Jeremiah Annual Bible Study
Encouragement for a Life of Faith

We live in a fast-paced world that measures achievement by the bottom line. People who fail to produce results quickly and consistently are as expendable as yesterday’s newspaper. That is why the prophet Jeremiah is rarely considered a model of success, especially from the world’s point of view. His ministry lasted forty years and had no quantifiable results. He didn’t add great numbers to the temple roll. He didn’t initiate new programs that made life easier for the people of Jerusalem. His ministry didn’t alter the course of society. He didn’t retire to a golf course community to live in leisure. By every standard the world holds as important, Jeremiah and his ministry were a monumental flop.

Yet the story of his ministry is preserved for all time as a significant piece of the mosaic that portrays Israel’s history. In every respect, Jeremiah’s ministry was successful in God’s eyes, not because hoards of people flocked to Jeremiah’s church, but because Jeremiah unflinchingly and obediently proclaimed the message of God throughout the course of his forty-year ministry. Obedience, as it turns out, is the yardstick by which God measures success.

Perhaps Jeremiah holds such fascination for us because, unlike many of the prophetic books, the book of Jeremiah offers more than message. We also see the man. It is not difficult for us to identify with Jeremiah’s alternating journeys into exaltation and depression. Life was as hard or harder on him than it is on us. Jeremiah, therefore, seems more human to us, somebody to whom we can relate. He moved from moments of compassion and courage to moments of fear and vengefulness, from exuberance to fits of loneliness. He was maligned and threatened by the people to whom he was sent to warn. In him we see the high cost of obedience to the prophetic calling.

Jeremiah has often been referred to as the “weeping prophet” because of the tears of compassion he shed for his people and the path of destruction they obstinately followed. Yet we also find him crying out for God to bring vengeance on the enemies who threatened and plagued him—enemies from within his own people. In essence, Jeremiah demonstrated a range of emotions and feelings as wide as that of any human being. Regardless of the path of emotions we travel, we will find the footprint of Jeremiah. Whether we experience joy or sorrow or anything in between, there we will find the thumbprint of Jeremiah. That is what attracts us to him and his message. His appeal is that his ministry did not smother his humanity; instead, his humanity was the platform upon which he carried out God’s call. We can easily identify with one who accepts the challenge of God’s call to bear a terrible message and then demonstrates anguish and pain over having to do it. In Jeremiah’s life, we witness the dynamic struggle of one who cannot separate himself from the burden of the message he is charged to deliver.

The historical setting in which Jeremiah prophesied was a tumultuous time of change throughout the entire ancient Near East. During the latter half of the seventh century bc, several major powers rose and fell, all impacting the life of tiny Judah. Caught in the middle of the shifting tides of power that flowed between Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, Judah fought to preserve its freedom by aligning with whichever power had the upper hand at a given time. The nation even explored independence in the relatively brief moments when one of the super powers began losing its grip on the region. Only during Josiah’s reign (640–609 bc) did Judah enjoy a protracted period of independence free from outside pressures and intervention. Usually, however, these brief and ill-advised attempts at independence ended in disaster for Judah. Some dominating power always waited in the wings to fill the void left by another declining empire.

Jeremiah was born during the reign of King Manasseh (687–642 bc), a leader about whom Scripture has little good to say. Manasseh’s evil reign followed that of his father, good King Hezekiah (715–687 bc), who had led Judah as a faithful servant of God, purging the land of idols and their worship and other pagan influences. Manasseh reintroduced and expanded the pagan worship practices his father had removed, even to the point of erecting pagan altars in the temple at Jerusalem, offering one of his own sons as a human sacrifice, and practicing sorcery and divination (2 Kgs 21:1-6). His influence over the people of Judah was devastating, leading them away from God and toward destruction (2 Kgs 21:9-15).

