GOD HAS A PLAN (Santamaria)

Jeremiah 29:11 is one of those verses that gets printed on mugs and stitched onto pillows—usually with the emotional volume turned up and the historical context turned down to a whisper. But the original setting is not a pleasant devotional moment in a sunlit kitchen. It is exile. It is dislocation. It is the ache of living under an empire you did not choose, with graves behind you, strangers around you, and a future that looks like fog

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That is exactly why the verse is so powerful when we actually hear it in its own voice.

Jeremiah 29 is a letter to the Judean exiles in Babylon. They are tempted by “fast deliverance” preaching—promises that the nightmare will be over in a blink. Jeremiah, speaking for the LORD, crushes the fantasy and replaces it with something sturdier: build houses, plant gardens, raise families, pray for the shalom of the city where you are carried, because the exile will not be short. The chapter explicitly speaks of seventy years in Babylon before God “visits” them and establishes his word to bring them back. (blueletterbible.org)

Now put yourself in their skin. If you are an exile, “God has a plan” can sound either like comfort or like insult—depending on whether “plan” means a cold blueprint that ignores tears, or a living purpose that includes tears but does not worship them. Jeremiah 29:11 is God saying: My purpose is not improvisation. It is not random. It is not cruelty dressed up as sovereignty. I know what I am doing, and what I am doing is aimed at your restoration.

Here is the Hebrew of Jeremiah 29:11 (Masoretic Text):

כִּי֩ אָנֹכִ֨י יָדַ֜עְתִּי אֶת־הַמַּחֲשָׁבֹ֗ת אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י חֹשֵׁ֥ב עֲלֵיכֶ֖ם נְאֻם־יְהוָ֑ה מַחְשְׁבֹ֤ות שָׁלֹום֙ וְלֹ֣א לְרָעָ֔ה לָתֵ֥ת לָכֶ֖ם אַחֲרִ֥ית וְתִקְוָֽה׃ (Chabad)

A woodenly literal rendering would sound like this: “For I, I know the thoughts/plans that I am thinking/planning concerning you—declares YHWH—plans of shalom and not for ra‘ah, to give you an acharit and a tiqvah.”

That repetition you can feel even in English—“I know… that I am thinking”—is not clumsy Hebrew. It’s emphasis. The verse doesn’t merely say God has plans; it says God is not absent-minded about them. He is not guessing. He is not ambushed by Babylon. He is not reacting in panic to Israel’s situation like a human leader trying to salvage a campaign gone wrong. He “knows” (יָדַעְתִּי, yadáʿtî) what he is doing.

That verb “to know” (ידע, y-d-ʿ) in Hebrew is more than data. It is often relational, covenantal, and purposive. In many places it signals not just awareness but intentional recognition—knowledge that belongs to a God who acts. Here it frames the exile the way Scripture so often frames suffering: not as a proof that God lost control, but as proof that human sin is real and God’s discipline is not imaginary—and yet, even discipline is harnessed to redemption.

Then we meet the word most English readers hear as “plans” or “thoughts”: מַחֲשָׁבוֹת (machashavot), plural of מַחֲשָׁבָה (machashavah). Bible lexicons note that machashavah can denote thoughts, plans, intentions, even designs or “devices,” and the moral flavor is determined by context—it can be good or evil depending on who is doing the planning and why. (Bible Hub) In Jeremiah 29:11 the moral flavor is made explicit: these are machashavot of shalom, not machashavot aimed at ra‘ah.

And notice how the Hebrew tightens the bolt: “the plans that I am planning” (אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי חֹשֵׁב, asher anokhi choshév). The root behind choshév (חשב, ḥ-sh-b) can mean to think, to reckon, to account, to devise. It is the language of intention, not vague wishing. God is not saying, “I have positive vibes for you.” He is saying, “My purpose is aimed.”

Then comes the heart-word: שָׁלוֹם (shalom). This is where many modern readings quietly go off the road. “Plans to prosper you” is a popular rendering, but the Hebrew does not say “plans to make you rich.” It says machashavot shalom—plans of shalom. Shalom is wholeness, well-being, soundness, restored order, a life that is not fractured. Shalom can include material provision (you can’t starve your way into wholeness), but it is not reducible to material provision. Shalom is the opposite of a life being ripped apart.

