Criswell Theological Review 5.2 (1991) 171-182
[Copyright © 1991 by
digitally prepared for use at
Gordon and
THE CHARACTER OF JEREMIAH*
RONALD YOUNGBLOOD
It is not an
easy task to characterize most of the so-called "writing
prophets'"
of the OT. To learn something about a man's characteris-
tics, his
likes and dislikes, his emotional struggles, his spiritual quali-
ties, his
relationships with his family, and so forth, requires a certain
minimum
amount of biographical details, recorded either by the man
himself or
by one of his friends or disciples. Such details are plentiful
for men
like Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, or David, so that we
have no
particular difficulty in evaluating their personalities with
some
degree of confidence.
But when we begin thinking about the lives of men like Isaiah,
Ezekiel,
Joel, Habakkuk, or Zechariah, the number of biographical de-
tails
suddenly shrinks considerably by comparison. And yet we would
have to
confess that Isaiah and Joel and Zechariah were fully as great
in
their own spheres as Abraham and Joseph and David were in
theirs. In
fact, if we only knew something of the personal experiences
and
inner struggles of the writing prophets, I am sure that we would
discover
incidents and events just as glamorous and exciting as those
in the
lives of their more famous predecessors.
The matter boils down to this: in the case of the writing prophets
the
message, rather than the man, is the important thing. Isaiah and
Joel and
Zechariah and the rest of the canonical prophets spoke the
words of
God as they, the prophets, were carried along by the Holy
Spirit to
pronounce God's blessing on the righteous and his judgment
against
sinners. In any theatrical production "the play's the thing,'"
and
whenever one of the actors or actresses tries to upstage another
*This is the second of two lectures read at the Criswell Lecture
Series, Criswell
College,
January 1990.
172 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
or to
attract undue attention to himself or herself in some other way,
the
message or moral of that production has a harder time getting
through to
the audience.
The same holds true for a prophecy, or a sermon, or a Sunday
school
lesson. When the personality of the speaker in any way blocks
the
content of his message, he defeats his own purpose. More than
once I
have heard Billy Graham deplore the fact that the media of our
country
devote more space to descriptions of him, his organization,
and his
family than they do to the Word that he preaches. As for him-
self, he
is careful always to give God the glory for his success, and in
interviews he
concentrates his comments on the Bible rather than on
Billy.
Graham knows full well, as he himself has stated repeatedly,
that as
soon as God and his Word are pushed into the background,
Billy Graham
will be through as an evangelist, and the cause of
Christ will
suffer untold damage. As witnesses for the Lord Jesus in
every walk
of life, we are to adorn the gospel, not ourselves.
Having said this, however, I do not mean to suggest that there is
nothing of
value to be gained in learning the basic details of a preach-
er's life or of a prophet's life. If a man is
a believing witness and prac-
tices what he preaches, knowing something of
his background may
actually help
us to understand his message better. What I am saying
is that
there is nothing inherently foolish in reading a biography of
Billy
Graham; it is only the exaggerated or merely curious interest in
his life
that is unproductive.
In turning, then, to the prophetic writings of the OT, we are a
little
disappointed when we find a scarcity of material concerning the
lives of
the prophets themselves. But there is one notable exception to
this
general rule: a number of autobiographical notes on the life of
Jeremiah have been preserved for us. In fact, the amount of informa-
tion we have concerning Jeremiah's life makes
it impossible to de-
scribe the
man fully in a paper such as this. In short, more is known
of
Jeremiah's life than of that of any other OT writing prophet,
because
throughout the Book of Jeremiah the writer gave us numer-
ous clues concerning himself and his times.
In the case of Jeremiah,
then,
surfeit rather than scarcity is our problem--or at least so it
would
seem.
