Jeremiah – The Prophet Of this late stage, when His patience was almost exhausted, He was prepared to put Doom the clock back and start again, if they Jeremiah prophesied later than Isaiah - would come home to Him. But time was around 600 BC. He lived through the last fast running out. Captivity loomed. “As years of the Kingdom of Judah. He was in you have forsaken me and served foreign Jerusalem during the final siege, and saw gods in your land”, God warned, “so you its horrors, and his people led away into shall serve foreigners in a land that is not captivity in Babylon. Jeremiah is usually yours.” Jeremiah 5:19 associated with messages of gloom, In chapter seven Jeremiah is told to stand because so much of his long book warns in the gateway of the Temple and address of judgments about to fall on unrepentant the crowds. They came there to worship Judah. But he actually has some really every Sabbath, and thought they had done lyrical prophecies about the Kingdom of their duty. But back at home they each God, when the Lord will forgive and had their own favourite gods, and their restore His people. Like Isaiah, he lived lives denied their claims to be God’s in Jerusalem, although his family came people. “Amend your ways!” he cried. It from a village called Anathoth, three is the same today. People persuade miles (5 km) away. He seems to have themselves that if they turn up at church been a lonely man - he was not married, three times a year, or kiss a few icons and and had few friends. Yet for over 40 years repeat ‘Hail Mary!’ God will protect this prophet faithfully brought to his them. But He demands our obedience all people the Word of the Lord, receiving in the week, not just on Sundays. return only abuse, beating and imprisonment. In chapter 13 the prophet is made to act out his message. He had to buy an Jeremiah was commissioned, like Isaiah, expensive new linen belt, and wrap it as a young man. Like Isaiah, he saw a round his waist. Then he had to walk hand from God touch his mouth. “Behold, hundreds of miles to the River Euphrates, I have put my words in your mouth”, said dig a hole and bury it. A long time the heavenly messenger. “See, I have set afterwards, he was told to repeat the you this day over nations and over journey, and dig it up. It was, of course, kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, ruined by damp. What, they must have to destroy and to overthrow, to build and asked, was this all about? The answer he to plant.” Jeremiah 1:9.10. Notice there gave them was that the belt stood for the are both negative and positive elements in people of Judah, once as close to God as a this command. God would first pull girdle. Now they were spoiled by their down, in judgment, but then build and idolatry, and soon they would make the plant in restoration and forgiveness. long march to the Euphrates, on their way The prophet uses brilliant metaphors to to captivity in Babylon. drive home his message. One of the most Two chapters later Jeremiah was so striking, which runs through the first five depressed at the hostile reception he chapters, likens Judah to God’s wife, received to his utterances he really married to Him by a vow made at Mount wanted to give up. “Woe is me, my Sinai in the time of Moses. The Lord, mother, that you bore me”, he cried, “a unhappy at their worship of other gods man of strife and contention to the whole (the equivalent of adultery), warns them land! I have not lent, nor have I He will have to put them away. Even at borrowed, yet all of them curse me”. Jeremiah 15:10. But God had not yet dates his prophecies by the year of the given up on His people. There might still king that was reigning at the time, so it is be one here or there who would listen and easy to check the sequence. Chapters 22 respond to His grace. So Jeremiah must and 25 jump back to the time of King plod on, He said, and He would guarantee Jehoiakim, but chapter 24 returns to the his life would be preserved from their reign of the last king, Zedekiah. In this hatred. chapter we have a vivid figure of speech. There are more acted parables in The prophet saw two baskets of figs, one Jeremiah’s casebook. Chapter eighteen juicy and ripe, and the others quite bad. has him walking down to the field south The good figs were the captives that were of Jerusalem where the potter had his taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. workshop. Here he saw a lump of clay They were fortunate, although they might spinning round on the wheel. But the clay not see it that way! A merciful God, was stiff and unyielding, and the potter knowing the end was coming on the gave up, squashed it into a ball, and Jewish state, was sending them away to started again. So, came the message, God preserve them, so that in years to come a works with nations. He has the skill to remnant could return to the land. The bad make soft human clay into characters of figs, the rebellious ones, would die in the beauty and utility. But if people are hard siege. Chapter 25 is particularly hearted, and fail to respond to the interesting in this respect, because here pressure of His fingers, He will turn them the prophet declares plainly that the out and start again. This He would do, of duration of their captivity would be course, centuries later, when He opened seventy years – the door of the gospel to the Gentiles. “This whole land shall become a ruin and Next Jeremiah had to carry a pottery a waste, and these nations shall serve the vessel to the Valley of Hinnom. Here the king of Babylon seventy years. Then after families of Jerusalem queued up to burn seventy years are completed, I will punish their children in the fire to Moloch, the the king of Babylon and that nation, the god of the Moabites. That is how bad land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, things were. He was told to smash the pot declares the LORD”. Jeremiah 25:11, 12 to pieces. “So”, he roared, “God will As we discovered in the historical books, break this people and this city”. Later the this remarkable prophecy came true in the prophet would be ordered to wear a Return under Joshua and Zerubbabel. wooden