The Book of Jeremias (Jeremiah)

Jeremias is the second of the greater prophets, after Isaias and before Ezechiel and Daniel. Its 52 chapters and more than 1,300 verses make it one of the longest books of the Bible. It reads like the record of a man's life: oracles, visions, signs acted out in the streets, prayers wrung from a broken heart, and the history of Juda's last days. Each chapter page sets the Latin Vulgate beside the Douay-Rheims.

Who wrote the Book of Jeremias?

The Church has always received the book as the work of the prophet Jeremias himself, written with the help of his secretary Baruch. Its first verse names him: "The words of Jeremias the son of Helcias, of the priests that were in Anathoth, in the land of Benjamin" (Jeremias 1:1). He came of a priestly, though not high-priestly, family in a village a few miles north-east of Jerusalem. Like St John the Baptist after him, he was set apart before birth: "before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and made thee a prophet unto the nations" (1:5).

The book tells us how it was written. In the fourth year of King Joakim, Jeremias dictated all his prophecies to "Baruch the son of Nerias", who read the roll aloud in the Temple. The king cut it up and burnt it. Jeremias then "took another volume, and gave it to Baruch ... who wrote in it from the mouth of Jeremias all the words of the book which Joakim the king of Juda had burnt with fire: and there were added besides many more words than had been before" (Jeremias 36:32). The book grew with the ministry, which is why it is arranged partly by subject rather than by date. Baruch has his own Book of Baruch.

Chapter 51 closes with a note: "Thus far are the words of Jeremias" (51:64). Chapter 52 then retells the fall of Jerusalem almost word for word as in 4 Kings 24–25. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia regards it as "an addition of the post-Jeremianic period", set there to show the prophecies fulfilled.

Scripture itself treats the book as his. 2 Paralipomenon 36:21 speaks of "the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremias", Daniel read "by books" the seventy years foretold "to Jeremias the prophet" (Daniel 9:2), and St Matthew names him three times (Matthew 2:17, 16:14 and 27:9). The Pontifical Biblical Commission issued no decision on Jeremias. Many modern scholars hold that later editors shaped the prose sections; the Church holds the whole book inspired, and Jeremias, with Baruch his scribe, its author.

When was the Book of Jeremias written?

Jeremias was called "in the thirteenth year" of King Josias (1:2), which the Catholic Encyclopedia dates to 627 BC. He preached on under Joakim, Jechonias and Sedecias, "even unto the carrying away of Jerusalem captive" (1:3), and then followed the remnant of Juda into Egypt. For "nearly half a century, at least from 627 to 585", in the Encyclopedia's words, "he bore the burden of the prophetic office."

The book was thus written over his lifetime, in the late seventh and early sixth centuries before Christ. The last chapters come from Egypt, and the appendix ends with Jechonias brought out of prison in Babylon "in the seven and thirtieth year" of his captivity (52:31).

Kings and false prophets promised that the Temple could never fall; Jeremias was sent to tell them it would, and that the way to life was repentance and submission to Babylon. Nabuchodonosor took Jerusalem in the eleventh year of Sedecias and burnt the house of the Lord (39:2–8), in 586 BC by the Catholic Encyclopedia's reckoning.

What is the Book of Jeremias about? A summary

The book is not in chronological order; it is best read by its large blocks.

The call of the prophet (chapter 1)

In chapter 1 God calls a young man who protests, "Ah, ah, ah, Lord God: behold, I cannot speak, for I am a child" (1:6). He touches his mouth and sets him "over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root up, and pull down, and to waste, and to destroy, and to build, and to plant" (1:10). Two visions follow, a "rod watching" and a boiling caldron from the north, and a promise: "I have made thee this day a fortified city, and a pillar of iron, and a wall of brass" (1:18).

Warnings to Juda and Jerusalem (chapters 2–25)

In chapters 2–6 Israel is an unfaithful bride who has left the fountain of living water, and God calls her back: "Return, O rebellious Israel ... for I am holy, saith the Lord, and I will not be angry for ever" (3:12). The Temple sermon of chapter 7 attacks those who cried "The temple of the Lord" while they stole, murdered and served Baal, and asks whether God's house has become "a den of robbers" (7:11), words Our Lord took up when He cleansed the Temple (Matthew 21:13).

Then come the acted prophecies: a linen girdle left to rot by the Euphrates (chapter 13), the command not to marry (16:2), the potter at his wheel (chapter 18), and the earthen bottle broken at Topheth (chapter 19). Woven among them are the prophet's "confessions", prayers of anguish from the meek lamb of 11:19 to the cry of chapter 20. Chapters 21–24 judge the last kings and the false shepherds and promise a true King of David's line, and chapter 25 fixes the servitude: "all these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years" (25:11).

Conflict with priests, prophets and kings (chapters 26–29)

Put on trial for his life after the Temple sermon, Jeremias is saved by Ahicam the son of Saphan (chapter 26). He wears a yoke through Jerusalem to show that the nations must bow to Babylon; the false prophet Hananias breaks it, and dies within the year as Jeremias foretold (chapters 27–28). In chapter 29 he writes to the exiles already in Babylon to build houses, plant gardens and "seek the peace of the city" (29:7), for God will bring them home when the seventy years are past.

The Book of Consolation (chapters 30–33)

In the midst of the siege comes the most hopeful part of the book. Chapters 30–31 promise the return, Rachel comforted, and a New Covenant written on the heart. In chapter 32, with the Chaldeans at the walls and himself in prison, Jeremias buys his cousin's field at Anathoth, a pledge that "houses, and fields, and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land" (32:15). Chapter 33 promises the "bud of justice" for David. The Catholic Encyclopedia says these chapters proclaim the return from exile "as the type and pledge of the Messianic deliverance."

The siege, the fall and the flight into Egypt (chapters 34–45)

This is mostly history, much of it in Baruch's plain prose. The Rechabites keep their father's command while Juda will not keep God's (chapter 35); Joakim burns the roll (chapter 36). In the last siege Jeremias is beaten, imprisoned, and let down into a dungeon "wherein there was no water, but mire" (38:6), until Abdemelech the Ethiopian draws him out. Jerusalem falls (chapter 39); the prophet stays with the governor Godolias until Godolias is murdered (chapters 40–41). He warns the survivors, "Go ye not into Egypt" (42:19), but they carry him there, and in Egypt he rebukes their worship of the pagan "queen of heaven" (chapter 44). A word of comfort to Baruch closes the section (chapter 45).

Oracles against the nations (chapters 46–51)

As his call foretold, Jeremias prophesies "unto the nations": Egypt, the Philistines, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Cedar and Asor, and Elam (chapters 46–49). Last and longest comes Babylon, God's instrument of judgment, who will fall in her turn (chapters 50–51); the prophecy is to be read in Babylon and sunk in the Euphrates with a stone: "Thus shall Babylon sink" (51:64). In the Greek Septuagint these oracles stand after 25:13, partly in another order, and the Greek text as a whole is about one-eighth shorter. St Jerome translated from the Hebrew and, as his preface says, restored the order of the visions that was confused among Greek and Latin readers.

Historical appendix (chapter 52)

Chapter 52 gives the capture of Sedecias, the burning of the Temple, and the release of Jechonias in Babylon: the prophecies fulfilled.

What does the Book of Jeremias teach? The Catholic reading

God's love outlasts His people's sin. The whole book is God pleading: "Yea I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn thee, taking pity on thee" (31:3). The judgment comes after decades of warning, and its end is healing. This is the heart of Lent, when the Church reads Jeremias at Mass.

Religion of the heart. Jeremias never despises the Temple or the sacrifices; he condemns trust in them without conversion: "The heart is perverse above all things, and unsearchable, who can know it? I am the Lord who search the heart and prove the reins" (17:9–10).

The New Covenant. The summit of the book is 31:31–34: "Behold the days shall come, saith the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Juda ... I will give my law in their bowels, and I will write it in their heart ... I will remember their sin no more." The Epistle to the Hebrews quotes the whole passage (8:8–12) as fulfilled in Christ. At the Last Supper Our Lord spoke of "the chalice, the new testament in my blood" (Luke 22:20), the covenant renewed at every Mass; see the Holy Eucharist.

