Jeremiah

Jeremiah was from a priestly family that lived in Anathoth. He preached during the reigns of Josiah, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah; and continued until he was taken by a group of rebels in 582 B.C.E. to Egypt, where he died.

According to the opening verses of his book, Jeremiah began his career during the reign of Josiah (circa 626 B.C.E.). He may have been inspired by Josiah's sweeping reforms. However, with Josiah's death in 609 and the rapid growth of Babylonian power that threatened to crush the tiny state of Judah, Jeremiah apparently became increasingly disillusioned. He was frustrated with the policies of Josiah's successors.

In Jeremiah's view, God was justified in punishing Judah because Judah had failed to enforce Mosaic principles that protected impoverished laborers and their families. In addition, Jeremiah argued that the government allowed the rich to use any means necessary to increase their wealth, including fraud and violence.

Jeremiah's Unpopular Message

Acting under the conviction that God intended to crush Judah for abandoning His covenant, Jeremiah viewed Babylon as God's chosen means for implementing his decision. Convinced that Judah's moral failures necessitated its punishment,

Jeremiah issued pronouncements full of negative judgments and images of loss and suffering.

Although he agonized over Judah's fate, Jeremiah believed that the punishment was deserved, because king and citizens alike abused the poor and powerless.

If the introductory chronology is correct, Jeremiah delivered his unpopular message of doom for approximately forty years, causing him to be hated, shunned, and persecuted. Many of his fellow Judeans regarded his call to surrender to Babylonian domination as a shameful betrayal of his country (26:7-11; 32:1-5; 37:11-15; 38:14-28). Jeremiah struggled to make Judah's leaders realize that the Babylonian Empire was God's judgment on His people for their faithlessness, idolatry, and social injustice (21; 22:1-9; 36; 37:16-21; 38:14-28).

An "Unpatriotic" Prophet

Although at one time Jeremiah probably supported Josiah's reforms, he seems to have become disillusioned when the people observed the correct sacrificial forms prescribed by Deuteronomy but did not otherwise change their behavior (3:6-10).

After the first deportation in 598-597 B.C.E., when Nebuchadnezzar had thousands of Judah's religious and political leaders removed to Babylon, Jeremiah intensified his warnings.

King Zedekiah was king at this point. Zedekiah was the son of Josiah and the uncle of the previous king. He respected Jeremiah enough to ask him for advice, but he was too weak to carry out the advice he received. Jeremiah aroused the anger of the super-patriots by consistently insisting that Judah's only hope of survival was to open the city gates, allow the Babylonians to take over, and then to be loyal subjects of Nebuchadnezzar. To emphasize his point, he made a wooden yoke like that used to hitch oxen to a plow and wore it on his neck. This was to emphasize the wisdom of Judah’s wearing the yoke of Babylon (27:1-22).

The prophet Hananiah contradicted Jeremiah and promised deliverance from Babylon. Hananiah then angrily smashed the wooden yoke. Jeremiah replied that he hoped Hananiah was right, but later Jeremiah came back with yoke bars made of iron. He told Hananiah that not only would Babylon's yoke not be broken, but that Hananiah himself would die (28:12-16). In that same year, in the seventh month, Hananiah died (28:17).

After the capture of Jerusalem and the first deportation to Babylon, Jeremiah wrote to the exiles telling them not to expect an early return but to build houses, plant gardens, and settle down as comfortably as possible for a long captivity (Ch. 29).

Jeremiah in Prison (37:6-21)

Jeremiah warned Zedekiah that the Babylonian withdrawal from Jerusalem was only temporary (37:6-10). This withdrawal occurred when the Egyptians marched out to oppose the Babylonians.

While the siege of the Babylonians was lifted, Jeremiah sought to leave the city for a trip to Anathoth to inspect some property. Thinking that he was deserting to the Babylonians, an overzealous guard arrested him and brought him before the city leaders. They had him beaten and thrown into the dungeon (37:11-15). After these leaders discovered that Zedekiah had freed Jeremiah from prison, they had him thrown into a muddy well to die (Ch. 38).

The reason the leaders of Judah hated him so was because he advocated a radical and what they called "unpatriotic" solution to the Babylonian threat: Jerusalem was to open its gates and surrender to the enemy. Jeremiah argued that if the city capitulated it would not be burned, and its citizens would escape with their lives. The prophet's recommendations were not based on political expedience. Instead, he offered Zedekiah and the nation a religious challenge to place their trust entirely in God's power to save.

To the Jerusalem leadership, Jeremiah's attitude toward Solomon’s Temple was as offensive as his "defeatist" pacifism. Throughout the siege, he declared that those who believed that the sanctuary could protect them were relying on an illusion (Chs. 7 and 26). Rather than depending on a mere building, which the corrupt had profaned, Judah must cleanse itself of crime and idolatry to regain Yahweh's favor and protection.

Shortly before Jerusalem fell, Jeremiah made a rare gesture of faith in the future. As his world was disintegrating around him, he bought a field in Anathoth to demonstrate his belief that land ownership in Judah would someday again be profitable (Ch. 32).

In 587 B.C.E., however, Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem, demolishing its walls, palaces, and Temple. The prophet was allowed to remain in Judah with the poor in the ruined city. After Gedaliah, Nebuchadnezzar's governor, was murdered, Jeremiah was forcibly carried into Egypt. The last words of Jeremiah were predictions of doom for Egypt and for those who had fled to it for protection.

Only Baruch, Jeremiah's faithful disciple, would escape with his life (43:8-45:5). As far as is known, Jeremiah died in Egypt.

Promised New Covenant

Perhaps Jeremiah's greatest contribution to the survival of the Jewish religion was his perception that Judah's faith did not depend on outward signs of Yahweh's presence or protection. David's throne, the holy city, Solomon's Temple, and even the nation itself could vanish. Jeremiah's most famous prophecy foretold a time when the old covenant that Yahweh had made through Moses would be replaced by a new and better covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-33).

A NATIONAL CRISIS: QUESTIONING THE DEUTERONOMIC ASSUMPTIONS

The flight of Jerusalem's inhabitants to Egypt brings the story of Israel full cycle. Seeking to find moral sense in the national catastrophe, the Deuteronomistic historians blamed the victims: The covenant community deserved to suffer because it had broken faith with Yahweh. Apostate rulers like Manasseh had led the way, but the people themselves were so full of guilt that a righteous Deity could not refrain from punishing them. Prophetic witnesses to the disaster who were also influenced by the deuteronomic view of history, such as Jeremiah, similarly attributed Judah's demise to its failure to keep the Mosaic Torah.

Not all Bible writers agreed with this view, however, and some were angered by what seemed to be God's failure to keep his word. The author of Psalm 44 contrasts ancestral traditions about God's saving acts in the remote past with God's present abandonment of his people.