1 The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, 2 to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. 3 It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.
Section Overview
These three verses introduce the OT’s longest book by word count in the original Hebrew (though not chapter count in modern Bibles). In the fifty-two chapters that follow, the human “words of Jeremiah” (1:1) are equated to the divine “word of the Lord” (v. 2). God’s communication to, through, and about his chosen prophet spans five decades, from the thirteenth year of King Josiah in 627 BC (v. 2) to King Zedekiah, Judah’s last ruler, deposed at the time of Jerusalem’s captivity in 587 BC (v. 3). The book of Jeremiah also contains two narrative sections about periods later than the exile: the prophet’s via dolorosa of being taken from Jerusalem to Egypt (chs. 41–44) as well as the narrative of Judah’s captivity and subsequent deportation to Babylon (ch. 52).
Section Outline
I.A. Superscription to the Book (1:1–3)
1. The Identity of Jeremiah, Yahweh’s Prophet to Judah (1:1)
2. The Span of Jeremiah’s Ministry (1:2–3)
a. From Josiah’s Thirteenth Year (1:2)
b. During Jehoiakim’s Reign and until Jerusalem’s Fall in Zedekiah’s Eleventh Year (1:3)
Response
Jeremiah’s opening references to the family of King Josiah present a study of God’s mysterious ways in history. Josiah is the grandson of King Manasseh, Judah’s most wicked king, whose actions make the exile necessary (2 Kings 21:9–16). Not only this, but Josiah ascends to the throne at the tender age of eight when his father, Amon, another evil king of Judah, is assassinated by his own servants (2 Kings 21:19–24). Despite such gloomy beginnings, Josiah’s piety redeems for a time the heritage of the Davidic line and fulfills God’s original design for his kings (cf. Deut. 17:14–20).
Even as Josiah’s yet-unborn life is not doomed by his evil ancestors, it is also true that Josiah’s sons do not follow the godly example of their father. The startling inconsistency of piety across the generations repeats itself not only across Israel’s history but also in the individual lives of Israel’s kings—Josiah, like David and Solomon before him, starts well but ends his life without the sort of divine favor and empowerment characterizing his reformation (2 Kings 23:29; 2 Chron. 35:20–24). In short, the history of Josiah and his family indicates that past apostasy is no prohibition against future piety, nor is past piety any guarantee against future apostasy. The past and future of Yahweh’s people lie in his sovereign hands, as the following narrative of Jeremiah’s call will make abundantly clear.Jeremiah 1:1–3
Jeremiah 1:4–19