Jeremias, a figure of Christ. In the Catholic Encyclopedia's words, "his entire life became a living personal prophecy of the suffering Messias." Like Our Lord he wept over Jerusalem, foretold the ruin of the Temple, and was rejected by his own; some even took Jesus for "Jeremias, or one of the prophets" (Matthew 16:14). The Church hears Christ in 11:19: "I was as a meek lamb, that is carried to be a victim ... saying: Let us put wood on his bread". Tertullian already saw here "this figure of the body of Christ": the bread is His body, the wood His Cross (Against Marcion IV.40). The Church reads these verses on Tuesday of Holy Week; see the Passion of Jesus Christ.

A woman shall compass a man. "The Lord hath created a new thing upon the earth: A WOMAN SHALL COMPASS A MAN" (31:22). The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, with St Jerome, understands it of the Virgin conceiving the Messias; St Athanasius saw in the "new thing" the Lord's body formed in a virgin without the co-operation of man. See the Incarnation.

The Good Shepherd and the just King. God condemns the shepherds who scatter His flock and promises "pastors according to my own heart" (3:15), and a "just branch" for David: "this is the name that they shall call him: the Lord our just one" (23:5–6). That name belongs to God alone, and the Church reads it of Christ, the Son of David who is also Lord.

The prophet who prays for his people. In 2 Machabees 15:14 Jeremias appears in a vision, and Onias says: "This is a lover of his brethren, and of the people of Israel: this is he that prayeth much for the people, and for all the holy city, Jeremias the prophet of God", a witness to the prayer of the saints for those on earth. The same book (2:1–8) tells how he hid the ark in a cave on Moses' mountain.

Famous verses and chapters of Jeremias

Jeremias 1:5. "Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee: and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee" (Jeremias 1).

Jeremias 2:13. "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water" (Jeremias 2): every sin in one image.

Jeremias 10:3–4. "The works of the hand of the workman hath cut a tree out of the forest with an axe. He hath decked it with silver and gold" (Jeremias 10). Verse 5 shows these are idols that "shall not speak", not Christmas trees, as we explain in Christmas: The Nativity of Our Lord.

Jeremias 17:5, 7. "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man ... Blessed be the man that trusteth in the Lord", a Lenten lesson at Mass.

Jeremias 20:9. Resolved to speak no more in God's name, the prophet finds "in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones" (Jeremias 20).

Jeremias 29:11. "For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of affliction, to give you an end and patience" (Jeremias 29); in the Vulgate, ut dem vobis finem et patientiam. Spoken to exiles told to settle in for seventy years, it promises a good end to suffering, not escape from it; see what Jeremiah 29:11 really means and our Catholic Bible verses. It is the Introit of the twenty-third and last Sundays after Pentecost: Dicit Dominus: Ego cogito cogitationes pacis, et non afflictionis.

Jeremias 31:15. "A voice was heard on high of lamentation, of mourning, and weeping, of Rachel weeping for her children". St Matthew sees it fulfilled in the Holy Innocents (Matthew 2:17–18), the Gospel of their feast on 28 December.

Jeremias 33:3. "Cry to me and I will hear thee: and I will shew thee great things" (Jeremias 33).

The thirty pieces of silver. Matthew 27:9 says: "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet ... And they took the thirty pieces of silver". The words are closest to Zacharias 11:12–13; St Augustine weighs the question in On the Harmony of the Evangelists (III.7).

Jeremias in the canon and in the liturgy

Jeremias stands among the greater prophets in every Bible, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant. The Vulgate (Prophetia Jeremiae) and the Douay spell the name Jeremias, from the Greek and Latin; modern English Bibles use the Hebrew Jeremiah. The chapter numbers are the same. In the Douay order the book is followed by Lamentations, the prophet's elegy over the ruined city, and by Baruch, whose sixth chapter is "the epistle that Jeremias sent" to the captives. On the text itself, see the Douay-Rheims Bible and the Latin Vulgate.