This matters because the exile itself was the ripping-apart: land lost, temple ruined, identity threatened, family lines disrupted. Shalom, then, is not a promise of immediate comfort; it is a promise that God’s final intention is not your disintegration.

The verse contrasts shalom with לְרָעָה (lera‘ah), “for evil/calamity.” The noun רָעָה (ra‘ah) can mean moral evil or disaster/calamity depending on context. Here, given the pairing with shalom and the situation of exile, it is best heard as harm, ruin, calamity—God is denying that his purpose is to crush them for sport. “Not for ra‘ah.” He is not a sadist with sovereignty.

Then the line that people quote as “a future and a hope” comes into view: אַחֲרִית (acharit) וְתִקְוָה (ve-tiqvah).

Acharit literally relates to what comes “after,” the latter part, the outcome, the end. Strong’s-based lexical summaries note it can mean “after-part/outcome,” “latter time,” even “posterity,” depending on context. (Bible Hub) That’s why older English sometimes renders it as “an expected end.” Not “end” as in nihilism, but “end” as in outcome—where this road is going.

And tiqvah is “hope,” but not the thin kind that means “maybe this will work out.” Lexical resources note tiqvah can literally mean a cord/line (a tangible thing you can hold), and figuratively expectation or hope. (Bible Hub) That concrete sense is not a cute trivia fact; it’s a theology sermon in one word. Biblical hope is not wishful thinking; it is being tethered. Hope is what you cling to when the ground is moving. God is promising that the exile will not be the final chapter and that they will not be left psychologically and spiritually untethered.

So, in the Hebrew, the verse is not primarily a promise of individual career success. It is a covenantal declaration to a shattered community: “Your story is not over. Your outcome is not annihilation. My intention is your restoration.”

Now, the user asked for Greek too, and Jeremiah gives us something fascinating when we look at the Septuagint (LXX), the ancient Greek translation. Jeremiah in the LXX often differs in arrangement and sometimes in length compared to the Hebrew tradition. You can actually see that in the way Blue Letter Bible labels Jeremiah 29:11 as corresponding to “lxx 36:11.” (blueletterbible.org) That’s not a typo; it reflects the well-known chapter/order differences in Jeremiah between textual traditions.

Here is the Greek text given there for Jeremiah 29:11:

καὶ λογιοῦμαι ἐφ᾿ ὑμᾶς λογισμὸν εἰρήνης καὶ οὐ κακὰ τοῦ δοῦναι ὑμῖν ταῦτα. (blueletterbible.org)

A straightforward translation: “And I will reckon/plan toward you a reckoning of peace, and not evils, to give you these things.”

Two things jump out immediately. First, the Greek is shorter than the Hebrew of Jeremiah 29:11 as commonly read today; it doesn’t explicitly include the “future and hope” phrase in this verse, instead ending with “to give you these things.” (blueletterbible.org) That doesn’t mean the Greek tradition denies hope; it means the translator’s base text and/or rendering strategy here compresses the thought. In context (verses around it), the same divine movement is present: God’s purpose is peace and restoration after the appointed time. (blueletterbible.org)

Second, the Greek chooses a very “accounting/reckoning” family of words: λογίζομαι (logizomai) and λογισμός (logismos). Logizomai is a verb meaning to reckon, consider, account, calculate, decide—language that often implies deliberate evaluation, not mere emotion. Blue Letter Bible’s lexicon summary for logizomai includes senses like “to consider,” “to take into account,” and even “to determine, purpose, decide.” (blueletterbible.org) That’s striking because Paul later loves this verb in the New Testament (for example, “reckon yourselves…”), precisely because it can carry the sense of treating something as a settled reality in one’s mental accounting. The LXX’s choice of this word family makes God’s “plans” feel like something weighed and purposed, not something impulsive.

