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By Rev. Adrian Grubbs

Fall Quarter: Judah, from Isaiah to Exile

Unit 1: The Early Ministry of Jeremiah

This month we have five lessons from Jeremiah, from the time of his calling during the reign of King Josiah until just before the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586 BCE.

Jeremiah received the call of Yahweh to be His prophet/spokesman/messenger in 627 BCE, the thirteenth year in the reign of King Josiah. Whereas Isaiah was from Judah, the southern kingdom, Jeremiah was from a priestly family in Benjamin, which had been part of the northern kingdom which fell to Assyria in 722 BCE. Early in his reign King Josiah began major social and religious reforms in Judah; and five years after Jeremiah became a prophet, Josiah ordered repairs to the temple, the torah scroll was discovered among the temple rubbish, and Passover was celebrated at the appropriate time. Isaiah was told at the beginning of his ministry that his messages from the LORD to the people and officials would not be well received; Jeremiah found that to be true of his ministry as well – he was publicly insulted, banned from the temple, his written message was burned; he was put in stocks, imprisoned, and thrown into a cistern, but he continued to proclaim messages from the LORD. Jesus quoted Jeremiah when he accused the Jews of turning the LORD’s house into a den of robbers. (The Hebrew language had no word for “temple;” it was called “the house, or palace, of the LORD.”)

The call of Jeremiah (chapter 1) has similarities to the call of Isaiah – both confessed unworthiness, their mouths were ritually touched and declared clean, they were commissioned to speak Yahweh’s words, and each of them received assurance that the LORD would be with them. The messages of Isaiah and Jeremiah were similar: unless the people and officials repent and return to the LORD, Jerusalem and the House of the LORD would be destroyed. Chapter 26 is a recap of Jeremiah’s temple sermon recorded in chapter 7 with the addition of the reaction of the temple officials. Jeremiah was accused of blasphemy and deserved to die because he dared to preach that the sacred temple and the holy city would be trampled by heathens! He told them he was merely delivering the message that Yahweh had given to him, and that they could do to him as they pleased.

Jeremiah 7 is the famous “temple sermon” delivered at the beginning of the reign of Josiah’s son, Jehoiakim in 609 BCE. The outer wall of Solomon’s temple complex had several gates. The eastern wall was also the eastern wall of the city, so, the eastern city gate entered directly into the outer courtyard of the temple compound, the Court of Gentiles. The other gates into the temple area were inside the city. Inside the eastern gate is probably where Jeremiah stood to preach the temple sermon. Jeremiah supported the reforms of King Josiah, but there is not much in the record of his activities during those early years of his ministry. Josiah was followed on the throne by three sons and a grandson, who were all described in 2 Kings as evil because they reversed all the social and religious reforms that Josiah had put into place. Jeremiah’s activities ramped up when Jehoiakim came to the throne. Jeremiah strongly proclaimed to all the people who entered the temple gate that, unless they amend their ways and turn to the LORD, the house of the LORD would be destroyed and the survivors would be carried away captive to Babylon. And, as reported in Barach’s recap of this event, Jeremiah was accused of speaking against the house of the LORD.

Jeremiah 35 is also during the time of King Jehoiakim. The Rechabites were a family of nomads in the tribe of Benjamin. For more than 200 years they had kept the instructions of their ancestor, Jonadab, to not build houses, tend crops, or drink wine; in-other-words, they were to always live in tents as nomads, tend sheep, and abstain from wine and fruit of the vine. When the Babylonians approached Jerusalem, the Rechabites sought refuge inside the walls of Jerusalem. Jeremiah’s point was that the Rechabites had obeyed their ancestor for two centuries, but the people of Judah had rebelled and disobeyed the instructions of their LORD. Consequently, Jerusalem would fall, but the Rechabites would survive into perpetuity.

Jeremiah was not a doomsday prophet. He certainly preached doom for Jerusalem, the temple, and the people; but Babylonian exile would not be the end for the people of Judah. Jeremiah 31 speaks of a new covenant. Most English translations say, “make” a new covenant; the word, literally, means “cut.” Yahweh will cut a new covenant with the remnants of Israel and Judah. The difference between the former covenant and the new covenant is that the former was cut in stone, but the new will be planted in the heart. Notice the verbs: I will cut a new covenant, the covenant I will cut, I will put my law within, I will write it on their hearts, I will be their God, I will forgive their iniquity. The Babylonian exile would not be the end!

For eighteen months the Babylonian army laid siege to Jerusalem. Jeremiah proclaimed to all the inhabitants of the city that they should surrender and save their lives. He told King Zedekia that if he surrendered, he would save not only his life but also the city. The king asked Jeremiah for word from the LORD but would not heed the advice; and the people did not listen. The king’s advisors accused Jeremiah of treason and wanted him executed. The king would not give the order, so they tossed him into a cistern that had no water, but the bottom was covered in mud. Jeremiah would not survive for long in the mud, without food and water. A foreigner in the king’s palace, an Ethiopian eunuch, and probably a slave, appealed to the king on Jeremiah’s behalf. He was allowed to rescue Jeremiah from the cistern, but Jeremiah had to be confined in the court of the guard. There he remained until the walls of Jerusalem were breached. Jeremiah was released by the king of Babylon, but was later kidnapped and taken to Egypt where his ministry continued. King Zedekiah saw his sons executed, then he was blinded and carried away to Babylon.

The nation is doomed when injustice prevails, the poor and the emigrants are abused, and God’s people put their trust in politicians, wealth, and the military. The message of the prophets holds true today.