In recent years, a skeptical approach to the question of the
liter-
ary identity of the man called Jeremiah has
set up a roadblock in the
path of
those who might wish to undertake a summary of the details
of his
life. At the outset we are obliged to admit the possibility that
when the
pronoun "I" is used in the Psalms, it may on occasion repre-
sent the
worshiping community of
that
praise hymn, lament, or thanksgiving hymn is expressing not
Ronald
Youngblood: THE CHARACTER OF JEREMIAH 173
only his
own joy, sorrow, or gratitude but is also representing or act-
ing as proxy for--or in behalf of--his fellow
believers. In other words,
the
psalmist's "I" may in fact be intended by the author himself as a
communal
"I." The Book of Psalms was, after all, the main hymnbook
in
ancient
resides in
its unique ability to voice the deepest religious experiences
of Everyman.
To paraphrase the comic strip character Pogo: "We have
met the
psalmist, and he is us."
Building on the widely accepted, communal "I" that
appears here
and
there in the Psalms, some scholars have suggested--indeed, pro-
moted--the idea that the communal "I"
occurs in the prophetic corpus
as
well. A prime example is the approach of T. Polk,l who discusses in
turgid
prose and at numbing length what it is that Jeremiah means
when he
uses the "language of the self." As the psalmist's first-person
singular
pronoun may be intended as a figure of speech for a plural or
collective
unity, so also the prophetic "I" in Jeremiah is ambiguous
and may
betoken bigger fish to fry. Rather than retaining its most ob-
vious meaning as the best way of stating the
self-identification of the
prophet-like
the covenant "I, Shuppiluliuma," in the
ancient Hittite
treaty
formularies or the epistolary "I, King Artaxerxes,"
in the OT
(Ezra 7:21)
or "I, Paul," in the NT (I Cor
Jeremiah is
often to be interpreted as a community "we," as a meta-
phor for communal identity, as a paradigm for
the existential Angst
of
I wish to observe immediately that Polk in no way denies the ex-
istence of the historical prophet Jeremiah.
Rather, he insists that
at one moment Jeremiah may speak in a voice that is purely his own
(10.19b), while at the next speak as or with the voice of the
people (10.20,
23-25; 14.7-9, 19-22; 8.14-15), and in the next speak in a voice indistin-
guishable from Yhwh's
(14.17-18; 9.1-5). We have also maintained that,
whenever he speaks, he speaks qua prophet. It is therefore inappropri-
ate to refer his speech to his "private" experience, or to
explain it in
terms of innate temperament or spiritual genius. Jeremiah's personal
and prophetic identity are one.2
With some of what Polk says I have no quarrel, and with a few of
his
examples in the previous quotation I am in complete agreement.
When
Jeremiah uses "we," as in 14:7-9, surely he identifies himself and
his sins
with those of his people, and his life and destiny are bound up
with
theirs. But other verses that Polk cites do not in fact contain the
1 T.
Polk, The Prophetic Persona: Jeremiah and
the Language of the Self (Journal
for the
Study of the Old Testament-Supplement 32;
2 Ibid., 125.
174 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
ambiguity that
he sees in them. To say that in 9:1-5 Jeremiah speaks "in
a
voice indistinguishable from" that of the Lord is, in my judgment,
simply to misdivide the literary units. Jer
classic
passages traditionally used to characterize Jeremiah as the
weeping
prophet, while beginning at 9:3 the Lord speaks.
