BLOG

The filet mignon of the word, part 12, Two yokes

In the law of tribulation, we read how God intended to bring an increasingly severe judgment upon Israel if the nation put away God’s law and violated its covenant (promise of obedience). Judgment was to culminate with foreign invasion, conquest, and exile, and we know from subsequent history that this indeed occurred.

Deuteronomy 28:48 tells Israel,

⁴⁸ Therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in the lack of all things; and He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.

This “iron yoke” is obviously associated with exile and captivity, and there is no doubt that the Assyrian captivity of the House of Israel fulfilled this word. Among the prophets, Jeremiah alone bore witness specifically to this law, telling the House of Judah in Jeremiah 27:2, 11, 12,

² Thus says the Lord to me—“Make for yourself bonds and yokes and put them on your neck… ¹¹ But the nation which will bring its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will let remain on its land,” declares the Lord, “and they will till it and dwell in it.” ¹² I spoke words like all these to Zedekiah king of Judah, saying, “Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him and his people, and live!”

Verse 11 tells Israel that if they were to submit to the king of Babylon in obedience to the word of the Lord, He would allow them to remain in the land. But if not, they would serve our their sentence in exile. This is explained further in the next chapter of Jeremiah.

The Wooden Yoke Option

Jeremiah had opposition from another prophet named Hananiah, who had prophesied that within two years the yoke of Babylon would be broken and that God would spare Judah from captivity. Jeremiah 28:10-13 says,

¹⁰ Then Hananiah the prophet took the yoke from the neck of Jeremiah the prophet and broke it. ¹¹ Hananiah spoke in the presence of all the people, saying, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Even so will I break within two full years the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all the nations’.” Then the prophet Jeremiah went his way. ¹² The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah… saying, ¹³ “Go and speak to Hananiah, saying, “You have broken the yokes of wood, but you have made instead of them yokes of iron.”

This is the only mention of “yokes of wood.” The law of tribulation speaks only of an iron yoke. The wooden yoke is that which God mentioned in verse 11, allowing the people to remain in their land. In both cases, Judah would have to serve the king of Babylon; the difference is where they would serve him. Would it be in the land of Judah or in Babylon?

Therefore, we can define the wooden yoke as a captivity without being exiled from their land; the iron yoke is a captivity along with exile to a foreign land. The word of the Lord to Judah gave them a choice. If they would acknowledge their sin and agree with God that His judgment was righteous, then they would suffer captivity under a (lighter) wooden yoke.

A wooden yoke could be broken, but not an iron yoke. If they refused, it was as if they had broken the wooden yoke, and so God would impose upon them a much heavier yoke, and the nation itself would be destroyed.

The people—and, most importantly, King Zedekiah—believed the prophet Hananiah. The result was that Judah was sent into exile for 70 years so that the land could keep its Sabbath rest years.

Heart Idolatry Brings Deception

Note also that Hananiah is never called a false prophet. He had a genuine calling as a prophet, but for some reason the word he received was false. His heart was not right. Jeremiah did not explain this. For an explanation, we must turn to Ezekiel 14:1-5, which says,

¹ Then some elders of Israel came to me and sat down before me. ² And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ³ “Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts and have put right before their faces the stumbling block of their iniquity. Should I be consulted by them at all?

God’s question was whether or not He should give men genuine answers from Him if they inquired with idols in their hearts. A heart idol is a preconceived view which takes precedence over God’s answer. In other words, when people inquire, hoping that God will affirm what they already believe to be true, then it is clear that such people are not really searching for truth but for affirmation.

God’s answer is in Ezekiel 14:4, 5,

⁴ Therefore speak to them and tell them, “Thus says the Lord God, ‘Any man of the house of Israel who sets up his idols in his heart, puts right before his face the stumbling block of his iniquity, and then comes to the prophet, I the Lord will be brought to give him an answer in the matter in view of the multitude of his idols, ⁵ in order to lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel who are estranged from Me through all their idols’.”

