29:7 was not to create an enduring theology instructing God’s people to always love all cities, but simply to instruct God’s people to stay put in Babylon as long as God intended for them to stay there. Calvin writes in his commentary of Jeremiah 29:7:

We hence learn that he exhorted the exiles to bear the yoke of the king of Babylon, during the time allotted to the captivity, for to attempt anything rashly was to fight against God, and that he thus far commanded them quietly to bear that tyrannical government.

J. A. Thompson (NICOT) concurs:

Jeremiah by these words, cast the people completely adrift from all those things on which they depended and which they regarded as essential to their own well-being, a nation-state, kingship, and army, national boarders the temple. . . . Such advice would not have been easy to accept for people who had been carried off from their homeland by those for whom Jeremiah was asking them to pray.

Keil and Delitzsch agree as well:

What the false prophets gave out . . . may be gathered from the context of ver. 10, namely, that the yoke of Babylon would soon be broken and come to an end. . . . [But in reality] the deliverance will not come about till after seventy years; but then the Lord will fulfill to his people his promise of grace.

We see the first problem with taking Jer. 29:7 as instruction to love our cities: it is not offered as general advice for how to relate to cities like Babylon, but rather it is an admonition that God’s people will be stuck there for their sin, until God delivers them.

The second problem with the contemporary usage of this passage is that it fails to see Babylon for what it is in a more well-rounded biblical view, namely, Babylon is the anti-city of God. Because of this, the more comprehensive biblical teaching on Babylon encourages us not to seek its welfare, but to oppose Babylon. When we come to Jeremiah Chapters 50–51, for example, the people of God are to take a vastly different stance toward Babylon. They were to be appalled at her, to hiss at her, to set themselves against her, and shoot arrows at her.

Because of the wrath of the Lord she shall not be inhabited but shall be an utter desolation; everyone who passes by Babylon shall be appalled, and hiss because of all her wounds. Set yourselves in array against Babylon all around, all you who bend the bow; shoot at her, spare no arrows, for she has sinned against the Lord. (Jer. 50:13–14)

God’s people were also called to flee Babylon, to declare vengeance on her, and to kill her people.

A voice! They flee and escape from the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of the Lord our God, vengeance for his temple. “Summon archers against Babylon, all those who bend the bow. Encamp around her; let no one escape. Repay her according to her deeds; do to her according to all that she has done. For she has proudly defied the Lord, the Holy One of Israel. Therefore her young men shall fall in her squares, and all her soldiers shall be destroyed on that day, declares the LORD.”  (Jer. 50:28–30)

God’s people were to entirely forsake Babylon.

We would have healed Babylon, but she was not healed. Forsake her, and let us go each to his own country, for her judgment has reached up to heaven and has been lifted up even to the skies. The Lord has brought about our vindication; come, let us declare in Zion the work of the Lord our God. (Jer. 51:9–10)

By what principle of hermeneutics may one decide that seeking the peace of Babylon in 29:7 is to be favored over forsaking, hissing at, shooting at, and fleeing Babylon in Chapters 50–51? We would argue that there is not one.

Furthermore, throughout the Bible, Babylon is contrasted negatively with Jerusalem. It was in Babylon that God’s people wept as they remembered Zion.

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy! (Ps. 137:1–6)

God destined the destruction of Babylon in part because she had tormented God’s people: “And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor and pomp of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them” (Is. 13:19). “‘And behold, here come riders, horsemen in pairs!’ And he answered, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon; and all the carved images of her gods he has shattered to the ground’” (Is. 21:9).

Indeed, Babylon represents all that is evil in the world, the world system that is anti-God, as she falls in the book of Revelation: “Another angel, a second, followed, saying, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality’” (Rev. 14:8).

When we take Jer. 29:7 in the broader context of Jeremiah and the entire biblical canon, we quickly see that Babylon is not meant to present to the Christian today a warrant for loving the city, far from it. Rather, Babylon represents the City of Man, that is the world system, and we are not to love the world.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15–17)

Then it follows, that in whatever respects our modern cities embody the spirit of Babylon, the City of Man, that is, the world, we are not to love them.

Augustine went to great pains to demonstrate that Rome, which was an embodiment of the City of Man in his age, was not the city that Christians were to love. In fact, he showed the failings of Roman culture in their gods, their politics, and in their immorality: “Lust requires for its consummation darkness and secrecy; and this not only when unlawful intercourse is desired, but even such fornication as the earthly city has legalized” (Augustine, City of God, 14.18). It was against the citizens of the earthly city that Augustine wrote to defend the very City of God: “For to this earthly city belong the enemies against whom I have to defend the city of God” (Augustine, City of God, 1.1).

While we should not love Babylon—the City of Man—there is one city that is commended to our affections.

Dr. Thomas D. Hawkes is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America; he resides in Charlotte, North Carolina.