Theopedia

Book of Jeremiah

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah… I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.”

— Jeremiah 31:31, 33

Overview

Jeremiah belongs to the Latter Prophets of the Hebrew canon. Jewish tradition groups it with Isaiah and Ezekiel among the “greater” prophets, a division based on length rather than rank.1 The book records the ministry of the prophet Jeremiah to the kingdom of Judah across the last four decades before its fall to Babylon in 586 BC, combining oracles of judgment and hope with an unusually full account of the prophet’s own life.2

Author and Date

The prophet Jeremiah is himself the book’s author. He was a priest from Anathoth, in the territory of Benjamin, and was called to the prophetic office in his youth, exercising it in Judah from the thirteenth year of Josiah to the fall of Jerusalem, a span of about forty-one years, and afterward in Egypt among the remnant that carried him there against his will (Jer. 1:1-3; 43-44).3 God appointed him “a prophet to the nations” before his birth (Jer. 1:5).

Jeremiah did not write the book alone. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim he dictated to his scribe Baruch, son of Neriah, all the prophecies God had given him from the days of Josiah onward, and Baruch wrote them on a scroll (Jer. 36:1-4). After Jehoiakim burned that scroll, Jeremiah dictated it again, and “there were added besides unto them many like words” (Jer. 36:27-32).4 The book as it now stands does not preserve that original scroll intact: prophecies from before and after Jehoiakim’s fourth year are interwoven rather than kept in strict chronological order.4 A closing appendix (Jer. 52), drawn almost word for word from 2 Kings 24:18-25:30, appears to have been added by a later hand, most likely Ezra.4

Historical and Literary Context

Jeremiah prophesied through the reigns of Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah, as Judah’s religious and moral condition worsened despite Josiah’s reforms and the nation passed from Assyrian into Babylonian power.3 Unlike Isaiah, who could hold out hope of deliverance from Assyria, Jeremiah had no such word for Judah: he counseled submission to Babylon and warned that trust in Egyptian help would end only in disappointment (Jer. 37:5-10).5

That message provoked sustained opposition, much of it from kings and from rival prophets speaking without God’s word. The men of Jeremiah’s own town conspired against his life (Jer. 11:18-23; 12:6); Pashur the priest struck him and put him in the stocks (Jer. 20:1-6); the priests and false prophets accused him before the princes in Jehoiakim’s reign as a man deserving death (Jer. 26); and under Zedekiah he was repeatedly imprisoned and lowered into a dungeon (Jer. 32:2; 33:1; 37-38).2

He and Baruch went into hiding after the burning of the scroll (Jer. 36), were released and treated well once Jerusalem fell to the Chaldeans, and were then carried into Egypt against Jeremiah’s counsel by the remnant that survived the city’s fall (Jer. 39-40; 42-43).2 Jeremiah wove this personal history into his prophecies to an extent unusual among the prophets, so that the book preserves both his message and his own inward conflict between grief for his people and fidelity to God’s word.2

Structure

Following the order the Hebrew text itself displays, Jeremiah falls into three broad divisions: prophecies addressed to Judah, interspersed with episodes from the prophet’s own life and closing with a message to Baruch (Jer. 1-45); oracles against foreign nations; and a historical appendix drawn from 2 Kings (Jer. 52).4 The book does not proceed chronologically throughout. Some prophecies carry no date, and where dates are given they are not always kept in sequence.4

Major Themes

The weeping prophet’s call to a hardened nation

Jeremiah is remembered as “the weeping prophet” for the grief that runs through his oracles against a people who would not repent.5 His particular calling was to expose, more fully than any other prophet, the connection between a nation’s sin and its ruin, holding up Judah’s own history as a warning to every wicked nation.5 The men of his own generation despised his warnings and held him in contempt; only after the exile he had predicted arrived, and ended when he said it would, was he honored among the greatest of the prophets.6

Judgment and hope beyond exile

Jeremiah predicted not only the Babylonian captivity but also its end after seventy years and the eventual overthrow of Babylon itself (Jer. 25:12-14; 29:10-14).6 Chapters 30-33 turn from judgment to future restoration, describing, in language paralleling Isaiah’s, the glory God’s people will yet receive.6

The new covenant

Within that section of restoration, Jeremiah records God’s promise of a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, unlike the covenant made at the exodus, in which God will put his law within his people and write it on their hearts, forgiving their iniquity and remembering their sin no more (Jer. 31:31-34). Bavinck traces this promise to the same demand for a total, inward conversion that runs through the prophets: God not only requires “a broken and contrite heart” but also promises to grant it himself, and “will some day grant it in the days of the new covenant.”7

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References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 294. ↩

  2. Barrows, 310. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. Barrows, 311. ↩ ↩2

  4. Barrows, 313-314. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  5. Barrows, 312. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. Barrows, 313. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 19, “Faith and Conversion”: “He not only demands this but also promises it and will some day grant it in the days of the new covenant (Jer. 31:31ff.; Ezek. 36:25ff.; Zech. 13:1; Mal. 4:6).” ↩