Old Testament · Prophecy · book 24 of 66 · 2 min read
The book of Jeremiah
Forty years of being right and being ignored, from a man who says plainly that he did not want the job and could not put it down.
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you," says Yahweh, "thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future.”
At a glance
- Chapters
- 52
- Author
- Jeremiah, with his scribe Baruch
- Written
- Late seventh to early sixth century BC
- Written for
- A city that did not want to hear it
- Themes
- warning, lament, new covenant, exile
What it is about
Jeremiah prophesied through the last decades of Judah and into the fall of Jerusalem. His message was that the city would fall and that resistance was futile, which made him a traitor in the eyes of most of his contemporaries. He was beaten, imprisoned, thrown into a cistern and finally taken to Egypt against his will.
The book preserves his complaints as well as his oracles, and they are unusually raw — he accuses God of deceiving him, curses the day he was born, and says that when he tries to stop speaking the message becomes a fire in his bones.
It also contains the promise of a new covenant written on hearts rather than tablets, which the New Testament takes up directly, and the letter to the exiles that includes the most-quoted and most-misapplied verse in the book.
Where to start
Chapter 29, the letter to the exiles, which is both the source of the famous verse and the correction to how it is used.
The chapters worth knowing
- Jeremiah 20 — The passage where he accuses God of deceiving him and says the message is a fire in his bones.
- Jeremiah 29 — The letter to the exiles, containing the verse everybody quotes and the seventy years that reframe it.
- Jeremiah 31 — The new covenant written on hearts, which Hebrews quotes at length.
What people get wrong about it
That 29:11 is a personal promise about your plans. It is written to a nation deported to Babylon, in a letter telling them to build houses and settle down because the exile will last seventy years — most of its first readers died in it.
From this book
Questions
What is Jeremiah 29:11 really about?
It is part of a letter to exiles in Babylon telling them to settle there for seventy years. The promise is to a nation about a return most of the original readers would not live to see.
Why is Jeremiah called the weeping prophet?
Because the book preserves his laments alongside his oracles — including passages where he curses the day he was born and accuses God of deceiving him.