Jeremiah Overview

Bible Book Overviews — Steve Gregg

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Jeremiah Overview

Bible Book OverviewsSteve Gregg

In this overview, Steve Gregg delves into the historical context and major themes of the book of Jeremiah in the Bible. Jeremiah, a true prophet who countered false prophets, prophesied the destruction and captivity of Judah by Babylon and accurately predicted that they would be in captivity for 70 years. Gregg highlights the significance of Jeremiah's predictions of the New Covenant, which Jesus references in his teachings, and discusses the acted parables and visions in the book that convey important messages for readers.

Transcript

Tonight we're going to be talking about the book of Jeremiah and the book of Lamentations. Now the book of Jeremiah certainly warrants the full time that we have available just by itself. But I think the problem is if we only took the book of Jeremiah, that would leave only the book of Lamentations to take next time, which is only five chapters long.

So we'd be taking 52 chapters tonight and five chapters next time. Both books are written by Jeremiah. They both have the same theme.

And therefore, when we study the book of Jeremiah itself, and then turn to Lamentations, it will be only a brief need to talk about a few observations in that book, rather than to take it with any kind of detail. Let's put it that way. We are not trying to be comprehensive here.

Some of you know that I directed many years ago a school in Oregon for 16 years. We went through the entire Bible verse by verse every year. We had students living on the campus for nine months.

And we'd start in Genesis and Matthew in September and finish in Malachi and Revelation in June. And I would teach. I or some other teachers, most of myself, but we had some other teachers too, would teach verse by verse through the entire Bible, which is the way I enjoy teaching.

But it takes an awful long time, especially when you only have meetings once every two months. Getting through the whole Bible would be very well. It would take over a year to get through.

Well, even if we met every week, it'd take a year to get through Jeremiah alone. And what we're doing now is each time we gather, we're taking a fairly detailed overview and introduction to a book each time. And so this time it is Jeremiah and Lamentations, which we're going to treat as if it was one book.

Depending on how long it takes me to get through Jeremiah, there's a likelihood I'll give you a break after Jeremiah for stretching and so forth. And then I come back and do Lamentations. I'm not predicting with certainty because I don't yet know how long it'll take me to get through Jeremiah.

But that is a possible. That's a very likely scenario. All right.

So let's talk about the book of Jeremiah. When you when you study any book of the Bible, it really is helpful, maybe even necessary to understand the historical setting that the book is in. Now, for New Testament books, for example, Paul's epistles, we can often turn directly to the book of Acts and see where Paul traveled and where he was when he wrote these epistles and so forth.

That's very helpful to know some of the background of the churches he wrote to and such. In the Old Testament, it's equally helpful to know, maybe even essential to know, though the history of the Old Testament is somewhat more remote, even though the book of Acts isn't exactly just yesterday. What we go back another half a millennium or more before the book of Acts to study the time of the prophets of Israel and Judah.

Last time we studied the book of Isaiah and Isaiah lived 100 years before Jeremiah. Isaiah lived at a time when his nation, Judah, was threatened by the Assyrian empire that was basically conquering, swallowing up all the smaller countries in the Middle East. And and the nation of Israel to the north of Judah actually was conquered and destroyed by Assyria in Isaiah's time.

And Isaiah had a lot to say about that. But he also in the latter parts of Isaiah, he predicted a time when Judah would be threatened by Babylon. In fact, not only threatened by but conquered by Babylon.

And then Isaiah looked even further beyond that to a time when God will restore the people of Judah from the Babylonian exile. Now, Isaiah didn't live anywhere near really the time of the Babylonian ascendancy in Isaiah's time. Assyria was the great threat.

But Jeremiah writing 100 years later is living at the very time that Babylon is threatening Judah. And Jeremiah is, we might say, very pessimistic about Judah's prospects. He's very clear that God is judging Judah.

And Babylon is the instrument by which they will be judged. It is Jeremiah who specifically says in chapter 25 that Israel will go into or Judah will go into captivity for 70 years. Actually, the number 70 years is given exactly in Jeremiah.

That's the only place in the Bible where we get that information. Although we read of it again in Daniel as he's reading Jeremiah. Actually in Daniel chapter 9, we find that at the beginning of Daniel 9, Daniel is reading the book of Jeremiah.

