Jeremiah1chapter 1

Jeremiah 1:1-4

The book opens by naming its author twice over, the words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests of Anathoth in Benjamin, so a priest's son becomes the prophet who watches the priesthood fail. The reign markers set the whole book on a timeline that never loosens its grip, the thirteenth year of Josiah, forward through Jehoiakim, to the eleventh year of Zedekiah and the carrying away of Jerusalem in the fifth month. Forty years of ministry are compressed into these opening verses, spanning a king who tore his robes over the found law and a king who cut Jeremiah's own scroll with a penknife, before the word of the Lord comes to him directly.

Jeremiah 1:5

The call precedes the man's own existence, before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, the strongest prenatal calling text in Scripture, stated plainly for what it is. Ordination as prophet unto the nations follows the knowing and the sanctifying rather than the reverse, so the office rests on God's initiative and not on any qualification Jeremiah could offer. The bench reads the verse alongside the servant songs of Isaiah and Paul's own account of being set apart from his mother's womb, a pattern of calling that runs before birth through both Testaments.

Jeremiah 1:6-8

Ah, Lord God!: Jeremiah's protest, Ah, Lord God, behold, I cannot speak, for I am a child, sets him beside Moses at the burning bush and Isaiah before the seraphim, each man's first word to his call a plea of insufficiency, as the older commentators note. The Lord answers the objection rather than the excuse, say not, I am a child, for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, the sending itself becoming the qualification. Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee closes the exchange with the promise that will be tested through every trial and stocks the book goes on to record.

Jeremiah 1:9-10

The commission is sealed by touch, the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth, and I have put my words in thy mouth, an ordination scene the bench sets alongside the seraph's coal at Isaiah's lips. The six verbs of verse 10 give the whole book its program in one sentence, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant, four verbs of judgment against two of restoration. Jeremiah's authority runs over nations and kingdoms though he never leaves Judah, a prophet to the world from inside a single collapsing city.

Jeremiah 1:11-12

The first sign is a wordplay Hebrew carries and English cannot, the almond, shaqed, is named for blooming earliest and watching for spring, and the Lord answers, I will hasten, shoqed, my word to perform it. The rod of an almond tree becomes a pledge that the word just spoken over Jeremiah's mouth will not lie dormant. Gill and the writers after him read the sign as the book's own promise of its reliability, watched over by the God who named the tree that watches for the first bloom.

Jeremiah 1:13-16

The second sign is a boiling pot tipped toward the observer, its face toward the north, and the Lord's own reading follows at once, out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land. The threat is named with precision, the families of the kingdoms of the north setting their thrones at the gates of Jerusalem, the invasion Babylon will carry out described before Babylon is named in the book. The ground of the judgment is stated in the same breath, they have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods, so the pot answers the idolatry the book will spend fifty chapters exposing.

Jeremiah 1:17-19

The call closes with a soldier's order, gird up thy loins, and arise, matched by a fortification promise, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brasen walls against the whole land. The opposition is named at full breadth, against the kings of Judah, against the princes, the priests, and the people, every rank of the nation Jeremiah will spend his ministry confronting. The promise that closes the chapter is not that the fight will be avoided, they shall fight against thee, but that it will not be won against him, for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee.