Jeremiah and the Word of the Lord

By Bishop Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

Jeremiah as a Person, Prophet, and “Word”

God forces Jeremiah by virtue of being Creator and Controller, against Jeremiah’s own will, instructing him to proclaim a message that is indestructible, incontrovertible, and irreversible. This problem is seen in the first chapter, Jeremiah 1:4-10, which shows that Jeremiah is given authority, set over everyone else, because he contains the words of prophecy that God put in him, not because of anything good on his own, but because God’s words are sublime and all-powerful. The core message of Jeremiah to the Judeans is “Return”, a word that occurs 47 times in a repentance connotation throughout the book of Jeremiah!

God’s Law as an Inner Reality

The radical concept of the circumcision of the heart (4:4, 9:25-26), which would later be co-opted by Christian theology and an understanding of baptism, makes it clear that the spiritual state of the Judeans was one in which the inner meaning of the outer forms was lost. Jeremiah had a unique position within the culture as a priest in an age when the status and political power of priests was at a zenith, when King Josiah had restored the worship and the law under the priests, and in which the temple rites were fully functioning and the recipient of national generosity. Outwardly, Jeremiah’s day seems to be the most pious, but God was still preparing judgment for Judah, because the intention of their people was not sincere and the meaning of the temple rights and covenantal rituals was not internalized. This would be a lesson to the future Hebrews, who were to be completely sincere in the inward and outward observance of rituals, because mere outward observance was not enough!

Receiving the Word of God

Jeremiah’s experience compares in striking ways to both Ezekiel and Isaiah, two prophets who write in the same style of poetic prophecy. In typical prophetic typology, Jeremiah personally experiences God’s Word, typified in the touching of the lips in which the “Word” is placed in his mouth (1:9, Isaiah 6:7, Ezekiel 3:27, 24:27). In this way, the prophet becomes a literary work, and the connection between the man, his message, and the text that was accepted by the community is solidified and inseparably affirmed. Jeremiah’s person and life become the book, and this both insures the inspiration and divine origin of his message, but also asserts the claims of his writing as Scripture (even far past the ending of the, then, official canon, and the castigation of and isolation from the official cult, which relegated the prophetic personality to a social category of outcast and outsider). Because he was born in the high estate of the priestly caste, such a position is all the more striking, implying that he also had a lot to lose by taking on this ascetic practice of “standing without.”  

Experience with God as the Source of Authority

Here you have the consistent biblical claim of direct ordination from God, later echoed by Paul himself in Galatians 1:1, which undercuts the claims that anyone else can make to authority, or any discrediting of the prophet due to his human connections or ordination. The ordination is manifest in a responsibility to be a faithful messenger, to say and do as God commands, and to make a clear account of the message. God commands Jeremiah not to fear the faces of those who hear His words (1:8), and that the prophet is given authority, not just for Jerusalem, the locus of the prophetic rebuke, but over the “nation”, which are the ultimate concern of the prophecy (1:10). This is a radically different approach from Ezra, who focused on God’s exclusive connection with the Hebrews as a nation and race upon leading the return of Judah from captivity in Babylon that Jeremiah foretold, excluding the “nations” from any part in the Jewish Covenant. 

Jeremiah and the Psalms

Jeremiah’s role in the prophetic scheme is clear, and is comparable in theme and content to the Psalms of David. “Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you; and before you came out of the womb, I sanctified you, and I ordained you a prophet unto the nations” (1:5, echoing Psalms 139:13). His emotional reflection is also highly reminiscent of the Psalmist, which can be felt in the reference in the phrases “if I were” and “O that I might”, the voice of inner longing that is felt so clearly in the Psalms. Psalms 1 and Jeremiah 17:8 are also identical, leading to interesting possibilities on the origin of this “Psalm of David”.  Jeremiah prose is remarkable that the prophet completely identifies himself with God, speaks for God, and narrates a passionate, love/hate history of a relationship that is typified by God drawing, making a covenant, protecting, loving, and nurturing, and Judah following after lusts and false gods, continuously doing evil in the sight of God. The grief of Jeremiah is God’s grief, and his warning of impending doom resonates with empathetic concern, the hope of a final chance for repentance, and the certainty that the people will not turn to God and will be destroyed, taken into captivity, and will ultimately return from this captivity to become better, more faithful lovers and worshippers of God in the distant future.

Jeremiah’s Prophetic Relationship with Others

Jeremiah was “set against” those of his own brothers, people, language, and class, proclaiming what they were doing to be fruitless, sinful, and judged by God. God warns him of this at his calling as a young man in the beginning of the book. By declaring that all other prophets were false, the priests were wrong, and the people were preparing for a great reckoning, Jeremiah alienated and infuriated all of his contemporaries. His denouncing of the seemingly righteous kingdom, by the standards of the day, must have been disorienting to those who saw their religious practice as reflecting a sincere desire to follow God’s Revealed Law. As a result, Jeremiah was banned from the temple, and was only represented by Baruch, his faithful secretary and scribe who dangerously read his prophecies in the Temple. His prophecies were cut in pieces by the king (36), he was cast in a well, and cast in prison (32, 37, 38), only to be freed by the King of Babylon (who apparently saw his message as pro-Babylonian, Chapter 39 & 40). Even this aid from the king did not save Jeremiah from his own people, who forced him to go with them into Egypt, the land Jeremiah himself had proclaimed they must not go (42:17, 43).

