Jeremiah

97:6.1While sev­eral teach­ers con­tin­ued to ex­pound the gospel of Isa­iah, it re­mained for Jeremiah to take the next bold step in the in­ter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of Yah­weh, God of the He­brews.

• asserted Yahweh was God of all nations

97:6.2Jeremiah fear­lessly de­clared that Yah­weh was not on the side of the He­brews in their mil­i­tary strug­gles with other na­tions. He as­serted that Yah­weh was God of all the earth, of all na­tions and of all peo­ples. Jeremiah’s teach­ing was the crescendo of the ris­ing wave of the in­ter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of the God of Is­rael; fi­nally and for­ever did this in­trepid preacher pro­claim that Yah­weh was God of all na­tions, and that there was no Osiris for the Egyp­tians, Bel for the Baby­lo­ni­ans, Ashur for the As­syr­i­ans, or Dagon for the Phil­is­tines. And thus did the re­li­gion of the He­brews share in that re­nais­sance of mono­the­ism through­out the world at about and fol­low­ing this time; at last the con­cept of Yah­weh had as­cended to a De­ity level of plan­e­tary and even cos­mic dig­nity. But many of Jeremiah’s as­so­ciates found it dif­fi­cult to con­ceive of Yah­weh apart from the He­brew na­tion.

97:6.3Jeremiah also preached of the just and lov­ing God de­scribed by Isa­iah, declar­ing: “Yes, I have loved you with an ev­er­last­ing love; there­fore with lov­ing-kind­ness have I drawn you.” “For he does not af­flict will­ingly the chil­dren of men.”

• counseled surrendering Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar

97:6.4Said this fear­less prophet: “Righ­teous is our Lord, great in coun­sel and mighty in work. His eyes are open upon all the ways of all the sons of men, to give ev­ery one ac­cord­ing to his ways and ac­cord­ing to the fruit of his do­ings.” But it was con­sid­ered blas­phe­mous trea­son when, dur­ing the siege of Je­ru­sa­lem, he said: “And now have I given these lands into the hand of Neb­uchad­nez­zar, the king of Baby­lon, my ser­vant.” And when Jeremiah coun­seled the sur­ren­der of the city, the priests and civil rulers cast him into the miry pit of a dis­mal dun­geon.

• proclaimed era of inner righteousness

97:8.3But five hun­dred years of the over­lord­ship of alien rulers was too much for even the pa­tient and long-suf­fer­ing Jews. The proph­ets and priests be­gan to cry: “How long, O Lord, how long?” As the hon­est Jew searched the Scrip­tures, his con­fu­sion be­came worse con­founded. An olden seer prom­ised that God would pro­tect and de­liver his “cho­sen peo­ple.” Amos had threat­ened that God would aban­don Is­rael un­less they re-es­tab­lished their stan­dards of na­tional righ­teous­ness. The scribe of Deuteron­omy had por­trayed the Great Choice—as be­tween the good and the evil, the bless­ing and the curse. Isa­iah the first had preached a benef­i­cent king-de­liv­erer. Jeremiah had pro­claimed an era of in­ner righ­teous­ness—the covenant writ­ten on the tablets of the heart. The sec­ond Isa­iah talked about sal­va­tion by sac­ri­fice and re­demp­tion. Eze­kiel pro­claimed de­liv­er­ance through the ser­vice of de­vo­tion, and Ezra prom­ised pros­per­ity by ad­her­ence to the law. But in spite of all this they lin­gered on in bond­age, and de­liv­er­ance was de­ferred. Then Daniel pre­sented the drama of the im­pend­ing “cri­sis”—the smit­ing of the great im­age and the im­me­di­ate es­tab­lish­ment of the ev­er­last­ing reign of righ­teous­ness, the Mes­sianic king­dom.

• proclaimed downfall of Jerusalem

97:9.22The next king, Amaziah, had trou­ble with the re­volt­ing tax-pay­ing Edom­ites and their neigh­bors. Af­ter a sig­nal vic­tory he turned to at­tack his north­ern neigh­bors and was just as sig­nally de­feated. Then the ru­ral folk re­volted; they as­sas­si­nated the king and put his six­teen-year-old son on the throne. This was Azariah, called Uzziah by Isa­iah. Af­ter Uzziah, things went from bad to worse, and Ju­dah ex­isted for a hun­dred years by pay­ing trib­ute to the kings of As­syria. Isa­iah the first told them that Je­ru­sa­lem, be­ing the city of Yah­weh, would never fall. But Jeremiah did not hes­i­tate to pro­claim its down­fall.