And he there is informed that the captivity would be 70 years. And at the time that Daniel's reading, later than Jeremiah's time, that captivity is actually almost over. But he was encouraged by reading the book of Jeremiah to believe that he was living at the time when the nation would be restored.

Jeremiah was living at the time when the nation would be destroyed. You know, a good long time after Assyria had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, Babylon came, threatened, and eventually destroyed and took into captivity the nation of Judah, which was Jeremiah's own nation and where the capital city of Jerusalem was. That destruction of Jerusalem involved also the destruction of the Jewish temple, the abolition of the sacrifices, the abolition of the priesthood, the carrying away of virtually all of the people of Judah into foreign lands, which had already come under Babylonian control.

The situation, therefore, for Jerusalem in captivity was as dire as one could think. You know, at an earlier time, God had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that they would inherit the land that had belonged to the Canaanites. But then they went into captivity for several hundred years in Egypt.

And it certainly did not seem like there was any prospect of them ever inheriting the land of the Canaanites. But God, through Moses, rescued them from Egypt in what we call the Exodus and did, through Joshua, bring them into the land and they conquered it. But what happened when they went to Babylon was sort of like a repeat.

Because of the idolatry and the sins of the people of Judah, God punished them and sent them out of their land once again into captivity to a foreign power. Once again, there was nothing of the Jewish state in the promised land. The state was wiped out.

The people were exiled. They were in captivity, 500 miles away to a foreign power. There was no obvious way in which they would ever be able to build their temple and build their capital city in the promised land again.

We find that in Ezekiel, for example, who was in fact contemporary with Jeremiah, but Ezekiel was in Babylon and Jeremiah was in Jerusalem. In Ezekiel, he says that the captives saw themselves as scattered dry bones in the desert and that they were saying, our bones are dry, we are without hope. In other words, there would be no more likelihood that they could ever come back and be restored as a nation than that the dead would rise.

That scattered bones in the desert would assemble themselves and rise and come alive. However, in Ezekiel chapter 37, God actually in a vision told Ezekiel, that's exactly what would happen. God was going to bring them back from Babylon, but it certainly didn't seem like it.

It seemed as hopeless as the Jews in Egypt before the time of Moses as they contemplated ever owning the land again. There's been twice therefore that God had taken his people out of the land, the promised land, had had them against their will captives in a foreign land far away, and then miraculously, seemingly, delivered them and brought them back to establish their nation from scratch. They had done this under Joshua and later they did this under Zerubbabel.

Now, Jeremiah and Isaiah both predicted these things. Isaiah much earlier than Jeremiah. Jeremiah was actually predicting them for some time before they happened, but he lived through that.

He lived to see it happen. And his prophecies therefore have more of an urgency as he, especially in the first 29 chapters, prophesies the doom of Judah and the horrible fate that they will have. Not only going into captivity, but of course a tremendous slaughter as the Babylonians would break through the walls of the city and you know, kill a bunch of people before they carried the rest away into captivity.

It was a nasty situation, obviously. And Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet because he felt the pain of his people. Now he himself, because God gave him special favor, even in the eyes of the Babylonians, he was spared any of the suffering.

He was not killed. He was not taken into captivity. He was not punished by the Babylonians once they conquered the city, but before they did, his own people persecuted.

He was thrown in jail. His life was threatened in the temple courts. They wanted to kill him because of his prophecies.

He was considered to be a traitor to Judah because he was predicting that their enemies were going to defeat them. And the problem was, of course, the Jews on the walls were trying to defend Jerusalem against the encamped Babylonians outside. And Jeremiah was saying, don't fight, surrender.

If you surrender, you'll go safely alive into captivity. If you fight, there's going to be a massacre here. There's going to be a holocaust here.

Now, of course, when your nation is at war and besieged, if you're out there telling your own soldiers, surrender, if you're anybody other than the king telling them to surrender, you are seen as a traitor. And it was because of that that Jeremiah has been imprisoned and otherwise abused by his own people. It wasn't until the Babylonians actually came and did conquer Jerusalem that Jeremiah started to be treated more humanely, by the Babylonians, in fact.