yoke across his shoulders, every day for three years, to indicate that God The most amazing prophecy of all, would put Judah and the surrounding however, is found from chapters 30 to 33. countries under the yoke of Babylon, until Here Jeremiah states that God will never the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson cast off the Jews. He would punish them (see Jeremiah 27:2-7). for their hard heartedness, but eventually He will regather them to their land. This In chapter twenty, the chief priest Pashur prophecy had a primary fulfilment in the arrested Jeremiah for his prophecies, and return from Babylon, of course, but like shackled his feet in the public stocks. He Isaiah, Jeremiah is looking into the distant was utterly humiliated. This was when he future as well. How do we know? Well, decided to stop speaking in the name of in chapter 33:14-21 God insists a king is the Lord, but found he could not. going to sit on David’s throne again – Some chapters of Jeremiah are out of "Behold, the days are coming, declares chronological order. However, he always the LORD, when I will fulfil the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house tried. He shouted, but nobody heard. He of Judah. In those days and at that time I prayed, but nothing happened. Hours will cause a righteous Branch to spring passed. At last he heard a noise above his up for David, and he shall execute justice head. Daylight appeared. It was and righteousness in the land ….. For Ebedmelech, a black man, servant of the thus says the LORD: David shall never king, who had learned of his plight and lack a man to sit on the throne of the come to rescue him. God had kept His house of Israel, If you can break my word, after all. covenant with the day and my covenant There are two more extraordinary with the night, so that day and night will prophecies in Jeremiah. One is a not come at their appointed time, then statement in chapter 46:28 – also my covenant with David my servant may be broken, so that he shall not have a “Fear not, O Jacob my servant, declares son to reign on his throne ….” the LORD, for I am with you. I will make a full end of all the nations to which I Now, when the captives returned from have driven you, but of you I will not Babylon, they had no king. The throne of make a full end. I will discipline you in David has been vacant, non-stop, for just measure, and I will by no means 2,500 years. But when Jesus was born, it leave you unpunished." was promised to him. “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son”, the angel said to Mary, “and you shall ‘Jacob’, of course, is a synonym for call his name Jesus. He will be great and Israel. They have certainly tasted the will be called the Son of the Most High. bitterness of God’s discipline, over the And the Lord God will give to him the centuries. But the fact remains; they are throne of his father David.” Luke 1:31, still here in the world today. There is a 32. So the prophecy of Jeremiah belongs State of Israel in the United Nations. But to our future, to a time when Israel is where are the Babylonians today, or the regathered from dispersion, and Jesus, the Assyrians, or the Romans who would Branch from the tree of David, will bring finally drive them from their land? They joy to God’s people. are nonentities. They have disappeared The scariest story about Jeremiah is the into the sands of history, just as Jeremiah time when he was put in the dungeon. He said they would. had told the people that if they wanted to The other great prophecy comes at the save their lives they should leave end of the book. Jeremiah had an Jerusalem and surrender to the assistant, who recorded all his words for Babylonians. This way they would avoid posterity: “Then Jeremiah called Baruch the inevitable siege. But Jeremiah’s the son of Neriah”, says chapter 36:4, enemies saw this counsel as treason, and “and Baruch wrote on a scroll at the had him arrested. They did not like to dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the shed his blood – after all he was a prophet LORD that he had spoken to him.” We of the Lord – so they lowered him into a can be thankful for his patient work. large water cistern underneath the city. Now, Baruch had a brother called Here he sank into deep, sticky mud. They Seraiah, who had to go on an official visit put a stone lid over the cistern, and left to Babylon with the king, perhaps to pay him to die, standing up in the darkness. tribute (see Jeremiah 51:59). Jeremiah God had promised him that his life would wrote a special message for Seraiah to be preserved from his enemies, but now take with him. When he got to Babylon, his faith in that assurance was sorely the prophet said, he must stand next to the great river Euphrates that ran through the The little Jew from Jerusalem stood heart of the metropolis, and read out amongst the crowds, and bravely unrolled aloud the words on the scroll. We should his scroll. Loudly he declared that remember that at this time Babylon was Babylon would be destroyed so the largest city in the world, covering 200 completely that nothing would be left. square miles (500 sq km), and protected Then he tied a stone to the scroll, hurled it by high walls 90 feet (27m) thick. It was into the river, and cried “Thus shall the centre of international trade, with Babylon sink, to rise no more”. Jeremiah mighty ships piling into the river quays to 51:61-64. It must have seemed ludicrous unload their cargo. It had some to the bystanders. Imagine someone from impressive buildings. The Hanging Africa saying something like that in the Gardens (an artificial mountain covered centre of London! The city breathed with trees) were one of the Seven power and permanence. But the fact is, Wonders of the World. There was a God’s word came true. Babylon today is a massive ziggurat (stepped temple tower), heap of ruins in a vast desert plain, but and the half mile (0.8 km) long Jeremiah’s people are alive and in their Processional Way was lined with 120 own land. enormous lions and over 500 dragons and bulls made from glazed tiles. © Copyright David Pearce, used with permission.