Then λογισμὸν εἰρήνης (logismon eirēnēs): literally, “a reckoning of peace.” Eirēnē is the Greek “peace,” and in the LXX it often functions as a Greek carrier-word for Hebrew shalom. The genitive “of peace” here works like “characterized by peace,” a plan whose quality is peace. And the contrast is explicit: καὶ οὐ κακὰ (“and not evils”). Kaka (plural of kakon) can mean bad things, evils, harms—again, not a picture of God plotting spiritual sabotage.

So Hebrew and Greek converge in meaning even when they differ in shape. The Hebrew says: machashavot shalom, not lera‘ah; to give you acharit and tiqvah. The Greek says: logismon eirēnēs, not kaka; to give you these things. (Chabad) Both traditions force the same theological question onto the table: When God disciplines, what is his endgame? And both answer: peace, restoration, a real outcome that is not destruction.

Now we have to do the mature thing: we have to keep the verse inside the paragraph of Jeremiah 29, and inside the covenant storyline of Scripture.

Jeremiah is not writing to modern individuals deciding whether to take a job offer in another state. He is writing to a community under judgment and mercy simultaneously. The exile is not random suffering; it is covenant discipline. Israel has broken faith; the prophets have warned; the collapse has come. And yet—even in discipline—God says his intention is not to erase them as a people, but to purify, preserve, and restore.

That means Jeremiah 29:11 has an edge to it that sentimental readings often remove. God’s “plans” include seventy years in Babylon. (blueletterbible.org) In other words, God’s shalom is not always immediate comfort. Sometimes shalom is what God is building through a long, humbling season where you learn that idols don’t feed you and empires don’t keep promises. The verse is hope, but it is not denial. It does not say, “Nothing bad will happen.” Bad already happened. The temple is already burning in their memory. It says, “The bad is not the final aim. The final aim is restoration.”

This is where Hebrew acharit is such a dagger against despair. Despair says, “This moment is ultimate.” God says, “This moment is not ultimate. There is an acharit. There is an outcome.” (Bible Hub) The exile feels like the end, but God says it is not the end; it is a severe chapter in the middle of a story whose conclusion God has not surrendered.

And tiqvah—hope-as-cord—pushes the same point into the emotions. Hope is not pretending the present is fine. Hope is refusing to treat the present as final. Hope is the cord you hold while you wait for God to do what he promised. (Bible Hub)

That’s why Jeremiah 29 doesn’t stop at verse 11. It continues into prayer and seeking. The next lines (in Greek, at least) move immediately into “pray to me…and I will hear you” and “seek me…and you will find me…with your whole heart.” (blueletterbible.org) God’s plan is not a fatalistic script where humans are irrelevant; it is a living covenant movement where God restores a people to himself.

Now let’s widen the lens. Scripture is full of moments where God’s people mistake the timing of God for the absence of God. Abraham receives promise, then waits. Israel is delivered, then wanders. David is anointed, then hunted. The Messiah comes, then suffers. If you want a biblical theology of “hope and future,” it is never mere upward mobility; it is resurrection logic. God often brings life through death, victory through humiliation, clarity through exile.

So Jeremiah 29:11 becomes a kind of Rosetta Stone for reading your own suffering without lying. It teaches you to say two things at once, without contradiction. First: the pain is real. Second: the pain is not ultimate.

You can hear that double-speech everywhere in Scripture. Joseph can look at a chain of evil actions and still say God meant it for good. The Psalms can scream and still trust. The prophets can announce judgment and still promise restoration. The New Testament can name tribulation and still insist on hope. The Bible is not embarrassed to put grief and hope in the same sentence. In fact, it insists on it.

That is why Jeremiah 29:11 is not a prosperity slogan; it is a covenant promise spoken into exile. It doesn’t guarantee you a painless life. It guarantees that God is not purposeless. It guarantees that he does not abandon his people to meaninglessness. It guarantees that restoration is not a fantasy when God has spoken it.

And this is where the Greek verb logizomai, if we let it preach, adds a sharpness. God does not merely “feel” peace toward his people; he reckons it, purposes it, determines it. (blueletterbible.org) The plan is not a mood; it is a decision. And that means the believer’s hope is not anchored in the volatility of human history but in the settled intention of God.