That's one of the themes you find in many of the stories of the Bible, is that the Jews thought themselves so superior to the Gentiles. But in many cases, the Gentiles were more humane or more just or more righteous in some respects than even the Jews when they were apostate. This is why we see Paul, when he was asked by the Roman governor, Felix, whether he would allow the, I guess it was Festus that asked him if he would allow the Jews to try Paul in Jerusalem.

He says, no way. I want to stand before Caesar. Here, you know, he thought he'd get more justice from the pagan ruler Caesar, who was no angel, than he would get at the hands of his own people because they were so evil.

And so also in Jeremiah's day, he found it to be so. Now, let me just give you a little bit of the background. The notes that you have on your chairs contain this.

I don't know that I'll go into as much detail as the notes do because we have a lot to cover. But we find that in the days of Jeremiah, the political scene had for a very long time, well, when he was born at least, this political scene had been dominated by the Assyrians for about 300 years at that point. But the Babylonians were rising and there was a power struggle within the region between Babylon that was ascending to power and both Assyria, which was descending in power, and Egypt.

Egypt to the south of Israel also had some hopes of gaining some of that power that Assyria was losing. In other words, Assyria, which had been so strong was now diminishing in power. And there are two other nations that would like to have grabbed that power and seized the empire.

One was Babylon and one was Egypt. As it turned out, Babylon won. Just before Jeremiah was called to be a prophet, and that was in his youth, we don't know his exact age.

We do know that his prophecies from the time he was called till he died was a period longer than 40 years, possibly closer to 50 years of adult ministry. But his call, which is recorded in chapter one, occurred when he referred to himself as a child. Now, almost certainly he was not a little child.

There's a good chance he was in his mid to late teens. But the word child in Hebrew can refer to someone that old. After all, Joseph, who went into Egypt back in Genesis, he was called a child in the same Hebrew word when he was 17 years old.

And there's a good chance that that's how we should picture Jeremiah, probably 16, 17 years old. In that respect, he was just a little bit younger than the king, who was Josiah. Josiah and Jeremiah were both born during the reign of Josiah, King Josiah's grandfather, Manasseh.

And Manasseh was a very wicked king, and the Bible indicates that it was the horrible corruption that came into Judah through Manasseh's reign that caused God to finally say, okay, I'm gonna have to wipe you guys out. I'm gonna have to take you into captivity like I threatened before. Manasseh was the bad one.

But Manasseh's grandson, Josiah, became king at age eight. And within a few years, six years later, when he would then be 14 years old, Josiah began to turn his heart toward the Lord. We have a timeline of this on the third page of your notes, by the way.

In the year 631 BC, actually, it was at age 16, it was the eighth year of his reign after he was eight years old, then eight years later, Josiah began to seek the Lord, according to 2 Chronicles 34, 3. A few years later, four years later, in 627 BC, Josiah actually began his reforms, which was in the 12th year of his reign, so he was 20. Now, his reforms involved repairing the temple, which had been neglected. It had not been totally without use.

There were hardly any seasons, even in Israel and Judah's most apostate times, there's hardly any times that they just barred up the doors of the temple of Yahweh, although what they usually did is give preference to other gods. Molech and Baal and other foreign gods became the obsession of Israel and Judah in their times of apostasy. And many times they saw themselves still as the people of Yahweh, still having his temple in Jerusalem, and sometimes even telling themselves that no harm could come to them because Yahweh's temple was in Jerusalem.

God would never allow any harm to come to the city where his temple was. It was almost like having the temple in your city as a rabbit's foot or some kind of a superstitious protection against all harm, no matter how much you deserve penalties from God. By the way, Ezekiel, another prophet, pointed out that they were saying these things.

Jeremiah also points it out in chapter 7 that the people were saying the temple of the Lord is here, suggesting that we are immune from defeat. It may be that the Babylonians are currently threatening us, as the Assyrians formerly did. You know, back in Isaiah's day, not only did the Assyrians wipe out the northern kingdom of Israel, they later came down and besieged Jerusalem.

But Jerusalem had a godly king then named Hezekiah, and he sought the Lord. And while the Assyrian troops were encamped outside Jerusalem, besieging the city, one night an angel of the Lord was sent to kill 186,000 of the Assyrians who were sleeping. He had them at a disadvantage because they were sleeping, so it wasn't really quite fair.

