Jeremiah

I

Introduction

Jeremiah, book of the Old Testament (see Bible). In the King James Version of the Bible, it is the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah. It is entitled the Prophecy of Jeremias in some English versions of the Bible used by Roman Catholics.

II

Life

Jeremiah was probably born about 650 bc, began his prophetic career in 627 bc, and died at an undetermined time after the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 bc. His work breaks an almost complete silence of prophecy in Israel since that of Isaiah some 70 years earlier. It also marks a new development in the prophetic tradition. Although early in his career he was protected by powerful friends at court and probably assisted in the reforming activities of King Josiah of Judah, Jeremiah, after Josiah's death in 609 bc, came into increasing disfavor with the religious and civil leaders of his people. The reverential awe that had previously surrounded prophecy disappeared. He was, on various occasions, put under house arrest, denied a public forum, thrown into a dry cistern that served as a dungeon, and widely regarded as a traitor and defeatist in time of war. After the final defeat of Jerusalem, Jeremiah was carried off to Egypt against his will by die-hard resisters of the Babylonian conquest. The Jewish tradition that he was eventually murdered by these same people, although doubtless based more on legend than on evidence, is not unlikely.

III

Origin of the Text

Like all the prophetic books of the Bible, Jeremiah is a work produced through editing and redaction. Prophecies spoken by the prophet were remembered and only later written down by his disciples. They were usually poetic in form and brief; where prose and lengthy prophetic passages occur in these books, they are most often the product of editors who combined originally smaller passages and sometimes elaborated on them. The Book of Jeremiah has a complicated history of composition, some of which can be discerned from the book itself with relative ease and some of which is more conjectural. In chapter 36 the origin of the book is discussed. The scroll written by Jeremiah's disciple Baruch is a principal source, but the precise contents of Baruch's scroll cannot be reconstructed from the present text, which was also compiled from other sources, probably over a long period.

Modern critics distinguish three types of material that were used to compose Jeremiah: (1) prophetic oracles and first-person accounts from Jeremiah himself; (2) third-person accounts about Jeremiah that appear in a consistent style that is probably Baruch's; and (3) the so-called Deuteronomic sections, consisting of prophecies originally derived from Jeremiah but amplified and altered by other writers in the tradition of Deuteronomy.

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The Book of Jeremiah is one of those Old Testament works that differ considerably as they are presented in the traditional Hebrew version (the Masoretic text) and the ancient Greek translation of the original (the Septuagint). The Greek version is longer than the Hebrew and appears in a different order. This suggests that the Book of Jeremiah was relatively late in reaching a fixed and final canonical status in the Hebrew Bible. The Jeremianic material circulated freely and was continually adapted and applied to new situations in the Jewish community.

IV

Contents

The Book of Jeremiah falls into three distinct parts. The first portion (chap. 1-25) consists largely of prophecies against Judah and Jerusalem uttered by Jeremiah during the reigns of the Judean kings Josiah, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. The prophecies are mostly in the first person and are probably derived in large part from Baruch's scroll. Also included in this first portion are an account of Jeremiah's call (1:4-19); a number of introspective “confessions” of Jeremiah (11:18-12:6; 15:10-21; 17:14-18; 18:18-23; 20:7-18), which are passages of a private nature that the prophet presumably did not intend for publication; biographical details such as Jeremiah's Temple sermon (7:1-15); and his activities in support of King Josiah's religious reforms (11:1-17). The last two chapters recount two visions concerning the fall of Judah and the Babylonian Captivity.

The second distinct part of Jeremiah (chap. 26-29; 32-45) is an account, almost entirely in prose, of Jeremiah's activities, trials, and persecutions from roughly 608 bc to his last days. The prophet appears throughout in the third person, and most of the narrative probably comes from Baruch. The historical events are accurately reported, but the original order has been changed by later writers or editors; chapters 26 and 45, for instance, record events in the reign of King Jehoiakim, while much of the material in chapters 27 to 44 dates from the reign of King Zedekiah. Chapters 30 and 31, the so-called Little Book of Comfort, are probably original utterances of the prophet and predict the restoration of Israel and Judah, their reunification, and a new covenant“with the house of Israel and the house of Judah”(31:31).

The third distinct part of Jeremiah consists of a collection of pronouncements against foreign nations (chap. 46-51) and a historical appendix (chap. 52) that seems to have been drawn from 2 Kings 24:18-25:30. It gives the number of Jews taken into captivity, a historically valuable statistic not recorded in 2 Kings.

A number of theological teachings contained in Jeremiah have significantly affected the development of postexilic Judaism. Preeminent among these is the view that the God of Israel and Judah could be worshiped away from the sanctuaries at Shiloh and Jerusalem, a view that enabled the Jews of the Diaspora to preserve and perpetuate their religion. Another significant contribution is the emphasis given to the concept of individual responsibility (see especially 31:30), which ultimately was to find its fitting expression in a new covenant between the Lord and his chosen people (see 31:31-34).

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