Jeremiah – Son of Sorrow
Dear Brethren and Sisters, Jeremiah’s life was a sad one and apparently a complete failure, nothing to show for it. There is no record of him ever convincing anyone of anything.
Externally, there was nothing but continuous and deepening tragedy right to the end. Internally, of course, he had the peace of God—the perfect peace assured to all whose hearts are fixed on God. This peace—the deepest inner layer of his consciousness carried him through everything. It made the struggle possible. But it was not an automatic, insulated, unfeeling peace. Christ had this peace. It made the outcome of Gethsemane possible, but it did not eliminate or neutralize Gethsemane.
Jeremiah’s life, like Christ, was a life of suffering and struggle, of sorrow and rejection, and in both cases not for themselves, but for the sorrows of their people. More than any other, Jeremiah was the forerunner of Christ in this.
For 40 years, he gave faithful and courageous testimony to a hated and rejected message. The latter half, after Josiah was dead, was far worse than the first. He was universally despised as a traitor to his nation—an enemy to his people. He was ridiculed and beaten, put in stocks, and thrown in dungeons and cisterns and left to die.
He was called to his mission at an early age, and he protested his youth. But God said to him, verse 10 of chapter 1, “I have this day set thee”—a term meaning to give great authority, “set the over the nations…to root out, and to pull down…to build, and to plant.” This to a young boy, who would have no standing as yet, even in his own village.
He was not only to foretell, but to bring to pass. Of course, it was all of God, but Jeremiah was the instrument.
Paul says, “All things are for your sakes.” If we are Christ’s, then all world developments are solely on our account, and for our eternal welfare. It is a tremendous thought with tremendous responsibilities. We do not dare to be ordinary. The young Jeremiah had a great responsibility.
Verse 17 – “Gird up thy loins…be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them.” He must do his part with courage, or God would not stand behind him. He must publicly stand fast for God, whatever might come.
He was called in the fourteenth year of Josiah—one year after Josiah’s reforms had begun. There are very few historical details concerning his first 18 years, under Josiah. There is no mention of his having had any part in Josiah’s national reforms. But we can be sure that they worked together. We know he was publicly active all that time, because five years after Josiah’s death, he says in chapter 25 that he had been rising early and speaking to them for 23 years. Jeremiah would not suffer any official abuse or persecution, as long as Josiah lived. Still his heavy message that the nation was doomed brought him continual ridicule and hatred.
Josiah’s national reform was only on the surface; the people were wicked and idolatrous in their hearts. The doom of the nation was already determined by God, and this Jeremiah must proclaim.
His first message – chapter 1, verse 14 – “Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.” Josiah was told the same thing, when the book of the law was found, and the curses in it were read to him. God said, 2 Chronicles 34, “I will bring evil upon this place…, even all the curses written in the book.” But Josiah was promised that it would not come in his day.
The chapters in the Book of Jeremiah are in very irregular order, that is, irregular from a chronological point of view. Many are not dated and are impossible to date chronologically.
Chapters 1-3 are in Josiah’s reign. Chapters 4-20 are undated and undateable. These cannot help us line up the events of Jeremiah’s life, but they reveal much about the battle he faced and his inner struggle concerning it.
Chapter 3 is the last one actually attributed to the time of Josiah. Chapter 5 says, “Run through Jerusalem, and see if you can find one man that seeks truth, and God will pardon it.” This would seem to be after the good figs had been taken away captive with Jehoiachin for their own good.
The tone of impending judgment is even more urgent in chapter 6, and the determination to reject God’s law seems described in words that cannot fit the time of at least surface obedience under Josiah.
However, on this first point, it does seem that from the beginning, Jeremiah spoke with the impression of immediately impending catastrophe that actually took 40 years to come, causing the people increasingly mock and deride him as a false prophet. He was somewhat like Noah in this respect.
And on the second point, Jeremiah clearly at times puts words into their mouths that they would never think of openly saying, but which were a true expression of their hearts. As in chapter 18, where he has them saying, “We will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.” (Verse 12)
God sees us and describes us, not by the surface appearance, but as with an all-penetrating X-ray. If we miss this fact, we miss much of the exhortation and lesson. It is not what we say or profess that God takes any account of, but what we do, and where our heart is.
These people were very ready with their lips to profess allegiance to God, and to go piously through the form of His service, but their lives were just ordinary, untransformed, animal lives like the people around them.
God is listening to, and carefully recording, our actions and not our professions, or even our vague and well-meaning, some-day intentions.