Despite basic methodological flaws in the "prophetic
persona" the-
ory, however, a not insignificant number of
scholars have voted in its
favor. To
illustrate the nature of the debate, I call your attention to the
two most
stimulating full-scale commentaries written on Jeremiah in
the past
few years: those of R. P. Carroll3 and W. L. Holladay.4
Carroll,
though
perhaps not going quite so far as to consign the prophet Jere-
miah to the make-believe world of fictional
characters, says of him that
"the 'historical' Jeremiah disappears behind the activities
of redactional
circles and
levels of tradition which have created the words and story
of
Jeremiah ben Hilkiah of
Anathoth!"5
vigorously affinns the flesh-and-blood, real-life, historical
existence of
Jeremiah
from beginning to end, although he adopts an alternate chro-
nology for that life that puts his birth, rather
than his call in 627 B.C.6
(The latter
position remains the dominant one, shared by formidable
scholars like
H. H. Rowley7 and J. Bright8 as well as by myself.9)
It goes without saying, then, that I have very little patience
with
reductionist views of the space-time existence of a
great prophet
named
Jeremiah, who ministered in and around
last
forty years of its death throes that culminated in the destruction of
its
temple and the dispersion of its people in 586 B.C. When viewed
historically, Jeremiah can be demonstrated to have handed down to us
the
fullest account of a prophet's life and character, the fullest account
by far,
to be found anywhere in Scripture. In this regard, attention is
often
focused (and rightly so, in my judgment) on the so-called "con-
fessions" of Jeremiah (Jer
3 R P.
Carroll, Jeremiah: A Commentary (Old Testament Library;
4 W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah 1 (Hermeneia;
Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986).
5 Carroll, 48 (italics his).
6
1990) 13-14.
7 H.
H. Rowley, "The Early Prophecies of Jeremiah in Their Setting," in A Prophet
to the
Nations: Essays in Jeremiah Studies (ed. L. G. Perdue and B. W. Kovacs;
8 J.
Bright, Jeremiah: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (AB 21; Garden
City,
NJ: Doubleday, 1965) xxviii, xxix, xxxvi.
9 R. F.
Youngblood, "The Prophet of Loneliness,"
(May 1965) 15.
Ronald
Youngblood: THE CHARACTER OF JEREMIAH 175
and
20:7-18).10 For the sake of brevity, I will confine my summary of
various
aspects of Jeremiah's character to an examination of the first
two
confessions (
of them
constitutes a dialogue between Jeremiah and the Lord.
We observe that the "confessions" of Jeremiah are not
merely la-
ments, as we might expect from an inherently
timid man. Jeremiah,
often
called the "weeping prophet," might in fact better be called the
"groaning prophet"--or, better still, the
"screaming prophet." His con-
fessions were complaints, what the Germans call Klagen. On occasion
their
ferocity expanded them into Anklagen--i.e.,
"accusations,"
"charges brought in a lawsuit." Though Jeremiah was
timid at the
time of
his call, God caused him to become a tower of strength--"a
fortified
city, an iron pillar and a bronze wall," to quote the divine
word to
Jeremiah in
ous ways in Jeremiah's confessions, in
Jeremiah's complaints.
A subtly different metaphor may be implied in the name "Jere-
miah" itself, which means something like
"the LORD hurls/launches."
Jeremiah was
the world's first guided missile, aimed by God at
specific
targets and with pinpoint accuracy. His ministry was success-
ful (from God's standpoint at least), a fact
that not only provoked re-
taliation from Jeremiah's enemies but also provided
additional
ammunition for
his confessions and complaints. His sense of freedom
in
"talking back" to God is similar in many respects to that of Moses
(Num
11:11-15), in whose prophetic tradition Jeremiah found himself.
Jer
Jeremiah (by
the "men of Anathoth" in
and
"family" in 12:6). The two complaints are remarkably similar in
other ways
as well, as my analysis will seek to demonstrate. In terms
of
structure, for example,
evoking the
Lord's first reply in 11:21-23, while the second prophetic
complaint and
its divine response appear in 12:1-4 and 12:5-6 respec-
tively. Furthermore, in each of the two complaints
Jeremiah quotes
the
words of his enemies (11:19b; 12:4b).
It was only after the Lord had "revealed" (literally,
"caused to
know")
the enemies' plot to Jeremiah that he "knew" it (
that time
he did not "realize" (literally, "know") it (
the
Sovereign Lord shares his plans with his servants the prophets can
10
Although my list of six "confessions" is typical, there is no general
agreement
concerning
either their parameters or their number. A recent study, for example, argues
for only
five confessional units (by combining the first two) and shortens the sixth (by
excluding
and Role
in Chapters 1-25
(SBLDS 94; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988).
