Jeremiah 1:1-3

PART TWO

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CALL OF THE PROPHET

Jeremiah 1:1-19

The prophets of Israel were launched upon their prophetic career by a definite call. Amos, the herdsman from Tekoa, declared that God took him from following the flock and inducted him into the prophetic ministry (Amos 7:14-15). He felt a divine compulsion to preach (Amos 3:8). Isaiah, the aristocrat, saw a vision of divine glory and heard the voice of his God calling for a messenger. Isaiah knew that the call was meant for him and so he volunteered: Here am I! Send me! (Isaiah 6). Ezekiel saw the dazzling and mysterious throne-chariot of God and from this experience he came to realize that he was to preach the word of God (Ezekiel 2:8 ff.). An essential mark of a true prophet and a primary element in the prophetic consciousness[93] was the assurance of a divine call. Logically and chronologically the prophet's career begins with a call.[94] It is therefore most appropriate that the account of the call of Jeremiah stands first in the book.

[93] R. B. Y. Scott, The Relevance of the Prophets (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1944), p. 88.

[94] Lindsay B. Longacre, A Prophet of the Spirit (New York: Methodist Book Concern, 1922), p. 92.

I. PREFACE Jeremiah 1:1-3

TRANSLATION

The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, of the priests which were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, (2) to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. (3) Also it came in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah son of Josiah, king of Judah, until Jerusalem was carried away captive in the fifth month.

COMMENTS

A great deal of information is packed into the brief preface with which the Book of Jeremiah opens. Most of this information has been sifted and weighed in the preceding pages. It remains here to briefly take note of the literary, personal, geographical and chronological data contained in the first three verses.
The superscription opens with the formal title of the book: The Words of Jeremiah. Though the book contains a great deal of biographical narrative the emphasis throughout is on the preaching of Jeremiah. He was first and foremost a preacher of the word.
Concerning Jeremiah personally the superscription relates three facts: (1) That he was of the family of Hilkiah; (2) that he was a priest before he was a prophet; and (3) that he lived in the priestly town of Anathoth. As a priestpossibly the son of the high priestthe prospect before him was that of a quiet and probably uneventful life teaching the Torah of God in his home town and serving periodically at the Temple in Jerusalem. But God had other plans for this timid young priest. From the obscurity of priestly service Jeremiah was catapulted by the call of God into a position of national and even international responsibility.
The main function of the preface is to sound forth the note that Jeremiah had received divine revelation. The phrase to whom the word of the Lord came describes that mysterious process by which the prophet of God received divine revelation. This expression occurs some twenty times in the Book of Jeremiah. Many attempts have been made to explain how God spoke to the prophets. Did the revelation come to the prophet while in a state of mental unconsciousness and inactivity?[95] Or did they receive their oracles while in complete possession of their rational consciousness?[96] It is interesting to notice that the New Testament is silent as to the manner in which God spoke to the prophets. peter declared: Men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit (II Peter I:21). To go beyond this simple statement is to become involved in useless speculation.

[95] Such was the position of Philo the Jewish philosopher who be lived that the prophet was to the Spirit what a flute would be to a musician. See Harry A. Wolf son, Philo (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947), II, 28-30.

[96] Such was the position of Origen, the Christian Apologist. See Origen against Celsus; The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), IV, 611-13.

The superscription is full of valuable chronological information. Three kings are named: Josiah, Jehoiakim and Zedekiah. Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin, both of whom reigned only a matter of months, are omitted. The year of Jeremiah's call is pin-pointed as the thirteenth year of king Josiah. This was one year after Josiah began to purge Jerusalem and Judah and five years before the discovery of the lost law book.

The superscription seems to imply that the ministry of Jeremiah terminated with the fall of Jerusalem in the eleventh year of Zedekiah. The problem is that Jeremiah continued to perform his prophetic duties for some time (possibly years) after the destruction of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 41-44). The solution to this problem probably lies in the fact that there was more than one edition of the Book of Jeremiah during and shortly after the lifetime of the prophet. See earlier discussion. It is of course possible that the superscription simply means that the active or official ministry of Jeremiah closed with the destruction of Jerusalem. A minister today who has officially retired and terminated his active ministry might still preach occasionally.