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 1:5Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
• Jeremiah 29:11For 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 31:33-34But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.