But how do we keep this from becoming either sentimental or fatalistic? By remembering what the exile was for. Jeremiah is not a motivational speaker. He is a covenant prosecutor and a covenant comforter. The exile is tied to Israel’s sin; the return is tied to God’s faithfulness. Jeremiah 29:11, then, is not “You’re great and you deserve nice things.” It is “You were unfaithful and you are being disciplined, but I am faithful and I will not let the covenant die in your hands.”

That is a deeper comfort than flattery, because it places hope where hope can actually survive. If my hope rests on me being strong, then hope dies the moment I’m weak. If my hope rests on circumstances behaving, then hope dies the moment circumstances turn feral. But if my hope rests on God’s faithfulness—on God’s machashavot shalom, God’s logismos eirēnēs—then hope can exist even in Babylon. (Chabad)

And that, perhaps, is the most scandalous part of the verse: it implies you can live in the wrong place, under the wrong rulers, after the wrong choices, with the wrong regrets—and still not be beyond the reach of God’s restoring intention. The exile is real. The consequences are real. But God is not finished.

A modern reader often wants the verse to mean: “God will get me out of Babylon fast.” Jeremiah’s letter, however, means: “God will meet you in Babylon, sustain you in Babylon, sanctify you in Babylon, and in his appointed time bring you out.” That is harder, but it is more solid. A quick fix can be a lie. A long obedience in hope is often the truer mercy.

So what does “hope and a future” finally look like in Jeremiah’s world? Historically, it looks like return from exile, rebuilding, reconstitution of the community. Theologically, it looks like God’s refusal to let judgment have the last word. And ultimately—if we follow the Bible’s own trajectory—it looks like the Messiah, because the deepest “shalom” Scripture promises is reconciliation with God, the healing of the covenant fracture, the restoration of a people who could not restore themselves.

That doesn’t turn Jeremiah 29:11 into a generic Christian platitude; it intensifies it. Because if the pattern is “restoration after exile,” then the final form of that pattern is “life after death.” The Bible’s idea of “future” is not merely “next year will be better.” It is that God is capable of bringing you through what looks like an ending and making it the doorway into what he promised.

Acharit is not just “later”; it is “outcome.” Tiqvah is not just “optimism”; it is “tethered expectation.” (Bible Hub) And shalom is not “comfortable”; it is “whole.” When Jeremiah 29:11 says God has plans of shalom, it is saying: God’s endgame is not to shatter you into permanent fragments, but to restore wholeness—wholeness of worship, wholeness of identity, wholeness of a people under God.

That kind of promise does not erase suffering; it gives suffering a boundary. It says suffering is not sovereign. God is.

And that is why this verse has survived so many centuries of human darkness. Because people keep ending up in Babylon. Not always literal Babylon—sometimes Babylon is illness, sometimes grief, sometimes oppression, sometimes the consequences of your own sin, sometimes the slow ache of unanswered prayer. Babylon is the place where you learn you cannot save yourself, cannot control the timeline, cannot build the kingdom by force, cannot demand an immediate explanation. Babylon is where idols get quiet and you hear your own heart beating.

Into that place, God does not always say, “Tomorrow you’ll be home.” Sometimes he says, “Plant a garden.” That is, live faithfully where you are. Pray. Seek. Wait. And do not interpret the slowness of my deliverance as the absence of my love.

“For I know…”—you don’t. I do. “The plans…”—not random, not chaotic, not improvised. “Plans of shalom…”—my intention is wholeness, not harm. “To give you an acharit and a tiqvah…”—your outcome will not be annihilation; your hope will not be embarrassed. (Chabad)

So read Jeremiah 29:11 with reverence, not as a slogan. It is not God offering you a personalized fortune cookie. It is God testifying, in the teeth of exile, that he remains God. He remains faithful. He remains purposeful. He remains committed to his people’s restoration.

And maybe the most bracing comfort of all is this: the verse does not depend on the exiles being brilliant, strong, or deserving. It depends on God being God. That is the only foundation that can actually hold the weight of hope.

If you want, I can also write a companion piece that walks verse-by-verse through Jeremiah 29:1–14 (letter structure, false prophets, “seek the shalom of the city,” the seventy years, and the “seek me and find me” language) and show how 29:11 functions as the hinge of the whole paragraph.