Jeremiah

Jeremiah or Yirmiyáhu (יִרְמְיָהוּ, Standard Hebrew Yirməyáhu), was one of the "greater prophets" of the Old Testament, and the son of Hilkiah, a priest of Anathoth.

The name Jeremiah means "Raised-up/Appointed of the Lord. According to the Book of Jeremiah, he prophesied in Jerusalem from the thirteenth year of King Josiah of Judah through the eleventh year of King Zedekiah, a period of 40 years from roughly 626-586 B.C.E. or beyond. The Book of Jeremiah identifies his pupil Baruch, the son of Neriah, as the loyal scribe who transcribed much of of his work and probably provided many of the biographical details of his life, which is better documented than any other Hebrew prophet. Jeremiah lived in a time when the Kingdom of Judah not only faced military challenges from foreign invaders and spiritual challenges from Canaanite religion, but also bitter internal divisions in which even the prophets of Yahweh denounced each other and kings received conflicting advice from those who spoke in God's name. Fearless in the face of both political and religious authority, Jeremiah did not hesitate to confront Temple authorities and royal personages alike. He was the epitome of the prophet who, regardless of consequences, declared the truth to power.

Speaking truth to power: Jeremiah confronts the King.

Jeremiah's prophecies contain some of the most inspiring and troubling passages in the Bible. In one breath he tells his listeners of God's compassion, his forgiveness, and his promise of a New Covenant in which the laws of God will be written on men's hearts rather than tablets of stone. In the next, he becomes a channel for God's fierce, implacable wrath.

The only Hebrew prophet specifically instructed not to marry, Jeremiah was a controversial figure in his own day, facing prison several times and supporting the surpising policy of accommodation with pagan Babylonian invaders rather than resistance in God's name. His prediction that Judah was doomed to suffer in exile for several generations, however, proved true, while rival prophets who urged a policy of resistence eventually failed. His understanding of the divine providence in history became the prevailing Jewish viewpoint in the exilic and post-exilic period. This, coupled with his sublime oracles promising that God would eventually temper his wrath and form a New Covenant with his people, made Jeremiah one of most enduring and important figures to Jews and Christians alike

Jeremiah's Life

Under Josiah

"Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem" by Rembrandt van Rijn

According to the biblical account, Jeremiah, was called to the prophetical office when still relatively young, in the thirteenth year of Josiah around 628 B.C.E. His calling promised him practically unequalled authority, together with powerful earthly opposition and divine protection:

Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, "Now, I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant... Today I have made you a fortified city, an iron pillar and a bronze wall to stand against the whole land -— against the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests and the people of the land. They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you" (1:9-10)

At an uncertain point after his calling, Jeremiah left his native home and priestly family in Anathoth and went to reside in Jerusalem, where he seems to have supported the young Josiah in his work of reformation. In a hopeful mood, possibly inspired by Josiah's campaign against idolatry, he declared an end to the "divorce" between God and the northern kingdom of Israel, which had been destroyed by the Assyrian Empire, and called for the people of Judah and Israel alike to return to the Lord. On the other hand, and more characteristically, he warned that "from the north disaster will be poured out on all who live in the land." (1:14) The devastation would be so great that God commanded him:

"You must not marry and have sons or daughters in this place. For... son and daughters born in this land ... will not be mourned or buried but will be like refuse lying on the ground. They will perish by sword and famine, and their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth."

From the outset, Jeremiah's message went beyond the mere religious formalism. Although he probably supported the king's newly promulgated — or rediscovered — "Book of the Law," (2 Kings 22-23) he rejected the importance of external religious trappings. Neither the tablets of the Law nor the the Ark of the Covenant itself were essential to God's relationship to his people:

"Return, faithless people," declares the Lord, "for I am your husband... Men will no longer say, 'The ark of the covenant of the Lord.' It will never enter their minds or be remembered; it will not be missed, nor will another one be made. At that time they will call Jerusalem the Throne of the Lord, and all nations will gather in Jerusalem to honor the name of the Lord. No longer will they follow the stubbornness of their evil hearts. In those days the house of Judah will join the house of Israel." (3:14-16)