According to Jeremiah 1:2, Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry began in the thirteenth year of the reign of King Josiah, or 627 bc. Josiah was only eight years old when he became king, so his immediate personal impact on life in Judah was negligible. In 622 bc, however, a great transformation took place in Josiah’s life that had deep ramifications for his country. During renovations of the temple in Jerusalem, the high priest Hilkiah found the Book of the Law—portions or perhaps all of the book of Deuteronomy. He turned it over to Josiah’s secretary, Shaphan, who in turn took it and read it to the king. Josiah’s response was immediate and moving. He realized the demands the law book made on the people of Judah, and he realized the faithless way the leaders and people had lived throughout the reigns of Manasseh, his grandfather, and Amon, his father. In a display of contrition and repentance, Josiah tore his clothes. With his new emphasis on loyalty to God, the king implemented reforms that included the elimination of all cults and practices within the temple proper not associated with God and also the removal of shrines and high places used for cultic practices throughout the country. Josiah’s reforms were impressive and broadly based.

Josiah’s reforms were due in part to the Assyrian Empire’s declining influence over Judah. Having held sway over the Fertile Crescent for nearly a century, in the latter part of the eighth century bc Assyria found itself weakened by constant conflicts, rebellions within its own borders, and growing threats posed by Egypt and Babylon. Assyria so lacked control over its own lands that Josiah’s reforms extended well north into the former lands of the northern empire of Israel, which Assyria had conquered in 722 bc.

Unfortunately, these reforms proved to be effective only as long as Josiah was alive. Just thirteen years after the Book of the Law was found, Josiah was killed in the Battle of Megiddo, in which he attempted to halt the advancing Egyptian army on their way to assist the final remnants of the Assyrian army at Haran, which was itself battling the growing Babylonian empire. After Josiah’s untimely death, Judah fell under the control of the Egyptians, led by Pharaoh Necho II. Necho appointed Jehoahaz, Josiah’s son, as the new king of Judah. When Jehoahaz began to support the anti-Egyptian movement in Judah, he was deposed and taken as a prisoner to Egypt. The Egyptians then placed another of Josiah’s sons, Jehoiakim (609–598 bc), on the throne. His wickedness is well documented in the books of Jeremiah and 2 Kings. Although placed on the throne by the Egyptians, he shifted his loyalty to the Babylonians after they defeated the Egyptians at the Battle of Carchemish in 605 bc. Later, Jehoiakim attempted to resist the Babylonian domination, a foolish course of action that brought the Babylonian army to the doorstep of Jerusalem in 598 bc. Jehoiakim died, some speculate by assassination, in 598 bc, before the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem began. His son, Jehoiachin, occupied the throne for only three months before the Babylonians deposed him and took him to Babylon in 597 bc. Another of Josiah’s sons, Zedekiah, was placed on the throne by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. He also foolishly sought to rebel against the Babylonians, and the Babylonians responded by laying siege against Jerusalem for eighteen months. When Jerusalem finally fell, Zedekiah was forced to watch his sons being executed before the Babylonians put out his eyes and dragged him off to Babylon.

The Babylonians took many hostages with them, but among those remaining in Jerusalem was Jeremiah. The Babylonians appointed Gedeliah, a member of an important Judean family, as governor over Jerusalem. Shortly after his appointment, Gedeliah was assassinated, and fearing Babylonian retaliation, many citizens of Jerusalem fled to Egypt, taking Jeremiah and his scribe Baruch with them. We last hear a word from Jeremiah when he preached a sermon against the refugees from Judah living in Egypt (Jer 44), accusing them of abandoning their faith in God and turning to idols.

Jeremiah’s ministry spanned a wide array of political and religious dimensions. He experienced domination by outside powers and relative freedom under the rule of a benevolent king. He saw his own people engaged in idol worship and also experienced religious reforms that centered on faithfulness to God. At no time was Jeremiah simply standing to the side as an idle observer in these instances. He was not immune from either the terror of attack or the deprivation of the siege. What the people of Jerusalem felt, he felt equally. As a prophet of God, though, Jeremiah was able to see cause and effect in each of the events that unfolded around him. He, like no other, could interpret events, both present and unfolding, through the lens of God’s revelation. The consistent way in which God had dealt in the past with the sins of a people served as a framework for how God would deal with the era in which Jeremiah lived. Sensing God’s demands for righteous living, the increasing rebellion in the lives of the people of Judah, and the growing threat posed by outside powers, Jeremiah proclaimed the approaching judgment of God.

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