The Church gives Jeremias a special place in Lent and Passiontide. In the 1962 Missal its Lessons are read on Thursday of the second week of Lent (17:5–10), Thursday of the third week (7:1–7), Saturday of Passion Week (18:18–23) and Tuesday of Holy Week (11:18–20). In the Roman Breviary the Matins lessons of Passiontide are drawn from Jeremias, beginning on Passion Sunday with his call in chapter 1, while Lamentations is sung at Tenebrae. The Roman Martyrology keeps his memory on 1 May. Follow these days in the liturgical calendar and pray the Office in our Breviary.

How to read the Book of Jeremias

Begin with chapters 1 and 36: the call, and the story of the book itself. Then read the history in chapters 37–44, so that you know the man and his times before taking on the oracles, with 4 Kings 22–25 at hand for the background. The Book of Consolation (30–33) is the best place to pray with the book. Read it in Passiontide, as the Church does. A chapter a day takes you through the whole prophecy in under two months.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Book of Jeremiah about?

The Book of Jeremias (Jeremiah) records the preaching and life of the prophet in Jerusalem from about 627 BC until after its destruction by Babylon. He called Juda to repent of idolatry and injustice, warned that the Temple would fall, and foretold seventy years of exile. He also promised a return and a New Covenant.

Who wrote the Book of Jeremiah?

The Church holds that the prophet Jeremias, son of Helcias, a priest of Anathoth, is its author. He dictated his prophecies to his secretary Baruch, who wrote them out a second time after King Joakim burnt the first roll (Jeremias 36). The last chapter is a historical appendix drawn from 4 Kings, added after the note "Thus far are the words of Jeremias" (51:64).

When was the Book of Jeremiah written?

Over the prophet's ministry: from his call in the thirteenth year of King Josias, about 627 BC, until after the fall of Jerusalem, which the Catholic Encyclopedia dates to 586 BC. The last chapters date from his exile in Egypt.

How many chapters are in the Book of Jeremiah?

The Book of Jeremias has 52 chapters and more than 1,300 verses, one of the longest books of the Bible. The chapter numbering is the same in the Douay-Rheims, the Vulgate and modern Bibles, and each opens from the Iter Fidei Bible.

Is the Book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament?

Yes. Jeremias is one of the greater prophets of the Old Testament, with Isaias, Ezechiel and Daniel. In Catholic Bibles it is followed by Lamentations and Baruch, both closely tied to the prophet.

Is the Book of Jeremiah in chronological order?

No. It is gathered partly by subject: oracles to Juda, conflicts with false prophets, the Book of Consolation, the history of the siege, and the prophecies against the nations. The Greek Septuagint also places the oracles against the nations differently from the Hebrew and the Vulgate.

What does the Book of Jeremiah teach us?

That God's love pursues His people even through punishment, and that worship without conversion of heart is empty. It also teaches that God keeps His promises: after judgment He gives a New Covenant, fulfilled in Christ. The prophet's sufferings for the truth prefigure the Passion of Our Lord.

Why is Jeremiah called the weeping prophet?

He wept openly over his people: "Who will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to my eyes? and I will weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people" (Jeremias 9:1). Tradition also gives him the Lamentations over the ruined city. Tertullian records that he was stoned (Scorpiace 8), in Egypt according to the tradition reported by the Catholic Encyclopedia.

How does the Book of Jeremiah end?

Chapter 52 tells how Nabuchodonosor took Sedecias, burnt the Temple and carried the people to Babylon. It closes with a gleam of hope: in the thirty-seventh year of his captivity, King Jechonias is released from prison and given a place at the king of Babylon's table.

Read the whole Book of Jeremias verse by verse, the Latin Vulgate beside the Douay-Rheims, in the Iter Fidei Catholic Bible app.

Sources. Jeremias, 4 Kings 22–25, 2 Paralipomenon 36, Daniel 9, 2 Machabees 2 and 15, St Matthew 2, 16, 21 and 27, St Luke 22, Hebrews 8 (Douay-Rheims, Challoner); St Jerome, Prologue to Jeremias; Tertullian, Scorpiace 8 and Adversus Marcionem IV.40; St Augustine, De consensu evangelistarum III.7; St Athanasius, as cited in the Catholic Encyclopedia; Missale Romanum (1962) and Breviarium Romanum; Martyrologium Romanum, 1 May; Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "Jeremias" (M. Faulhaber) and "Virgin Mary".