The Theme of Jeremiah – The Weeping Prophet

Various themes occur in Jeremiah that are of profound importance to the Christian Tradition – The universality of God’s concern, the reality of cleanliness of life and circumspectness of activity through the internalization of the outward forms of the covenant, and the need to know, love, and follow God with the heart. Jeremiah’s bearing, too, is one of the great archetypes of the Christian monastic and prophetic presence. We find in him the sorrowful, repenting, lover of man who is carrying harsh words to God’s people because of God’s heart of love for these same people. Jeremiah’s goal is always repentance, always to restore, and always to create in the hearer a sense of shock, awe, indignation, gratitude, and remorse for the sinful and reckless attitudes of seemingly religious people. “O, that my head were waters, and my eyes were fountains of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughters of my people!” (9:1)

Identifiable Features of Pre-Captivity Judaism

The identification with the Temple, the City of Jerusalem, and the priestly modalities of worship are obvious in the Book of Jeremiah, a constant backdrop during the course of the narrative, functioning as a primary motivation for the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem, in a socio-political move that would culminate in the work of Ezra and Nehemiah. The fact that Law was “found” (2 Kings 22), temple worship was restored for the first time since the end of the Solomonic Dynasty (14 generations, according to Matthew 1:17), that Josiah had “sought to the ancient paths” (6:16) and “did that which was right in God’s eyes” (2 Kings 22:2) is striking, since it implies a “revival” and “return” already on the part of Judah. This, and the dramatic fulfillment of Jeremiah’s vision of return has led many scholars to speculate that it was a work created in the captive diaspora, a cultural blueprint for the Jewish return, and as a political manifesto that contextualized the reasons for captivity and plotted a course for the Hebrew people to return to their home and restore the worship of the temple.

The fact that no archeological evidence for the Solomonic Temple has been found, that the previous “high places” and altars had been associated with Baal and Asherah, and ancient stone inscriptions use YWH and Baal’s name interchangeably is of interest to this discussion.  That Josiah both “found” the Book of the Law and completely reformed the religious and political system, and nothing earlier than this time can be confirmed in either the literary or physical record, has lead many to see this as one of the many books that the Priestly and Deuteronomist schools created to give a backstory to the captive Jews, show a prophetic justification for their return to the Land, and lay claim to it as a distinct group. The fact that it was Ezra, the scribe who brought the Jews out of Babylonian Captivity, who compiled and edited the books that became the Jewish Torah seems to confirm this suspicion. After their return from Babylon, unlike their sojourn in Egypt, the Hebrew people had an unbreakable national identity, a distinct religious cult, and a marked faithfulness to their own destiny as representatives of the One and Only True God.  If this was the case, Ezra, who is believed to be the final editor of these texts and the final authority on the definition of the Jewish Tradition as it came to be understood during the time of Christ, finalized this process and completed what would become canonical scripture to the Rabbinic School of Judaism, roughly 400 years before Christ.

The Political Significance of the Book of Jeremiah

While Jeremiah’s personality, his style, and his concept of self are important, he also narrates an crucial political process that was axial in the formation of the Jewish identity. As such, he is an important link in the process of a culture’s self-justification and post-captivity religious trajectory that the Jews took, and central to the process of setting the scene for the Jewish expectation of the Messiah and the founding of the Christian Church. 1) Jeremiah explains why, even when “keeping the law”, Judah didn’t experience blessing and protection for their efforts. Thus, Jeremiah provides the inner justification for the Rabbinic School’s approach to the Jewish Tradition, its literal, lifestyle-oriented approach to the Law, and the development of the Synagogue Tradition alongside of the Temple Rites. 2) Jeremiah argues against an Egyptian orientation (46:1-12), provides a cultural directive towards Babylon and the Chaldean Culture (29:10, 46:12-24), which defined the Jew’s since of self in relation to the real political powers that surrounded this small, resource and population poor nation. This orientation would be highly significant for both culture and language, reflected in the Hebrew substitution of Aramaic for Ancient Hebrew, and the general affinity that Biblical literature has with Chaldean sources. This is seen in both mythical narrative and future alliances. 3) Jeremiah argues for a pro-Babylonian stance, which, 70 years later in the day of Ezra, proves to be an expedient foreshadowing of the sponsorship and positive vassaldom of the Judean State by the Babylonian Empire. One could argue that Jeremiah’s pro-Babylonian narrative and his descriptions of the pre-captivity era were the blueprints for the return, rebuilding, and re-establishment of the Jewish Nation, brought to fruition by the Maccabees and the Hasamonean Dynasty.