Jeremiah 1-2; 15; 20; 26; 36-38

The Bible Dictionary (p. 711) is a good place to start before you begin reading Jeremiah. The chapters covered in this lesson are from three distinct periods in Jeremiah’s more-than-40-year-long service as a prophet: prophesies from his youth, when he was called as a prophet during the reign of Josiah; prophesies from the reign of Jehoiakim; and prophesies from the reign of Zedekiah. Jeremiah started young. After the Lord tells Jeremiah that he was foreordained as a prophet in the preexistence, Jeremiah replies in Jeremiah 1:6 by saying, “Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.” The footnote tells us that he was actually a youth at the time. He needed to be young and strong, because he had a huge amount of work to be done.

The prophesies during the reign of Josiah are in Jeremiah 1–6; we are asked to read Jeremiah 1–2. Josiah was a pretty good king who brought about extensive religious reform, but he was killed in battle by an Egyptian Pharaoh (see the Bible Dictionary, p. 718). If you look at the Bible Dictionary under Chronology on p. 639, it places Josiah at 640 B.C. and also says that Jeremiah began to prophesy in 628 B.C.

The prophesies during the reign of Jehoiakin are in Jeremiah 7–20; we are asked to read 15 and 20. Jehoiakim was the son of Joash and the brother of Zedekiah, and he was a bad king. (See p. 710 in the Bible Dictionary.) He follows Jehoahaz in the Chronology on p. 639; Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim are both listed at 609 B.C., so obviously Jehoahaz wasn’t around for long. Interestingly, Daniel was carried into captivity in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar’s armies three years later, in 606 B.C.

According to the Bible Dictionary entry for Jeremiah, the prophesies that are primarily during the reign of Zedekiah are in Jeremiah 21–38. (However, if you look at these chapters, you will see that Zedekiah does not become king until Jeremiah 37.) We are asked to read chapter 26 and chapters 36–38. Zedekiah follows Jehoiachin, who was Jehoiakim’s son. Jehoiachin didn’t last long, either, because Jehoiachin and Zedekiah are both listed as beginning their reigns in 598. Jerusalem fell 11 years later, in 587 B.C. The story of Lehi and Nephi begins about the same time as the beginning of Zedekiah’s reign. (If you look in 1 Nephi, it dates things at “about 600 B.C.” However, 1 Nephi 1:4, says that “in the commencement of the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, …there came many prophets, prophesying unto the people that they must repent, or the great city Jerusalem must be destroyed.”) Zedekiah is also interesting because his son Mulek came to America (see the Bible Dictionary, p. 792). As it says in Helaman 6:10, “[F]or the Lord did bring Mulek into the land north, and Lehi into the land south.”

I don’t know about you, but I always thought there was a bigger separation of time between Lehi and his family coming to America and then Mulek coming to America. However, 11 years just doesn’t seem all that long to me.

As mentioned above, Jeremiah 1 contains Jeremiah’s call as a prophet thirteen years into the reign of Josiah. The Lord gives him visions of “a rod of an almond tree” and a “seething pot” (verses 11 and 13), then gives him an understanding of what these visions mean. What it comes down to is that the Lord is going to act and will judge his people for their wickedness (verses 12 and 16). The Lord also tells Jeremiah that he will be protected as he does the work the Lord has asked him to do.

This does not mean he died in bed of old age, however; from what we know about him, Jeremiah, like many other prophets, died a violent death. According to the Bible Dictionary again, some Jews who fled fallen Jerusalem for Egypt may have taken him with them and then stoned him there. I am reminded of Matthew 10:28, which reads, “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell,” but it does seem to me that Jeremiah had a hard life, harder I think than most of us would want to have to deal with.

Jeremiah 2 is a sermon that Jeremiah is instructed to give to the people of Jerusalem. It is really good and has a lot of powerful verses. The one that particularly struck me was verse 13, which reads, “For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” According to Webster’s, a cistern is a container for holding liquid, such as an underground tank for water or a silver jar. My guess is that Jeremiah meant an underground tank.

Jeremiah 20 contains a personal glimpse into Jeremiah’s life. In Jeremiah 20:1–2, it reads, “Now Pashur the son of Immur the priest, who was also chief governor in the house of the Lord, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things. Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the Lord.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that Pashur must have been very angry with Jeremiah and his prophesying.

