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Jer_1:1
Here was born the prophet Jeremiah, and this was the place of his usual residence—the near neighborhood of which to Jerusalem sufficiently explains his frequent appearance in the metropolis, the distance being no more than an easy morning walk.
He was a priest, and his father’s name was Hilkiah. He commenced his prophetic ministry when very young, in the time of king Josiah; and as the high-priest, who found the book of the law in that reign, bore that name, some have thought that Jeremiah was his son. But there is no other foundation for this than the name, which was a common one among the Jews; and if the father of Jeremiah had really been high-priest, the fact would, in all probability, have been indicated when he is mentioned.
The extreme youth of Jeremiah when he was called to the high and perilous office of a prophet, is shown by the length of the period during which he exercised its functions, and also by the pleas of youth and incapacity which he modestly urged, when the voice of the Lord called him to be “a prophet unto the nations.” Smitten by the sense of the solemn duties which his commission imposed, his gentle nature shrunk from them, as unsuited to his degree of strength, and he cried with deep emotion, “Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak; for I am a child.” But when he was shown that the strength in which he was to act and speak was not his own, and that he might always reckon upon supplies of grace and strength to discharge the high duties to which he was called, he no longer sought to evade them; and although the influence of his natural temper breaks out at times in complaints that he, of all men most unsuited, as he thought, had been chosen for the place he filled, and in sighings for that retired and peaceful life he must know no more—he fulfilled his tasks with unremitting diligence and unswerving fidelity for at least forty-two years, reckoning from the thirteenth year of king Josiah. In the course of his ministry he met with much opposition and ill-treatment from his countrymen of all classes, especially of the highest. The exigencies of the times constrained him, as the commissioned prophet of the Lord, to take a part in, or rather to exercise an important influence upon, the public policy of the time; and the part he took, though based on the most enlarged views of true patriotism, and on the most exact apprehension of the nation’s only safe and wise course in the circumstances of the times, was offensive to its natural pride; and the great ones, seeing how adverse his counsels were to their own plans of aggrandizement, affected to discredit his mission, and strove to destroy his influence. His keen susceptibility to injustice and misconstruction, his deep sense of the wickedness, perversity, and ungodliness of men—his consciousness that the leaders of the people were, with willful blindness, hurrying the nation with headlong speed to its ruin—together with his painful perception of the unpopularity to which his faithful denunciations exposed him, and the general dislike with which he was regarded, all this occasionally drew from him, in the bitterness of his soul, expressions which some have found it hard to reconcile with his religious principles and his near intercourse with Heaven; but which considered with due regard to his natural temper, and all the circumstances of his position, will be found far more to demand our pity than our censure. Nay, there is none of the prophets with whom we contract an acquaintance so close and sympathizing, by virtue of those very indications of the natural temper and spirit of the man, which are permitted to ripple the surface of his prophetic career, and which enable us to recognize, in one so gifted from Heaven, a man and a brother. The cries by which he attests the frequent anguish of his spirit, find a response in our hearts. We pity him, feel for him, love him; and this is more than can be said with regard to Isaiah, whose prophetic rapture more absorbed the individual man, and left no room for any other than feelings of admiration and awe towards him; whereas Jeremiah enlists our personal interests towards him by his starts of natural passion, and speaks to our hearts in his wails of human pain. Hear him—“Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast born me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me.” Note: Jer_15:10. And thus he expostulates with his Lord: “As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow Thee: neither have I desired the woful day; Thou knowest: that which came out of my lips was right before Thee. He not a terror unto me,” he fearfully adds, but instantly rises from this prostration of spirit, and, with holy confidence, exclaims, “Thou art my hope in the day of evil.” Note: Jer_17:16-17. Sometimes the outbursts of his mental agony are awful: “Cursed be the day wherein I was born; let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man-child is born unto thee, making him very glad…. Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?” Note: Jer_20:14-15; Jer_20:18. Sometimes he goes so far as to propose in his heart that he will no longer deliver those utterances which bring so much trouble upon him; but he then found that he lay under a constraining necessity superior to his own will—“I said, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in his name: but his word was in my heart, as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.” And what was the cause of this deep discouragement? He does not leave us in the dark as to this; he tells us that he had heard “the defaming of many, fear on every side…. My familiars watched for my halting, saying, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him.” This was well suited to dismay a man of Jeremiah’s temper; but he again speedily comes back to his trust in God—“But the Lord is with me.” With him as what?—“as a mighty terrible One” Note: Jer_20:9-11.—terrible to the adversaries of His servants, and to the opposers of his word.
It is possible that, on some occasion, Jeremiah had, under the influence of such feelings as he so often expresses, been tempted to soften or to suppress some part of a message entrusted to him, which be deemed likely to excite that violent antagonism which was grievous to his peaceful temper. The man who had confessedly purposed not to speak at all, might think of withholding part of the words entrusted to him. This supposition would give added force to the injunction which, on one occasion, he received—“Speak all the words that I command thee to speak unto them. Diminish not a word.” Note: Jer_26:2. So here also he found that there was no discretion left to him.
In the Lamentations, the same prophet speaks generally in the person of afflicted Zion, but we still recognize the man Jeremiah, and trace his own experiences, and the tone of his own mind, in them. We must not multiply instances. Here is one—“I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast heard my voice; hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry. Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: Thou saidst, Fear not.” Note: Lam_3:55-57.