Book of Jeremiah - Bible Survey

His message is first a message which charges the people with having forsaken Jehovah. The sins of the people are uncovered, especially the sins of false worship and idolatry. Connected with this are the appeals to return unto the Lord with the promises of the mercy of Jehovah. The impenitent condition of the people is foreseen and judgment is announced. Then follow the messages which make known Jehovah's determination to punish Jerusalem, and further announcement of the impending judgment. But while Jeremiah gave the messages of warning of the coming disaster of Nebuchadnezzar's conquest, he also received prophecies concerning the future. Thus in chapter 23 we find a great prophecy of restoration. He speaks of the days when the righteous Branch, the King, is to reign, when Judah will be saved and Israel dwell safely. Who that King is, every believer knows. His name is "Jehovah our Righteousness." It is the Lord Jesus Christ. Greater still is the great prophecy contained in chapters 30-31. Here we find the prophecy of the new covenant to be made with the house of Judah and the house of Israel. Chapter 33 contains another prophetic restoration message. Chapters 46-51 contain prophecies against Gentile nations.

The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah has a different character from that of Isaiah. It does not contain the same development of the counsels of God respecting this earth that Isaiah does. It is we, that we are told many things in it concerning the nations; but it is principally composed of testimony addressed immediately to the conscience of the people, on the subject of their moral condition at the time the prophet speaks, and with an eye to the judgment with which they were threatened. Judah had forsaken Jehovah; for their repentance under Josiah was but a fair appearance, and under the kings that succeeded him their degradation was complete. The prophet's heart was overwhelmed with grief, because of his love for the people; at the same time that he was filled with a deep sense of their relationship with the Lord. The sense of this produced a continual conflict in his soul between the thought of the value of the people as the people of God, and a holy jealousy for the glory of God and His rights over His people — rights which they were trampling under foot. This was an incurable wound to his heart. He had pleaded for the people, he had stood in the breach for them before Jehovah; but he saw that it was all in vain: the people rejected God and the testimony that He sent them. God Himself would no longer hearken to prayer made for Israel. Jeremiah prophesies under this impression: a sorrowful task, indeed, and one which made the prophet truly a man of sorrow. And although he could always say that, if the people repented, they would be received in grace, he well knew that the people had even no thought of repenting. Two things sustained him in this painful service: (for what could be more painful than to announce judgment for their iniquities, to a people beloved of God?) first of all, the energy of the Spirit of God, which filled his heart and compelled him to announce the judgment of God, in spite of contradiction and persecution; and then the revelation of the people's final blessing according to the unchangeable counsels of God. After this brief notice of the spirit of the Book of Jeremiah, the proofs and details of which we shall find in going through his prophecies, let us now examine these in succession.

We have here the present dealing of God with rebellious Judah, making them Lo-ammi by the captivity in Babylon; next, from chapter 30, the revelation of the infallible love of Jehovah to Israel (Judah and Ephraim), and the certainty of their establishment under David, according to the order of God, in Jerusalem, Jehovah being their righteousness; then, after the history of Zedekiah, and the details of what brought in the captivity, and what passed in Palestine after it, we have the judgment of all the nations and Babylon itself.

The main contents and purpose of Jeremiah's message are constantly returning appeals to the conscience of Judah's inhabitants. The messages urged them to recognise their low moral condition and to come back to God from their apostasy off Jehovah as well as from their idolatry. With that Jeremiah constantly bore the threatening judgment of Jerusalem's destruction before his eyes.

This book is not a commentary on the Book of Jeremiah, but an outline of his personality, life, and service. Characterized by faithfulness and obedience in a time of weakness and confusion, Jeremiah spoke the final words of Jehovah in Jerusalem, where He had placed “the remembrance of His name”, before this city was destroyed. Soon afterward began “the times of the Gentiles,” a period which continues to the present and will last until Israel finally acknowledges its Messiah.