176 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
they
possibly know the future and their part in it (Amos 3:7). At the
same
time, the true prophet rests content in the perception that God
always
"know(s)" him in the bond of covenant relationship (Jer 12:3).
Sensing himself to be "like a gentle lamb led to the
slaughter" be-
cause of
his enemies' schemes (
to turn
the tables and "drag them off like sheep to the slaughter" (12:3).
Accounts of
imprecation--curses against one's enemies--are a frequent
feature of
Jeremiah's confessions (cf., e.g.,
the OT
with unsettling frequency, and cause no end of consternation
to
believers on the one hand and no end of "I told you so" glee to un-
believers on
the other hand. Although substantial treatises have been
written on
this subject, let the apologetic of J. A. Thompson (in his com-
mentary on
The persecutors who would seek to harm Jeremiah were really
seeking to
harm God's spokesman and therefore to harm God. The hour called for a
display of Yahweh's sovereignty over those who
persecuted his servant. It
is not a case of a petty vendetta waged against Jeremiah's
persecutors, but
rather a display of Yahweh's positive action to
restrain the evildoers and
to enable his servant to continue the task to which Yahweh had
called
him. It was, after all, for Yahweh's sake that the prophet suffered
the re-
buffs of his persecutors. . . . There is a boldness about such words
which
only those in a very close relationship with Yahweh may show.11
Jeremiah complains to God that the men of Anathoth
not only
want to
destroy him ("the tree and its fruit") but also to wipe out all
reference to
him ("his name") and thus in effect to nullify his entire
ministry (
his
enemies "grow and bear fruit"--and this as a result of God's hav-
ing "planted them" (12:2)!
Convinced that the Lord judges “righ-
teously" when he commits his “cause" to
him (
knowing that
the Lord "sees" him (12:3), Jeremiah wants to "see" di-
vine
vengeance upon his enemies (
and
mind, the thoughts, not only of the men of Anathoth (
also of
the prophet from Anathoth (12:3), and therefore the
innocent
Jeremiah has
an airtight case against his guilty enemies. Jeremiah
knows,
deep down inside, that the hearts of his fellow citizens are far
from God
(
11 J. A
Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah (NICOT;
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980)
395-96. For a recent sensitive treatment of imprecation in the
Psalms see E. H. Peter-
son, Answering
God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer (
1989) 93-103, 149.
Ronald
Youngblood: THE CHARACTER OF JEREMIAH 177
The Lord's response to Jeremiah's complaint (
to
bring disaster on the men of Anathoth. Though they
had threat-
ened Jeremiah with death because he was
prophesying in the Lord's
name and
therefore presumably endangering their livelihood as
priests,
they and their families would feel the stroke of death by
sword and
famine.
Jeremiah's second complaint (12:1-4) and the divine response to it
(12:5-6)
begin with the age-old question, "Why do the wicked pros-
per?"
How can the justice of God permit such blatant injustice? Since
evil
continues to exist, it is obvious either that God cannot or will not
eradicate it.
If he cannot, he is not omnipotent. If he will not, he is not
supremely
good. Like Jeremiah, all of us struggle with such antino-
mies. The sovereignty of God and the free will
of human beings, if
both are
to have full sway, must often be viewed as remaining in par-
adoxical tension. Philosophical dualism is not the
answer, since the
end is
not in dispute: righteousness will ultimately win the victory
and
overcome the world. In the meantime, our small peephole will
keep us
from clearly seeing the big picture, and we will continue to
look for
better--if only partial--answers (for example, that the pa-
tience and mercy of God give the evildoer time
to repent). Perhaps we
can
learn to rest in the realization that although we may not under-
stand, it
should be enough for us to know that our loving heavenly
Father
understands.
