Jeremiah Jeremiah
Jeremiah
Introduction
At a Glance
Author: Traditionally Jeremiah
Audience: Originally Israel, but these revelations speak to everyone
Date: 627–586 BC
Type of Literature: Prophetic literature
Major Themes: Speaking prophetic truth; the coming righteous judgment; the coming hopeful restoration; the new covenant; seeing Jesus in the book
Outline:
I. Jeremiah’s call and commission — 1:1–19
II. Prophecies before the captivity — 2:1–38:28
III. The captivity of Judah — 39:1–18; 52:1–34
IV. Prophecies after the captivity — 40:1–51:64
About the Book of Jeremiah
You are about to encounter one of the most unique books in the Bible, a book that plunges into the depths of despair while soaring to the heights of hope. The book of Jeremiah doesn’t shy away from warnings of judgment and destruction, chronicling the fallout from Judah’s unheeded prophetic revelation-insights. It serves as a warning that the patient heart of God also judges and punishes the hardened, unrepentant hearts of people. Yet running parallel to these warnings are words of tender compassion, holding out the possibility of forgiveness, redemption, and restoration.
It was written by a man known as the Weeping Prophet, the prophet Jeremiah. Before he was even born, he was divinely chosen by God, and he longed through tears for the nation of Judah to respond to the heart of God. God commissioned him to bear a message warning of judgment. God said, “My people . . . have abandoned me, the Spring of Living Water, and they have dug for themselves cisterns—cracked cisterns that hold no water” (Jer. 2:13). Idolatry was the taproot that fed Israel’s rebellion, which led to their destruction. For generations, God was waiting for them to repent; his heart, overflowing with love, was ready to pour out his forgiveness and grace. But his people refused to heed his voice.
The resulting judgment was disastrous: in vivid, high-definition, color detail, Jeremiah gives us the sordid history of the last five kings of Judah, the cataclysmic destruction of the temple, the utter desolation of Jerusalem, and the heartrending captivity of Judah in Babylon. It is a warning for all of the eventual judgment that befalls those whose hardened hearts refuse to listen to Yahweh’s voice and obey his decrees. And yet this prophetic work is also one of hope. For although Israel had broken her covenant with Yahweh, leading to the city’s destruction, there was a remarkable promise: “I, the Lord, promise you that a time is coming when I will raise up a righteous Branch who will sprout from David’s lineage. He will rule as their King, and his reign will prosper with wisdom and understanding. He will succeed in bringing justice and righteousness to all” (23:5).
This “Branch” is Jesus Christ, who is from the Tree of Life, the Rod of priestly authority that budded in the Holy Place, the Branch of the Lampstand, and the Righteous One, who makes righteous before God all who believe in him. Jeremiah reveals the message of the new covenant that God makes with his people today: “ ‘This is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel when the time has come,’ declares Yahweh. ‘I will embed my law into the core of their being and write it on their hearts and minds. Then I will truly be their God, and they will truly be my people. . . . From the least to the greatest, they will all know me intimately,’ Yahweh declares, ‘for I will remove their guilt and wipe their sin from my memory’ ” (31:33–34).
Vast in its scope, enduring in its truth, the revelation given to Jeremiah is meant to pierce the hardest of hearts, reminding people that alongside God’s judgment and destruction is his enduring promise of forgiveness and redemption. The Weeping Prophet’s message will convict you and lead you deeper into the ways of God, drawing you closer to his heart.
Purpose
Jeremiah was called to follow King Josiah’s national reformation by calling Judah to repentance. He lived in a time of crisis, political turmoil, and national disasters. He was the evening star of the declining days of the Jewish commonwealth before being taken into captivity. Yahweh spoke to him as a teenager and called him into his true calling—to be a spokesman for God, bearing his message of repentance and forgiveness, punishment and ultimate renewal. This message and its purpose unfolded within a broader historical context, unveiling important revelation-insights into God’s spiritual purposes for the world.
