John Job explains the great modern relevance of Jeremiah's message and notes strong links with the life and teaching of Jesus.
Jeremiah's message was inextricably linked with the history of Israel in his day. He first addressed the North, with a plea for unity with the Southern Kingdom. Then, when his word to his own people was rejected with the burning of the first scroll (Jer 36), he moved to the theme of inevitable judgment and finally to a message of hope beyond the end.
Throughout his long ministry, optimistic prophets kept building up false hopes in the people by parroting "Peace, peace" when the situation was hopeless. Jerusalem's demise was long and drawn-out; but by refusing to heed Jeremiah's call for repentance and turning away from idolatry and corruption, the fate of the city and its people was sealed.
Conflicting Interpretations of Scripture
Jeremiah's conflict hinged on the interpretation of Deuteronomy: the 'Book of the Law' found during the repair of the Temple early in Jeremiah's lifetime (2 Chron 34:14). This book was the address by Moses to the Israelites on the threshold of the Promised Land.
Jeremiah's optimistic contemporaries saw the book as promising that the crossing of the Jordan and occupation of the Promised Land was a drama to be re-enacted as they regained independence from the Babylonians on their God-given soil.
Jeremiah, by contrast, saw it as a warning of three interlocking aspects of sin in response to which God was sending the Babylonians to bring judgment. Chapter 11:1-17 is particularly instructive as a parody of the nationalistic hopes built on Deuteronomy.
Jeremiah's contemporaries saw the Torah as promising liberation from Babylonian rule – Jeremiah knew that it was a warning of judgment.
Deuteronomy summarises human duty as to love God (Deut 6:5). Though Jesus included "and your neighbour as yourself" taken from Leviticus 19:18 (Matt 22:39), there is plenty of evidence in Deuteronomy that this is a major implication of loving God. Jeremiah's indictment, then, can be seen under three headings: failure to love God was idolatry; failure to love others was immorality; failure to change was rebellion.
Idolatry and Immorality
Idolatry is criticised as ingratitude (Jer 2:13) and as folly (Jer 2:27). Idolatry led to alliance with pagan powers, which amounted to reliance on their gods (Jer 14:10). Drought was seen as the penalty for misconceiving Baal as the source of fertility. Beyond all else, idolatry amounted to slighting the true God.
Spiritual adultery, as often in the prophets, was depicted as sexual immorality (Jer 2:20). But there is also a reference to failures in the area of justice, especially for the poor (Jer 5:26-28; 21:12; 22:13). The prophet inveighed too against commercial malpractice, and in the same passage, slander, which he himself suffered (Jer 9:3-4).
Rebellion
These first two areas of Jeremiah's teaching echo Amos and Hosea. But his emphasis on rebellion is his most distinctive perception of his people's predicament. A long sequence of pictures make this point:
- The uncircumcised ear cannot hear (Jer 6:10);
- No soap can wash away guilt (Jer 2:22);
- Refining is futile when no precious metal underlies the dross (Jer 6:27-30);
- The people are like a she-camel on heat, enslaved to instinct (Jer 2:24);
- They are like a common harlot who legally (Deut 24:1-4) cannot, and practically will not, return to her husband (Jer 3:1-3);
- They compare unfavourably with the swift and wryneck, mere birds well aware of the time for returning (a verb which in Hebrew also means 'repent') (Jer 8:7).
The sweep of the book makes the point more forcibly still: events and reality constantly vindicated Jeremiah; but he was ignored for 25 years. Why, though, was it so wrong to resist the Babylonians? Why was the situation so different from when the Assyrian Sennacherib threatened Jerusalem a century earlier? The answer must be that, however unwisely, the Judeans had made a covenant with Babylon.
Most distinctive about Jeremiah's teaching is his emphasis on rebellion.
Here, then, lay the great irony - Deuteronomy was itself couched in the form of a 'covenant document', and those who made their covenant with God needed to be the first to keep covenants with others. Deuteronomic condemnation of the stubborn and rebellious son (Deut 21:18ff) is referred to in Jeremiah 2:14-19, and the incorrigible son breaks the most fundamental covenant of all.
With Jehoiakim's burning of the scroll, Jeremiah's stance changed. This is reflected in the reversal of some of Israel's basic and most cherished spiritual convictions.
The Reversal of the Exodus
Jeremiah may have thought of himself as the prophetic successor to Moses, mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:15 (Jer 1:4-10; 15:16). But he was told not to pray for the nation (Jer 7:16; 11:14; 14:11). It was not for him to stand in the breach (cf Ps 106:23) as Moses had done over the Golden Calf: he actually prays for judgment (Jer 18:21f). In the end he goes back as a prisoner to Egypt, from which Moses had led the people from slavery into freedom.
The Reversal of Holy War
The original invasion of Canaan was a 'holy war', in which the Israelites were God's agents to punish the Amorites (Josh 5:1). Often in the story of Judges, God instils panic into Israel's enemies: now the opposite happens; God fights against Israel (Jer 4:9; 6:24) and they are driven out of the land.
The Reversal of Creation
The account of Creation in the Old Testament embodies two themes. The first is the notion of order rather than chaos (Gen 1:1-2). The second is the provision of a garden for human beings to live in (Gen 2:4ff). The first theme is linked with the turning of a motley collection of slaves into an organised community; and the second with their settlement in the garden-land of Canaan.
Jeremiah implied (Jer 4:23-28) that all this was to be undone. The salvation oracle was turned on its head (Jer 12:5). The Abrahamic promise was reversed (Jer 15:8).
Those who make their covenant with God need to be the first to keep covenants with others.
Close study of Jeremiah's ministry reveals strong resemblances to that of Jesus:
(i) Conflict with the 'Establishment'
In both cases this is centred on the interpretation of Deuteronomy - in Jesus's day this was the text-book for hopes of national autonomy (defeat of the Romans) and renewed national greatness. It is no accident that Jesus's three answers in the desert to satan, who represents these Jewish aspirations, come not simply from Scripture ("It is written"), but all from Deuteronomy (Luke 4).
(ii) 'Another Moses'
The Messiah was expected to be another Moses. Indeed, this was how New Testament writers saw Jesus. But like Jeremiah, Jesus also prophesied national disaster. The cross exposed the spirit of nationalism which was doomed to be broken on the wheel of Roman power. In just the same way, Jerusalem's nationalism was broken by Babylon in Jeremiah's time.
It could be said that both Jesus and Jeremiah were Moses' successor. But this has to be re-appraised in the light of the great contrasts between the way in which God carries out his purposes of salvation in Jesus and what had happened in Old Testament times.
(iii) Undeserved Suffering
Jeremiah could describe himself as a lamb led to the slaughter and together with the well-known passage in Isaiah 53, this paved the way for the widespread use of the lamb metaphor in the New Testament, notably on the lips of John the Baptist (John 1:29), and no fewer than 31 times in Revelation.
Striking too is the same misunderstanding and rejection within the family of Jeremiah and Jesus (Jer 12:6, cf Mark 3:32).
(iv) The Destruction of the Word
The desecrating act of Jehoiakim was for Jeremiah what the cross was for Jesus: the final act of the rejection of the covenant relationship with God. In Jeremiah's case it was confined to the Jews, but through the crucifixion of Jesus, guilt was extended to all mankind.
(v) The Emergence of Hope Out of Disaster
Jeremiah did not pray for his people (Jer 7:16) and Jesus did not pray for the world (John 17:9). The demise of the Jewish state in Jeremiah's time points to the doom of non-Christian society in its alienation from God. The only hope for the world is for those who become 'unworldly' by refusing to live according to worldly values.
Jeremiah spells out his hopes of a 'new covenant' (Jer 31:31) and the New Testament sees in Christ's death and resurrection a fulfilment of this promise (most explicitly in Hebrews 8 and 9). Just as the Babylonian sledgehammer's demise is part of Jeremiah's optimism, Revelation, depicting Rome (in the guise of the scarlet woman of Babylon), spells out in her doom the end of worldly corruption.
The desecrating act of Jehoiakim was for Jeremiah what the cross was for Jesus: the final act of the rejection of the covenant relationship with God.
Our Society the Same?
Our society is not unlike that which confronted Jeremiah. The point is made by Jesus in the parable of the 'Rich Fool' (Luke 12:13), who epitomised both self-help and idolatry. For him, death played the same role as the destruction of Jerusalem played for the Jews.
Jesus had a long struggle with a people determined to go their own way, and Jeremiah's teaching is parallel to the message of Jesus, which says 'You cannot save yourself! You cannot engineer a solution to sin, or to your present problems, or save yourself from death'.
It is common to see some code of ethics comparable with Deuteronomy as a 'ladder' or 'lever' for making oneself acceptable to God. No doubt Paul took lessons from Jeremiah as well as from Jesus in seeing that God's law is neither ladder nor lever, reaching the conclusion that through the law we become conscious of sin (Rom 7:7). Yet Jeremiah's teaching on the new covenant enables us to anticipate God's judgment, and begin a new life; to echo Paul and say, "I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I: Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20).
Flouting of God's Word
Jeremiah's catalogue of sins is closely matched by our society. In his book about the Bible (The English Bible and Seventeenth-Century Revolution, Penguin, 1993), Christopher Hill shows that behind the theological divergences in Cromwell's day, the notion that Protestant England could be modelled on Old Testament Israel and see itself as a Christian nation in covenant relation with God was generally accepted. We need to be careful not to exaggerate the extent to which English history follows that of Judah, but some comparisons can safely be made.
Our society is not unlike that which confronted Jeremiah.
In recent years we have seen erosion of respect for the Ten Commandments as a summary of divine law - notably in the increase and supposed trivialisation of adultery and homosexual practices, the advocacy of euthanasia and abuse of abortion.
We have also seen sentimentality about disciplining children and decay of truthfulness in public life. The message of Jeremiah challenges us to look at the sins of our own nation. Are we not in danger of the same judgment that Jerusalem suffered in his day? Has not the church also sadly missed its way and followed the ways of the world?
It may not be easy to tell when God's word has been nationally rejected as finally as with Jehoiakim's burning of the scroll, but Godly standards are being flouted. There is a need for a prophetic call to repentance and warning of the inevitability of disaster if this call is rejected.
Hope Beyond the End
Even in the worst scenario, Jeremiah's message, seen through New Testament eyes, holds out today the same hope beyond the end. To those who have kept Christian faith in a watertight compartment away from politics, Jeremiah is a model for courageous interaction in the life of the nation.
In a sense his ministry was entirely fruitless. But he has been vindicated, not only because the preservation of his words in Scripture testifies to the fact that he was right and his opponents were wrong, but also because the resurrection of Jesus points to a world where the truths he stood for are, and always will be, upheld.
To that realm Christians already belong, and to that extent are impervious to the worst that this world can do to them.
First published in Prophecy Today Vol 12 No 2, March 1996. Revised September 2016.
