Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart for my holy purpose. I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations… Today I have put you in charge of nations and kingdoms. You will uproot and tear down. You will destroy and overthrow. You will build and plant.

Jeremiah 1:5, 10  ·  God’s Word

Jeremiah spoke the Word of the Lord to the inhabitants of Judah and to the surrounding nations during the reigns of the final five kings of the monarchy. The prophet could speak destruction to a nation because God had already declared it to him. For the historical background of his prophecies see II Kings 22–25 and II Chronicles 34–36. Note that these prophecies are not in chronological order.

His father was Hilkiah — probably the same Hilkiah, the high priest, who found the book of the law during the reign of Josiah. His aunt Huldah was a prophetess, and the one to whom Josiah sent a delegation to inquire of the Lord. His contemporaries included Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah. Daniel and his three friends were probably his disciples. Ezekiel might well have been familiar with him.

The reign he began in, and the four that followed

Jeremiah began his ministry in the thirteenth year of the godly king Josiah — the happiest reign of Judah’s experience. When Josiah came to the throne at the age of eight, idolatry in every form was rampant because of the practices of his father and grandfather. But he had God-fearing advisors who turned him to the ways of Yahweh, and at sixteen he began to seek Him personally. When he was twenty-six, Hilkiah the high priest found a copy of the Torah during the restoration of the temple. On hearing its words Josiah immediately assembled all Judah; they renewed the covenant and pledged themselves to keep its commands.

Sadly, the revival was only superficial. On the surface the people appeared to have a renewed devotion to the temple and its services, but their hearts remained cold, unrepentant and actively resistant to the pleadings of compassion. Yahweh’s stern rebuke came through Jeremiah that they were a treacherous people, only acting in pretense — see 3:10. See the diagram of the last five kings.

Josiah’s untimely death brought an end to all hope of a true revival and introduced a succession of four evil kings — three of them his sons, one his grandson. Jeremiah thus had the unenviable task of speaking to a dying nation that refused to listen: a nation that sought solutions to its problem of national defence through foreign intrigue and foreign gods, putting its trust in worthless, gold-encrusted wooden idols and in the superpowers of its day, rather than in its covenant God (17:5–7).

He names the failure exactly once and it is the sentence the whole book turns on:

My people have done two things wrong. They have abandoned me, the fountain of life-giving water. They have also dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that can’t hold water.

Jeremiah 2:13  ·  God’s Word

Not merely leaving God, but going to the trouble of building a replacement that does not work.

The love that stayed while the nation fell

The amazing thing is that in the midst of their rebellion, Yahweh reaffirmed His love for His covenant people. To an obstinate nation He declared that He had loved them with an everlasting love, and therefore had drawn them with lovingkindness (31:3). Israel did not cause God’s love to begin; therefore they could not cause God’s love to end. It was not that Israel was attractive to God — quite the reverse. He had drawn them to Himself because of lovingkindness, covenant love.

Israel’s conduct demanded punishment, but God in His mercy would not completely destroy them. Those who would surrender to Babylon — the instrument of God’s chastisement — would go into exile, but one day they would return to inhabit the land. Knowing that we can rest securely in God’s everlasting love gives us tremendous comfort. If we fail, we can expect God’s discipline, but we will never be forsaken.

Movement one  ·  Chapters 1–20  ·  The call to repentance, and what it cost the man who made it

The call  1

The six verbs, and the promise that goes with them: “Don’t be afraid of people. I am with you, and I will rescue you.”

The case against Judah  2 – 20

• Israel forsakes the Lord  2 – 3:5
• God entreats faithless Israel to return  3:6 – 4:4
• Israel’s conduct brings judgment  4:5–31
• The people, priests and prophets all have rebellious hearts  5
• Judah refuses to listen  6 – 8:20
• Conniving Israel  8:21 – 9:26
• The living God or worthless idols  10
• The curses of the covenant  11:1–17  ·  the plot against Jeremiah  11:18–23
• Jeremiah’s grievance and the Lord’s response  12
• The ruined linen belt  13:1–11  ·  filled with drunkenness  13:12–14  ·  the king and queen have forgotten their God  13:15–27
• Punishment for their sins  14 – 15:9  ·  Jeremiah’s plea for deliverance  15:10–21
• Loss of their inheritance  16:1 – 17:27
• Israel has forgotten their God  18:1–17  ·  a verbal attack against Jeremiah  18:18–23
• The smashed potter’s jar  19  ·  Pashhur imprisons Jeremiah  20

