At the beginning of the chapter, we witness the remarkable faith of the Babylonian chief guard. He has successfully subdued Jerusalem, yet he attributes the victory to God, seeing himself merely as an instrument of divine will: "The chief of guard took Yirmeyahu and said to him, ‘The Lord, your God, ordered disaster for this place. The Lord brought it about as he had promised, for you all sinned against the Lord and did not heed His voice, and this is what has happened to you’” (40:2-3). This perspective stands in stark contrast to that of Assyria when it sought to destroy Jerusalem. At that time, Rav-shakeh mocked and disparaged God: "Have the gods of other nations managed to save their own lands from the hand of the king of Assyria?" (Yeshayahu 36:18). Assyria failed to recognize that it was merely a tool in God's hands and was therefore met with prophecies of destruction: "Woe to Assyria, staff of My fury; My rage is the rod in their hand … But this is not how he thinks of it; his heart does not see it so.” (Yeshayahu 10:5–7). The Babylonians, however, understood their role as instruments of God's will, which is why they achieved great success (at least in the initial stage).

Following the destruction, the Babylonians appoint Gedalyahu son of Achikam as governor over the land of Yehuda. Under his leadership, a glimmer of hope emerges, and Yirmiyahu’s prophecy of the ingathering of the exiles and the renewed flourishing of the Land of Israel begins to take shape. First, those who had remained in the ‘countryside’ return: "When all the army officers who were scattered in the countryside, they and their men, heard… they came to Gedalya at Mitzpa” (40:7). This refers to people who had fled from the city and hidden before the siege but now understood that it was possible to return to settled land. In the next stage, those who had escaped to more distant places begin to return: "all the people of Yehuda who were in Moav and among the Ammonites and in Edom and in all other lands heard that the king of Babylon had granted a remnant in Yehuda” (40:11). Not all of Yehuda’s people had persisted in fighting the Babylonians to the bitter end. Some had fled even before the rebellion began, while others likely escaped after it was already underway. Today, such an act might seem unpatriotic, but at the time, even without the explicit words of the prophet, it was far more aligned with the prophetic vision: they are not to resist to the Babylonian empire. Those who had surrendered to Babylon, as Yirmiyahu had urged, were the most fortunate. But even those who had at least fled instead of fighting were now the first to return to the land. They would become the nucleus from which renewal would begin seventy years later when Babylon would fall.

Yet this hope is now under threat. Intelligence reports indicate that the king of the Ammonites has sent an assassin — Yishmael son of Netanyahu. The chapter ends with Gedalyahu ignoring the warnings and refusing to act against Yishmael, despite the potential cost, which Yochanan son of Kare’ach foresees: "Why should he take your life? Then all of Yehuda who have gathered to you will scatter, and the remnant of Yehuda will be lost!" (40:15) Chazal harshly criticize Gedalyahu for his ignoring of  the warnings. In the Midrash on the verse in chapter 41: "whom he murdered because of Gedalyahu" (in Hebrew the verse could be understood as ‘who Gedalyahu himself murdered’), they expound that all those who were killed fell due to Gedalyahu’s negligence: "And did Gedalyahu kill them? But didn’t Yishmael kill them? Rather, since he should have been concerned on the advice of Yochanan son of Kare’ach, but was not concerned, the verse ascribes him as though he himself killed them" (Nidda 61a). With great power comes great responsibility. Not every warning is malicious speech (‘lashon hara’), and not every action that appears righteous at first glance is truly so. One must weigh decisions carefully, lest purity turn into puritanism, and piety into foolish piety.