In chapter 7, verse 16 appears for the first time an expression of terrible significance, “Pray not thou for this people…for I will not hear thee.” We are told, and it is basic, that God is not mocked. He is exceedingly longsuffering, up to a point, which deceives many. But there comes a time in every life, when opportunity ceases. The door is closed. It may be at death, or it may be any time before, when God sees fit.
This same command, “Pray not for them,” occurs again in chapters 11 and 14. For those people, it was too late. Yet, God left Jeremiah with them to exhort and warn them to the end. What a burdensome task was his! To testify all his life to minds of flesh and hearts of stone.
In chapter 9, verses 1-2, he says, “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might…go from them!”
It was essential for Jeremiah’s ministry that he have the capacity for deep grief for his wicked suffering people, though they had no feeling for him but hatred and resentment. He longed for the relief of getting away from the continual struggle and confrontation. His task was to keep warning over and over, but it all fell on deaf ears. And he knew from the beginning that that was how it would always be. Why then keep on? Why continue to provoke the bitterness and the resentment? Yea, the anger and the retaliation. Simply because that is what God’s wisdom required. And dimly we can begin to perceive the wisdom of that wisdom.
It was a time of great change—one of the historic turning points for the ages. Iniquity had reached its full, and the kingdom was to be blotted out. The people were hopelessly committed to sin. But the open door must be kept prominently displayed before them, right to the very end, though God knew that as a nation they would never use it.
The pitiful fact, that at the very end, the last miserable remnant of the people forced Jeremiah to go down to Egypt with them, is very revealing. He was their contact with God, though they always rejected the message from God that he brought, and they kept asking him for.
Chapter 11 is commonly attributed to the time when the book of the law was found in the 18th year of Josiah. Verse 2 – “Hear ye the words of this covenant.”
Verses 3-4 – “Cursed be the man that obeyeth not the words of this covenant, which I commanded your fathers.” And God instructed Jeremiah, in verse 6, to make a tour of the cities of Judah, to proclaim the law and the long-recorded penalties that were to accompany its violation.
Certainly, the discovery and publicizing of the original book of the law and the cleansing of the temple would be a very appropriate time for this tour and would add much to its force.
In verse 14 of this chapter 11, we have again those dreadful words, “Pray not thou for this people.” Possibly as a reaction to this tour of preaching, the men of Anathoth, his own neighbors, plot to kill him (verses 19-23). There is a very striking type of Christ at Nazareth. Verse 19 says, “I was as a lamb or an ox.” The word translated ox is only once so rendered elsewhere, and questionably there. It appears that it should be, as in the Revised Version, “I was like a gentle, or tame, lamb.” The word means domesticated, not ox.
He went among his own people, wholly innocent and unsuspecting of their malice, while they plotted to kill him. But God revealed the danger to him, verse 18, and pronounced their utter destruction for it, verse 23.
Apparently in reaction to this treachery of those he depended on, he cries – chapter 12, verse 1 – “Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?” It is an age-old question, which we can all answer theoretically, but which most like Jeremiah find it difficult to accept personally. And God does not give him a direct answer; in fact He doesn’t give him any answer at all to the question. But rather, warns him to prepare and adjust himself to much worse to come.
This is certainly the most practical and useful answer, and directs our minds into the proper channel of preparation and submission rather than questioning. “Who art thou, O man, that questioneth God,” as read from Romans. And not only his neighbors, but – verse 6 of chapter 12- his very brethren and family will deal treacherously with him, and he must be ready to accept it without wavering or weakening.
Then in an obvious parallel to Jeremiah’s grief, God speaks of His own dearly beloved turning against Him – verses 7-8. And His own neighbors – verse 14 – that is, the nations surrounding Israel are oppressing His heritage. And so, Jeremiah would be comforted in his small sorrows.
Chapter 13 is the enacted parable of the girdle, taken and hidden by the Euphrates.
Chapter 14 concerns a very severe drought in the land. There is no indication of time or chronology. The chapter illustrates Jeremiah’s difficult position and his inner suffering for his people. He was chosen to be a constant reminder to them of God’s message of doom, and they hated and rejected him for it. And yet, he was one of them, and feels deeply for them, and cries out on their behalf in confession of and identification with their sins.
Verse 7 – “O LORD, though our iniquities testify against us, do thou it (that is, save us) for thy name’s sake.” God’s answer again – verse 11 – comes like the voice of doom, “Pray not for this people.” But again, in the closing verses, Jeremiah makes another impassioned appeal, doubtless remembering, and in the spirit of Moses, who in the face of a similar declaration by God, was privileged because of his persistence, to be the mediator for whose sake God refrained from destroying the nation early in their history.