Historically, the events of the book of Jeremiah occurred during a time of remarkable change in the ancient Near East. The Assyrian Empire collapsed, and the dreaded foe from the north, the kingdom of Babylon, strengthened and extended its rule. During this period, the kingdom of Judah experienced its own cataclysmic disaster. This prophetic history is not in chronological order. Instead, it was arranged to address God’s people in the midst of their catastrophe in order to turn their hearts to repentance and offer the hope of rescue and restoration.
Spiritually, Jeremiah reveals heaven’s mercy in calling a rebellious nation back to God. Sin breaks the heart of God, but mercy triumphs! Jeremiah’s book is full of mercy. It reveals the righteous judgments of God, for God’s discipline is a demonstration of his love; it shows God’s principle of restoration; it unveils the revelation of the Branch of Yahweh; and it prophesies the new covenant that will draw people into an intimate relationship with God, imparting a new heart and wiping clean the stains of guilt and shame.
Author and Audience
There can be little doubt that the book bearing his name was written by the prophet Jeremiah with the assistance of his scribe, Baruch ben Neriah. Jewish tradition holds that Jeremiah also wrote the two books of Kings and Lamentations. He appears on the scene as one full of passion and emotion; Jeremiah was known as the Weeping Prophet. His writing clearly reveals his personality: he wept many tears over his nation and their refusal to repent and honor the God of glory. Perhaps no better patriotic Jew ever lived compared to Jeremiah. Even the prophet Daniel consulted the words of his predecessor, Jeremiah (Dan. 9:2).
The Lord did not permit Jeremiah to marry (Jer. 16:2). He was a priest by birth and a prophet by grace. Jeremiah unceasingly advised Jerusalem to surrender to Babylon, so much so that he was considered a traitor to his nation. He suffered much for the sake of his people. In fact, because of the depths of his sufferings, Jewish tradition holds that Jeremiah is the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. His ministry endured for almost fifty years until he was finally carried off to Egypt and stoned to death at Tahpanhes.
Jeremiah lived about one hundred years after the prophet Isaiah. There were several prophetic voices in Israel and Judah during the lifetime and ministry of Jeremiah, including Zephaniah, Habakkuk (Hab. 2:1), Nahum, Obadiah, Ezekiel (Ezek. 3:17–21; 33:7), and Uriah (Jer. 26:20–23). Additionally, Jewish tradition states that Jeremiah and Zechariah were contemporaries with an overlapping ministry of a few years. God always gave both warning and comfort to his people through his prophets. When Nebuchadnezzar finally destroyed Jerusalem, Jeremiah would have been about fifty-seven years old. He likely lived several decades after that.
Jeremiah pleaded with the people of Judah and Jerusalem to repent of their idolatry and turn from their wicked ways, lest Yahweh, Commander of Angel Armies, rise up against them with promised punishment. He called them back to faithfulness in their devotion and dependence on Yahweh. The book also served as a clarion call to subsequent generations of God’s people, with a warning to repent of their sins, a call to worship the one true God, and a reminder of the reality and possibility of Yahweh’s judgment. It also gave them hope that God’s punishing hand still offered them grace, forgiveness, and redemption while anticipating a period of ultimate renewal through the restoration of Jerusalem and a new covenant between God and his people. We join that same audience, sitting in the same prophetic utterances. These revelation-insights still speak to us with warning and hope.
Major Themes
Speaking Prophetic Truth. Someone has described prophecy as not only fore-telling events to come but also forth-telling truth today. As much as he articulated Yahweh’s plans for the future, Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry pronounced moral truths in the present, confronting people with God’s Word to bring about radical change. In Jeremiah, we find a bold and brave, fierce and fiery, courageous and caring articulator of God’s plans for his people, not only to those in power—the kings, priests, and prophets of Judah—but also to the regular men and women on Jerusalem’s streets. Even at the expense of his life, when a mob threatened to murder him, Jeremiah spoke truth to power, resting in Yahweh’s promise that he was “always with you to rescue you” (1:19).
