Remnant of Judah, the LORD has told you, 'Do not go to Egypt.' Be sure of this: I warn you today. – Jeremiah 42:19

Today's Scripture Reading (September 8, 2026): Jeremiah 42

Italian author Laurentius Abstemius wrote his most famous work, Hecatomythium, in 1495. The book is a collection of a hundred fables written in Latin. Some of the fables were translated from Greek for the book. The book of fables was passed over by the critics of the day. They considered the stories ridiculous, and many took exception to the negative view some fables took of the clergy.

One of the fables contained within the book was a story about a group of fish. The fish had been caught and were being placed in a pan of boiling oil. In this fable, the fish began to talk. One of the fish suggested they do whatever they could to get out of the pan. So, they made a plan and jumped out of the oil, but that only landed them in worse trouble because they landed in the fire. There, lying on the burning coals, the fish cursed the bad advice that they had followed. The fabulist concludes that "this fable warns us that when we are avoiding present dangers, we should not fall into even worse peril." Aesop paraphrased the fable for his collection of moral tales. He entitled the fable "Worse and Worse" and rephrased the moral as "jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire."

The fish fable fits the message God gives to Jeremiah. It would seem that the immediate reaction of those left in Judah, after the close of the Babylonian-Judean war, was to run to the other superpower that ruled in their world. The idea was that maybe they could be safe in Egypt. It is sometimes amazing, as we tell the story of the Bible, how often Israel seems to believe that safety is found in Egypt, that place where they once existed as enslaved people.

But God's message was that the only place where they could be all that they were created to be was with God. What had happened in Judah may have been uncomfortable, but if God had not been with the people of Judah during their conflict with Babylon, it would have been so much worse. God had never left them. In this moment, God was inviting them to stay, not to run to Egypt. God was still with them, and He had no plans to leave them. Jeremiah hoped the people left in Judah would commit to God, leaving behind any plans to leave Him if they wanted to be successful in the future.

According to Jeremiah, to run to Egypt would be like "jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire." Life might have been uncomfortable, but they could trust God to be with them where they were and walk with them into the future. Here is the reality that I know. People will let you down. That was the danger that Egypt represented. Escaping to Egypt meant trusting a group of people who could not save them. Only God was worthy of their trust, and if they were looking for someone to move them through to the end of the story, they would not find that person in Egypt. That someone was the one who had held them every step of the way so far, and the one who was never going to give up on them. That someone was their God, the one who deserved their trust.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 43