God calls Jeremiah as a young man, telling him "before you were born I set you apart," and commissions him to a difficult, largely rejected ministry to "uproot and tear down… build and plant" that will run through the kingdom's final decades and into exile.
Further context
3 min readJeremiah is called in the thirteenth year of Josiah, which is 627 BC, and he is from a priestly family at Anathoth, a village a few kilometres north-east of Jerusalem. His career runs about forty years and ends in Egypt against his will.
The call is an argument he loses. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. His objection is his age and his speech: I do not know how to speak; I am too young. The reply removes both excuses and adds a hand touching his mouth.
Two visions follow, and one of them is a pun. He is shown the branch of an almond tree, and told that God is watching to see that his word is fulfilled. The Hebrew for almond and the participle for watching sound almost identical. The second is a pot boiling and tilting away from the north, which is the direction every invading army came from.
What he is told at the outset is that nobody will listen and that everyone will fight him, and that he will not be overcome. Both halves turn out to be accurate.
The forty years cover the reforms of Josiah, the disaster at Megiddo, three kings installed by foreign powers, two deportations, a siege and the destruction of Jerusalem. He tells the country to surrender to Babylon, which is treason and is heard as such. He is beaten and put in the stocks by a temple official. He is put on trial for his life for saying the temple will be destroyed, and acquitted only because some elders remember Micah. He is thrown into a cistern with no water and sinks into the mud, and is pulled out with old rags padded under his arms by an Ethiopian court official. He is accused of desertion while leaving the city to see about a piece of family property.
He is also forbidden to marry or have children, as a sign that no ordinary family life will survive what is coming, which makes him the only prophet required to be celibate.
His complaints to God are the most bitter in the Hebrew scriptures, and they are preserved rather than edited out. You deceived me, LORD, and I was deceived. Cursed be the day I was born. Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame?
And in the middle of the destruction he buys a field at Anathoth from his cousin, weighs out the silver, signs the deed in front of witnesses and has it sealed in a clay jar, because houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.
Jeremiah works for over forty years, through five kings and the destruction of everything he is speaking about, and the book preserves more of his private reactions than any other prophet's.
The objection he raises when called is that he is too young, and the word used describes a boy rather than a young man. The answer touches his mouth and tells him not to be afraid of anyone's face.
What follows is the most sustained failure recorded of anyone in that role. He is put in the stocks, thrown into a cistern and left sinking in the mud, accused of desertion, imprisoned, and finally carried off to Egypt against his will by people who ignored everything he said.
His complaints are unsparing: you deceived me, LORD, and I was deceived. Cursed be the day I was born. Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame?