Seraiah Spoke

It is wonderful how the LORD chooses and gifts people to contribute to the health and fruitfulness of His kingdom by His grace.  Because we serve the LORD who calls and ordains us for His good purposes, the things He tells us to do may not be our natural inclination.  We can make the mistake of limiting God by our own perceived strengths, and at our best (on our own) we are incapable of doing anything profitable for the kingdom of God.  The almighty God is likely to direct us to do things we cannot do on our own, something out of our comfort zone, so we will learn to seek and rely upon Him for success in faith.

Seraiah the prince is a good example of this.  See how he is introduced in Jeremiah 51:59:  "The word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of Judah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. And Seraiah was the quartermaster."  A quartermaster was a royal attendant who aided the king by setting up camp and provided necessary comforts when the king traveled.  The KJV refers to Seraiah as "a quiet prince."  He was the sort of person who diligently went about his business behind the scenes.  Seraiah wore many hats in his duties, but one thing he was not was a prophet.  The word of the LORD came to the prophet Jeremiah who wrote in a book of all the evil God would bring upon Babylon.

Jeremiah 51:61-64 says, "And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, "When you arrive in Babylon and see it, and read all these words, ⁶² then you shall say, 'O LORD, You have spoken against this place to cut it off, so that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but it shall be desolate forever.' ⁶³ Now it shall be, when you have finished reading this book, that you shall tie a stone to it and throw it out into the Euphrates. ⁶⁴ Then you shall say, 'Thus Babylon shall sink and not rise from the catastrophe that I will bring upon her. And they shall be weary.' " Thus far are the words of Jeremiah."  Jeremiah was directed by God to write in a book and then gave it to Seraiah with instructions.  He was to pray to the LORD according to the word spoken to him, read the book, bind it to a stone, throw it in the Euphrates and then speak the word of the LORD.  Israel had been brought into captivity, but God would certainly judge Babylon.  Like a stone, the empire would sink and not rise.

This would have been a strange request by the LORD through Jeremiah the prophet to fulfill, something Seraiah would never encounter with setting up camp.  In a sense he was directed to utter Jeremiah's last recorded words of what God would do, and God would be faithful to according to do all He said.  God chose a quiet prince to proclaim the truth of the LORD we read today.  It was a comfort to know their period of captivity would have an end, and God would see to it those who plundered His people would be weary.  God would bring catastrophe upon Babylon from which they could not rise, and God would bring His people out and back to Jerusalem.  Praise the LORD He chooses regular people to do His work and proclaim the truth of His word that will surely come to pass.  By faith a quartermaster does the work of a prophet, and the quiet prince spoke up as the servant of the LORD.