• told Jews of their impending doom

97:9.25With the over­throw of Ne­cho by Neb­uchad­nez­zar, Ju­dah fell un­der the rule of Baby­lon and was given ten years of grace, but soon re­belled. When Neb­uchad­nez­zar came against them, the Ju­dahites started so­cial re­forms, such as re­leas­ing slaves, to in­flu­ence Yah­weh. When the Baby­lo­nian army tem­porar­ily with­drew, the He­brews re­joiced that their magic of re­form had de­liv­ered them. It was dur­ing this pe­riod that Jeremiah told them of the im­pend­ing doom, and pres­ently Neb­uchad­nez­zar re­turned.

• told of law written in men’s hearts

121:7.5These cir­cum­stances ren­dered it im­pos­si­ble for the Jews to ful­fill their di­vine des­tiny as mes­sen­gers of the new gospel of re­li­gious free­dom and spir­i­tual lib­erty. They could not break the fet­ters of tra­di­tion. Jeremiah had told of the “law to be writ­ten in men’s hearts,” Eze­kiel had spo­ken of a “new spirit to live in man’s soul,” and the Psalmist had prayed that God would “cre­ate a clean heart within and re­new a right spirit.” But when the Jew­ish re­li­gion of good works and slav­ery to law fell vic­tim to the stag­na­tion of tra­di­tion­al­is­tic in­er­tia, the mo­tion of re­li­gious evo­lu­tion passed west­ward to the Eu­ro­pean peo­ples.

• Jesus quoted

130:8.2At Syra­cuse they spent a full week. The no­table event of their stop here was the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Ezra, the back­slid­den Jew, who kept the tav­ern where Je­sus and his com­pan­ions stopped. Ezra was charmed by Je­sus’ ap­proach and asked him to help him come back to the faith of Is­rael. He ex­pressed his hope­less­ness by say­ing, “I want to be a true son of Abra­ham, but I can­not find God.” Said Je­sus: “If you truly want to find God, that de­sire is in it­self ev­i­dence that you have al­ready found him. Your trou­ble is not that you can­not find God, for the Fa­ther has al­ready found you; your trou­ble is sim­ply that you do not know God. Have you not read in the Prophet Jeremiah, ‘You shall seek me and find me when you shall search for me with all your heart’? And again, does not this same prophet say: ‘And I will give you a heart to know me, that I am the Lord, and you shall be­long to my peo­ple, and I will be your God’? And have you not also read in the Scrip­tures where it says: ‘He looks down upon men, and if any will say: I have sinned and per­verted that which was right, and it prof­ited me not, then will God de­liver that man’s soul from dark­ness, and he shall see the light’?” And Ezra found God and to the sat­is­fac­tion of his soul. Later, this Jew, in as­so­ci­a­tion with a well-to-do Greek pros­e­lyte, built the first Chris­tian church in Syra­cuse.

• said human heart is deceitful

143:2.5“Many times, when you have done evil, you have thought to charge up your acts to the in­flu­ence of the evil one when in re­al­ity you have but been led astray by your own nat­u­ral ten­den­cies. Did not the Prophet Jeremiah long ago tell you that the hu­man heart is de­ceit­ful above all things and some­times even des­per­ately wicked? How easy for you to be­come self-de­ceived and thereby fall into fool­ish fears, divers lusts, en­slav­ing plea­sures, mal­ice, envy, and even venge­ful ha­tred!

• Jesus quoted

145:2.5“But even this is not a new idea. Many of the spir­i­tu­ally minded among you have known this truth, inas­much as some of the proph­ets have so in­structed you. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures where the Prophet Jeremiah says: ‘In those days they shall no more say, the fa­thers have eaten sour grapes and the chil­dren’s teeth are set on edge. Ev­ery man shall die for his own in­iq­uity; ev­ery man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. Be­hold, the days shall come when I will make a new covenant with my peo­ple, not ac­cord­ing to the covenant which I made with their fa­thers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, but ac­cord­ing to the new way. I will even write my law in their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my peo­ple. In that day they shall not say, one man to his neigh­bor, do you know the Lord? Nay! For they shall all know me per­son­ally, from the least to the great­est.’