Few details are given regarding Jeremiah's career during the reign of Josiah. His prophecies call Judah and the remnant of Israel to repentance and foresee an impending doom from an unnamed northern power. Some have suggested that he may have continued to dwell in his native Anathoth during this period as was not much invloved in Jerusalem's affairs. Others believe he strongly supported Josiah's program of reformation, traveling throughout Judah to promote belief in Yawheh alone and to put an end to the worship of Canaanite deities. He condemned the practice of worshiping "on every high hill and under every spreading tree" (3:6) and proclaimed "in the towns of Judah" that the people must "listen to the terms of this covenant and follow them." (11:6) Another possibility, however, is that Jeremiah's relations with Josiah became strained. Some scholars have suggested that Jeremiah might have opposed certain of Josiah's policies, such has his centralization of the priesthood exclusively in Jerusalem, his fatal military campaign against Pharoah Neco II of Egypt, or his reliance on Temple officials as key advisors. Since Josiah is regarded by the Bible as the most righteous of the kings of Judah after David, later editors may have excised any portions of Jeremiah's writings that were critical of Josiah.

Under Jehoaikim

After Josiah's death in the battle of Meggido, one of his sons, Jehoahaz, reigned for three years. From this period we find no reference to Jeremiah, but in the beginning of the reign of Jehoahaz' brother Jehoiakim, Jeremiah is clearly present and active in Jerusalem. His preaching was upsetting to the king, Temple authorities, and the people alike. To the king he declared:

Jehoiachim destroys Jeremiah's prophecies

"This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place. For if you are careful to carry out these commands, then kings who sit on David's throne will come through the gates of this palace, riding in chariots and on horses, accompanied by their officials and their people. But if you do not obey these commands, declares the Lord, I swear by myself that this palace will become a ruin.'"

To the Temple authorities and general populace he warned:

'This is what the Lord says: If you do not listen to me and follow my law, which I have set before you, and if you do not listen to the words of my servants the prophets, whom I have sent to you again and again (though you have not listened), then I will make this house like Shiloh [a desolation] and this city an object of cursing among all the nations of the earth.' (26:4-6)

This speech resulted in Jeremiah's being officially threatened with capital punishment(26:16) and resstricted from preaching in the Temple confines (36:5). Not to be deterred, Jeremiah subsequently dictated his prophecies to Baruch and instructed him to read them in the Temple courtyard. The prophecies was later delivered and read to King Jehoiachim himself. They so outraged the king that he cut the scroll into pieces, burned it, and ordered both Jeremiah and Baruch arrested. (36:23-26) The two outlaws went into hiding, where Jeremiah dictated an even longer collection of prophecy.

File:Jeremiah-Baruch.jpg

Jeremiah dictates to Baruch

Exactly which of Jeremiah's oracles offended Jehoichim is not specified. However, one policy on which king and prophet were certain to disagree was that of Babylon. Jehoichim had been a vassal of Egypt, Babylon's enemy. Jeremiah, on the other hand, believed that the Babylonians were the instrument of God's wrath against Judah on account of her sin. Babylon had defeated Egypt at the battle of Carchemish in 605, and Jeremiah urged accommodation with the Babylonians. Jehoiachim determined to resist and withheld the payment of required tribute to the new regional power. It may well be that Jeremiah's warnings against resisting Babylon caused Jehoiakim to view him as a political liability or even a Babylonian agent. In any case, the royal policy of resistence proved unfortunate, as Jerusalem now faced a Babylonian invasion and siege, during which time Jehoiachim died.

Under Jehoiachin

To Jehoiachim's son Jechoiachin, Jeremiah's words were particularly harsh:

"As surely as I live," declares the Lord, "even if you, Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, I would still pull you off. I will hand you over to those who seek your life, those you fear—to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and to the Babylonians. I will hurl you and the mother who gave you birth into another country, where neither of you was born, and there you both will die. You will never come back to the land you long to return to." (22:24-17)

Scholars debate whether this and certain other prophecies in the Book of Jeremiah are truly Jeremiah's words. However it is nearly certain that the prophet did publicly challenge the royal policy toward Babylon, and this must have seemed unpatriotic or even treasonous. For Jeremiah, however, Nebuchadnezzar was "God's servant," sent to punish Judah. Jehoichin's decision to continue his father's policy of resistance against Babylon constituted, therefore, a grave mistake. Even the fact that the invaders had plundered Jerusalem's Temple did not cause him to waver in his belief that Nebuchadnezzar was acting on behalf of God. Standing at the gate to the Temple, Jeremiah had warned:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, "This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!" If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. (7:3-8)

Jehoichin did not hold out long against the power of Babylon's armies. He surrendered after only three months on the throne, and was taken in chains to Babylon, together with many of Jerusalem's leading citizens. Nebuchadnezzer found what he believed was a suitable replacement for him in the person of his uncle, Zedekiah.