God replies again – chapter 15:1 – “Though Moses and Samuel (not only Moses, but both of them together pleaded for Israel)…yet my mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of my sight.”
Verses 2-9 go on to reveal the terrible severity of God once the day of forbearance is past. It sounds pitiless, and it is pitiless. There would be none to show them pity – verse 5. It sounds even callous and cruel, but it is just plain stark reality that men will not face. Just because God is so longsuffering, men think that they can skip along their merry way, pleasing themselves, ignoring God’s law, wasting His goods on themselves for all is His, filling their time with anything but Him, as long as His great patience lasts. And then at the final showdown, come whining back to Him for mercy. He wants all their heart and He wants it NOW, when it means something.
This is what Jeremiah had to convey to them. He is caught in a terrible conflict between compassion and faithfulness.
Verse 10 – “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth!...Every one of them doth curse me.” Simply because he gave them the facts.
In verses 15-18, he cries to God again. It was a cry for relief from his intolerable position. He had done all that God had required for many years. He had completely given up all natural things, and had entered wholeheartedly into God’s service.
“Why then (verse 18) is my pain perpetual?” It is a marvelous secret of sympathy and identification. No man, no real man, no godly man, liveth to himself. It was Jeremiah’s deep identification with the dying nation that was his perpetual pain. It could not end. That was his burden and his service. This was his fellowship with the sufferings of Christ, who similarly and even more deeply suffered for his people’s sufferings.
Paul said, “I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart, and I could wish myself accursed from Christ (dreadful words), for my brethren according to the flesh.” He could see the terrible ages that lay ahead for Israel. This is very strong language and a bitterness of mind for others. And this is the same man who said to the Philippians, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.” There is no contradiction, just a glorious divine paradox.
There is an element of weary despair in Jeremiah’s inquiry, like John the Baptist in prison, and like John too, doubtless physical abuse was part of his suffering. It was the combined weight of many things, without and within. And there is an element, too, in his bitterness of questioning God.
Verse 18 – “Wilt thou be unto me as a liar?” Rather, as deceitful? It is not for us to judge him in his extremity, but to learn from his overall faithfulness. God answers him at this occasion very patiently and promises strength, if he will be patient. We remember that Job spake the same way under intense pressure and suffering. And the matter was properly settled between Job and God.
In chapter 16, Jeremiah is told that he is not to take a wife. This was a sign to the people of the terrible times of suffering and destruction that were to come. The barbarous abuses and cruel deaths of partners and children would only add to the burden of their misery. Jeremiah submitted uncomplainingly, entering completely into the will and purpose of God.
Chapter 20 is the last of this long group of undated chapters. It records, at the beginning, the beating and torture of Jeremiah by Pashur, the chief governor of the temple, because of his testimony in chapters 18 and 19. This is the first record in the book of actual physical violence against Jeremiah, though it is hinted at in earlier chapters.
This incident must have been after Josiah’s death, and it is usually attributed to the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign. This was now to be Jeremiah’s increasing experience. To be locked into an uncomfortable and immobile position in stocks after a severe beating was very cruel torture. Paul and Silas experienced the same. Jeremiah was in the stocks for a whole night and at least parts of two days.
The latter part of chapter 20, from verse 7 to the end, is another deep insight into Jeremiah’s inner life and thoughts. Some of it may seem hard to understand and to harmonize. But we must view it overall as a unit—as the bitter conflict between flesh and spirit that can only be judged by its outcome and not by its details. We must see it in the light of Christ in Gethsemane, though of course none ever rose to Christ’s perfection under trial.
Perhaps these were his very thoughts, while he was suffering cruelly in the stocks and exposed to public taunt and ridicule. Or, perhaps it was while he was sinking in pitch darkness in the filthy mire of the cistern, abandoned to die. Obviously, it was wrung from him under some great pressure. It was hardly while he was sitting comfortably and at ease in an armchair, as we probably are when we are reading it.
None who have not gone through such a lifetime of sorrow such as Jeremiah would be in any position to judge him. But these things are written for our admonition and instruction, and there is much we can learn from them.
Verse 7, still in chapter 20 – “O LORD, thou hast deceived me.” The word often means persuaded, though it is clear that Jeremiah here felt that he had been pressured by overwhelming divine influence to take on something that was proving just too much to bear.
Ever since he had begun to preach, he had met bitter antagonism and biting ridicule—the latter perhaps harder to take than the former. And when the awful march of events at last proved him right and cut off the ridicule, then the physical abuse intensified, as the nation grew more desperate and embattled.
Verse 9 is a clear struggle between the natural and the spiritual. All his natural inclinations were to abandon the battle, but faithfulness and a burning fear for God overcame all natural desires, and kept him at his lonely and dangerous post of duty.