Continuing his complaint against his enemies with dogged per-
sistence, Jeremiah pleads with God to "set
them apart for the day of
slaughter"
(12:3). Since they had refused to be set apart for God's glory,
they
should be set apart for God's wrath.12 Jeremiah, in using the verb
"set apart," perhaps reflects on the fact that God had
"set" him "apart"
before he
was born (1:5).
In the tradition of Job, the Lord's answer to Jeremiah begins with
questions
(12:5) designed to steel him for the more difficult burdens
he will
yet be asked to bear. Though weary now, Jeremiah will be-
come
wearier still, and God simply tells him what he probably al-
ready
knows: not to trust the members of his family (12:6). To his lack
of
necessary information, his pursuit by neighbors and relatives, his
perception of
divine injustice, his high dudgeon at the prosperity of
the
wicked, his puzzlement in the face of divine inaction, his impa-
tience with divine agendas, his being told that
things are sure to get
worse--to
these problems will be added a few more, as the record of
his next
confession reveals.
12 Cf. similarly S. R Driver, The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah (
ner's, 1906) 71.
178 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
The two confessions found in
gin with
Jeremiah's complaint and continue in sequence with God's
answer,
Jeremiah's complaint, and God's answer, as already noted.
The
confession recorded in
complaint (v
10), God's answer (vv 11-14), Jeremiah's complaint (vv 15-
18), God's
answer (vv 19-21). We are thus reminded once again that
Jeremiah's
confessions are often examples of prayer as dialogue be-
tween a supplicant and his God. Let us turn our
attention to the sec-
ond divine-human interchange in this
confession:
Jeremiah begins (
in a
position to "understand" (literally, "know") him and what
he is go-
ing through, an emphasis seen also in a
previous confession (12:3). The
prophet then
states his personal agenda in three imperatives: "re-
member
me," "care for me," "avenge me." The last of the verbs
re-
prises his earlier desire for divine vengeance
on his enemies (
Knowing from
experience how patient God often is with evildoers
("You
are long-suffering"; cf. Exod 34:6, "slow
to anger," where the un-
derlying Hebrew is the same), Jeremiah pleads that
the Lord not
"take" him "away," an expression often
referring to termination of life
on this
earth and translation to the afterlife (Gen
His
persecutors are seeking his life, and he pleads with God not to
grant them
success in that endeavor. Again using the verb "know"
("think of”), Jeremiah reminds the Lord that the reproach he
suffers is
due not
to his own folly but to his divine commission. It is "for your
sake,"
he says to God, that his enemies are bent on killing him.
Indeed, the reproaches and insults that come
to him on a daily ba-
sis are
a direct result of his proclamation of the word of God (20:8). Re-
ferring back to his original divine call, when
the Lord had put his
words in
Jeremiah's mouth (1:9), the prophet says that he "ate them"
(
his call
(Ezek 2:7-3:3). Just as in Ezekiel's case the scroll he "ate" was
as
"sweet at honey" in his mouth (3:3), so also the Lord's words were
the
"joy" and "delight" of his heart (Jer
later
rebuked Satan by reminding him, "Man does not live on bread
alone, but
on every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matt 4:4).
The law from
the Lord's mouth was more precious to the psalmist
than
"thousands of pieces of silver and gold" (Ps 119:72). And God
would soon
remind Jeremiah that if the prophet's words were worthy,
he
himself would be the Lord's "mouth" ("spokesman," Jer
A word that comes from God is always worth proclaiming faith-
fully: it
is like fire, like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces, like the
best of
grain from a bountiful harvest, (
Lord's words
were Jeremiah's joy contrasts sharply with the reproach
Ronald
Youngblood: THE CHARACTER OF JEREMIAH 179
that he
suffered because of them. His joy also forms a contrast with
the
"indignation" (v 17) that he felt "at the grievous sins of his
people."13
Jer
that he
found any joy in his calling whatever. Yet he declares that it
was so:
he was happy to know that he was God's man."14
Verse 17 tells us that Jeremiah never had the experience of
sitting
among
"revelers." It is possible that the "revelers" were
"not making
merry in
general but. . . at (Jeremiah's) expense, or at the expense of
his
message,"15 since he complains in 20:7 of being an object of
"ridi-
cule" (the underlying Hebrew root is the
same as that of "reveler"). But
because of
the immediate context, the word is more likely a reference
to the
"house of feasting" mentioned in 16:8, where Jeremiah states
that God
told him not to "sit down" there (cf. "never sat" in
this
connection it is instructive to compare Ps 26:3-5, where the psalm-
ist refuses to "sit with deceitful men.
