Jeremiah 1:1-10
Jeremiah was called to Be a priest.
1 The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin,
2 to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign
3 It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month.
The Prophet Is Called
Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying:
“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I sanctified you; I [b]ordained you a prophet to the nations.”
Then I said:
“Ah, Lord God! Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth.”
7 But the Lord said to me:
“Do not say, ‘I am a youth, for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.
8 Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you to deliver you,” says the Lord.
9 Then the Lord put forth His hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me:
“Behold, I have put My words in your mouth.
10 See, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant.”
Prophetic vocation and message
This sketch of Jeremiah’s life portrays him as a courageous and persistent prophet who often had to endure physical suffering for his fidelity, which means “faithfulness to a person, cause, or belief,” to the prophetic call. He also suffered inner doubts and conflicts, as his own words reveal, especially those passages that are usually called his confessions.”
Jeremiah 11:18–21
18 Now the Lord gave me knowledge of it, and I know it, for You showed me their doings. But I was like a docile lamb brought to the slaughter, and I did not know that they had devised schemes against me, saying, Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be remembered no more.”
20 But, O Lord of hosts, you who judge righteously, testing the mind and the heart, let me see Your vengeance on them, for to You I have revealed my cause.
21 “Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the men of Anathoth who seek your life, saying, ‘Do not prophesy in the name of the Lord, lest you die by our hand.
22 Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Behold, I will punish them. The young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine;
23 and there shall be no remnant of them, for I will bring catastrophe on the men of Anathoth, in the event of their punishment.’ “
Jeremiah had a strong conflict between his natural inclinations and his deep sense of vocation to deliver Yahweh’s message to the people.
Jeremiah was by nature sensitive, introspective, and perhaps shy. He was denied participation in the ordinary joys and sorrows of his fellowmen and did not marry.
He could thus say, “I sat alone,” with God’s hand upon him. Jeremiah had periods of despondency when he expressed the wish that he had never been born or that he might run away and live alone in the desert.
Hear Jeremiah 15:10.
Woe is me, my mother, that you have borne me, a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent for interest Nor have men lent to me for interest. Every one of them curses me.
Disturbing hope: Settle down in Babylon
Jeremiah 29:1-10
1 The prophet Jeremiah sent a letter from Jerusalem to the few surviving elders among the exiles, to the priests and the prophets, and to all the people Nebuchadnezzar had taken to Babylon from Jerusalem.
2 The letter was sent after King Jeconiah, the queen mother, the court officials, the government leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, and the craftsmen and smiths had left Jerusalem.
3 It was delivered to Babylon by Elasah, Shaphan’s son, and Gemariah, Hilkiah’s son—two men dispatched to Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar by King Zedekiah.
4 The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims to all the exiles I have carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon:
5 Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce.
6 Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands so that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away.
7 Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare.
8 The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims: Don’t let the prophets and diviners in your midst mislead you. Don’t pay attention to your dreams.
9 They are prophesying lies about you in my name. I didn’t send them, declares the Lord.
Oh, Daniel the prophet understood the writings of Jeremiah, and you see the reason for Daniel’s fasting, prayers, and visitation by the angel of the Lord.”
10 The Lord proclaims: When Babylon’s seventy years are up, I will come and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place.
11 I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope.
12 When you call me and come and pray to me, I will listen to you. When you search for me, yes, search for me with all your heart, you will find me.
14 I will be present for you, declares the Lord, and I will end your captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have scattered you, and I will bring you home after your long exile, declares the Lord.
Before we go further in Jeremiah, I want you to see something important in verse 3, “the letter from Jerusalem.” Verse 1 of Jeremiah 29 speaks of Jeremiah’s Letter to the Captives.
29 Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the remainder of the elders who were carried away captive—to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon.
2 (This happened after Jeconiah [a] the king, the queen mother, the eunuchs, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem.)
3 The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon, to
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, saying,
Who is Shaphan? Shaphan (Heb. ןָפָש; “rock badger, hyrax, coney”) is the son of Azaliah, Josiah’s scribe, and the head of one of the most influential and pro-Babylonian families in the last days of Judah (II Kings 22:3).
Shaphan was one of the messengers sent by the king to the prophetess Huldah concerning the finding of the new book in the Temple (II Kings 22:14; see *Deuteronomy).
Later, his sons were supporters of the prophet Jeremiah. One of them, Ahikam, used his influence to save Jeremiah from death when the latter prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem (Jer. 26:24).
A second son, Eliasah, one of the men sent to Babylon by Zedekiah, took Jeremiah’s letter to the elders in exile (Jer. 29:3).
Mention is made of two or more sons of Shaphan: Jaazaniah and Gemariah. Jaazaniah is only mentioned among the elders in Jerusalem seen by Ezekiel in a vision in Ezekiel 8:11.
The information about Gemariah is more definite. It was in his chamber at the Temple gate that the scribe Baruch read Jeremiah’s scroll “to the people” in the reign of Jehoiakim (Jer. 36:10ff.).
Shaphan’s son Micaiah was present, but he himself was sitting with other officials in conference. Apprised by Micaiah, they warned Baruch to go into hiding with Jeremiah, and they later pleaded with the king not to burn the scroll.
The family’s sympathy with the prophet was further evidenced by the fact that Jeremiah was put under the guardianship of Shaphan’s grandson, Ahikam’s son *Gedaliah, who was appointed governor of Judah by the Neo-Babylonian captors of Jerusalem (Jer. 39:14; 40:5).
To Have God’s hand on your life is sometimes the hardest thing to deal with, and most of the time it is in seemingly impossible situations, but I want to assure you that God always has a daughter or a son who will do his work; we are never alone.
So wife, be careful of how you treat your husband; God’s hand is upon him. Son, be careful how you treat your dad; he has God’s hand on him.
As a prophet, Jeremiah pronounced God’s judgment upon the people of his time for their wickedness. He was concerned, especially with false and insincere worship and the failure to trust Yahweh in national affairs.
He denounced social injustices, but not as much as some previous prophets, such as Amos and Micah. He found the source of sin to be in the weakness and corruption of the hearts of men—in what he often called “the stubbornness of the evil heart.”
He considered sin to be unnatural; he emphasized that some foreign nations were more loyal to their pagan (false) deities than Judah was to Yahweh (the real God), and he often contrasted nature’s obedience to the law with man’s disobedience to God.
Jeremiah had more to say about repentance than any other prophet. He called upon men to turn away from their wicked ways and dependence upon idols and false gods and return to their early covenantal loyalty to Yahweh.
Repentance thus had a strong ethical coloring since it meant living in obedience to Yahweh’s will for the individual and the nation.
In the latter part of his career, Jeremiah had to struggle against the despair of his people and give them hope for the future. He expressed his own hope vividly through an action that he undertook when the Babylonians were besieging
Jerusalem and he was in prison. He bought from a cousin a field in Anathoth, his native town. In the presence of witnesses, he weighed out the money and made the contracts and said, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses, fields, and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”
In this and other ways, he expressed his hope for a bright future for Israel’s own land.
Jeremiah’s most important prophecy concerning the future is one regarding the New Covenant.
Jeremiah 31:31–34
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—
32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, [h]though I was a husband to them, says the Lord.
33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”