Our world is desperate for a new generation of forth-tellers to proclaim in our day the same moral truths found in this prophetic book, doing what Jeremiah did with his people: urging them to worship Yahweh alone, orient their lives around his truths, submit to his authority, and forsake the ways of the world. If you feel unworthy or inadequate for the task—feeling too young or old, incapable or undeserving—remember the same revelation-insight Jeremiah received straight from the heart of God: “Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew you intimately. I had divine plans for you before I gave you life, and I set you apart and chose you to be mine. You are my prophetic gift to the nations. . . . Fear nothing when you confront the people, for I am with you, and I will protect you” (1:5, 8).
The Coming Righteous Judgment. Much of Jeremiah’s book centers around the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the nation of Judah. In fact, the prophetic work concludes with the city’s fall, the pursuit and capture of the king and his household, and the deportation of the people. This righteous judgment was the culmination of Yahweh’s warnings stretching back to the book of Deuteronomy, particularly chapter 28, where Yahweh outlined both blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. Now Yahweh’s patience had run out; it was time to discipline his people for perverting Jerusalem and the temple and for their continued rebellion.
“I will pass sentence against the people of Jerusalem and Judah,” Yahweh declared to Jeremiah, “for all their wickedness in deserting me. They have sacrificed to other gods and worshiped the works of their hands” (Jer. 1:16). That judgment would ultimately be rendered through Babylon, when they destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and then exiled the people. As one commentator puts it, “exile was, in a sense, the cleansing of the land as well as judgment on its inhabitants for their failure.” # J. Andrew Dearman, The NIV Application Commentary: Jeremiah and Lamentations (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 38. Yahweh’s judgment cleansed the land of its wicked inhabitants, his people of Judah, who had defiled it with their idolatry and sin. Jeremiah’s call was to warn Yahweh’s people that this coming hand of discipline would fall upon them, while he was also calling them to repentance and obedience.
The Coming Hopeful Restoration. Although Jeremiah’s prophetic book is rather bleak, destruction and judgment are not the end of Judah’s story. Yahweh offers a hopeful, forward-looking view of future healing and restoration through the life and words of his prophet. A promise that plumbs the depths of God’s heart reveals this hope, even for you: “Here’s what Yahweh says to you: ‘I know all about the marvelous destiny I have in store for you, a future planned out in detail. I have no intention to harm you but to surround you with peace and prosperity and to give you a beautiful future, glistening with hope’ ” (29:11).
This future restoration centers around a remnant, city, and temple. Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed, yet the Lord promised both would “become to me a source of joy, honor, and splendor for all the earth to see” (33:9). Desolate and abandoned, the streets of Judah’s towns and of Jerusalem would hear once again the sounds of people and animals, along with “the raucous shouts of joy and mirth and the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride” (33:11). Not only that, but Yahweh also promised, “You will once again hear the glad songs sung by those who bring thank offerings to my temple” (33:11).
This wasn’t all, for there was a promise straight from the glory realm given to the remnant of God’s faithful in exile. Yes, he promised to “heal them, restore them, and give them prosperity and lasting peace” (33:6), but it was more than that. He also promised to “cleanse them from all the guilt of all the sins they have committed against me. I will even forgive all their sins of rebellion against me” (33:8). This remnant would be saved by grace, pointing to the full unveiling of the gospel in the new covenant. A reminder that forgiveness is waiting, restoration is coming, and that your future, full of peace and prosperity, beauty and hope, is secure—overflowing from the heart of God.
The New Covenant. One of the more prophetic elements in the book of Jeremiah is its revelation-insight into the covenants God has made with humanity. The high point comes when the text speaks of a future new covenant unlike the old, which was established at Sinai and based on people’s outward obedience to God’s laws. The new covenant, however, imparts a new heart and empowers one to fulfill God’s desires. God gives us a new, faithful heart to follow him. No longer embodied in mere stone and keeping people at arm’s length through ritual, the covenant made new is etched on tablets of embodied hearts, written on the minds of believers.