The potter, and what the clay is for  18:1–6

God sends him to a workshop to watch a craftsman fail and start again. “Whenever a clay pot he was working on was ruined, he would rework it into a new clay pot the way he wanted to make it… Nation of Israel, you are like the clay in the potter’s hands.” The image is not of a God who discards a spoiled pot. It is of a God who will not stop working the same lump.

What it did to him  20:7–9

Jeremiah is the one prophet who tells you what the job felt like, and he does not tidy it up:

O LORD, you have deceived me, and I was deceived. You overpowered me and won. I’ve been made fun of all day long… I think to myself, “I can forget the LORD and no longer speak his name.” But his word is inside me like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I wear myself out holding it in, but I can’t do it any longer.

Jeremiah 20:7–9  ·  God’s Word

He tried to quit. He could not. That is the honest centre of this book, and it is why he is worth reading when you are tired.

The sermon at the temple gate  7:1–11

Standing at the door of the building everyone assumed was their insurance policy, he tells them the building is not the point.

Do not trust the words of this saying, “This is the LORD’s temple, the LORD’s temple, the LORD’s temple!” It’s a lie… The house that is called by my name has become a gathering place for thieves.

Jeremiah 7:4, 11  ·  God’s Word

Jesus quotes the last line in the temple courts six centuries later, and everyone standing there knew exactly which sermon He was quoting.

Movement two  ·  Chapters 21–33  ·  Babylonian judgment and Messianic salvation

• The way of life or the way of death  21  ·  evil kings rebuked  22
• The LORD our righteousness  23:1–8  ·  false prophets  23:9–40
• The exiles shall return  24
• After seventy years, Babylon will be punished  25:1–14  ·  the cup of God’s wrath  25:15–38
• Jeremiah’s life is threatened  26 — and it is Micah who saves it
• Judah and all nations to serve Nebuchadnezzar  27  ·  the false prophet Hananiah  28
• A letter to the exiles  29

The branch, and the name  23:5–6

The days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will grow a righteous branch for David. He will be a king who will rule wisely… This is the name that he will be given: The LORD is our righteousness.

Jeremiah 23:5–6  ·  God’s Word

Spoken about a dynasty that is one king away from ending. Yahweh Tsidkenu — the covenant name given here has its own page.

The letter to the exiles  29:11–13

The most quoted verse in the book, and it is worth knowing who received it: people who had just lost everything and were being told to settle down in the country that took it.

I know the plans that I have for you, declares the LORD. They are plans for peace and not disaster, plans to give you a future filled with hope.

Jeremiah 29:11  ·  God’s Word

The book of comfort  30 – 33

During the last hours of Jerusalem, as the nation hovered on the edge of collapse and deportation, the Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah concerning the New Covenant. These prophecies were partially fulfilled in the return of Israel to their land some seventy years later, but were finally brought about in the finished work of Christ and the birth of the Church. These chapters should be thoroughly read and studied in as many translations as possible. They are the climax of all that has gone before in terms of promise, covenant and prophecy. The monarchy and priesthood teetered on the brink of ruin, and out of the darkness Jeremiah assured the people of restoration and joy in God.

The heart of the prophecy is 31:31–34.

The days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new promise to Israel and Judah. It will not be like the promise that I made to their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of Egypt. They rejected that promise, although I was a husband to them… I will put my teachings inside them, and I will write those teachings on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will each person teach his neighbors or his relatives by saying, “Know the LORD.” All of them, from the least important to the most important, will know me — because I will forgive their wickedness and I will no longer hold their sins against them.