But no, I'm pretty sure he'd have no trouble with them even if they were awake. But the survivors woke up and found 186,000 of their companions dead, and they left off the siege. And so God had spared Jerusalem from the same threat that had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel.

And so that again encouraged the people of Judea to say, oh, we got the house of the Lord here in Jerusalem. God won't let any harm come. Well, Jeremiah was saying the opposite.

He said it doesn't matter that you've got the temple here. You're profaning the temple. You're profaning your spiritual lives.

You're unfaithful to God. God is angry. He's made threats concerning this.

And he's going to carry out those threats. And, you know, don't say, oh, the temple of the Lord is here as if that's some type of a superstitious protection from God's judgment. And so this is how Jeremiah was actually countering other prophets in Jerusalem who were false prophets who were in fact saying, because the temple is here, God will not let the Babylonians inside these walls.

So Jeremiah was not the only prophet. He was just the true prophet. And there were other prophets who were false prophets.

There actually were some other true prophets, some of them known to us. Ezekiel, for example, and Daniel were both contemporary with Jeremiah, but they were over in Babylon already. And Jeremiah was not.

And we'll find that there were also some there were also some other minor prophets. Let's see here. I think Habakkuk was contemporary with him and Zephaniah, if I'm not mistaken.

So what we call minor prophets, they wrote shorter books. But there were in addition to Yahweh's true prophets, there were the false prophets. And the false prophets differed from Jeremiah primarily in this.

That Jeremiah said the temple of the Lord is not going to be a rabbit's foot that gives you good luck. Your relationship with God is what you need to be looking to and you're dashing that to pieces by your idolatry and your rebellion against God. And so you're in trouble, even though the temple's with you.

The false prophets say, no way, the temple is sacred. The temple is God's house. He'll defend it against all invaders.

So this is what was going on at the time. In 621 B.C., which was the what would that be? The the 18th year, I guess, of Josiah's reign. So he would now be 26 years old, the king.

The book of the law was found in the temple. This story is found in Second Kings and in Second Chronicles. Actually, Hilkiah the priest was following the young king Josiah's orders to renovate the temple because Josiah wished to you know attend to things that had been neglected.

He was in the process of tearing down idols and shrines to false gods. He was trying to reform the whole nation and bring it back to Yahweh, to God. And of course to restore the temple of the Lord was important.

So he had had even before he found the book, which we'll talk about in a moment, he was already trying to get things right in Judah with the Lord. And as they were remodeling or refurbishing the temple, Hilkiah the priest found, and I picture this being in some little cubby somewhere covered with, you know, inches of dust upon it, a scroll. Now according to the the narration in Kings and Chronicles, it just says it was a scroll of the law.

But it seems obvious that it was a scroll of Deuteronomy in particular. The law can mean the Torah, which is the first five books of the Bible. But specifically Deuteronomy seems to be the book that was found because when Hilkiah the priest found it, he didn't even know what it was.

This tells us how far the people of Judah had drifted from their Bible. This was the only Bible they had was the Torah. And when it was found, Hilkiah the priest didn't know what it was.

He read it and didn't know what he was reading. They were absolutely unfamiliar with their own scriptures. And that must mean it had been neglected for at least a generation or two.

But he said, hey, I think King Josiah needs to see this. So it was taken to Josiah and the king, and it was read to him, and he was so moved by it, he tore his clothes, which is a cultural way of showing grief and repentance. And he said, well, we are under God's curse.

We had really better repent. And so he repented. He called the nation to repent, and he stepped up the abolition of idolatrous shrines and things like that.

He really went to town and did more than anyone before him, I believe, in removing idolatry and trying to reform the country. But it was too little too late. Because after he died, his sons went back to idolatry and were just as bad, and they reigned in his place.

But during Josiah's reign, he was doing these reforms. And it was because this book of the law had been found. Now Jeremiah had become called to be a prophet in Jeremiah chapter one, one year before Josiah began his reforms.

So he'd become his, he'd begun his reforms in 627 BC. The next year, 626 BC, Jeremiah was called to prophetic ministry. And then five years later, the book of the law was found, Deuteronomy, in 621 BC.

