Introduction to Jeremiah

There is no prophet of whose life and emotions we know as much as Jeremiah’s. Called from a priestly family in the small town of Anathoth (Jer 1:1), 3-4 km north of Jerusalem, he preached to Judah in the forty years leading up to the Babylonian exile (587 BC). He would have lived through the reign of King Josiah, whose temple repairs led to the discovery of ‘the book of the law’ (probably Deuteronomy; 2 Kings 22:1-20).[1] Confronted with God’s Word, Josiah initiated a thorough cleansing of the temple and land from the worship of other gods (2 Kings 23:1-27) yet, as so often, reform from above did not result in lasting change in the people’s heart, so that Jeremiah had to keep admonishing them against idolatry.

Jeremiah’s ministry under Josiah’s sons

Jeremiah’s ministry continued in the reign of Josiah’s two sons (Jehoiakim and Zedekiah).[2] For about a century and a half, Assyria was the major power in the region, but the Babylonian province of that empire rebelled and gained the upper hand in 605 BC, a few years after Josiah’s death. Judah was trying to manoeuvre between the two super-powers, Egypt in the south and Babylon in the north, but to no avail. Jeremiah not only prophesied the coming disaster but lived through it, the two Babylonian sieges of Jerusalem (597 and 587 BC), the exiles taken away and the temple and the city destroyed. He was innocent and godly yet suffered the punishment with his sinful people.

Jeremiah’s suffering

God also commanded Jeremiah never to marry (Jer 16:1-4), a major tragedy for anyone in that age when children meant the continuation of the family line. He was to be a sign to Judah of their barren future, that they and their children would die in the coming judgment. His life embodied their suffering and fate. Because of his message, the townsfolk of Anathoth and his own family plotted to get rid of him (Jer 11:18-23; 12:6) and he was persecuted by the country’s leadership. He had to go into hiding for a while, was beaten, and eventually imprisoned. He prophesied about the coming disaster, but the delay meant that many did not believe him and mocked him (Jer 17:15). In the book he describes his pain over the future judgement of his people (Jer 8:18-22; 9:1), despite his own suffering at their hands. His words sometimes merge with God’s reflecting the grief the Lord Himself feels over His wayward people. Jeremiah suffers emotionally from the ongoing ridicule and even reaches a crisis of faith over his calling (Jer 20:7-8). His very human emotions demonstrate how serving God faithfully may involve flak from others that can be deeply hurtful especially when the attack comes from family and friends.

Structure of the Book

The Book of Jeremiah is unwieldy and its structure difficult to see. Prophecies do not follow a chronological order but are grouped thematically, though the logic of the arrangement is not always evident (see table on the structure of Jeremiah). The major division is between the first half of the book, containing prophecies in poetic form (evident in English from the lines not running to the margins), followed by mainly prose descriptions of events from Jeremiah’s life, his struggle with false prophets, as well as his more hopeful prophecies about future restoration (including the promise of a new covenant; Jer 31:31-34).

Key themes

The key themes are idolatry and the issue of self-serving lies (Hebrew sheqer). Worship of other gods is unfaithfulness to the Lord and comparable to leaving the source of fresh water for the sake of leaky cisterns or like prostitution and seeking out lovers (e.g. Jer 2:13, 23-25; 3:1). Such a sin was going to lead to exile, yet the people and their false prophets were confident that God’s presence (represented by the Temple) was in their midst, which meant a guarantee of safety and grace, no matter what they did (Jer 7:8-11). They were God’s people, and He was not going to allow their enemies to defeat them, so the prophets complacently pronounced peace and wellbeing and rejected Jeremiah’s message of judgement (Jer 14:13-14; 23:16-17). This is a temptation among Christians, too, who as saved people may think that they have arrived, so that they see faithful service to God as an optional extra. The encounter with false prophets also raises the question of how one can discern what is really spoken from God when there are contradictory interpretations of a situation.

Oracles against the nations

Most prophetic books include oracles against the nations, which are hard for us to understand today. In Jeremiah, Babylon’s conquest of the other countries around Israel-Judah are seen as God’s judgment on them and eventually Babylon is punished, too. In ancient cultures, people were conditioned to think that military victory or defeat reflected the power or weakness of a people’s god. Yet prophets from tiny Israel and Judah, who were themselves conquered by Assyria or Babylon, were claiming that their God, the LORD, was sovereign over all nations! What an audacious statement and yet what comfort to a vulnerable people going into exile. Nothing that was happening to them was out of God’s control and he would bring justice in the end.

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[1] Deuteronomy repeatedly refers to itself as ‘this book of the law’ (e.g. Deut 29:21; 30:10; 31:26), which is why it is thought to be the book discovered during Josiah’s reign. Its teaching on the dangers of idolatry and having one temple only that everyone comes to worship to (Deut 12:1-32) explains Josiah’s actions in the reform (the focus on getting rid of other shrines and idolatry).

[2] Two other kings reigned only a few months each and are omitted in Jer 1:3 (see table on events).

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