• Jesus quoted

149:6.12“Well did the Prophet Jeremiah de­scribe many mor­tals when he said: ‘You are near God in the mouth but far from him in the heart.’ And have you not also read that dire­ful warn­ing of the prophet who said: ‘The priests thereof teach for hire, and the proph­ets thereof di­vine for money. At the same time they pro­fess piety and pro­claim that the Lord is with them.’ Have you not been well warned against those who ‘speak peace to their neigh­bors when mis­chief is in their hearts,’ those who ‘flat­ter with the lips while the heart is given to dou­ble-deal­ing’? Of all the sor­rows of a trust­ing man, none are so ter­ri­ble as to be ‘wounded in the house of a trusted friend.’”

• Jesus quoted

153:2.2And when Je­sus had fin­ished this read­ing, he turned to the Proph­ets and read from Jeremiah: “‘If you will not hear­ken to the words of my ser­vants the proph­ets whom I have sent you, then will I make this house like Shiloh, and I will make this city a curse to all the na­tions of the earth.’ And the priests and the teach­ers heard Jeremiah speak these words in the house of the Lord. And it came to pass that, when Jeremiah had made an end of speak­ing all that the Lord had com­manded him to speak to all the peo­ple, the priests and teach­ers laid hold of him, say­ing, ‘You shall surely die.’ And all the peo­ple crowded around Jeremiah in the house of the Lord. And when the princes of Ju­dah heard these things, they sat in judg­ment on Jeremiah. Then spoke the priests and the teach­ers to the princes and to all the peo­ple, say­ing: ‘This man is wor­thy to die, for he has proph­e­sied against our city, and you have heard him with your own ears.’ Then spoke Jeremiah to all the princes and to all the peo­ple: ‘The Lord sent me to proph­esy against this house and against this city all the words which you have heard. Now, there­fore, amend your ways and re­form your do­ings and obey the voice of the Lord your God that you may es­cape the evil which has been pro­nounced against you. As for me, be­hold I am in your hands. Do with me as seems good and right in your eyes. But know you for cer­tain that, if you put me to death, you shall bring in­no­cent blood upon your­selves and upon this peo­ple, for of a truth the Lord has sent me to speak all these words in your ears.’

• sunk in mire of filthy dungeon

153:2.3“The priests and teach­ers of that day sought to kill Jeremiah, but the judges would not con­sent, al­beit, for his words of warn­ing, they did let him down by cords in a filthy dun­geon un­til he sank in mire up to his armpits. That is what this peo­ple did to the Prophet Jeremiah when he obeyed the Lord’s com­mand to warn his breth­ren of their im­pend­ing po­lit­i­cal down­fall. To­day, I de­sire to ask you: What will the chief priests and re­li­gious lead­ers of this peo­ple do with the man who dares to warn them of the day of their spir­i­tual doom? Will you also seek to put to death the teacher who dares to pro­claim the word of the Lord, and who fears not to point out wherein you refuse to walk in the way of light which leads to the en­trance to the king­dom of heaven?

• Jesus quoted

165:4.8Then, as the peo­ple went down by the river to wit­ness the bap­tiz­ing, the first man came pri­vately to Je­sus about his in­her­i­tance inas­much as he thought Je­sus had dealt harshly with him; and when the Mas­ter had again heard him, he replied: “My son, why do you miss the op­por­tu­nity to feed upon the bread of life on a day like this in or­der to in­dulge your cov­etous dis­po­si­tion? Do you not know that the Jew­ish laws of in­her­i­tance will be justly ad­min­is­tered if you will go with your com­plaint to the court of the syn­a­gogue? Can you not see that my work has to do with mak­ing sure that you know about your heav­enly in­her­i­tance? Have you not read the Scrip­ture: ‘There is he who waxes rich by his wari­ness and much pinch­ing, and this is the por­tion of his re­ward: Whereas he says, I have found rest and now shall be able to eat con­tin­u­ally of my goods, yet he knows not what time shall bring upon him, and also that he must leave all these things to oth­ers when he dies.’ Have you not read the com­mand­ment: ‘You shall not covet.’ And again, ‘They have eaten and filled them­selves and waxed fat, and then did they turn to other gods.’ Have you read in the Psalms that ‘the Lord ab­hors the cov­etous,’ and that ‘the lit­tle a righ­teous man has is bet­ter than the riches of many wicked.’ ‘If riches in­crease, set not your heart upon them.’ Have you read where Jeremiah said, ‘Let not the rich man glory in his riches’; and Eze­kiel spoke truth when he said, ‘With their mouths they make a show of love, but their hearts are set upon their own self­ish gain.’”