Now, that means that Jeremiah was prophesied for about six years before they found the book of the law. And Jeremiah had no more access to it than anyone else did. Jeremiah and Josiah were about the same age, and the law had been essentially lost or, you know, put aside and no one had read it for at least a generation, maybe two.

So Jeremiah was prophesied for years without even having a shred of scripture to guide him. He just got his messages directly from the Holy Spirit. But when the book was found, Jeremiah realized that this is very significant.

And if you look at Jeremiah chapter 11, it looks very much like he's alluding to the fact that the book of Deuteronomy had been found and now had been read and now was known to Jeremiah as well as to Josiah. And in chapter 11, it says the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, hear the words of this covenant. Now, the book of Deuteronomy is the book that was most emphatic of the covenant that God had with Israel.

In fact, scholars say that Deuteronomy is arranged in its structure like an old Middle Eastern suzerainty treaty. Now, most of us don't use the word suzerainty unless you're some kind of Middle East scholar. A suzerain was a king who had other kings under him.

We might be more familiar with the term vassal. A king that was under a suzerain was called a vassal. He had loyalty and he paid tribute to the suzerain.

Now in ancient suzerainty treaties of the Middle East, which have been found and analyzed by scholars, they are structured very much like the book of Deuteronomy. And throughout the book of Deuteronomy, there's emphasis on the covenant that God had and of the curses that would come upon Israel, especially in Deuteronomy 28, if they would neglect the covenant. And we see Jeremiah in chapter 11, verse 2 saying, hear the words of this covenant and speak to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and say to them, thus says the Lord God of Israel, cursed is the man who does not obey the words of this covenant.

This is essentially what Deuteronomy's theme is. And it says, which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt from the iron furnace. Interestingly, Deuteronomy 420 referred to the Egyptian captivity as the iron furnace.

When God in Deuteronomy chapter 4, verse 20 refers to bringing Israel out of Egypt, he says he delivered them from the iron furnace. We see now Jeremiah picking up the very terminology from the book of Deuteronomy. He says, when I delivered you out of the land of Egypt from the iron furnace saying obey my voice and do according to all that I command you, so shall you be my people and I'll be your God.

That's a good summary of the covenant that's enunciated in Deuteronomy. And he says that I made to establish the oath which I made to your fathers to give them a land flown with milk and honey, etc, etc. And there's several other references here to the covenant.

And then in verse 8, in the middle of verse 8, it says, therefore I will bring upon them all the words of this covenant. Now, all the words of this covenant, that would have to be Deuteronomy because frankly the other books of the law do not emphasize specific judgments that would come upon them. Leviticus 26 had some, but Deuteronomy is full of repeated warnings of curses that would come upon them for breaking the covenant.

So it seems like Jeremiah here is could have prophesied this the year, we don't know what year it was he prophesied this, could have been the year that the book was found. And now he's telling people listen to the words of this covenant, the curses of this covenant. God says they're coming on you.

And Josiah the king certainly recognized that. And that's one thing that really amped up his efforts to reform the nation. Now, unfortunately in 609 BC, Josiah, after 31 years of reigning was killed in battle.

And when he went to war against Pharaoh Necho, interestingly, Necho was on his way up to fight against Babylon in order to spare the Assyrians. And he got killed in battle. A prophet had told him not to, but the king disregarded the prophet and went and got himself killed.

A couple years later, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Assyria. And so that was the end of the Assyrian empire. And that was in 607 BC, within the lifetime of Jeremiah.

Two years later, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Egypt at the Battle of Carchemish in 605. And that was the end of Egypt's hopes of filling the power vacuum that was being left by the decline of Assyria. So there's a three-way power struggle in the region.

Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt. And in 607 BC, Assyria went down to Babylon as they were conquered by Babylon. And two years later, Egypt was.

So now Babylon was the unchallenged lord of the region and began to swallow up all the other little countries around. Now, swallowing them up often just meant getting them to bow and say, okay, we will pay you tribute. He didn't always come and make war against them because some of them were smart enough not to try to fight him.

So as he came, many times the leaders of the countries would surrender to him and they'd be allowed to continue to reign but have to pay tribute to him. They'd be vassals to him. And that was the case with Judah.

Because in 605 BC, after conquering Egypt at Carchemish, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came down and he subdued Judah. And at that time, he went back to Babylon. He didn't destroy Judah.