Under Zedekiah

The most dramatic events of Jeremiah's minstry came during the reign of Judah's last king. In Zedekiah's fourth year as monarch, ambassadors from the surrounding nations came to discuss an alliance to gain their common independence from Babylon. The prophet Hananiah quickly endorsed this seemingly patriotic plan, declaring in the Temple:

Jeremiah confronts Hananiah

"This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: 'I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two years I will bring back to this place all the articles of the Lord's house that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon removed from here and took to Babylon. I will also bring back to this place Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah and all the other exiles from Judah who went to Babylon,' declares the Lord, 'for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.'" (28:2-4)

Jeremiah countered this prophecy by appearing in the marketplace with a wooden yoke around his neck publicly counseling a policy of submission to the Babylonian power. When Jeremiah later appeared at the Temple, Hananiah dramatically took the yoke from Jeremiah's shoulders and broke it, declaring that God would do likewise to the yoke of Babylon within two years. Jeremiah retreated to consider, and then countered with a prophecy of his own declaring that Hananiah himself would die within the same period. (28) In the next chapter is recorded the text of a remarkable letter from Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon counseling them not to listen to other prophets, but to settle down, buy property, raise families, and pray for the Babylonian king. (29)

File:Jeremiah-Dungeon.jpg

Jeremiah imprisoned

Jeremiah's predictions would eventually prove correct, but in the short term both he and the nation faced serioius trouble. Zedekiah decided to join the rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar, and the Babylonians soon marched against Judah. Jeremiah warned the king directly that resistance would bring disaster, but this was understandably difficult advice to accept for the independence-minded king. When the Babylonians temporarily lifted their seige to cope with the threat of a resurgent Egypt, Jeremiah left Jerusalem on business in the territory of Benjamin and was arrested as a deserter. He was beaten and placed in a dungeon, although he was soon released at Zedekiah's command. Confined in the palace court, he refused to keep quiet concerning the final downfall of Judah, and the king's officers silenced him by imprisoning him in an empty cistern. He was saved from death by starvation only by the intervention of the king's Ethiopian eunuch. He remained in the captivity of the court prison until his liberation by the Babylonians after they captured Jerusalem. Zedekiah, for his part, was forced into exile and blinded.

The Babylonians allowed Jeremiah to choose the place of his residence, and he decided to settle in the new capital of Mizpah with Gedaliah the Babylonian-appointed governor of Judea. Gedaliah was soon assassinated as a collaborationist by an Amorite agent. He was succeeded by a certain Johanan, who rejected Jeremiah's counsels and fled to Egypt, taking Jeremiah and Baruch with him. (43:6) There, the prophet probably spent the remainder of his life. We have no authentic record of his death. One legend (see below) states that he was killed by his fellow exiles as a result of his unpopular preaching. Another tradition portrays him is finding his way to Babylon with the army of Nebuchadnezzar.

Themes of Jeremiah's Preaching

Michelangelo's Jeremiah on the Sistine Chapel ceiling

Jeremiah, like all true biblical prophets, strongly condemned idolatry and warned of doom for God's people if they did not repent. Because of his belief that Judah's sins had made God's punishment virtually inevitable, his prophecies betray a tortured soul who must stand reluctantly for an angry God before the people while also standing for the people before God: "Remember that I stood before you and spoke in their behalf to turn your wrath away from them. (18:20)

Jeremiah's reticence to represent God is understandable not only because he faced rejection and persecution, but also because of the distrubing character of God's communication to him:

Then the Lord said to me, "Do not pray for the well-being of this people. Although they fast, I will not listen to their cry; though they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Instead, I will destroy them with the sword, famine and plague." (14:11-12)

Yet Jeremiah was of two minds about how strongly God was determined to punish Judah, for in another prophecy he conveyed the opposite of the above words:

"If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned." (18:7-8)

Jeremiah emphasized that religion must be practiced first and foremost in the heart of the individual. Like Hosea, Isaiah, and other prophets before him, he stressed the need for personal sincerity and social justice over the external forms of the Temple ritual. Circumcision of the heart was more important than the circumcision of the flesh (4:4) He demanded that the wealthy citizens of Judah liberate their slaves of Hebrew birth (43). He insisted that the Sabbath day of rest be scrupulously observed (17:19-27) — although this prophecy is considered by some authorities to be a later addition incompatible with Jeremiah's opposition to religioius formalism.

