The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkijah, of the priests that were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin
The book opens with no vision and no throne room — only a man's name, his father's name, his priestly family, and the village he came from. Every detail in that first line shapes the forty years of ministry that follow.
Jeremiah does not read like Isaiah, and the difference goes deeper than style.
Jeremiah's character and style are very different from Isaiah's. Any careful reader must notice it. Here we do not have the magnificent unfolding of God's purposes for the earth, with Israel at its centre. Instead we have prophecy that deals with the souls of God's people in a moral way... The intention was to act on the conscience of the Jew, and to do this we see how much the Spirit of God makes of Jeremiah's own experience. Of all the prophets there is none who so much analysed his own feelings, his own thoughts, his own ways, his own spirit.
The same phrase returns near the end of the book, and critics still question who wrote what lies between.
The book of Jeremiah begins: "The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah," and in chapter 51:64 we read, "Thus far are the words of Jeremiah." Modern critics claim that most of Jeremiah's prophecies did not come from him. That contradicts these simple opening and closing words. It also ignores a plain fact: no other prophet in the Old Testament is described with so many personal details about his life and service. Yet there is not one sensible reason for such doubtful reasoning... Jeremiah's own records show that he was born during the reign of the wicked king Manasseh. The LORD called him to be a prophet in his very early years. His service lasted over 40 years, until after Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem. At first Jeremiah lived in Anathoth, but the hatred of its people soon rose against him.
Anathoth was not a random village, and where it stood explains why a priest's son counted as a Benjaminite.
Jeremiah is known as a prophet, but he belonged to the family of "the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin." As far as we know, he never acted as a priest. His village of Anathoth, a little over three miles northeast of Jerusalem, had been given to the priests, the descendants of Aaron... Jeremiah was a Levite, but people counted him a Benjaminite, because his birthplace lay in the land of the tribe of Benjamin.
A high priest named Hilkiah found the lost book of the law in the temple. Commentators differ over whether he was Jeremiah's father. Some treat the two as one man, and read Jeremiah's ministry in that light.
This fact is recorded in 2 Kings 22:8: "Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, 'I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the LORD.'" (Hilkiah is mentioned in Jeremiah 1:1. So Jeremiah had priestly rank and dignity, though he filled the prophetic office.) Now this Book of the Covenant certainly gave character to Jeremiah's ministry. It exposed the inward state of God's people in glaring colour, set beside the holy claims of God's majesty. This would cause great pain to his tender heart.
Others reject the identification on the grounds of family line, since the priests at Anathoth came from a different branch of Aaron's house.
Some have identified the father of Jeremiah with the high priest Hilkiah... This is incorrect. The high priest Hilkiah was of the line of Eleazar, as recorded in 1 Chronicles 6:4, 13. The first verse of this book tells us that Jeremiah's father was one of the priests in Anathoth. The priests who lived there were of the line of Ithamar.
Even his name carried a message about the God who sent him.
The name Jeremiah suggests that which is established by God. Israel was in a very broken state when God raised up this chosen vessel. He probably had one of the most difficult ministries ever entrusted to a servant of the Lord, and probably shed more tears than any other prophet.
The family and village in this verse were fixed long before Jerusalem fell. That order is deliberate.
In choosing this vessel God began a long way back, exactly as He did with Saul of Tarsus, as we see in Galatians 1. God's choice of His servants is not haphazard. Existing circumstances do not decide it. Jeremiah and Paul served in circumstances that came long after God chose them — but He chose them for those circumstances.
- Named — Jeremiah means established by God. God gave that name to a man He sent into a broken state of things, with one of the hardest ministries ever given to a servant.
- Rooted — he was born into a priestly family, yet he never served as a priest. His calling was to speak, not to sacrifice.
- Placed — Anathoth was a priests' town in Benjamin, a little over three miles from Jerusalem, and its own people came to hate him.
- Chosen — God chose him long before the circumstances he was chosen for existed. The choosing was never a reaction to events.
- Personal — the book opens and closes with "the words of Jeremiah." No prophet lays his own thoughts, feelings and spirit more open, and this prophecy works on the conscience.
to whom the word of Jehovah came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign;
One short line carries the date of Jeremiah's call — a named king and a numbered year. Why did God speak at that exact moment, and to that man?
The verse does not say Jeremiah thought of a message. It says the word came to him. One writer traces that claim back through the Prophets to the Law itself.
From the beginning of revelation God took care to assure those who read or heard His word that it was His truth, in His power and by His authority. He did this so that His people might believe and obey Him... As with the Law, so it was with the Prophets: "The LORD has spoken," though by Isaiah (Isa. 1:2); "The words of Jeremiah... to whom the word of the LORD came" (Jer. 1:1-2).