To his office as a spokesman for Jehovah, Jeremiah was sanctified from birth, and he is distinguished among his fellow-prophets of the Old Testament as a prophet to the nations. Jerusalem was set in the midst of the Gentiles as the centre of divine government in the earth. Before the city of Zion was destroyed by the Gentiles, Jeremiah's is the last voice to utter from that centre the word of Jehovah to Judah and Israel and to the surrounding nations.

Jeremiah ("Jehovah will cast forth") has been called the weeping prophet. Called of God evidently at a young and tender age, he prophesied during the reigns of Josiah, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah, and following the capture of Judah and Jerusalem ‑ apparently altogether about forty years. He was of the priestly family, but like John the Baptist was more a prophet than a priest. The deep sorrow of his soul over the condition of the kingdom of Judah is evident, but he faithfully delivers the stern message of God to the effect that the Chaldeans would take Judah captive.

Out of Jeremiah's records we see that he was born during the reign of impious king Manasseh (696 - 642 BC). He originated from the priestly family of Aaron. His hometown was Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, which was not far from Jerusalem (Jer. 1:1). In his very early years he was called by Jehovah to be a prophet (Jer. 1:4-10). This happened in king Josiah's 13th year, which was in 627 BC (he reigned from 640 - 609 BC). Jeremiah's service lasted over 40 years till after Jerusalem's destruction through Nebuchadrezzar in the year 586 BC (Jer. 39). According to Jehovah's command Jeremiah remained unmarried (Jer. 16:2).

To start with, Jeremiah lived in Anathoth. But soon enough the hatred of its inhabitants arose against him (chap. 11:18-23). The prophecies of chapter 1:2ff and 3:6ff were uttered during king Josiah's time (640 - 609 BC). After Josiah's death Jeremiah lamented for him (2 Chron. 35:25; compare Jer. 22:10). He prophesied against Shallum (or Jehoahaz) the son of Josiah king of Judah in chap. 22:11.

Jeremiah prophesied in Jerusalem and Judah during the 41 year period from 629 to 588 BC. The word came to him “in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign ... also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah . . . until the carrying away of Jerusalem captive.” After the final deportation, he continued his service in relative obscurity among the poor of the country whom Nebuchadnezzar had left. Subsequently he followed into Egypt the remnant of the people who took refuge in that country. Very probably he died there after having given his last known prophecy (Jer. 44).

Jeremiah was ordained a prophet to the nations before his birth, and was early called to the office (Jer. 1:5-7), which he occupied for the long period of forty-two years — about one hundred and thirty years after the call of Isaiah. Jeremiah uttered his predictions in and about the metropolis of Judea; then, on the capture of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, among the people spared by the clemency of the Chaldean conqueror, and who, after the murder of Gedaliah, the governor of Judea, and in spite of the faithful remonstrances of the prophet, went down into Egypt (Jer. 43, 44), and nearly all perished there.

These prophecies, in our English Bibles, as also in the Hebrew, are arranged (by whom we cannot tell, probably by Ezra) without regard to chronological order. But whoever was the editor of Jeremiah's weeping prophecies, for almost "every letter is written with a tear, and every word is the sound of a broken heart" — especially so of the Lamentations — must have been divinely directed; for the moral order, and connection of the various prophecies to each other are evidently of God. In the Septuagint they are arranged chronologically. The last verse of the fifty-first chapter ends with "Thus far are the words of Jeremiah." The last chapter of the book is not written by Jeremiah, but is an historical appendix substantially the same as 2 Kings 24:18-20, 25; and equally given by inspiration of God, and needful in its place. The predictions of the prophet respecting Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, were fulfilled to the letter, as this historical appendix, probably written by Ezra, conclusively prove. It is only in this book, so far as we know, that the duration of the Chaldean kingdom is given, as also the duration of Judah's captivity in Babylon (Jer. 25:9-14; Jer. 29:10). Daniel was a devout student of these very prophecies, especially of those portions just referred to (Dan. 9:2). We may observe that Jer. 10:11 contains a message to the heathen written in their own language — the Aramean or Syriac.