Jeremiah #64

Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah, was a priest from the town of Anathoth near Jerusalem who was called as a prophet in the thirteenth year of King Josiah (Jeremiah 1:1-2), around 627 BC. He prophesied through the last decades of the kingdom of Judah, through the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC, and into the aftermath. The book that bears his name is the longest of the prophetic books by word count, and more is told about his personal life than about most other prophets.

Biblical Significance

Jeremiah’s call came with reluctance. God told him he had been known and set apart before birth, and when Jeremiah protested that he was only a youth, God promised to put his words in his mouth (Jeremiah 1:4-10). His message was unpopular: the nation had abandoned the covenant, false confidence in the temple would not save them, and Babylon would be the instrument of judgment. For this he was beaten, put in stocks, threatened with death, and thrown into a muddy cistern, from which an Ethiopian court official named Ebed-melech rescued him (Jeremiah 20:1-2; 38:1-13). King Jehoiakim burned the scroll of his prophecies, and Jeremiah dictated it again through his scribe Baruch (Jeremiah 36).

The book is unusually honest about the prophet’s own struggles. In his so-called confessions he complains that God had persuaded him, and that he could not hold back the word, which burned in him like fire (Jeremiah 20:7-9). His personal grief over his people has led to his traditional title as the weeping prophet, and Jewish and Christian tradition has long associated him with the book of Lamentations, although that book does not name its author.

Jeremiah’s message was not only judgment. After the first deportation, he wrote to the exiles in Babylon telling them to build houses, plant gardens, and seek the welfare of the city where they lived, promising that God would bring them back after seventy years (Jeremiah 29:1-14). While Jerusalem was under siege, he bought a field at Anathoth as a public sign that life in the land would resume (Jeremiah 32:6-15). Most importantly, he announced a new covenant, distinct from the one made at Sinai, in which God would write the law on their hearts and forgive their sin (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

Legacy

The new covenant passage is among the most influential in the Old Testament. The Letter to the Hebrews quotes it at length (Hebrews 8:8-12), and Jesus is recorded speaking of the cup as the new covenant at the Last Supper (Luke 22:20). After Jerusalem fell, Jeremiah was taken to Egypt by a group of survivors against his advice, and tradition holds that he died there, though the Bible does not record his death (Jeremiah 43:1-7). His example of faithfulness in the face of rejection has made him a lasting figure for readers dealing with unpopular obedience.