Jeremiah says the same about his own preaching later in the book.
"Hear and give ear; be not proud, for the LORD has spoken" (Jer. 13:15), says Jeremiah. He deliberately refuses to claim his statements as his own, saying that they are the LORD's.
The verse fixes the exact moment. Josiah was the reforming king of Judah, and Jeremiah's call came a year into his national clean-up.
Jeremiah began his prophetic ministry, as he shows, in the thirteenth year of Josiah... It came the year after the first effort to clear the capital and the country of high places, groves, carved images and molten images. The fair promise of that reform only sharpened his grief when the reformation turned out to be completely shallow. Under God, so to speak, only the life of Josiah held back the ruin hanging over them, and he died at the age of 39.
The call came at a moment of real but limited change.
He was called to the work when God was at work with power, not only in the good king Josiah but in a few of the Jewish people. This partial repentance of the people clearly did not suit the character of the work given to Jeremiah. His was really an inward work in the conscience. What brought out his expressions of grief was that Josiah's reformation had only an outward effect.
Why send a prophet of ruin while the nation was being cleaned up? Reform driven by the king's power reaches only so far.
The king's power had brought about a great reformation, but it left most people's hearts untouched... But why could not God rest in the outwardly improved state of the kingdom of Judah in Josiah's day? He looked beneath the surface. He looked for reality, for tenderness of conscience, for a heart subject to His word — and He did not find them... God will never be satisfied with anything short of thoroughness.
The people's state shaped the book itself.
This condition of the people gave rise to the double character of Jeremiah's prophecy. They had outward pretence and profession, a great appearance of good, a little real good underneath the surface with a great deal of outward show... There were some good figs, and the good figs were very good; but there were very many bad figs, and the bad figs were very bad.
The date also tells us the messenger's age.
Jeremiah was only a child when the word of the Lord first came to him. It came in the thirteenth year of King Josiah, just a year after the momentous reformation carried out by that good man. We know very little of the prophet's activity during the rest of Josiah's reign.
This one line opens a ministry that would outlast the kingdom it addressed.
Jeremiah's prophecies began in the thirteenth year of Josiah, king of Judah. They continued after Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem some forty years later. So his testimony came just as the kingdom of David was about to end as a national witness for the LORD on the earth.
- Source. The message is God's before it is Jeremiah's — the word came to him, and he later refuses to let anyone call it his own.
- Timing. God chose the moment: the thirteenth year of Josiah, one year after the king began cleaning up the land.
- Reason. God spoke while the nation looked its best. He looked beneath the surface and found the change had not reached the heart, and Jeremiah's own work reached the conscience.
- Messenger. The word reached a child. Jeremiah was very young, and we hear little of him for the rest of Josiah's reign.
- Reach. From that dated start his testimony ran past the fall of Jerusalem. It spanned the end of David's kingdom as a national witness for God.
it came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, unto the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah the son of Josiah, king of Judah, unto the carrying away of Jerusalem captive, in the fifth month.
Jeremiah's book opens with a calendar, not a vision: three kings, a thirteenth year, an eleventh year, a fifth month. The dates mark a ministry that starts in a season of reform and ends with the city in ruins.
The third verse is a summary line. It reaches beyond the reign in which his ministry began and covers most of his working life.
The first time the Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, he was still young — only a child. It was in the thirteenth year of King Josiah, just a year after that good man's great reform. We know very little about the prophet's work during the rest of Josiah's reign… It seems that the third verse gives the period covering the larger part of this prophet's ministry.
The end of these dates marks more than the end of one man's work.
Jeremiah's prophecies began in the thirteenth year of Josiah, king of Judah. They continued after Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem some forty years later. So he gave his testimony at the very time when the kingdom of David was about to be abolished as a national witness for Jehovah on the earth.
Jeremiah's ministry began just after Josiah started cleansing the land. That timing made his sorrow heavier, not lighter.
Jeremiah prophesied for a long time. His ministry covered the whole period of Israel's decline — from the year after Josiah began to cleanse Jerusalem and all the land, until the Chaldean army finally destroyed the city, and even a little while after that in Egypt. It was more than forty years, and all of it a time of distress and anguish. Josiah was a godly king, but the people's reform was only outward… So the anguish of a man who saw things as God saw them was all the greater because of this appearance of godliness.
This mixed condition marks the whole book.
They kept up an outward show and made great claims: a great appearance of good, a little real good under the surface, and plenty of display… In Jeremiah's day the state of the nation was much as he described it himself (Jer. 24). There were some good figs, and the good figs were very good; but there were many bad figs, and the bad figs were very bad. This is the moral character we find in this book.
The verse names Josiah, Jehoiakim and Zedekiah. But the throne changed hands more often than that.
