Verse explainer
A promise of answered prayer — but the word 'then' carries the whole weight: this is a conditional, calendared promise given to exiles, not a blank check for anyone at any time.
Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.
BSBThen you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
The plain meaning
Jeremiah 29:12 sits inside a letter God dictated to Israelites deported to Babylon. Verses 10–11 set the frame: after seventy years, God will visit them and fulfill his promise to bring them home. Verse 12 follows directly — 'then shall ye call upon me.' The timing matters enormously. This is not a general invitation posted for all occasions; it is a specific assurance that when the appointed end of exile approaches, God will pour out in them a desire to pray, and he will hear that prayer. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown observe that when God designs a mercy, he first moves his people to pray for it — the spirit of prayer is itself a sign that the mercy is coming. John Gill notes the same pattern: the promise of the blessing becomes the very argument that stirs them to seek it. The verse is genuinely warm and personal — 'I will hearken unto you' is an attentive, leaning-in listening — but it flows out of covenant faithfulness to a particular people in a particular crisis, not out of a vending-machine theology where prayer automatically unlocks blessing.
The common misreading
What the commentators say
Gill observes that when God is about to bestow a mercy, he gives his people the spirit of prayer to ask for it — so the promise itself becomes the argument to pray. 'I will hearken unto you' signals that God is a God who truly listens and answers in his own time and way, which Gill calls no small encouragement to persist in prayer until the blessing arrives.
JFB points to Daniel 9:3 as the fulfillment: Daniel, reading Jeremiah's own prophecy of seventy years, is moved to fasting and intercession. Their note presses the principle: when God designs a mercy, he pours out the spirit of prayer for that very mercy — the praying and the promised outcome are inseparably linked in his providence, not two independent variables.
The word behind it
The verb qara' (קָרָא) means to call out, cry, or summon — used throughout the Psalms for urgent, voiced appeal to God. Its force here is not casual request but earnest, directed calling. Gesenius notes the word carries the sense of crying aloud to someone, expecting them to turn and attend. That intensity of expectation is part of what 'I will hearken' answers.
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