Jeremiah Introduction

It is common these days for critical scholars to dismiss the idea that God might speak directly to someone. They consider prophetic utterances to be mere literary devices, and they assume predictions are impossible. They don’t even consider the possibility that what Jeremiah had to say might be true.

Such accusations, however, are nothing new. Jeremiah himself faced significant opposition during his time as a prophet of God, and he saw little or no fruit for any of his labors. His words were discounted by everyone almost as soon as he said them. And yet, despite everything, he persisted in his ministry.

Jeremiah strongly believed that he was delivering a message from God (1:2-3; 2:5; 34:1). When he was imprisoned (32:2; 37:15) and even threatened with death (26:8), he did not recant his prophecies nor reverse his claim that they were messages from God (26:12). A man may be willing to die for something he mistakenly thinks is true, but one will seldom die for something he knows to be a sham. Jeremiah was in a unique position to know whether or not his words were a revelation from God. Given the way he lived his life in the face of such opposition, we can be sure that these words are not the rantings of a madman.

The words about Jeremiah’s call to ministry—“I chose you before I formed you in the womb; I set you apart before you were born. I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (1:5)—have caused some to think that the date of Jeremiah’s call and birth is one and the same. However, this is not likely to have been the case. The plain sense of the text is that God was thinking about Jeremiah and planning his life before he was born, and he had already designated Jeremiah as a prophet, but Jeremiah’s commissioning took place when he was “a youth” (see v. 6; this Hb word most commonly refers to men in their teens). The important points to note are that God alone chose Jeremiah and that God spoke through his chosen prophet.