Then came the sad reigns of Jehoahaz (also called Shallum), whom Pharaoh-Necho removed, putting Eliakim (Jehoiakim) on the throne. Jehoiakim's son Jehoiachin (also called Jeconiah or Coniah) followed him, and Nebuchadnezzar soon replaced him with "his brother" (or, as we would say, his father's brother) Zedekiah (also called Mattaniah). Under these kings the closing disasters of Jerusalem got mixed up with the struggle between Egypt and Babylon… What time could better draw out the inward wrestling of a heart like Jeremiah's? These trials of soul, which the Holy Spirit worked in him, gave the mould in which the different parts of the prophecy were shaped, as far as circumstances and people could shape them.
Asked why the Spirit dates the ministry all the way to the deportation, one reading gives an answer with two sides.
On the one hand it would show that the nation refused the testimony he carried. On the other hand it would show that he did not give up his testimony; he kept right on to the end. It was the Word of the Lord that was to continue — not Jeremiah himself so much, but what Jeremiah had been entrusted with: the Word of the Lord. The Lord could do very well without any one of us, but He chooses not to do without us. If He entrusts us with His Word, we should seek help to keep going, despite the captive condition of the testimony today.
The fifth month closes the verse, but not the man's work.
After the last group was carried off, he went on serving, little noticed, among the poor of the land whom Nebuchadnezzar had left behind. Later he followed the rest of the people who fled to Egypt. He very likely died there, after giving his last known prophecy (Jer. 44).
The man who kept going was more than a mourner.
He has been called "the weeping prophet"… No other prophet wept like Jeremiah… But he was more than the weeping prophet. He was a man of great courage, as bold as a lion. Before his Lord he was bowed down and broken, trembling at His Word and filled with godly fear. He was a man of prayer and faith in the Lord, faithful in carrying out his great commission.
- Continued — in dates. The verse runs from Josiah's thirteenth year to Zedekiah's eleventh. That is most of Jeremiah's ministry.
- Continued — through decline. Those years covered the nation's whole decline. Josiah's reform touched only the surface, which made the grief heavier.
- Continued — under changing kings. Kings came and went: Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah. Those trials shaped the prophecies.
- Continued — though refused. The dates show two things. The nation refused the testimony, and Jeremiah never dropped it. What continued was the Word entrusted to him.
- Continued — past the ruin. After the deportation he served among the poor left in the land, then in Egypt, weeping yet bold to the end.
And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying,
Jeremiah's book opens with the outward facts: his name, his family, his village and the kings he lived under. Then in verse 4 the voice changes, and a word from God reaches one young man in person.
One writer sees a pattern here for everyone, not just for prophets.
Now we have Jeremiah's call in verse 4, where it says, "the word of the LORD came to me." There comes a time for every one of us when we have to move from the general to the particular. We come to value our own personal history with God Himself.
The same writer ties this to how God prepares anyone for service.
It is important to realize, deep in your own soul, that God has a message for each person, fitted to the service He has in mind. Each of us must deal with Him personally if He is to form us for that service.
Jeremiah wrote the account himself, so the call comes to us from the man who received it.
Verses 4-10. "Now the word of the LORD came to me" (verse 4). The prophet is the writer, and he tells us how God called him to be a prophet. A Lord who is sovereign, all-knowing and all-powerful speaks to young Jeremiah. He tells him that He knew him already, and that his call came before he was born. God had chosen him and set him apart for the exact work he was now to take up... What comfort this sure knowledge must have been to the prophet in his hard ministry, in the persecutions he met and the suffering he went through! The Lord had called him, He knew all that would happen, and He had the power to hold him up. And He is the same Lord today, and Jeremiah's comfort is still the comfort of His trusting people.
The call has a date, and it falls just after a national turning point.
The first time the Word of the Lord came to young Jeremiah, for he was but a child, was in the thirteenth year of King Josiah, or just a year after the eventful reformation accomplished by that good man.
Yet the change in the nation did not go as deep as it looked.
It is clear that this partial repentance of the people did not suit the kind of work God had entrusted to Jeremiah. His work was truly inward, in the conscience. What drew out his expressions of grief was that Josiah's reformation had only an outward effect.
Jeremiah's first reaction to the call was that he was too young.
At first Jeremiah felt he was only a child. Later it must have been a great support to him to think that God knew him even before his birth, set him apart, and made him a prophet not only to Israel but also to the nations (Jer. 1:4,10)... Every servant of the Lord should have some sense of this, along with a settled conviction of the foreknowledge of God. This gives stability amid trials and testings.
One writer sets Jeremiah's call beside other calls in Scripture that came the same way.
