Jeremiah

About Jeremiah

Jeremiah records the long, painful ministry of a prophet who warned Judah for forty years that Jerusalem would fall to Babylon, and then lived to see it happen. He was mocked, beaten, and jailed for telling the truth, which is why he is often called the weeping prophet. Yet in the middle of the wreckage he delivers one of the Bible's brightest promises: a new covenant where God writes His law on human hearts. In the big story, Jeremiah explains why the exile happened and points ahead to the deeper rescue God still planned.

Written by

The book presents the words of the prophet Jeremiah, written down with help from his scribe Baruch, and most scholars agree it grew from Jeremiah's own preaching.

When

Jeremiah's ministry ran from about 627 to just after 586 BC, and the book was gathered during and shortly after those years.

Themes

• Warning before judgment
• The cost of speaking truth
• God's grief over sin
• The new covenant
• Hope beyond exile

Key verses

• Jeremiah 1:5“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
• Jeremiah 29:11For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope.
• Jeremiah 31:33-34“But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people. No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.”