. . and . . . the wicked."
Where Jeremiah never sat is balanced, as it were, by where he
did sit:
"alone." Jeremiah may aptly be characterized as the prophet of
loneliness. For
example, he remained a bachelor throughout his life.
"The
word of the LORD came to me: 'You must not marry and have
sons or
daughters in this place'" (16:1-2).
The Lord gave Jeremiah a good reason why he was not to marry.
Hard and
difficult times were coming, and his family might be killed
in the
siege of
want to
subject a wife and her children to the suffering that his
prophet
would have to undergo. But all of this must have been of
little
comfort to Jeremiah, because if by nature and temperament any-
one ever
needed a wife and family it was he. In spite of everything,
however, he
was forced to go through life alone. His neighbors and
relatives turned
against him, just at the times when he needed them
most; His
true friends can be counted on the fingers of one hand:
Ahikam, Ebed-Melek,
Baruch. And even
from these he was separated
for long
periods of time by being placed in various prisons and dun-
geons, although his only crime was that he
continually issued warn-
ings about the coming judgment of God. Each
successive king after
Josiah
considered Jeremiah an enemy of the court, although if they
had only
known the truth, they would have realized that Jeremiah
was by
far the best friend they had.
But nobody likes a prophet of doom, and the minister who persis-
tently lashes out against the evils in his
community will never be the
13 Thompson, 397.
14 J. Bright, "A Prophet's Lament and Its Answer: Jeremiah
15:10-21," in A Prophet
to the
Nations, 330.
15
180 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
most
popular man in town. He will never be a "regular guy"; he will
not be a
prominent socialite; the local lodges and services clubs will
not
usually invite him to join their organizations. We can be sure that
Jeremiah's
ideas for social reform and spiritual renewal were far too
radical for
him to be elected to the Anathoth chapter of the
Lions Club.
Nevertheless, everyone must have companionship. Without a
friend, any
of us would dry up inside; at best we would become ec-
centric, at
worst insane. Jeremiah doubtless knew this, and so he built
up
extensive spiritual reserves that served him well when he was in
prison. He
knew that God was a friend who would never fail him, be-
cause at
the very beginning of his ministry the Lord had said to him,
"I am
with you and will rescue you" (1:8, 19).
Just as in the life of Jesus, so also in the life of Jeremiah, loneli-
ness was
accompanied by pain and suffering, both inward and out-
ward.
"Why?" (
pain
never end, while you, O Lord--you who are supposed to be a
spring of
ever-flowing, never-failing, living water (
cially the simile in Amos
"like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails"?
Jeremiah has now
clearly and
decisively moved from Klage,
"complaint," to Anklage,
"accusation." What he says to God teeters perilously on
the edge of
blasphemy. He
questions whether the Lord is a liar, just as in 20:7 he
complains that
the Lord has "deceived" him--a verb that elsewhere
means
"seduced" (Exod
at Jer 20:7)--by forcing him into the prophetic office.
But God is good, great, and gracious. He answers his distressed
and
distraught servant with words that are remarkably gentle and
healing in
their intended effect. Knowing that Jeremiah is already ex-
periencing agony and confusion beyond belief, the
Lord brings relief
and
solace.
He begins his response, however, by reminding Jeremiah that he
has
sinned and that a change of heart and attitude is thus called for.