The call of God to service is absolutely and exclusively a matter between God and His servant. Moses (Ex. 3:10), Samuel (1 Sam. 3:19-20), Isaiah (Isa. 6:8-9), Jeremiah (Jer. 1:5), Ezekiel (Ezek. 2:38), and John the Baptist (John 1:6) all bear clear witness to the same fact... God is the one who gives him his orders. God also gives him the message, and he must pass it on simply and plainly, adding nothing to it and taking nothing from it at all.
Jeremiah's own ministry would end. One writer points to what would not.
What was to continue was the Word of the Lord. Not Jeremiah himself so much, but what had been entrusted to him — the Word of the Lord. The Lord could do very well without any one of us, but He chooses not to do without us.
- The word comes. Verse 4 turns a record about Jeremiah into a word spoken to him. The general becomes personal.
- The word calls. Jeremiah himself reports his call, and the Speaker is sovereign, all-knowing and all-powerful.
- The word steadies. God's foreknowledge of him became his support afterwards, giving stability in trial.
- The word commands. The call is a matter between God and His servant alone. God gives the message, and His servant adds nothing and drops nothing.
- The word remains. Jeremiah's part ended, but the word he carried went on. Even so, God chooses not to work without His servants.
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I hallowed thee, I appointed thee a prophet unto the nations.
God's first recorded word to Jeremiah is not about his nation. It is about Jeremiah himself, and it reaches back before he was born. Three things were already settled before he drew breath: God knew him, God set him apart, and God gave him his work.
The verse opens with God knowing Jeremiah before he existed. One writer names what that knowing is, and where else the Bible speaks of it.
God simply spoke to him in his early youth declaring in a few precise statements why He chose to send him: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" (Jer. 1:4-10). This is God's foreknowledge. For us it is connected with His election before the foundation of the world (1 Pet. 1:2; Eph. 1:4). The motives of this great plan are not revealed to us.
Another writer asks what such complete knowledge means for us. God knows the worst about us, and He has also spoken to us about our sin.
God knows us from the start of our life to the end of it. His verdict on us is that our own nature "is no help at all." We do well to start from that verdict. But the same God has spoken to us in the gospel about the forgiveness of sin. Because He knows everything, it is forgiveness of all sin. When God speaks to us of the righteousness of faith, He again knows everything, so that righteousness is "everlasting righteousness."
Why did God pick this man for this moment in history?
God does not choose His servants at random. Nor does He choose them because of the situation of the moment. Jeremiah and Paul served in situations that arose long after God chose them. Yet He chose them for those very situations.
If the choice comes first, then all the years before the calling are preparation. That includes the years when a person knows nothing about it.
With this in view, God shapes the person He will use and arranges everything in his later life. God uses all that he goes through to prepare and train him for the calling God has for him. This happens even while the man is still unconverted and knows nothing of that calling.
The verse moves in three steps, and one writer traces them in order.
But to Jeremiah the Lord revealed more, "Before you were born I consecrated you." Like the apostle Paul, Jeremiah was set apart from his mother's womb (see Gal. 1:4, Acts 9:15; 22:14). Then God spoke further to him, "I appointed you a prophet to the nations," and finally, "I will send you."
Jeremiah was a Jew and a priest, and most of his message lands on Jerusalem. Yet the last phrase of the verse reaches wider than Jerusalem.
"I appointed you," it is carefully added, "a prophet to the nations." Why to the nations? This special commission shows us something unusual about Jeremiah's service. We will see it confirmed again and again in this book. He was a Jew himself, and even a priest. The Jews in Jerusalem fill a huge place in his prophecy. Yet the nations hold a large place too.
God had already appointed Jeremiah before any human body could have a say. One writer presses that point, using this verse alongside Paul's account of his own calling.
These verses speak plainly of God Himself ordaining and appointing people to His service... God called and appointed Paul. Paul did not learn his ministry from the apostles who came before him. So how could they, or anyone else, ordain him? And why would he, or anyone else, need man's ordination and permission, when God, the highest authority, had already called him, appointed him, given him his gift, and taught him?
Jeremiah's immediate reaction to this word was to protest that he was only a child. The truth he was given did its real work later, under pressure.
At first Jeremiah felt he was only a child. Later it must have been a great support to him to remember that God knew him before he was born, set him apart, and made him a prophet — not only to Israel, but to the nations... Every servant of the Lord should have some sense of this, and a settled conviction that God knows us beforehand. This gives stability in trials and testing.
- Known — the verse starts with God knowing Jeremiah beforehand. Writers here link this to God's choice made before the world began. Why He chose is not told us.
- Chosen — God did not choose Jeremiah because of the situation he would face. He chose him long before it, and for it.
- Prepared — from that choice on, God shapes the person and arranges every part of his life, even the years he knows nothing about it.