Jeremiah 31:31–34  ·  God’s Word

vs. 31, 32. Jeremiah refers to Sinai and the covenant made there (Exodus 19:1–6). That covenant was their charter as a nation, and it has now collapsed as a total failure. Man did not keep the law given. Has God’s purpose failed? No, says Jeremiah — Israel will be restored, but on the basis of a new covenant that deals with all the weaknesses of the first.

vs. 33, 34. The law once written on stone would now become a principle of life. Each member of that newly constituted Israel would have a personal, intimate knowledge of Yahweh. This indicates that there would be no need for a priesthood, for every man would stand face to face with God: every Israelite of the renewed nation would be a priest. This new covenant would not only abolish the priesthood but also the sin-offerings, for all sin would finally be paid for.

Note carefully the repetition and expansion of these ideas in 32:38–42 and 33:8–11. Jesus claimed to fulfil this New Covenant and bring it to substance — see Luke 22:20. Read carefully Hebrews 9, in as many translations as you can.

The field at Anathoth  32:6–9

In the middle of the siege, with the Babylonian army outside the walls and Jeremiah himself under arrest, God tells him to buy a field. His cousin comes to the prison courtyard and says: “It is your responsibility to purchase it, because the rights of the closest relative belong to you.” So he weighs out the silver, signs the deed in front of witnesses, and has it sealed in a clay jar to keep.

It is the act of the kinsman-redeemer — the same duty Boaz took up in Ruth, and the same thing Hosea did for his wife. Buying real estate in a country that is about to cease existing is not a sound investment; it is a sermon. Land will be worth owning here again.

Movement three  ·  Chapters 34–45  ·  Before the fall, and after it

• Zedekiah is promised a peaceful death  34:1–7  ·  the covenant of emancipation is broken  34:8–22
• The faithful Recabites  35  ·  King Jehoiakim burns the scroll  36
• Jeremiah’s imprisonment  37 – 38  ·  Jerusalem falls to Babylon  39
• Jeremiah released  40:1–6  ·  Gedaliah’s assassination  40:7 – 41:15
• Jeremiah’s Egyptian ministry  41:16 – 44:30  ·  Baruch’s safety is assured  45

Two scenes carry this section. In chapter 36 the king listens to the scroll being read, cuts off each column with a knife as it is finished and drops it in the fire — and Jeremiah simply dictates it again, longer. In chapter 38 he is lowered by ropes into a cistern with no water in it, “only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.” He is pulled out by a foreigner, an Ethiopian official, who is the only person in the chapter who does anything decent.

And to Baruch, his secretary, who is exhausted and wants something for himself, God says the hardest kind word in the book: “Are you looking for great things for yourself? Don’t look for them… But wherever you go I will let you escape with your life” (45:5).

Movement four  ·  Chapters 46–51  ·  Prophecies concerning the nations

Six chapters of oracles against Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Kedar, Elam — and then, at length, Babylon. They are placed here deliberately. Jeremiah has spent forty years telling Judah that Babylon is God’s instrument and that resisting it is resisting God; a reader could easily conclude that Babylon is therefore in the right. These chapters close that door. The instrument is judged too — the same verdict Nahum pronounced on Assyria, and the reason the seventy years of 25:11–12 have an end date at all.

Chapter 52  ·  An historical appendix

More details concerning the fall of Jerusalem (52:1–30), and the release of Jehoiachin (52:31–34). The appendix is not an afterthought: it is the receipt. Everything he said would happen is recorded here as having happened, dated and itemised down to the temple furniture.

He burned down the LORD’s temple, the royal palace, and all the houses in Jerusalem. Every important building was burned down.

Jeremiah 52:13  ·  God’s Word

And it ends with a king let out of prison and given a seat at a table — a small, strange note of mercy in the last four verses of a book about ruin.

Where this leaves you

In the summer of 587 or 586 BC the city fell to Babylon. Zedekiah tried to escape but was captured near Jericho and brought to Nebuchadnezzar’s headquarters at Riblah, where his sons were killed in front of him before his eyes were put out. Jerusalem was razed and Solomon’s Temple destroyed.

Good tradition says that as the city lay in ruins Jeremiah sat outside it and wept, writing what we call the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Read it next, and enter into the feeling of the moment. The description of Jeremiah’s feelings as he witnesses God’s judgment gives us an understanding of the sufferings of Christ who, in that same spot, would fully endure all of God’s wrath.

Four verbs of demolition, then two of construction. He lived to see the first four. The last two he had to take on trust, and buy a field to prove it.