Books of the Bible

The Book of Jeremiah

Old Testament · Major Prophets · Genre: Prophecy · Author: The prophet Jeremiah, with his scribe Baruch · Chapters: 52

Jeremiah is the anguished witness of a prophet who called Judah to repent for forty years as the nation slid toward ruin. Called the weeping prophet, he announced God's judgment with a breaking heart, yet also promised a new covenant that God would write on the very hearts of his people.

Start reading: Jeremiah chapter 1

A key verse

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.Jeremiah 29:11 (KJV)

The setting and background of Jeremiah

Jeremiah is the second of the Major Prophets and, with its companion Lamentations, the great witness to the fall of Jerusalem. Jeremiah prophesied in the final decades of the kingdom of Judah, from the late seventh century into the early sixth, and his words were gathered and written down with the help of his faithful scribe Baruch. He is often called the weeping prophet for the grief that runs through his ministry.

The book does not unfold in strict chronological order but gathers Jeremiah's oracles, sign-acts, laments, and the narratives of his suffering across forty years of faithful preaching. It moves through warnings of judgment, confrontations with kings and false prophets, deeply personal complaints to God, oracles against the nations, and the account of the city's fall, all held together by the tension between coming judgment and enduring hope.

Jeremiah was written to explain the catastrophe of the exile and to sustain hope beyond it, above all through the promise of a new covenant written on the heart. That promise is one of the most important passages in the Old Testament and is quoted at length in the New. In the sweep of Scripture, the weeping prophet and his new covenant both point forward to Jesus, who wept over Jerusalem and sealed the new covenant in his blood.

The story and structure of Jeremiah

Jeremiah was called as a young man, told that God had known and appointed him before he was even formed in the womb, and sent to a people who would not listen. His ministry stretched across the last decades of the kingdom of Judah, through the reigns of its final kings and into the catastrophe of Babylon's conquest and the exile.

For forty years Jeremiah warned that judgment was coming because the people had forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters, and hewn out for themselves broken cisterns that could hold no water. He confronted false prophets who cried peace when there was no peace, and kings who burned his words, and he was mocked, beaten, imprisoned, and thrown into a muddy pit for his faithfulness.

The book gives us rare glimpses into the prophet's inner life, his laments and complaints to God, his loneliness and anguish, and his confession that God's word was like a fire shut up in his bones, so that he could not keep silent even when speaking cost him everything. His life was one of costly faithfulness in a hostile age.

Jeremiah performed vivid sign-acts to make his message unmistakable: a ruined belt, a potter reshaping marred clay, a shattered jar, a yoke worn on his neck. He counseled the doomed city to submit to Babylon, which looked like treason but was obedience to God, and he watched, heartbroken, as his warnings came true and Jerusalem fell.

Yet amid the darkness Jeremiah spoke some of Scripture's brightest hope. He promised that after seventy years God would bring his people home, that God's plans for them were for a future and a hope, and, most wonderfully, that God would make a new covenant, writing his law on their hearts, forgiving their sin, and remembering it no more.

The great themes of Jeremiah

Key passages in Jeremiah

Jeremiah in the sweep of Scripture

Jeremiah stands among the major prophets as the great witness to the exile, interpreting the catastrophe that ended the kingdom of Judah. His promise of a new covenant is one of the most important passages in the Old Testament, quoted at length in the New. His life of rejected faithfulness became a pattern for understanding the suffering of God's servants, and his tears over a doomed people anticipate a greater weeping still to come.

Where Christ is in Jeremiah

Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant, with God's law written on the heart and sins remembered no more, is fulfilled in Jesus, who at the last supper lifts the cup as the new covenant in his blood. The weeping prophet, rejected and grieved by his people, foreshadows Christ, who wept over Jerusalem and was despised by those he came to save, and who secured by his own suffering the forgiveness Jeremiah could only promise.

How to read Jeremiah well

Read Jeremiah for the cost and courage of faithfulness, letting his example strengthen you to speak and live the truth even when it is unwelcome. Let his laments give you permission to bring your own anguish honestly to God, and let his image of God's word as a fire remind you of the power of Scripture. Above all, rest in his promise of a new covenant, and rejoice that in Christ God has written his law on your heart and remembers your sin no more.

Explore more: Read Jeremiah · All 66 books of the Bible · The whole Bible