- Sent — set apart, then appointed, then sent. The call comes straight from God, and no human body has to approve it.
- Steadied — a man who called himself a child later stood firm, because he knew God had known him first.
And I said, Alas, Lord Jehovah! behold, I cannot speak; for I am a child.
God has just told Jeremiah He knew him before birth and appointed him a prophet to the nations. The young man's first answer is a protest, and it raises a question every called person asks: what if the job is far bigger than the person given it?
Jeremiah's first answer is fear about himself. One writer sets it beside Moses, who said much the same when God sent him to Egypt. (Older translations read "I am a child" here.)
Jeremiah expresses at once his fear. Like Moses (Exodus 4:10), he shows self-distrust. He was a child, not in the sense of a mere child, but a youth. The Greek Septuagint translates it, "I am too young." The Lord then encouraged him with the promise of His presence: "I am with you to deliver you."
This shrinking back was not a passing mood. It runs through the whole opening chapter.
Verses 6-8, 17, 18 show the great fearfulness of the prophet's spirit, which Jehovah had to strengthen in this way.
Commentators differ here. God corrects the objection, yet one writer treats the feeling behind it as exactly right, because the opposite attitude is more dangerous.
"Then I said, 'Ah, Lord GOD!... for I am only a youth.'" That is the right attitude in which to respond to God's call: a sense of complete inadequacy to answer it in oneself... There is nothing more to be dreaded in God's service than self-confidence. These are very testing matters. Some of us may have been ministering the word for many years. But if we rely on our past service or our own ability, we are bound to fail.
Jeremiah's temperament made the charge harder. God gave him a message of judgment to carry, and he was a man of tender feeling.
He was a prophet set apart for the nations. The people of God were about to lose their position as His set-apart people, and all were merged into one common ruin and exposure to divine judgment. A serious charge for one of Jeremiah's tender feelings, so open to grief and pity! But he must deliver it.
God's reply does not argue that Jeremiah is more capable than he thinks. It shifts the whole matter off the messenger.
This unusual commission brings out Jeremiah's timid spirit. Jehovah's answer is, "Do not say, 'I am only a youth.'" That was not the question at all. The question was who was sending him. If a king chooses a man by his own wisdom to be his servant and ambassador, what matters to others is not who the ambassador is, but what power sends him. Those who despise are not despising the man, but despising the authority that appointed him.
Jeremiah is not the only servant who answered a call this way.
Jeremiah is still young, and this God-given mission frightens him. He protests meekly, "Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth." Moses, when much older, made the same objection when the Lord sent him into Egypt (Ex. 4:10). Amos reminds us that he was not the son of a prophet nor a prophet himself, but a simple and poor shepherd. God, however, had taken him while he was tending the flock, and had said to him, "Go, prophesy to my people Israel" (Amos 7:14-15). Timothy also was young and timid, but the apostle still wanted him along (Acts 16:3).
The same writer turns the verse on the reader, and notes how an excuse repeated long enough becomes a life.
Isn't it true that we make similar objections? Sometimes we feel too young or too ignorant to pray in the presence of others... The years go by. We still feel too young or not good enough, so we stay silent — until middle age arrives, and then old age!
The cure for Jeremiah's fear was not a change in Jeremiah, but a sight of the One who sent him and words that were not his own.
There is no need to fear the face of man when one has seen the face of God. The weakest is as the mighty when he has the words of God on his lips. Let us remember this in these days, and not faint because of our feebleness. The Lord will let none of His words fall to the ground, though spoken by faltering lips.
- Objection. Jeremiah's "I am only a youth" is self-distrust — the same reaction Moses had when God sent him to Egypt.
- Attitude. A sense of complete inadequacy is the right way to meet God's call. In God's service, nothing is more dangerous than self-confidence.
- Correction. God does not argue about the weakness. He moves the question from who the messenger is to who sends him. To despise the ambassador is to despise the authority behind him.
- Company. Moses, Amos and Timothy all felt the same disqualification, and God used every one of them.
- Cure. God's presence and God's words in the mouth end the fear. No one needs to fear the face of man when he has seen the face of God.
But Jehovah said unto me, Say not, I am a child; for thou shalt go to whomsoever I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.
Jeremiah has just pleaded his age: he is too young to speak. God overrules that objection instead of soothing it, and the two commands He gives rest on His own authority, not on Jeremiah's fitness.
Jeremiah's excuse is about himself. God's answer moves the whole matter onto different ground.
This unusual commission brings out Jeremiah's timid spirit. "Then I said, 'Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.'" The Lord's answer is, "Do not say, 'I am only a youth.'" This was not at all the question, but who was sending him. If a royal authority chooses a man by its own wisdom to be its servant and ambassador, it does not matter to others who the ambassador is. What matters is the power that sends him. Those who despise him are not despising the man. They are despising the authority that appointed him. Jeremiah was meant to feel that the Lord was calling him to this office.