Verse 10 – “All my familiars watched for my halting.” Those closest to him were always trying to catch something whereby they could accuse and destroy him. So Christ was stalked by enemies, who pretended to be his friends in order to catch him in his words.
Verse 11 – “The LORD is with me as a mighyt terrible one.” This was his inner confidence, and clearly, from the race that he ran right to the end, this was what always won out in his inner struggle. And this really is the basic clue—perhaps the central reason the whole chapter was recorded. If this one assurance can be firmly held onto and kept in the forefront, everything else falls into place, and nothing else really matters. “The LORD is with me.”
Verse 12 – “Let me see thy vengeance on them.” He had been praying for them for many years, and God had repeatedly told him to stop praying for them. There is no difficulty here, in him calling for vengeance, though some have imagined such. We are listening to Jeremiah, as inspired prophet of God with a message of God, speaking of evil men whom God has condemned and cast off, but whom He has allowed to clearly abuse His faithful prophet who sought only their welfare. "
Three times already we have had recorded, “Pray not for this people.” We are not in that extremity, and we are not under that instruction. Samuel was rebuked for continuing to mourn for Saul after Saul was rejected. He was taking the wrong side.
True righteousness is to see things as God sees them. There is a time for God’s vengeance and for God’s people to call for it. Elijah was right in calling down fire from heaven, but the disciples were not right on the occasion when they wanted to copy him. And so, we must neither criticize Jeremiah nor, in this case, copy him, unless we have divine instruction to do so.
Verses 13 and 14 are remarkable contrasts. “Sing unto the LORD, praise ye the LORD.” “Cursed be the day wherein I was born.” We must take them both together as a unit to get the correct picture. They certainly represent different aspects of a conflict. Jeremiah may have been wrong in the closing verses of chapter 20.
Job made a similar statement in the extreme anguish of his pain and grief. God commended him highly before all his critics, however, pointing out that in some things he had spoken foolishly, which Job himself humbly and readily confessed.
We must leave it between God and Jeremiah, but it was recorded for our learning, and we can learn from it, the extreme magnitude of the lifelong burden that God saw fit in His eternal purpose to lay upon the back of Jeremiah.
Paul, summing up a similar life spent day and night in hardship and divine service, called it “a light affliction which endureth but for a moment.” And that is true—that is a true assessment. Anything else and we a re just pitying ourselves. At the very worst, that is all it is—a light affliction but for a moment, compared to the endless joy and glory of the promised divine nature. So, any self-pity is folly. It is charging God with foolishness.
Jeremiah was tried to his limit, and he held fast, though bitter cries of anguish were wrung from him. How little we do, or even ask to do, in comparison. How pitifully little is the very most we could do. Surely if we have any love or zeal for God at all, we shall grudge every moment spent on anything except His word and His service.
From chapter 21 on, most are dated and can be fitted into a chronological pattern by their events. We can now pick out the subsequent record of events in Jeremiah’s life in Jehoiakim’s 11-year reign, Zedekiah’s 11-year reign, and a few years in Egypt after that.
Very briefly, the events were these:
Chapter 26 – The beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim: The good Josiah was now gone. All four kings after him were wicked. Jeremiah stood in the court of the temple and again pronounced the impending desolation of the city and temple. The priests and prophets seize him and drag him before the princes, demanding his death, but the princes release him.
Chapter 25 – Jehoiakim’s fourth year: Jeremiah declares that he has now been warning them continuously for 23 years.
Chapter 36 – The same year: Jeremiah is told to write all of his prophecies in a book and have them read to the people at some great national assembly. Events are now closing in. Some, including Daniel, have already been carried captive. Egypt has been crushed.
It is Nebuchadnezzar’s first year. The next year, Jehoiakim’s fifth, the book is read publicly. The princes fear the message and arrange to have it read to the king. But as soon as he begins to hear it, he seizes it and cuts it and throws it in the fire.
That same year, perhaps at that very same time, Nebuchadnezzar had the dream of the image—the beginning of Gentile times.
Jehoiakim sent to take Jeremiah, but God hid him. We are told no more of Jeremiah during the remaining six years of Jehoiakim. But chapter 13, the girdle, and chapter 35, the Rechabites, probably come in that time.
At the death of Jehoiakim, his son Jehoiachin became king. Nebuchadnezzar came and took him to Babylon. Ezekiel was taken at the same time. Zedekiah was set up as king.
Chapter 29 – At the beginning of Zedekiah’s reign: Jeremiah wrote to the captives in Babylon, telling them to settle down for the captivity would be for 70 years.