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Jeremiahs buys land in Anathoth

Jeremiah's most enduring theme, however, was the idea of a New Covenant.

"The time is coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt... This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people." (31:31-33)

So confident was he in God's promise of renwed spiritual and physical blessing to the land that in the midst of the Babylonian seige, Jeremiah invested in land in his native Anathoth, where he had previously faced a plot against his life, (11:21) declaring:

"This is what the Lord says: As I have brought all this great calamity on this people, so I will give them all the prosperity I have promised them. Once more fields will be bought in this land of which you say, 'It is a desolate waste, without men or animals, for it has been handed over to the Babylonians.' Fields will be bought for silver, and deeds will be signed, sealed and witnessed...beause I will restore their fortunes, declares the Lord." (32:42-44)

Jeremiah in the New Testament

While Jeremiah is seldom mentioned directly in the New Testament, his influence on Jesus and the New Testament writers is evident. Jesus quoted Jeremiah 7:11 in his words to the moneychangers in the Temple courtyard, saying: "Is it not written, 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'" It is also likely that Jesus was thinking of Jeremiah's experience in Anathoth when he declared, "Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor." (Matt. 13:57) Like Jeremiah, Jesus reportedly predicted that the Temple would be made desolate if the rulers, priests, and people did not respond to God's call, and like Jeremiah he was arrested and threatened with capital punishment shortly after his public denunciation of the Temple's corruption.

The earliest Christian writer, St. Paul, speaks of the Christian ministry as fulfilling Jeremiah's prophecy of a New Covenant: "He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant -— not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." Both Paul (I Cor. 11:25) and Luke (22:20) portray the Last Supper as initiating the New Covenant of Jesus' blood through the commemoration of the rite of holy communion: "After the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood..." Hebrews 8:7-8 directly quotes Jeremiah's own prophecy of the New Covenant as being fulfilled in Jesus. Indeed, the term New Testament itself is simply an alternate translation of the normal rendering Jeremiah's New Covenant.

Jeremiah in legend and midrash

According to a Christian legend (in pseudo-Epiphanius, "Lives of the Prophets") Jeremiah was stoned by his compatriots in Egypt because he reproached them with their evil deeds. This account of Jeremiah's martyrdom, however, may have come originally from Jewish sources. From the same source comes another story that Jeremiah's prayers freed Egypt from a plague of crocodiles and mice; for which reason his name was for a long time honored by the Egyptians.

In rabbinic literature [1], Jeremiah and Moses are often mentioned together; their life and works being presented in parallel lines. He was said to be a contemporary of his relative the prophetess Hulda, whom King Josiah consulted concerning the authenticity of the newly discovered Book of the Law in the Temple. Hulda supposedly ministered to Jerusalem's women while Jeremiah spoke to the men in the street. When Josiah restored the true worship, Jeremiah become a traveling preacher to the exiled ten tribes, many of whom returned to Palestine under Josiah's rule. Jeremiah warned Josiah against going to war with Egypt, which resulted in the Josiah's death, but the king's act was an error rather than rebellion against God.

The merits of Jeremiah were so great that God would not bring punishment upon Jerusalem so long as the prophet was in the city. God therefore commanded him to go to Anathoth; and only in his absence the city was taken and the Temple destroyed. Among the many other legends concerning Jeremiah is one in which, before the destruction of the Temple, the prophet brought holy tent and the Ark of the Covenant to the mountain from which God showed the Holy Land to Moses shortly before his death.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Friedman, Richard E. Who Wrote The Bible?, Harper and Row, NY, USA, 1987.
• Jeremiah andThe Book of Jeremiah in the Jewish Encyclopedia

See also

• History of ancient Israel and Judah
• Documentary hypothesis.

This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897. cs:Jeremjáš de:Jeremia (Prophet) es:Jeremías fr:Jérémie no:Jeremia pl:Jeremiasz (Biblia) pt:Jeremias fi:Jeremia

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