Day 24 – Tuesday -- The Book of Jeremiah

Day 24 – Tuesday

The Book of Jeremiah

Jeremiah didn’t want to be a prophet. (Nor a bull frog.) He tried to wiggle out of it. But God won the argument. So, about 75 years after Isaiah the prophet, Jeremiah begins to speak on God’s behalf, warning the people of Judah (southern kingdom) to shape up or God will send an army to smash them to bits.

God says through Jerry that the people had done two evil things:
for my people have committed two evils:
    they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water,
    and dug out cisterns for themselves,
cracked cisterns
    that can hold no water. (2.13)

Jeremiah is known as “the Weeping Prophet.” That’s because he cried a lot. He felt anguished over the way his people were forsaking God. The northern kingdom (Israel) had already been destroyed. Jeremiah is speaking from the capitol of the southern kingdom (Judah)—Jerusalem. He knows his own country is in danger of coming under the judgment of God. But his task as a spokesman for God is a heavy burden. He is accused of treason. His friends don’t like him. At one point Jeremiah has had all he can take. “I just want to die!” he says. “I wish I hadn’t been born” (see Jer. 20).

There is the parable of the potter in chapter 18. God is like a potter. He can shape his people any way he wishes. He warns them that he is pounding and twisting the clay to be destroyed. But—they still have a chance. If they turn back to him, he can still shape them into a beautiful vessel.

My professor in seminary pointed out to us that what we find in Jeremiah 18 is “conditional prophecy.” God says, “IF…THEN.” It all depends upon the people’s response. God says, “I will change my mind” (18.10).

We preachers like to refer to Jeremiah 20.7-9 where Jerry says,

If I say, “I will not mention him,
    or speak any more in his name,”
then within me there is something like a burning fire
    shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
    and I cannot.

If the preacher ever loses that fire in her bones (something like a fire in the belly), she will experience burnout. Preaching is both a privilege and a burden. There have been some Sunday in my experience when I was barely smoldering. But others when I was so hot I thought I would burn the church down.

Jeremiah had a secretary named Baruch. He took down Jerry’s dictation. It was a common practice. St. Paul also dictated his letters in the New Testament.

Leland Ryken points out how the Book of Jeremiah is similar to Dante’s Inferno in that both books give a detailed anatomy of human sinfulness and picture how depraved people can become. “Like the tragic heroes of Greek tragedy, in the book of Jeremiah we watch the tragic victims march grimly to their own ruin.”

Jeremiah is so full of laments and harangues and accusations against the people of Jerusalem that it spawned a word in English: jeremiad. We now use this word to describe a genre of literature which goes on and on about the sins of one’s society.

Jeremiah carries out several symbolic acts. He smashes a jar to show what will happen to Jerusalem if the people do not turn to God. He refused to marry to show how hopeless the situation was. But later he buys a plot of land to show that it wasn’t hopeless in the long run, that people will return here to live.

A great passage is found in chapter 31. Jeremiah says that God will make a new covenant with the Jews.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more (31.31-34).

Notice the marital language. God describes himself as their husband. They will “remarry”—enter into a new covenant. The vows are there: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

The Church, of course, understands the Jew, Jesus, to be the stand-in for God as the Groom. At Holy Communion we lift the cup and say: This cup is the new covenant, sealed in my blood, for the forgiveness of sins. We are repeating the words of Jesus, who is quoting Jeremiah.

On January 15, 588 BCE Nebuchadnezzar arrives at Jerusalem. His army surrounds the city. After a two and a half year siege, on July 18, 586, the army breaches the wall. King Zedekiah and part of his army flee. But he is caught. His eyes are gouged out. He spends the rest of his life in a Babylonian prison.

Jeremiah has no plan to leave Jerusalem. But he along with Baruch is forced to leave with a small group of people. They flee to Egypt. As far as we know that is where Jeremiah dies.


Can you say this: Holy Potter, I am in your hands. Mold me as you will. Use me as you wish. Shape my life according to your wisdom.