Jensens survey of the old testament adam 202
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had considered to be his friends. (Read
11:18-23; 12:6; 18:11-18; 26:1-15; 32:1-3;
38:6-13, 28.)
Jeremiah’s life as a prophet was one long,
sad, stormy day. Often he grew discouraged
and was almost ready to give up the battle,
but the re of the Spirit in his bones kept
him true to God (read 20:9). James Gray
describes the fiery trials:
God placed him between two
“cannots” or, if you please, between
two
res. There was the
re of
persecution without, and that of the
Holy Spirit within, the latter being the
hotter of the two. To avoid being
consumed by the one, he was more
than willing to walk through the other.
“I cannot speak any more in God’s
name,” he says at one time, and
follows it by adding, “I cannot refrain
from speaking.”2
Jeremiah’s personal life was very lonely.
As noted above, even his friends and
relatives plotted to kill him. He was
instructed of God not to marry and raise a
family (16:1-4). But he had one companion
at his side throughout most of his career:
Baruch. Baruch served as Jeremiah’s
secretary, playing an important part in the
story of the scrolls of the prophet’s messages
(36:4-8). Chapter 45 is devoted wholly to a
message from God to him. Baruch remained
close to Jeremiah throughout all the stormy
years, and the two went into exile together.
Part of Jeremiah’s task was to convince
the people and rulers of Judah that Babylon,
the nation from the “north” (4:6), was the
divinely destined master of Judah for the
near future, and that Judah’s
irting
relations with other nations would add to
the horror of the doom to come. But his
appeals were rejected. In 588 B.C., the
Babylonian conqueror, Nebuchadnezzar, did
come, the siege of Jerusalem began, and
about thirty months later (586 B.C.) the city
and its Temple were utterly destroyed.
The Bible gives no details of Jeremiah’s
death. One tradition says that he was stoned
to death in Egypt by the very Jews he tried
so hard to save.
III. THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH
Jeremiah did not write this book
overnight, nor even over a short period of
time. Many years and many experiences
were the setting of its composition.
Though the theme of divine judgment for
sin runs throughout the book of Jeremiah,
the organization of the book’s materials is
not always clear. From the record itself we
learn that Jeremiah wrote the di erent
parts, including biography, history, doctrine,
and prediction, at various times and under
diverse circumstances. When all the parts
were brought together on one scroll as one
book, a general pattern of composition was
followed, placing the discourses in the rst
half of the book and reserving the latter half
mainly for narrative. Jeremiah appropriately
used the story of his call and commission as
the introduction of the book, and