God will indeed give the prophet a word, but it will be a word that the inquirer wants to hear. It will not be a true word. We read further in Ezekiel 14:9,

⁹ But if the prophet is prevailed upon to speak a word, it is I, the Lord, who have prevailed upon that prophet, and I will stretch out My hand against him and destroy him from among My people Israel. ¹⁰ They will bear the punishment of their iniquity; as the iniquity of the inquirer is, so the iniquity of the prophet will be.

This is strong meat indeed. Few preachers dare to teach on this passage, because they cannot deal with the idea that God might prophesy a lie. But the principle behind God’s action is based on the same law that allows an Israelite to charge interest on a loan to foreigners but not to fellow Israelites. Deuteronomy 23:19, 20 says,

¹⁹ You shall not charge interest to your countrymen; interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest. ²⁰ You may charge interest to a foreigner, but to your countrymen you shall not charge interest…

In God’s Kingdom—among law-abiding Kingdom people—loans must reflect the principle of love. This includes foreigners living as law-abiding citizens of the Kingdom. But a loan to a foreigner who is not subject to the law of God may be treated by the standard of his own measure. An Israelite was under no obligation to loan money interest free to a Babylonian, who could then use the money to charge interest to his fellow Babylonians.

One must be careful how one uses this principle, of course, so that we do not use it as an excuse to abuse or oppress others. We are, after all, to be a testimony and a light to the world, so that perhaps men everywhere might repent. God gives us room for discretion and discernment. Yet in some cases men may be dealt with according to their own standard of measure, as even Jesus affirmed in Matthew 7:2, saying, “by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.”

In the case of heart idolatry, God utilizes this principle by giving the inquirer answers that he desires, because the idols of his heart cause him to reject the true word of God.

The Captivities

By Jeremiah’s definition of the wooden yoke, it is clear that all of the captivities recorded in the book of Judges were of the wooden yoke. In each case the Israelites were oppressed within their own land, being forced to pay tribute (taxes) to foreign nations. It was only in the final captivity—Israel to Assyria, and Judah to Babylon—that the iron yoke was actually imposed.

In the law of tribulation, the judgments for disobedience came incrementally. Each new judgment represented an increased sentence upon the Israelites. So also, the wooden-yoke captivities were imposed upon them for centuries before they experienced the iron yoke of exile.

So we read in Leviticus 26:18,

¹⁸ If also after these things [judgments] you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.

This is repeated in Leviticus 26:24 and 28. The “seven times more” should not be thought of as a beating that is seven times harder than before. It is actually seven times longer in duration. This is how it is interpreted in Daniel 7:25, where we read of “a time, times, and half a time.” A “time” is one year (360 days) in short-term prophecy or 360 years in long-term prophecy. In this case, 3½ “times” is 1,260 years. The full “seven times” is 2,520 years.

Jeremiah saw only a 70-year exile/tribulation. It was later revealed to Daniel that the Babylonian captivity was only the first phase of a much longer captivity, which involved a succession of world empires: Babylon, Persia, Greece, Imperial Rome, and the “little horn” religious extension, known as the church (Vatican).

Judah returned after 70 years under King Cyrus of Persia. This ended the iron yoke phase, and Judah then was allowed to return to the old land under the wooden yoke. They remained under the wooden yoke until they again rebelled against the fourth empire (Rome). When they refused to submit to Rome, the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem, burned the temple, and exiled the people of Judah. This put the Jews back under the iron yoke, as promised in Deuteronomy 28:48.

In the 20^th century, the Jews returned to the old land without repenting first. This was in violation of the law of tribulation in Leviticus 26:40, 41, 42, but God allowed this in order to fulfill Isaac’s prophecy to Esau-Edom. The Israeli state, from God’s perspective, is neither Israel nor Judah but Edom, to whom the birthright was given for a season.