Jeremiah, however, was not deterred by Pashur’s attempt to punish and humiliate him. He tells Pashur what will happen to him and his friends (it isn’t pretty; Jeremiah calls . Pashur a new name, Magor-missabib, which means “Terror all around” according to the footnote.” The name is indicative of the events that Jeremiah tells Pashur will occur). Nevertheless, Jeremiah also makes it plain that he isn’t saying these things because he wants to. In Jeremiah 20:8–9, he says, “For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the Lord was made a reproach unto me, and a derision, daily. Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.”

Imagine for a moment being in Jeremiah’s shoes: You know that people will hate you and treat you badly if you speak, and yet you cannot be silent. You have to speak.

Jeremiah 26 continues the story. In Jeremiah 26:1, it says Josiah’s son Jehoiakim is now king (which I guess means also that Joash is another name for Josiah, since the Bible Dictionary says Jehoiakim is the son of Joash). Not only are people upset with Jeremiah, they want to kill him. They do in fact kill another prophet named Urijah, even going so far as to go to Egypt (where Urijah had sensibly fled) to bring him back and murder him (see verses 20 through 23). In verse 24, we learn that it is only because Jeremiah was protected by a man named Ahikam that he survives at all.

In Jeremiah 36, Jeremiah is still trying to give the people an opportunity to find out what the Lord is saying to them, in the hope that they will repent (see Jeremiah 36:1–3). In verse 4, Jeremiah asks Baruch to be his scribe and write down the words that Jeremiah gives him in a scroll. Predictably, when a man named Jehudi reads the words in the scroll to the king, the king has him cut up the scroll and burn it in the fire that is heating the room (see verses 21–23). Not only does Jeremiah rewrite the scroll, he adds to what the new scroll says (verse 32). This story reminds me of Martin Harris and the lost pages of the Book of Mormon.

Jeremiah 37 starts with Zedekiah being made king. Jeremiah prophesies that the Chaldeans are going to destroy the city of Jerusalem and that Egypt will go home without successfully protecting them (verses 6–10). In the Bible Dictionary, there is an entry for Chaldea on p. 632; basically, Chaldea is part of Babylonia. Jeremiah is thrown into prison as a possible traitor (verses 13–15), but Zedekiah consults with him privately to find out what the Lord says. Although he does not release Jeremiah, Zedekiah does arrange for Jeremiah to be fed a daily piece of bread even though the city is under siege (verses 17–21).

Jeremiah 38 tells about the fall of Jerusalem to the Chaldeans. Jeremiah is thrown into a dungeon with mire (read: mud) down at the bottom of it in verse 6; this has to have been a miserable situation for him. However, an Ethiopean eunuch named Ebed-melech hears of his situation and rescues Jeremiah in verses 7–13. Ebed-melech’s kindness reminds me of the story of the good Samaritan; something tells me that being an Ethiopean eunuch was not on the high end of the social scale in Jerusalem, but I suspect that Jeremiah was very grateful to get out of that muddy dungeon he’d been cast into.

Zedekiah decides he wants to talk to Jeremiah, but Jeremiah is understandably worried that if he speaks bluntly, Zedekiah will kill him. However, Zedekiah promises to listen and not to murder him, as long as he doesn’t tell “the princes” who had thrown Jeremiah into the mire what it is that he has told the king (verses 14–27). In verse 28, Jerusalem falls.

The lesson guide talks about how Jeremiah’s life “provides a personal, faith-promoting record of this prophet’s response to his life’s sorrow and frustration” (p. 26). Perhaps. I think most of us would be very grateful to be spared similar circumstances, and frankly, as I read about his life, I can only imagine his feelings as he lived through it. He had an uncomfortable life and must have been terrified for a large part of it; he knew what he needed to do, and he did it, but the people he prophesied about did not treat him with kindness or restraint.

I do feel tremendous admiration for Jeremiah’s courage. Would we be as unflinching as he seems to have been, saying what the Lord asks us to say even if the personal cost is as high as it was for him? And would we have helped him, or wanted to murder him, if we had been one of his contemporaries? It’s worth thinking about.

Sunday School Notebook - October 2006 - Susan Morgan