Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease.
that ye . . . be . . . not diminished--It was God's will that the seed of Abraham should not fail; thus consolation is given them, and the hope, though not of an immediate, yet of an ultimate, return.
Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters,.... That is, such as had no wives, who were either bachelors or widowers; not that they were to take wives of the Chaldeans, but of those of their own nation; for intermarriages with Heathens were forbidden them; and this they were to do, in order to propagate their posterity, and keep up a succession: and take wives...
Jeremiah's letter to the scattered exiles served a vital purpose: written Scripture carries the same divine authority as spoken word, and at a distance it delivers the seasonable comfort God's dispersed children desperately need. The case of these captives was melancholy indeed; they looked like greater sinners than those left behind.
AI summary
Commenting on Jeremiah 29:1-7