He just subdued them, brought them under his authority. And he took with him when he left some of the choicest Jewish men to train in his culture and language and to make part of his administration in Babylon. And some of those that went in 605 BC into Babylon under those terms were Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego whom we read about in the book of Daniel in chapters one through three, especially.

So we have then part of the Jewish nation has come under Nebuchadnezzar's authority but has not suffered much under them. They've only had some of their best men taken from them, young men. And those men are not treated badly.

They're actually treated really well in Babylon because they're being given positions of influence and authority. But in 598 BC the son of Josiah, Jehoiakim actually, I think he was the grandson of Josiah, Jehoiakim. He died.

No, I'm sorry. Jehoiakim was a son of Josiah and he died and his son Jehoiakim reigned who's also called Jeconiah. And then Nebuchadnezzar came in the next year and replaced Jeconiah with his uncle Zedekiah who this is all kind of the kings of Judah near the end there before the Babylon invasion get a little tricky because Josiah, who was a good king, three of his sons at different times reigned on his throne.

First Jehoiakim and then and then another son Jehoiakim and then Jehoiakim, I'm sorry, was the grandson and then when Jehoiakim died or was taken away Zedekiah who is again the uncle of Jehoiakim and son of Josiah. It's obviously very confusing. Not impossible.

I mean the Bible does describe it. It's just hard to say it, you know, I mean we'd have to look at charts, you know lineage charts to make it simple. The thing is though that in 597 Nebuchadnezzar came took Jeconiah away put his uncle Zedekiah into power in his place and took more captives into Babylon.

There still had not yet been war between Babylon and Judah because Judah wasn't stupid enough to actually fight against Babylon at that point. And so Babylon just came did what they wanted to replaced one king with another one in Judah and took away captives and that one of the captives that was taken in 597 BC was Ezekiel. So while Jeremiah was living in Jerusalem when he was quite young Daniel Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were taken into captivity in 605 BC and then later in 597 Ezekiel and many other captives were taken away, but Jeremiah remained.

Still in Jerusalem, but now we had several prophets in Babylon Jewish prophets in Babylon and Jeremiah and a few others in Jerusalem. In 586 BC the problem here is that Zedekiah had rebelled against Babylon thinking he could throw off their yoke and reprisals came down and Zedekiah had his eyes put out his sons were killed before his eyes and he was taken away into captivity where he died and and the city was destroyed the temple was burned down and all of that and basically most of the rest of the Jews in Judah were taken away into captivity. The really poor dirt farmers and so forth who had no power and no influence in the society.

Some of them were left behind but every one of importance was taken away and the city was no, there was no more temple no more Levites no more worship of Yahweh in the traditional way and Jeremiah lived to see that now shortly after that other problems arose for the few that were left in Judah after the temple was destroyed because another rebellion took place when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple and carried Zedekiah the king into captivity He chose someone unrelated to the royal line named Goliath to be the governor in Judah and and he left, you know a very small number of population there and this lesser official under him to rule but some rebel Jews killed Goliath which was Nebuchadnezzar's representative and so the Jews that remained alive realized that Nebuchadnezzar would come down and there would be reprisals. So the rest of the Jews most of them fled into Egypt. Now Jeremiah was still there prophesying at the time and he told them don't go to Egypt He said if you don't go to Egypt you'll live but if you do go to Egypt you'll die But they went anyway, and they forced him to go along And so he ended up in Egypt and what became of him after that the bible does not tell us We are told from Jewish tradition That in Egypt he was eventually martyred Killed by one of his fellow Jewish exiles there.

There is an alternative tradition of the Jews that say that Nebuchadnezzar Pursued these Jews down in Egypt captured them and took them including Jeremiah up to Babylon and he died in Babylon. There's two different Traditions among the Jews, but since the bible doesn't tell us it doesn't support either of them. We have no way of You know favoring one over another All right, so that's the historical background now I want to talk about some of the things about the book itself Jeremiah the man We're talking about a man who actually Unveils his own heart a great deal in this book.

