Jeremiah was a prophet who delivered God’s message to Judah’s kings and people. He was the son of Hilkiah from the priestly community at Anathoth in Benjamin. God’s word came to him in Josiah’s thirteenth year. His ministry continued through Jehoiakim’s reign and into Zedekiah’s reign, when Jerusalem’s people were carried into captivity.
God said he had known Jeremiah before birth and appointed him as a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah replied that he was young and did not know how to speak. God told him to go where he was sent, speak what he was commanded, and not be afraid. He touched Jeremiah’s mouth and entrusted him with words. An almond branch was explained as a sign that God watched over his word to fulfill it. A boiling pot tipping from the north signaled coming disaster. God promised to be with Jeremiah and rescue him from those who opposed him.
God’s instructions also affected Jeremiah’s personal life. He was not to marry or have children in that land, enter houses of mourning, or share celebratory meals. These commands pointed to the coming deaths and disasters that would end the ordinary comfort of funerals and joy of weddings.
At the temple gate Jeremiah called worshipers to change their conduct. They could not rely on possessing God’s temple while denying justice or oppressing foreigners, orphans, and widows. He condemned stealing, murder, adultery, false oaths, and worshiping other gods while claiming deliverance in the temple. As Shiloh’s sanctuary had faced judgment, disaster could also come upon Jerusalem’s temple.
Early in Jehoiakim’s reign, priests, prophets, and people seized Jeremiah for his warning in the temple court and demanded his death. He said God had sent him and urged them to change their ways. Killing him would bring innocent blood upon them. Officials and people judged that he should not die, and elders recalled Micah’s warning in Hezekiah’s day. Uriah, who had delivered a similar message, fled to Egypt but was brought back and killed by Jehoiakim. Ahikam son of Shaphan protected Jeremiah.
Jeremiah also used actions to convey warnings. He hid a linen belt and recovered it ruined as a sign that Judah and Jerusalem’s pride would be ruined. After watching a potter reshape clay, he announced that God could withdraw threatened disaster if a nation turned from evil, or withdraw promised good if it did evil and refused to listen. He also shattered an earthen vessel before elders of the people and priests to warn of the city’s destruction.
Pashhur, a priest overseeing the temple, struck Jeremiah and confined him in stocks that prevented free movement. Released the next day, Jeremiah announced that Pashhur and his household would be taken to Babylon and die there. In the confession that follows, Jeremiah says that ridicule made him resolve to stop speaking, but the word was like fire trapped in his bones and he could not hold it in. Praise to God and a lament cursing his birth appear in the same passage.
In Jehoiakim’s fourth year, God told Jeremiah to record on a scroll the messages he had received since Josiah’s reign. Jeremiah called Baruch son of Neriah and dictated the words. Since he could not enter the temple, he instructed Baruch to read the scroll to the people on a fast day.
A message to Baruch is also dated to that year. Baruch had said he was weary with pain and groaning and found no rest. God told him not to seek great things for himself while what God had built and planted was being torn down. He also promised to preserve Baruch’s life wherever he went.
A fast was proclaimed in the ninth month of Jehoiakim’s fifth year, and Baruch read the scroll in the temple. Officials heard its contents and told him to hide with Jeremiah. As Jehudi read three or four columns before the king, Jehoiakim cut them off and threw them into the fire. He ignored appeals not to burn the scroll and ordered Jeremiah and Baruch arrested, but God hid them. Jeremiah gave Baruch another scroll and dictated the words again, adding many similar words.
During Zedekiah’s reign, Jeremiah wore a yoke and delivered the message that the nations must serve Babylon’s king. A yoke is a frame placed on an animal’s neck; here it represented Babylon’s rule. In Zedekiah’s fourth year, Hananiah claimed in the temple that the captured vessels and exiles would return within two years. He broke Jeremiah’s wooden yoke. Jeremiah said a prophecy of peace would be recognized as true when it happened. God then described an iron yoke in place of the broken wooden one, under which the nations would serve Babylon’s king. Jeremiah told Hananiah that he had made the people trust a lie and would die that year. Hananiah died in the seventh month.
In a letter to people taken to Babylon, Jeremiah told them to build homes, cultivate gardens, and raise families. They were to seek the welfare of their city and pray for it, because their welfare depended on its peace. He warned against false prophecy and conveyed God’s promise to bring them back when seventy years were completed.
During the siege of Jerusalem, Babylon’s army temporarily withdrew when Egypt’s army approached. Jeremiah tried to leave for Benjamin, but the guard Irijah accused him of deserting to the Babylonians and arrested him. Jeremiah denied the charge. Officials beat him and confined him in Jonathan the scribe’s house. After many days, Zedekiah secretly asked for a word from God. Jeremiah said the king would be handed to Babylon’s king and begged not to return to the prison. Zedekiah placed him in the guard’s courtyard and ordered a daily loaf of bread until the city’s bread ran out.
The accounts of Jeremiah’s confinement in the guard’s courtyard include the purchase of a field. In Zedekiah’s tenth year, his cousin Hanamel asked him to buy a field at Anathoth. Jeremiah weighed out seventeen shekels of silver and prepared the purchase documents. Before witnesses, he entrusted both the sealed and open deeds to Baruch and instructed him to store them in an earthen jar. God said that houses, fields, and vineyards would again be bought in the land.
Some officials demanded Jeremiah’s death, saying his call to surrender weakened soldiers and civilians. When the king left Jeremiah in their hands, they lowered him by ropes into a waterless cistern, where he sank into mud. Ebedmelech, an Ethiopian eunuch in the palace, appealed to the king, warning that Jeremiah would starve. The king authorized a rescue. Ebedmelech lowered worn cloth for Jeremiah to cushion the ropes under his arms, and the men pulled him out.
Zedekiah secretly questioned Jeremiah again. Jeremiah said that surrendering to Babylon’s officers would preserve the king and his household and prevent the city from being burned. Refusal would lead to its burning and the king’s capture. Zedekiah feared abuse by Judeans who had already surrendered. Jeremiah assured him that he would not be handed over to them and urged him to obey. The king ordered the conversation kept secret, and Jeremiah remained in the guard’s courtyard until the city fell.
Jerusalem’s wall was breached in the fourth month of Zedekiah’s eleventh year. The fleeing king was captured, saw his sons killed, and was blinded and chained. The palace and houses burned, and the walls were demolished. Babylon’s king ordered that Jeremiah be protected. Jeremiah 39 describes his release from the guard’s courtyard into Gedaliah’s care. Chapter 40 describes him being freed at Ramah from among prisoners in chains. Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, offered him care in Babylon or freedom to stay where he wished. Jeremiah went to Gedaliah at Mizpah and lived among the people left in the land.
After Gedaliah’s murder, the survivors feared Babylonian retaliation and planned to leave for Egypt. They asked Jeremiah to pray and promised to obey God’s answer whether they liked it or not. Ten days later he said that God would rebuild them if they stayed, but the war and famine they feared would follow them to Egypt. They called his message a lie and accused Baruch of influencing him. Johanan and the officers took the remaining people, including Jeremiah and Baruch, into Egypt.
At Tahpanhes in Egypt, Jeremiah continued delivering God’s word. He hid large stones in the brickwork at Pharaoh’s house entrance and announced that Babylon’s king would set his throne over them. He urged Judeans living in Egypt to stop burning incense to other gods. They refused, saying they had prospered while making offerings to the queen of the sky. Jeremiah answered that those practices had brought disaster and said that Pharaoh Hophra would be handed to his enemies.
The record of Jeremiah’s life continues through his warnings to the people in Egypt. The book does not recount his later death.