This is the new covenant that Jesus Christ initiated at the Last Supper with the cup (his blood) and the bread (his body). This new covenant has been ratified and confirmed and forever supersedes the covenant made at Sinai. The Sinai covenant required perfect obedience; the new covenant extends perfect forgiveness and removes sin’s guilt, stain, and power. The first was written on stones, the second on tender hearts. It bridges the gulf between humanity and God by wiping away our guilt and sin, empowering every individual to know God intimately. From the least to the greatest, God intimately dwells in his people, and they dwell with him, experiencing the fullness of the heart of God.
Seeing Jesus in the Book. Many have noted certain similarities between Jeremiah and the life of our Lord Jesus. In fact, the foreshadowing was so strong that some disciples saw the prophet Jeremiah returned to life in Jesus (Matt. 16:14). Although no one truly compares to our glorious King Jesus, the Son of God, consider these striking similarities:
• Their historical settings were similar: captivity looming over Israel.
• Both had a message for Israel and the world.
• Both were priest-prophets.
• Both knew they were divinely called and chosen.
• Both condemned the commercialization of temple worship.
• Both were constantly accused by the religious elite.
• Both wept over Jerusalem (Jer. 9:1; Luke 19:41).
• Both were persecuted, tried, and imprisoned.
• Both were tenderhearted.
• Both deeply loved Israel.
• Both enjoyed deep communion with God.
• Neither married.
• Both emphasized a spirituality of the heart, not outward forms and traditions.
• Both emphasized the new covenant.
Not only have scholars taken into consideration these similarities between the prophet and Christ, but Jesus is also seen in the book of Jeremiah as:
The Benjamite, Son of God’s right hand (Jer. 1:1; Acts 2:34–35)
Prophet to the nations (Jer. 1:5; Acts 3:22–23)
The Almond-Awakening Rod and the Firstfruit Tree (Jer. 1:11–12; 1 Cor. 15:20)
The Spring of Living Water (Jer. 2:13; John 4:14)
The Husband of Jerusalem (Jer. 3:14; Eph. 5:25–32)
The Person who executes judgment (Jer. 5:1; John 5:22)
The Perpetual Decree (Jer. 5:22; John 1:1)
The Sign of Fire (Jer. 6:1; Heb. 12:29)
The Good Way (Jer. 6:16; John 14:6)
The Balm in Gilead (Jer. 8:22; 1 Peter 2:24)
The Lamb brought to the slaughter (Jer. 11:19; Acts 8:32–33)
The Strong Fortress of God’s people (Jer. 16:19; John 17:12)
The Tree of Life (Jer. 17:8; John 15:1–5)
Our Hope in the day of evil (Jer. 17:17; 1 Tim. 1:1)
The Righteous King (Jer. 23:5–6; Heb. 7:1–3)
The Voice of the Bridegroom (Jer. 25:10; John 3:29)
The Book (Jer. 30:2; Heb. 10:7)
The Father of the Firstborn (Jer. 31:9; Rom. 8:29)
The Law written on our hearts (Jer. 31:33; 2 Cor. 3:2–3; Col. 1:27)
The Great and Mighty God (Jer. 32:18; Rom. 16:27)
The Honest and Faithful Witness (Jer. 42:5; Rev. 1:5)
The Sword (Jer. 42:16; John 1:1; Heb. 4:12)
The Heir of Israel (Jer. 49:1; Heb. 1:1–3)
The Eternal Covenant (Jer. 50:5; Heb. 13:20)
The Armory of God (Jer. 50:25; Eph. 6:10–18)
The Powerful Redeemer (Jer. 50:34; Gal. 3:13–14)
Jeremiah
The Prophet of Righteousness
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Jeremiah Jeremiah: TPT
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