Some things in life need to be said in person. After Israel had been in the land for hundreds of years, God had something so vital to say, He sent not just a message, but a person, the prophet Jeremiah. We know that Jeremiah the man was vital to God’s communication because his book—more than any other prophetic book—tells us a great deal about the prophet himself. As we will see, the man was the message.
So, who was Jeremiah, and what was God saying through his life? We’ll explore Jeremiah’s identity by the analogies that Scripture makes between him and other biblical figures.
1. Jeremiah was a new Moses.
This point emerges when the Lord called Jeremiah in the days of Josiah, the last good king of Judah (roughly in 627 BC). In Jeremiah 1:9, God put His words in Jeremiah’s mouth, which recalls Deuteronomy 18:18, where God says He will raise up a prophet like Moses. Moses was the great leader of Israel out of Egypt whom God used to mediate the old covenant at Sinai. In Jeremiah, God raised up a great prophet who would mediate the dissolution of the old covenant order. Jeremiah would “pluck up and break down” (Jer. 1:10) the people of Judah and all that incarnated their relationship with God: the temple, the king, the land, and the city of Jerusalem. At Sinai, God had “married” Israel (Jer. 2:2). But now the people had committed heinous acts of spiritual adultery by worshiping foreign gods (Jer. 2:33). As Moses facilitated God’s wedding to His people, Jeremiah would be God’s emissary for divorcing His people (Jer. 3:8; 13:26).
Jeremiah was understandably afraid of this calling. Like Moses (Ex. 4:10), he resisted and claimed that he did not know how to speak (Jer. 1:6). But God said that He would be with Jeremiah to deliver him (Jer. 1:8, 19). Jeremiah would go on to proclaim the intense anger of God for Judah’s sin, along with the consequent desolation and exile that would soon befall Judah through the Babylonians.
2. Jeremiah was a new Job.
But Jeremiah did more than speak these sorrows; he lived them. The second analogy is that Jeremiah was a new Job. Though Jeremiah himself was not an idolater, he needed to experience the sorrows that would come to the wicked. The Lord forbade him from taking a wife and having children (Jer. 16:2), for soon the children of Judah would die from deadly disease because of their parents’ idolatry. Jeremiah could not enter a house of mourning (Jer. 16:5), for the coming devastation would mean that no one could bury the dead or lament them properly. Neither could Jeremiah enter a house of feasting (Jer. 16:8), for there would be no more feasting when the Babylonians ravaged the land. Jeremiah lived his message.
The catastrophe of Judah also convulsed Jeremiah terribly in his soul. He said, “For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded” (Jer. 8:21). Initially, he could not fathom why God would send judgment when so many other prophets proclaimed peace (Jer. 4:10). God then made clear that He did not send those prophets. Indeed, the people’s sin was so enslaving that they could not repent and judgment was inevitable (Jer. 6:10; 21:1–10). Jeremiah then struggled with the incessant persecution he faced and complained that God was being unfaithful to His promise to deliver him (Jer. 15:18). In response, God rebuked His prophet and insisted that His promise is true (Jer. 15:19–21). But the persecutions continued. Like Job, Jeremiah then cursed the day he was born (Jer. 20:14–18; see also Job 3:1). Jeremiah embodied the sorrow and despair of Judah.
3. Jeremiah points to Jesus.
But Jeremiah’s life was not merely a story of suffering and despair. The prophet who once cursed the day he was born eventually became a hero of faith, continuing to boldly speak the truth even at great cost to himself (see chs. 37–44). Moreover, Jeremiah also had a message of “building and planting,” which would overcome the plucking up and breaking down (Jer. 1:10; 31:28). The third analogy is thus between Jeremiah and Jesus. Jeremiah’s life foreshadowed the victory over sin that Jesus would win through His willingness to suffer for His people.
Like the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, Jeremiah was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter (Jer. 11:19). Though Jeremiah was thrown in the muddy pit like the innocent sufferer of the Psalms (Jer. 38:6; Ps. 69:2), he trusted God, and God delivered him. The last we hear of Jeremiah, he was forcibly taken to Egypt with wicked Judeans who reviled his preaching and refused to repent (Jer. 42–44). Truly, he made his grave with the wicked (Isa. 53:9).
And yet, his words emerge from beyond the grave, and they speak of a hope and a future that transcends the terrible judgment that the Lord brought on His people (Jer. 29:11). At the center of Jeremiah’s book about God’s demolition of the old covenant stands a glowing promise of a new and better covenant that finally includes the power to repent and obey with all the heart and soul (Jer. 31:31–34). In this new and better covenant, God would reverse all the curses of judgment: There would be a new king ruling over a new people in a renewed land with renewed worship (see chs. 30–33). All these amazing promises come about through Jesus Christ, the true and better Jeremiah, who not only died for His people, but who was raised and ever lives to intercede for them.
Ligonier Ministries