Over and
over the Lord, through Jeremiah, had pleaded with his people
to
"repent" ("return"; e.g.,
uses the
same terminology as he makes repentance a condition of Jere-
miah's restoration to divine favor and service.
"Repent" and "restore" in
as we
return to God will he cause us to return to him and to his minis-
try;
only as God's people return to him will he return to them (Zech 1:3).
In the case
of Jeremiah, "'the prophet of repentance' in the Old Testa-
ment,"16
his demand that others repent comes home to roost.
16 J.
P. Hyatt, Jeremiah: Prophet of Courage and Hope (
1958) 94.
Ronald
Youngblood: THE CHARACTER OF JEREMIAH 181
There is no reason to doubt that Jeremiah in fact repented on
this
occasion and that the experience resulted in a second call to
prophesy. The
Lord of the second chance told Jeremiah that if he ut-
tered words that were "worthy," he
would once again be God's
"spokesman," God's "mouth" (
then
"turn" ("return") to him (to hear God's voice), but he was
not to
"turn" ("return") to them (as though he needed
to listen to the ridi-
cule--or heed the advice--of sinful
Israelites).
Verse 20 makes it certain that this third confession leads to a
re-
newal of Jeremiah's call to be a prophet.
Virtually every word in the
verse
echoes the language found in the first chapter of the book. The
Lord
promises to "make" ("give") Jeremiah a "fortified wall
of bronze"
(cf.
most
verbatim. Jeremiah's three self-seeking and petulant requests in
overbalanced by the Lord's three final guarantees in
rescue
you," "I will save you," "I will redeem you."
Jeremiah has been called "the most human and tragic prophet
of
all the
Old Testament story."17 He "continued to meet persecution,
and
continued to see his word rejected, to the end of his life."18
He ex-
perienced very few moments of rest and relaxation
and security after
being
called to be a prophet. His life was one round of persecution
and
imprisonment and beating and anguish after another. He
con-
fessed many times to being harassed and
tormented. But his persis-
tence in his calling even after the fall of
his own
deep conviction about Yahweh's promise."19
In the confessions of Jeremiah we encounter "the entire spec-
trum of human, emotional distress: fear of
shame, fear of failure, loss
of
strength, doubting of faith, loneliness, pity, disappointment turning
to
hostility towards God."20 But the confessions "were not
the words
of a
quitter! Jeremiah's whole life seems to have been lived in tension
with his
calling. The only way in which he could have put an end to
that
tension would have been to quit the prophetic office--and that he
never
did."21 He may have wanted to on more than one
occasion--but
he
never did. Jeremiah's qualities of character remain a standing re-
buke to any believer who excuses himself from
serving God because
of
personal disinclination or incapacity. "It was precisely this man
who, for
all his weakness and in his weakness, was God's chosen
17 Rowley, 61.
18
Bright, "Prophet's Lament," 337.
19 Thompson, 149.
20 G. von Rad, "The Confessions of
Jeremiah," in A Prophet to the Nations, 346.
21
Bright, "Prophet's Lament," 334-35.
182 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
instrument to
speak his word, his judging and saving word, to his
people."22
The prophet Jeremiah learned the meaning of obedience, felt the
discomforts of
anguish, and endured the trials of loneliness; but
through it
all the Lord was steadfast and Jeremiah was satisfied. In
greater or
lesser degree, we who love Jesus Christ with all our hearts
and want
to serve him to the very core of our being must learn the
same
lessons. May we glorify the Savior in learning them!
Jesus! What a Friend for sinners!
Jesus! Lover of my soul!'
Friends may fail me, foes assail me;
He, my Savior, makes me whole.23
22 Ibid, 333.
23 J.
W. Chapman, "Our Great Saviour," in Worship
and Service Hymnal (
Hope, 1966), no. 121.
This
material is cited with gracious permission from:
The
www.criswell.edu
Please
report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt at:
thildebrandt@gordon.edu