Jeremiah

Jeremiah



(fl. 627–587 b.c.)

Old Testament prophet who foretold the Jewish exile to Babylon and rethought the conception of the Chosen People.
Jeremiah’s name is proverbial for gloom, and the word jeremiad is derived from the “lamentations” ascribed to him, though the biblical book called by that name was probably written by someone else under his influence. He lived in Jerusalem, still the capital of the southern Israelite kingdom of Judah, surviving feebly after the collapse of the northern kingdom. Much of the biographical matter in the book is the work of his secretary, Baruch.
Like his predecessors, Jeremiah denounced the evils around him, and he was bitter against the perversion of prophecy itself. Bogus prophets were assuring the public and their rulers that all was well and saying “peace, peace” when there was no peace. Jeremiah’s horizon was broad: he was well aware of other nations, and he forecast the rise of Babylon, expecting its king, Nebuchadnezzar, to be the Lord’s agent for the chastisement of Judah—the corollary being that it was futile and even wrong to resist.
Events bore Jeremiah out. Nebuchadnezzar’s expansion of his empire drew Judah into his orbit. He took Jerusalem in 597 b.c. and carried off some of its chief citizens. At first, he was prepared to treat Judah as a protectorate under a puppet king, but the king rebelled, and in 587, the Babylonians besieged and captured Jerusalem with much greater ruthlessness. Its walls were demolished; its principal buildings were burned down; the Temple itself was plundered and destroyed. Large numbers of Judah’s city dwellers and people of importance were deported to Babylon, and as other inhabitants trickled away over the years, the country became almost depopulated. Jeremiah himself had been imprisoned during the siege as pro-Babylonian. Nebuchadnezzar’s commander set him free. He is said to have gone to Egypt and died there soon afterward.
His assessment of the situation, in the last years before the final disaster, introduces themes that carry over into subsequent Jewish history. He describes a vision of two baskets of figs, good and bad. The bad figs are the Israelite sinners and apostates, and the Lord will cast them off. The good figs stand for a remnant that will survive, meaning, essentially, the deportees. These will endure a penitential exile in Babylon; while there, says Jeremiah, they must live peaceably, on as good terms as possible with their conquerors; and the experience will make them better and wiser, worthy of divine favor. This phase and the homeland’s concurrent desolation will last for seventy years (Jeremiah 25:11–12; 29:10–14). Then, Babylon will fall to enemies from the north, including the Medes, and the faithful remnant will be able to return to Zion. God will deal with them graciously. He will bring back others of the dispersed Israelite tribes to join them, and he will make a new covenant with them, writing it on their hearts.
The prophet was right about the captivity coming to an end, and he was right about Babylon falling to enemies from the north (including the Medes), with the exiles’ liberation resulting. It all happened in 539. The idea of the faithful remnant, though hinted at in earlier prophecy, grows more explicit in Jeremiah. It has become clear that the
Chosen People cannot be restrained from apostasy, idolatry, and a general falling-away. But while some will be lost, there will always be others who stand firm, and these will always be the Chosen, inheriting Israel’s whole legacy and bearing the glory and the burden. Eventually, the Christians, who accepted Jesus as the Messiah when most Jews rejected him, applied the conception of the remnant to themselves and explained Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new covenant as fulfilled in Christianity.
The seventy years of purification and penance may have been meant symbolically rather than literally; as a human lifetime, perhaps. The actual duration of the exile was less. This prophecy, however, has a strange later history. The author of Daniel reinterprets the seventy years as meaning seventy “weeks” of years, making a total of 70 × 7, that is, 490 years. This long and precise period is exceptional in Old Testament prophecy. The period cannot be related to the Babylonian exile, and there is no sign that Jeremiah truly had such a period in mind. In Daniel, to judge from events described in the final “week,” it is meant to end about the time of writing, in 165 b.c. or thereabouts. But if the count starts from Jeremiah, the dates do not work. Mysteriously, the author gives an alternative starting point, leading to a final phase that is not in his own time but in the first century a.d., and can be connected with the ministry and death of Jesus—a fact naturally observed by Christians. However this calculation should be understood, it has no real connection with Jeremiah himself.