The word Jeremiah uses does not mean a baby. It means a young man with no experience. He is not the first servant of God to plead it, and the Septuagint — the old Greek translation of the Old Testament — makes that plain.
Jeremiah expresses his fear at once. Like Moses (Exodus 4:10), he shows self-distrust. He was but a child, not in the sense of a mere child, but a youth. The Septuagint translates it, "I am too young."
Jeremiah's sense of weakness was the right starting point. The danger sits at the opposite end.
"Then I said, 'Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.'" That is the right attitude in which to respond to God's call — a sense of complete inadequacy to answer it in oneself... In God's service there is nothing more to fear than self-confidence. These are very testing matters. Some of us may have been ministering the word for many years. But if we rely on our past service or our own ability, we are bound to fail.
The verse gives two plain commands. God then adds the promise that makes both possible.
As for Jeremiah, the Lord deals with him in his time of weakness. He gives him words of encouragement and words of promise. First He gives him the definite order, "You shall go" (Jer. 1:7). He had spoken in the same way to Gideon, who thought he was the least in his father's house: "Go in this might of yours" (Judg. 6:14). God says further to Jeremiah, "Whatever I command you, you shall speak." Then, calming his mind still further, He says, "I am with you to deliver you."
"Whatever I command you" is a limit as well as a duty. Keeping to it also guarded Jeremiah from being shamed in public.
There was a way in which he could have been put to shame before the people. The way to avoid it was simply to "speak to them everything that I command you." If we bring our own thoughts into ministry, we must not be surprised at failure. But if we minister God's own word in the power of the Spirit, He will stand by His own word.
The plea is not only Jeremiah's.
Isn't it true that we make similar objections? Sometimes we feel too young or too ignorant to pray in the presence of others... The years go by and we still feel too young or perhaps too inadequate, and we remain silent until middle age and finally old age arrives!
Yet the commission itself is not reserved for famous names.
Divine principles never alter... Men like the apostle Paul have no exact copies. They had their own particular place. But the features that marked them must mark us today too, in a smaller measure. Whatever the service is, small or great, the Lord commissions us for the work He gives us as fully as He commissioned Jeremiah.
- Sender. The question was never who Jeremiah was. It was whose authority stood behind him. To despise the messenger is to despise the One who appointed him.
- Youth. The word means "too young," not "infant" — the same self-distrust Moses showed, and the right instinct to bring to a call.
- Go. The first order answers the fear: "You shall go" — the same word that sent Gideon out in the strength he thought he lacked.
- Speak. The second order sends him and limits him. God stands by His own word; our own thoughts mixed in end in failure.
- Still. You can plead youth or weakness until you are old. But the Lord commissions every servant, in small work or great, as fully as He commissioned Jeremiah.
Be not afraid of them; for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith Jehovah.
Jeremiah has just told God he is only a child, and God answers his fear with a promise instead of arguing about his weakness. So what makes a frightened person able to face hostile hearers?
One writer marks how often the chapter returns to the prophet's fear, and how God met it — with the assurance of His presence, and with His own words in that fearful mouth.
In Jeremiah 1 God settles the prophet in his office. Jehovah had appointed him to it even before his birth, so that he should carry His word to the nations. But Jeremiah's fears show at once. The Lord encourages him by the assurance of His presence. He puts His words into his mouth... Verses 6-8, 17, 18 show how fearful the prophet's spirit was. Jehovah had to strengthen it in this way.
God does not tell Jeremiah he is stronger than he thinks. He shifts the whole question onto the One doing the sending.
Jehovah's answer is, "Say not, I am a child." This was not at all the question, but who was sending him. If royal authority chooses a man by its own wisdom to be its servant and ambassador, it does not matter to others who the ambassador is. What matters is the power that sends him. Those who despise him are not despising the man, but the authority that appointed him. Jeremiah was meant to feel that Jehovah was calling him to this office.
"Their faces" were real people, and proud ones. Yet the command is given without qualification — not "fear less," but do not fear at all.
Our minds go back to poor, trembling Jeremiah, who had to meet the haughty faces of the pretentious Jews... Do not be afraid of their faces! There is nothing to fear! The position is difficult. You cannot hold it except in dependence. But once you are in it, there is not one single enemy to dread. This is true liberty and confidence — standing in the gap for the Lord, an unusual service, but no less secure.
There is a cure for the fear of faces: another face. And God's words carry, whatever the lips that speak them.
