Who was Jeremiah in the Bible?

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.

From the verse read in Acts it will be seen that our subject for this reading is a "Chosen Vessel", and in the call and preparation of Jeremiah we see how the Lord deals with His servants in sovereign selection. The name Jeremiah suggests that which is established by God, and it was in the midst of a very broken state of things in Israel that this chosen vessel was raised up of God. He had probably one of the most difficult ministries ever committed to a servant of the Lord, and probably shed more tears than any other prophet.

In choosing this vessel God began a long way back, exactly as He did with Saul of Tarsus, as we see in Galatians 1. The choice of God in relation to His servants is not haphazard, nor is it determined by existing circumstances; the circumstances in which Jeremiah and Paul ministered occurred long after God had chosen them, but He chose them for those circumstances.

Jeremiah was a weak and timid man, but God’s power worked in him. As one has said, “What matters is not knowing the ambassador, but knowing the Power that sends him. Those who despise him despise not the man, but the One who sends him” (W. Kelly). The tragedy of this prophet lay in his constant obligation to forewarn of judgment while his whole inner self recoiled from such a prospect.

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.

Verses 4-10. "Then the Word of the LORD came unto me" (verse 4). The prophet is the writer who tells us how he was called into the office of a prophet. A sovereign, omniscient and omnipotent Lord speaks to and informs the young Jeremiah that He knew him, that his call was prenatal. He had been chosen and set apart for the specific work which he now was to undertake. (See Isa. 49:1; Gal. 1:15, 16). What comfort this assuring knowledge must have been to the prophet in his trying ministry, in the persecutions which were his portion and the suffering he passed through! The Lord had called him, the Lord knew all that would take place, and He had the power to sustain him. And he is the same Lord today, and Jeremiah's comfort is still the comfort of His trusting people.

Jeremiah expresses at once his fear. Like Moses (Exodus 4:10), he manifests 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." After that the Lord encouraged him by the promise of His presence, "I am with thee to deliver thee." Then He touched his mouth and said, "Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth." He was the mouthpiece of Jehovah, Who commissioned him to fulfill a ministry over nations and kingdoms, to announce the overthrow of them by the judgments of the Lord.

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. We know but little of the activity of the prophet during the subsequent reign of Josiah. Only one message is timed "in the day of Josiah the king" (3:6). In the history of that illustrious king of Judah, we read nothing of Jeremiah, with the exception of the brief statement "and Jeremiah lamented for Josiah" (2 Chron. 35:25). It seems that the third verse gives the period covering the larger part of the ministry of this prophet. The Word of the Lord came unto him "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, the king of Judah, unto the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month."

His lot was one of great solitude; he was divinely commanded to remain unmarried (16:2). He was forbidden to enter the house of joy and feasting (16:8). Reproach and derision were his daily portion (20:8). He was betrayed by his own kindred (12:6), and his fellow citizens at Anathoth wanted to kill him (11:21). Then, in the first part of his book, we read of the inner struggles he had, the spiritual conflict, when everybody was against him. In the bitterness of his spirit he spoke of himself as "a man of contention to the whole earth" (15:10). He even doubted whether his whole work was not a delusion and a lie (20:7), and like Job he cursed the day of his birth (20:14). When the Chaldeans came to the front and Jeremiah heard from the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar was called as His servant to receive the dominion from His hands (27:6), Jeremiah urged submission. This stamped him as a traitor. False prophets appeared who contradicted him with their false messages; he committed his cause to the Lord. On one occasion when the temple courts were filled with thousands of worshippers, he appeared and uttered the message that Jerusalem would be a curse, that the temple should share the fate of the tabernacle at Shiloh (26:6). Then the great conflict began. The priests, the false prophets and the people demanded his death (26:8). The Lord graciously protected him through chosen instruments. Still greater were his sufferings under Zedekiah. His struggles with the false prophets continued; they called him a madman (29:26), and urged his imprisonment. He then appeared in the streets of Jerusalem with bonds and yokes upon his neck (27:2), showing the coming fate of Judah. A false prophet broke the offensive symbol and gave a lying message that the Chaldeans should be destroyed within two years. Then the Egyptian army approached, and the Chaldeans hastened away; it created a dangerous condition for Jeremiah. He sought to escape to his home town Anathoth; it was discovered, and he was charged with falling to the Chaldeans as others did (37:14). In spite of his denial, he was thrown into a dungeon. Later he was thrown into the prison pit by the princes to die there. From that horrible fate he was again mercifully delivered. When the city fell, Nebuchadnezzar protected his person (39:11), and after being carried away with other captives as far as Ramah, he set him free. It was left to him whether he would go to Babylon to live under the special protection of the king, or remain in the land with the governor Gedaliah. He chose the latter. But Gedaliah was murdered by Ishmael and his associates. Then the people forced him to emigrate with them to Egypt. The last glimpse of the prophet's life we have of him is in Tahpanhes, uttering there a final protest and a great message. Nothing is known of the details of his death.

The word of Jehovah, as we are told in Jeremiah 1, came to Jeremiah, saying, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee: and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee." "I ordained thee," it is carefully added, "a prophet to the nations." Why to the nations? This special commission brings before us a peculiarity of Jeremiah's service which we shall find abundantly verified in this book. Although he was a Jew himself and even a priest and although the Jews in Jerusalem have an immense place in his prophecy, the nations also are given great prominence.

Of the early verses of chapter 1 we have spoken. Although at first Jeremiah felt he was but a child, it must have been a great stay for him afterwards to think of God’s foreknowledge of him, even before his birth, setting him apart, and giving him to be a prophet not only to Israel, but also to the nations (Jer. 1:4,10). This fact of God’s foreknowledge was made known to him at his call to the work, when the Lord touched him and put His words in his mouth. “I am with thee” is twice said to him (vv. 8 and 19). Every servant of the Lord should have some sense of this, along with a settled conviction of the foreknowledge of God. This gives stability amidst trials and testings. The Lord said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee”. Paul constantly speaks of himself as “a called apostle of Jesus Christ, by God’s will”, and Peter reminds us that we are “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”. The faithful servant may have to meet great difficulties and fierce foes, but he is encouraged like Jeremiah, who is again twice told not to fear (vv. 8 and 17). God would fortify him against all opposition (v. 18), and however strong it might be, none should prevail against him. The greater the foe the greater becomes faith’s victory. “I am with thee, says the Lord, to deliver thee”.

Jeremiah was called of God at a very early age, his scruples on this point satisfied, made conscious of the power and authority by which he was ordained a prophet unto the nations (significant enough of the impending change in the ways of God with His people), and was maintained in faithfulness and service for God, during the last eighteen years of the reign of Josiah, that son of David who had been prophesied of by name 300 years before his birth (1 Kings 13:2), and who had been filled with moral and spiritual energy for the cleansing of the city and temple, and restoring (at any rate outwardly) the worship of God, and the observance of His ordinances.