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.