Prophetic vocation and message

This sketch of Jeremiah’s life portrays him as a courageous and persistent prophet who often had to endure physical suffering for his fidelity to the prophetic call. He also suffered inner doubts and conflicts, as his own words reveal, especially those passages that are usually called his “confessions” (Jeremiah 11:18–12:6; 15:10–21; 17:9–10, 14–18; 18:18–23; 20:7–12, 14–18). They reveal a strong conflict between Jeremiah’s natural inclinations and his deep sense of vocation to deliver Yahweh’s message to the people. Jeremiah was by nature sensitive, introspective, and perhaps shy. He was denied participation in the ordinary joys and sorrows of his fellowmen and did not marry. He thus could say, “I sat alone,” with God’s hand upon him. Jeremiah had periods of despondency when he expressed the wish that he had never been born or that he might run away and live alone in the desert. He reached the point of calling God “a deceitful brook,…waters that fail” and even accused God of deceiving and overpowering him. Yet there were times of exaltation when he could say to God, “Thy words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart,” and he could speak of Yahweh as “a dread warrior” fighting by his side.

As a prophet, Jeremiah pronounced God’s judgment upon the people of his time for their wickedness. He was concerned especially with false and insincere worship and failure to trust Yahweh in national affairs. He denounced social injustices but not so much as some previous prophets, such as Amos and Micah. He found the source of sin to be in the weakness and corruption of the hearts of men—in what he often called “the stubbornness of the evil heart.” He considered sin to be unnatural; he emphasized that some foreign nations were more loyal to their pagan (false) deities than Judah was to Yahweh (the real God), and he often contrasted nature’s obedience to law with man’s disobedience to God.

Jeremiah had more to say about repentance than any other prophet. He called upon men to turn away from their wicked ways and dependence upon idols and false gods and return to their early covenantal loyalty to Yahweh. Repentance thus had a strong ethical colouring, since it meant living in obedience to Yahweh’s will for the individual and the nation.

In the latter part of his career, Jeremiah had to struggle against the despair of his people and give them hope for the future. He expressed his own hope vividly by an action that he undertook when the Babylonians were besieging Jerusalem and he was in prison. He bought, from a cousin, a field in Anathoth, his native town. In the presence of witnesses, he weighed out the money and made the contracts and said, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.” In this and other ways he expressed his hope for a bright future for Israel in its own land.

Jeremiah’s most important prophecy concerning the future is one regarding the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34). While the present literary form of the passage is probably not Jeremiah’s, the thought is essentially his. He prophesied of a time when Yahweh would make a covenant with Israel, superseding the old Mosaic Covenant; Yahweh would write his law upon the hearts of men (rather than on tables of stone), and all would know God directly and receive his forgiveness. This New Covenant prophecy was very influential in New Testament times. It is quoted in the Letter to the Hebrews and lies behind words attributed to Jesus at the Last Supper: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”