Chapters 27 and 28 – In the fourth year of Zedekiah: The yokes of wood and iron and the death of the false prophet Hananiah.
Chapters 50 and 51 – Still in that same year: The prophecy of the complete destruction of Babylon sent to be read for the comfort of the captives there.
Chapter 21 – Zedekiah’s ninth year: The final siege of Jerusalem begins. Zedekiah inquires of Jeremiah and gets the same message of doom.
Chapter 34 – An Egyptian relief army approaches, and the siege is lifted. Those, who because of the siege and pretending to serve God, had freed all their bondservants, now immediately put them back into bondage, when the pressure is off. And Jeremiah bitterly condemns their hypocrisy. How soon we revert when the pressure is off!
Chapter 37 and 38 – Zedekiah again inquires of Jeremiah, who says the Babylonians will surely return. Jeremiah attempts to go to Anathoth, his hometown nearby, for supplies. He is arrested as a deserter to the enemy, beaten and cast into a dungeon—an underground dungeon where he remains for many days, possibly weeks or months. It would be damp and dark and doubtless cold.
The Babylonian army, in the meantime, returns. Zedekiah, again, inquired of Jeremiah. Jeremiah pleaded not to be returned to the dungeon to die, and so he was put in the court of the prison. But right away, the princes are not satisfied and demand his death. Zedekiah is afraid to resist the princes. And so they are allowed to take Jeremiah and lower him by ropes into a miry cistern, leaving him there to die, and he sank in the mire. It would be a very foul and corrupt place, where he could not survive very long. It seemed like the end. But Ebedmelech, a foreigner, stirred the king’s conscious, and Jeremiah was rescued and returned to the prison court, where he remained until the fall of the city.
At this time appear to come chapters 30-33, while he is in the prison. Among the most stirring and striking chapters in the Bible, concerning Israel’s final restoration. In them Jeremiah buys a field, as a symbol of faith that the restoration would some day come.
Chapter 39-44 follow. They are consecutive and bring us right to the end of the record. The fearful survivors profess to seek God’s guidance through Jeremiah, but always they again reject him and His word when it comes. The city has fallen; the people driven away captive. Jeremiah chooses to remain in the land with the tiny remnant of the poor under Gedaliah. It looks like relief at last. But Ishmael assassinates Gedaliah and the Babylonian guard that are with them.
The people had said to Jeremiah, chapter 42, “Pray for us unto the LORD…that He may show us the way.” They had been saying this for 40 years. “We will obey.” Did they mean it? Doubtless they thought they meant it. Doubtless in their little stunted fleshly mind, undeveloped all their lives in spiritual things, doubtless they really thought they wanted to serve God. But the answer that came from God through Jeremiah did not please them. It did not appeal to the flesh, and the flesh was the basis of their thinking. So the poor shallow fleshliness of their whole approach to God is revealed and exposed.
How often do we pray for guidance without really meaning to follow the guidance? We have lots of really plain guidance already in the word of God. It tells us just how to conduct every minute of our lives—things to do and things not to do; things that will completely transform our lives, if we obey them. If we are not sincerely devoting our whole lives to doing just that, then there is no point to seeking any more guidance. Certainly there is point in seeking the basic wisdom and courage and intelligence to obey the plain commands that we already have, but we shall never be able to do it of ourselves. For it to mean anything, we must be prepared to make that obedience the supreme purpose and effort in our lives, or else we are just like Israel—keep asking, but not doing.
They forced Jeremiah to accompany them to Egypt, still clinging to this prophet whom they would never listen.
His last prophecy, still warning and condemning them, is in chapter 44, in the land of Egypt. And still, they reject the message. They had convinced themselves that when they served the queen of heaven, they had been prosperous and blessed.
How easy to convince ourselves that a wrong course is right, just because it appears to have what we think are good results. I did this, and it worked out quite well, and so it must be all right. Thus we lull ourselves. What terrible surprises are in store!
In the final scene, as the curtain falls on all that is recorded of Jeremiah, we see him still after 40 years pleading with the last little remnant, now in Egypt, to put away their abominations and serve God with all their hearts. And their answer is still the same.
Chapter 44, verse 17 – “We will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth.” Rebellious to the end.
No man had less to show for 40 long years of labor of outward success or influence. But it was not in vain, neither for himself nor for others. Jeremiah, though rejected in his day and by his generation, will with Daniel stand in his lot at the end of the days, and will shine among the stars, who appeared as failures in their lifetime, but who in the deep working of God’s great purpose have turned many to righteousness.
Bro. G.V.Growcott
