Jeremiah is sometimes called "the weeping prophet". For around forty years he warned the people of Judah that judgement was coming unless they turned back to God. He was mocked, beaten, imprisoned and thrown into a muddy pit — and he lived to see Jerusalem destroyed, just as he had warned. Yet his book also contains one of the greatest promises in the Old Testament: the new covenant.
Who was Jeremiah?
Jeremiah was the son of Hilkiah, from a priestly family in the village of Anathoth, near Jerusalem. He began his ministry around 627 BC, in the thirteenth year of the good king Josiah, and continued through the reigns of the last kings of Judah until after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC (Jeremiah 1:1–3).
Jeremiah's call (chapter 1)
God called Jeremiah when he was young:
"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5, KJV)
Jeremiah protested, "Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child" (1:6). God replied that he would be with him and put his words in his mouth. His task was difficult: "to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant" (1:10).
Jeremiah's message
Warning against unfaithfulness
Jeremiah compared Judah to an unfaithful wife who had left her husband. The people had "forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water" (2:13).
False security
In his famous temple sermon (chapter 7), Jeremiah warned that the people trusted the temple building as a guarantee of safety while living in injustice and idolatry. God would not protect a nation that oppressed the poor and worshipped other gods.
Submit to Babylon
Jeremiah's most unpopular message was that Judah should submit to Babylon, because God was using Babylon to judge them (chapter 27). Others called him a traitor.
Object lessons
God often told Jeremiah to act out his messages: a ruined linen belt (chapter 13), a potter shaping clay (chapter 18 — "as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand"), a smashed clay jar (chapter 19), and a wooden yoke worn on his neck (chapter 27).
A suffering prophet
Jeremiah paid a high price for his faithfulness:
- He was forbidden to marry (16:2).
- He was beaten and put in stocks (20:2).
- King Jehoiakim cut up and burned the scroll of his prophecies; Jeremiah dictated it again to his scribe Baruch (chapter 36).
- He was accused of desertion, imprisoned and lowered into a muddy cistern (chapters 37–38), and rescued by an Ethiopian official, Ebed-melech.
His honest prayers, sometimes called his "confessions" (for example 20:7–18), show his inner struggle. He felt God's word "as a burning fire shut up in my bones" (20:9) and could not stay silent.
The fall of Jerusalem
Everything Jeremiah had warned about came true. In 586 BC the Babylonians broke through Jerusalem's walls, burned the temple and took many people into exile (chapters 39 and 52). Jeremiah was allowed to stay in the land, but was later taken to Egypt by a group of fleeing Jews.
Hope in the darkness
Jeremiah's book is not only about judgement. Some of the Bible's greatest promises are found here:
Seventy years
Jeremiah wrote to the exiles to settle in Babylon and pray for its peace, promising that after seventy years God would bring them home: "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you… thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end" (29:11).
Buying a field
While Jerusalem was under siege, God told Jeremiah to buy a field in Anathoth — a sign that "houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land" (32:15).
The new covenant
Above all, Jeremiah announced a new covenant:
"Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel… I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people… for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31:31, 33–34, KJV)
At the Last Supper, Jesus spoke of "the new testament [covenant] in my blood" (Luke 22:20). Hebrews 8 quotes Jeremiah 31 in full as fulfilled in Christ.
Lamentations
The short book of Lamentations, traditionally linked with Jeremiah, contains five poems of grief over Jerusalem's destruction. In the middle comes a famous expression of hope: "It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22–23).
Lessons from Jeremiah
- Faithfulness may be costly, but God's word must be spoken.
- It's right to bring honest feelings to God.
- Religion without obedience is empty.
- God's judgement is real, but never his last word.
- God's deepest promise is a changed heart through the new covenant.
Continue with Ezekiel: visions of God's glory, or read the Babylonian exile.