Why does the Lord tell Hananiah that he will remove him from the face of the earth?

Jeremiah has the final word as he tells Hananiah what his fate will be, Listen, Hananiah, the LORD has not sent you, and you have made the people trust in a lie. Therefore, thus says the LORD: ’Behold, I will remove you from the face of the earth. This year you shall die, because you have uttered rebellion against the LORD.’ It is clear that Hananiah is a false prophet. This is not simply Jeremiah’s opinion; the narrative makes it clear that it is the Lord who has revealed this to Jeremiah. The sentence of death reflects the words of the covenant in Deuteronomy 13:1–5. A prophet who calls on the Lord’s people to follow other gods has spoken rebellion against the Lord your God and is to be put to death. Hananiah has not explicitly encouraged the people of Judah to follow other gods, but the Lord’s verdict is that he has made this people trust in a lie and that is the same as uttering rebellion against the Lord. In Jeremiah 13:25 the Lord has already said that to trust in lies is to forget him. Hananiah may have believed that his message would give the people of Judah hope. He may even have believed that it affirmed the Lord’s faithfulness to his covenant promises. But he was not free to confuse his personal desires and opinions with what the Lord had actually said. The first responsibility of a prophet is to stand in the council of the Lord to hear what the Lord is saying and to take that message to his people. Hananiah has not done that. He has ignored and even contradicted the Lord’s word that judgment is still coming to Judah. With this lie he has led the people in rebellion against the Lord and that is the same as calling the people to follow other gods.¹

Hananiah’s sentence has a powerful play on words. The Lord has not sent him and so he will be removed (sent) from the face of the earth.² This is also an ominous sign to the people of Judah. They have believed Hananiah’s lie and so they too will be sent away in exile.³ The passage ends with just a single sentence, In that same year, in the seventh month, the prophet Hananiah died. The Lord’s word spoken by Jeremiah is fulfilled. The question could be asked why Hananiah’s death did not happen immediately? It is possible that the Lord was even now showing mercy to Hananiah, giving him time to repent, or perhaps the Lord wanted to make it clear that Hananiah’s death was not the result of Jeremiah scheming against him, but the Lord himself.⁴

Hananiah’s death draws the confrontation between the two proph ets to a very clear conclusion. Jeremiah’s prediction of Hananiah’s death has come true, affirming his message from the Lord that Hananiah is indeed a false prophet who has led the people in rebellion against the Lord. Jeremiah is the Lord’s true prophet, and his message of coming judgment has been affirmed, the wooden yoke is indeed an unbreakable yoke of iron. However, those who witnessed the encounter and those reading of it later in exile are still faced with the decision to accept Jeremiah’s message that the Lord’s judgment on Judah is not over. Up until and even after Jeremiah’s message is affirmed, when Babylon invades Jerusalem, destroys the temple and takes its people into exile in 587 BC, there are still prophets like Hananiah saying that all will be well and that the Lord will soon restore Jerusalem and its people. The temptation is always there to reject the Lord’s message that restoration is going to come through the process of painful refining judgment that leads to repentance and to rather believe the lie that there is no need for repentance and that soon the Lord will guarantee the wellbeing of his covenant people despite their ongoing unfaithfulness.⁵