No need to fear the face of man when one has seen the face of God. The weakest is as the mighty when he has the words of God on his lips. Let us remember this in these days, and let us not faint because of our feebleness. The Lord will let none of His words fall to the ground, though spoken by faltering lips.
God does not say this once; He repeats it in the chapter. One writer ties the promise to a settled conviction of God's foreknowledge.
"I am with you" is said to him twice (vv. 8 and 19). Every servant of the Lord should have some sense of this, and a settled conviction of God's foreknowledge. This gives stability in the middle of trials and testings. The Lord said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you"... The faithful servant may have to meet great difficulties and fierce foes. But he is encouraged like Jeremiah, whom God again tells twice not to fear (vv. 8 and 17). God would strengthen him against all opposition (v. 18), and however strong it might be, none would prevail against him. The greater the foe, the greater faith's victory becomes.
The same promise turns up long after Jeremiah. One writer follows it to an apostle who reached a new city weak and afraid.
Paul heard this same voice at Corinth — the voice that had encouraged Jeremiah and Gideon. He came to that city "in weakness and in fear and much trembling" (1 Cor. 2:3). The voice spoke to him in a vision at night: "Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you" (Acts 18:9-10).
Jeremiah's commission was public and unusual. Does verse 8 then belong only to famous servants?
Divine principles never change. We call these servants outstanding because their service was public. Yet every service for God is outstanding, even though much of it may be unseen by men... Whether the service is small or great, the Lord commissions us for it as fully as He commissioned Jeremiah.
- Fear named. Jeremiah's problem was not his youth. It was fear, and the chapter comes back to it until God has answered it.
- Sender, not sent. God does not argue about the messenger's smallness. He points to the authority that sent him, so contempt falls on the Sender.
- Face for face. The cure for dreading human faces is having seen God's. With His words on his lips, the weakest man stands as the mighty.
- Presence, twice given. God says "I am with you" twice in the chapter, and He is with the servant to deliver him — the greater the foe, the greater faith's victory.
- Still speaking. The same voice reached Gideon and a trembling Paul at Corinth. It reaches anyone God commissions, however unseen the work.
And Jehovah put forth his hand and touched my mouth; and Jehovah said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.
Jeremiah had just protested that he was only a youth. God did not argue with him. He reached out, touched the young man's mouth, and put His own words there. Everything Jeremiah said afterwards rests on that moment. It raises the question of where a servant's message comes from.
His first reaction to the call was fear, and that fear had a precedent.
Jeremiah expresses his fear at once. Like Moses (Exodus 4:10), he shows self-distrust. He was a child, not in the sense of a small child, but a youth. The Septuagint translates it, "I am too young." After that the Lord encouraged him by the promise of His presence, "I am with you to deliver you." Then He touched his mouth and said, "Behold, I have put my words in your mouth." He was the mouthpiece of the LORD.
A touch from God carries meaning elsewhere in the Old Testament too.
In the Old Testament a touch expresses God giving power to people. So it is with Isaiah (Isa. 6:7), with Jeremiah (Jer. 1:9), and with Daniel (Dan. 10:10, 16, 18). In Job's case the touch means bringing personal trial on him (Job 1:11; Job 2:5).
Isaiah's mouth was also touched, but the two scenes are not identical.
Isaiah's lips were cleansed, Jeremiah's were opened. Isaiah's touch was one of cleansing. Jeremiah's touch was one of power, as verse 10 shows. The LORD put His positive words into Jeremiah's mouth; He definitely put His own words there.
The touch settles what the prophet will draw on when he speaks.
Jeremiah was not to speak on the basis of what he had in himself. God put out His hand and touched the young man's mouth, saying, "Behold, I have put my words in your mouth." God would reveal things to him, and he must pass them on to others faithfully.
Darby puts the result in one sentence.
All Jeremiah's words, as a prophet, were absolutely God's words; that is what it means to be as God's mouth.
Davison sees verse 9 as the moment God equipped Jeremiah for his work.
This man was a prophet, and he was to speak on behalf of God. That is why we venture to call verse 9 his consecration. Consecration means the "filling of the hands". In other words, it is God's own equipment for carrying on His service, and we each need to be equipped like that.
The wording here is borrowed, and its source explains the place Jeremiah held in Israelite thinking.
Deuteronomy speaks of a coming "Prophet", and the very words used there are applied to Jeremiah, though they point clearly and first of all to the Lord. It says, "I will raise up for them a prophet like you (Moses) from among their brothers, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him" (Deut. 18:18). Of Jeremiah we read, "The LORD said to me, Behold, I have put my words in your mouth" (Jer. 1:9)… It is easy to understand, then, why Jeremiah had such a leading place in the mind of an Israelite. It also explains why, when our blessed Saviour was here, some thought He was "Jeremiah, or one of the prophets" (Matt. 16:14).
