Major or Minor, the vast majority of the Old Testament prophetic text is made up of visions, oracles or messages from God through the prophets to individuals or nations. There are exceptions, of course. Isaiah contains a historic interlude or two, as do Haggai, Daniel, Ezekiel, Jonah and especially Jeremiah, who provides an exceptional amount of useful historical context.
In addition to the history, some prophets also recorded the personal instructions, special insights, correction or encouragement God gave them in the process of serving him, and the substance of their conversations and interactions with him. Jonah does this in every chapter.
But no prophet preserved more of God’s editorial commentary on his own messages than Jeremiah, all the way through the first 2/3 of his prophecy.
Editorial Commentary in Jeremiah
Doubt me? Check this list out:
Jeremiah 1:1-19; 3:6-11; 7:1-2 and 16-20; 8:1-3; 11:1-2 and 6-23; 12:1-17; 13:1-11; 14:11-14; 15:1-2 and 10-21; 16:1-21; 17:14-19; 18:1-3 and 12-23; 19:1-2 and 14-15; 20:7-18; 23:33-40; 24:3-10; 25:15-16 and 27-30; 26:1-6; 27:1-4; 32:6-44; 33:1-9.
The final nineteen chapters of Jeremiah differ from the earlier portion in that they contain more history than prophecy, as well as a number of oracles directed at other nations and even the occasional message of hope for a repentant Israel in future days. It is notable that God’s personal words of encouragement, insight and instruction to Jeremiah are all but absent from these final chapters. Perhaps invectives against Judah’s oppressors were less stressful to deliver than messages of judgment against Jeremiah’s own nation, in which he was deeply emotionally invested.
The first 33 chapters of Jeremiah, by way of contrast, contain 238 verses of personal discussion, questions, answers and explanatory commentary. That’s about 8-1/2 chapters’ worth of dialogue, almost a quarter of the content of the book up to and including chapter 33. No other prophet can come close to that amount of documented interaction with his God. These exchanges include Jeremiah’s prayers and complaints, and God’s responses to them. Even when the Lord is sending messages through Jeremiah to others, he often addresses Jeremiah instead of the target, referring to Jeremiah’s contemporaries as “them” rather than the more direct “you”, the way you or I might discuss our frustration with the attitudes of erring loved ones with an intimate confidant.
A Fragile Vessel
In fact, it’s not entirely clear whether many of the things the Lord said to Jeremiah in these personal asides about Judah were ever conveyed to its people verbally. Obviously, they became part of the final version of the book when Jeremiah’s story and message were written down, so that later generations would see everything he went through in the process of serving the God of Israel. But it may be that some things God said to Jeremiah about his contemporaries were never repeated aloud after the original discussion until they began to be read in the synagogues of a nation in Babylonian exile.
We are all different, and some of us are much more emotionally robust than others. Given the sheer quantity of private whys and wherefores entrusted to Jeremiah, I suspect he was among the most fragile vessels through whom the Lord ever worked. Despite this, he was one of the longest serving, starting young and prophesying through forty years and the reigns of five different kings of Judah. Worse, he was the only prophet who had to go through the process of recording everything God had told him twice. If anything could make a prophet despair that he was in the wrong profession, that might just do it. The sheer unrelenting gloom of Jeremiah’s earlier messages earned him the name of “the weeping prophet”. Perhaps for this reason, the Lord granted him a unique insight into the emotions Judah provoked in their God and the reasons behind his judgments.
Managing Expectations
The Lord also managed Jeremiah’s expectations or hopes for success in his ministry in ways that were probably unnecessary with other prophets. Consider these two asides from God to Jeremiah in chapter 7:
“As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger.”
“So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips’ … The Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.”
In the first instance, the Lord tells Jeremiah not to pray for his people, as it is futile. In the second, he is bluntly told, “You shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you.” I suppose the only thing more discouraging than having one’s message rejected would be having it rejected when you had hoped against hope your audience would finally believe and repent. Jeremiah received no expectation of that. Perhaps if he had not been fully informed and prepared for how completely his message would fall on deaf ears, rejection might have broken him.
It didn’t, though sometimes he seems to have come close.
Why Bother? Here’s Why
Why bother? Jeremiah might have wondered. Nobody is paying attention.
We may sometimes wonder the same thing when spending yet another evening with an unsaved friend or relative who has heard the gospel repeatedly but never responded. Why keep it up anyway? Because God is relentlessly fair. He knows who will repent and who won’t, but he makes sure the obdurate hear his word as much or more than the responsive. You never know: other, more willing ears may overhear what you have said, provoking unexpected interest. In the worst case scenario, words that do not heal or bring life will stand at the end of time to testify against the sinner. They are never, ever wasted. It’s not enough for God to judge fairly, he also wants to be seen to judge fairly. In the end, every mouth will be stopped. Nobody will be able to complain that God has been unreasonable in his dealings with them.
For those of us who have no idea which way the dominos will fall, that’s a good thing to remember. Even when it seems nobody is listening, God is doing a work that has value to him, and in doing so, he is displaying his matchless patience and faithfulness to the world. Like Jeremiah, we are privileged to be part of it.
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Like a number of recent illustrations here, I created the digital art above with a one-sentence prompt to Microsoft Bing’s Image Creator online tool. Interestingly, Bing’s algorithm has already been programmed to reject prompts that include the word “Jerusalem” as potentially in violation of its content policy, even when the requested historical setting is 590 BC, suggesting that other verboten subjects are being politically corrected for users even before the AI technology is perfected.
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