What was true for Jeremiah touches anyone who speaks for God now.
It is marvellous grace on God's part that He should put His words into our mouths. But it is also a challenging matter… We may be sure of this. If God has put His Word into our lips, and we speak it, there will be results for His glory and for the blessing of the saints. God has said it "shall not return to me empty."
Knowing the Bible well and having a word given are not the same thing.
One may have a good knowledge of the Scriptures and yet not have a specific word from the Lord… To speak for the sake of speaking can bring a destructive element in among the saints of God… Waiting until you are sure of a definite word from the Lord brings an atmosphere of power and blessing.
- Fear first. Jeremiah's protest was self-distrust, like Moses before him. God promised His presence before He gave him anything to say.
- Touch next. The hand on his mouth gave power. Isaiah's lips were cleansed; Jeremiah's were opened.
- Words given. He was not to speak out of his own resources. As a prophet, his words were God's own words. That is what being God's mouth means.
- Christ foreshadowed. The wording comes from Deuteronomy 18:18, the promise of a prophet like Moses. It points first of all to the Lord Himself.
- Result guaranteed. God's Word in a servant's lips will not return empty. So waiting for a definite word beats speaking for the sake of speaking.
See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up, and to break down, and to destroy, and to overthrow, to build and to plant.
Jeremiah has just protested that he is only a child, and now God hands him authority over nations and kingdoms in six verbs — four tear down, two build. Why is a hesitant young man "set over" kingdoms, and why four words for tearing down and only two for building?
Jeremiah measured the task by himself. One writer shows that this was never the question:
This unusual commission brings out Jeremiah's timid spirit. "Then Jeremiah said, Ah, Lord Jehovah! I cannot speak, for I am a child." Jehovah's answer is, "Do not say, I am a child." This was not the question at all — but who was sending him. If royal authority chooses a man in its own wisdom to be its servant and ambassador, it makes no difference to others who the ambassador is. What matters is the power that sends him. Those who despise him are not despising the man, but the authority that appointed him.
Jeremiah tore down no city with his own hands. His words did the work, because God stood behind every one of them:
The meaning of this commission is that Jeremiah was chosen to be the announcer of the troubles and judgment that were coming upon all nations. God would surely carry out every threat that Jeremiah pronounced upon them. So He speaks of the prophet as if he were the one pulling down and planting and building and destroying, according to the prophecies that God gave him to speak.
The commission follows the moment God touched Jeremiah's mouth. Set that touch beside the one Isaiah received, and each shows its own purpose:
Isaiah's lips were cleansed, Jeremiah's were opened. Isaiah's touch was one of cleansing. Jeremiah's touch was one of power, as verse 10 shows. Jehovah put His own positive words into Jeremiah's mouth; He definitely put them there. That is important. We might get help from a concordance. We might get help from written ministry. But that is not necessarily the Word of God put into one's mouth.
The six verbs fall into two groups, and the split carries a warning for anyone who speaks for God today:
Verse 10 shows that the word of the Lord in Jeremiah's mouth was to have a twofold effect... We need to avoid a ministry that only tears down. In his letter to the Galatian believers Paul spoke very sharply about Judaism. He was on the line of pulling down. But his aim was to build them up in the liberty of Christianity.
God uses these same words again later, of a people He first uproots and then plants. One writer asks who that people is:
Now who are they over whom the Lord has watched, to pluck up, to break down, to afflict, and to destroy? Are they not the same people He here promises to watch over, to build, and to plant? And can there be any question that it is of the literal Israel that both are said?
There is a striking mismatch between the message and the messenger, and it was deliberate:
Man — Jeremiah himself — would not have arranged his path this way. His was a timid spirit. He would have been glad to go off alone to a shelter in the wilderness, and there weep his life away for the daughter of his people. But God chose this man of tender feeling to carry His terrible announcements. He made the one who prayed for Judah with the deepest feeling learn that nothing could stop the ruin.
- Sender. The commission never rested on Jeremiah's age or ability. What matters about an ambassador is the power that sends him. To despise the messenger is to despise that authority.
- Speech. He is set over kingdoms because his mouth carries God's own words. Isaiah's touch cleansed his lips; Jeremiah's touch gave power. Help from a concordance is not the same as God's word put in your mouth.
- Reach. The word runs past Judah to nations and kingdoms. God will carry out every threat the prophet speaks, so He speaks of the man as doing what He Himself will do.
- Order. Four words of pulling down come before two of building, but pulling down is never the goal. Paul spoke sharply about Judaism in his letter to Galatia, to build those believers up in liberty.
- Result. The same people God watched over to pluck up, He promises to watch over to build and to plant. The last two verbs are His final word, not the first four.