In fact, there's no other prophet Who gives us such an insight into his own? emotional and psychological state He's very transparent He weeps a lot He gets angry a lot He complains to god a lot He calls down curses on his on his opponents a lot Uh, he's you know, he's got a full range of emotions that exhibit themselves unlike say isaiah from whom we we don't really He doesn't reveal very much about his emotions at all Uh But uh jeremiah we have he's there's a very personal presentation Of this man to us so we can feel kind of like we know What kind of a personality he had? There are seven other jeremiahs besides this one in the bible Uh, so it was a very common name However, this prophet jeremiah was before a prophet. He was born to a priestly family and um Would have been a priest Except he was called to be a prophet and You know at the time that he would have been a priest the temple was pretty much um On shaky ground. Let's put it that way Um, and we don't know exactly what year he was called, but there's a good chance.

He was in his mid to late teens When god called him Jeremiah complained to god objected sort of like moses objected and said I can't speak. Well, uh Jeremiah said i'm just a child. I can't how can I prophesy and god said don't say that I'll be with you.

I'll put my words in your mouth You know, you'll you'll tear down and you'll build up and you'll plant and you'll uproot and you'll you'll have a tremendous impact but You're not going to change anything The funny thing is that god calls him and seeks to encourage him. It says but the people won't listen to you uh, even eventually While a prophet typically would pray very much for his people, uh, and jeremiah did At a certain point god just said stop praying for him. I'm done with them.

I don't I won't hear your prayers Just don't even pray for them anymore Uh, and as far as we know jeremiah Might have only had uh two converts to to his uh to his side Uh judah was very much against him One of the persons that was favorable to him was uh a scribe named baruch Who apparently is the one who wrote down the the book of jeremiah as jeremiah orally spoke the prophecies his scribe Baruch wrote it down. We we at least read a baruch writing some of it and in all likelihood. He wrote all of it um The other one who was fairly toward, uh, jeremiah was an ethiopian eunuch in the king's court named ebed melech And when uh basically the jews had uh thrown Jeremiah to a pit where he would have starved and died this ethiopian Uh came to his rescue and got him rescued out of the pit.

And so he did live to prophesy another day um Unlike many of the prophets jeremiah never married It's interesting that marriage the marital marital status of prophets is often part of their ministry or part of what is said Isaiah, for example had two children by a prophetess that he married One was uh, and and their names are part of this prophecy Isaiah had one named meher shalal hashbaz and another one named shir jashib both of which in hebrew are parts of his message meher shalal hashbaz means swift to the booty swift to the Well something like that to the booty like taking the spoils Uh, his other son shir jashib his name means uh, a remnant will return So both of those were actually part of isaiah's prophecy and the names of his sons Even even his wife was a prophetess. We're told in isaiah chapter 8 Ezekiel had a wife but she died the very day That jerusalem was besieged By the babylonians and it was he was instructed don't weep for her. This was going to be part of his prophetic message that uh, he's so Apparently so deeply smitten with grief that he can't even show any emotion uh, it's too deep a grief even to express jeremiah His marital state was an issue too.

God told him don't marry Don't don't get married. Don't have children in this land This is in chapter 16 And he said the reason is because those who are married and those who do have children are going to have tremendous grief Because the horrible things coming it's like when jesus was predicting the destruction of jerusalem in 70 a.d Which was very much like the destruction of jerusalem in 586 bc uh Jesus said woe to those who have children, uh, you know and who are pregnant in those days So and and they will say blessed are those Wombs that never bore and breasts that never gave suck Because of the horrible things that were coming so just as jesus said it'll be so horrible when jerusalem is attacked by the romans that those who have no children and no spouses and no Emotional connections to other people will be the ones who will suffer the least jeremiah is told he should not marry have children because those who do are going to be horribly pained to see what will happen to their families in the holocaust that was coming upon them so let's uh I'm going to turn over to the third page here The two uh minor prophets that were contemporary with jeremiah in jerusalem were habakkuk and zephaniah So they were prophesying during the same crisis some of the same kind of information Uh daniel and ezekiel as I said were in babylon prophesying at this time And there was another prophet contemporary with jeremiah. We don't know much about he was in kirgiz jerem Another is israelite city.

He's mentioned in jeremiah 26 verses 20 through 23. His name was urijah And he was uh, he was more unlucky than jeremiah. He prophesied Unpopular things like jeremiah did and the king sent out to kill him and he fled to egypt to get away And seemingly was safe, but the king sent Officers down to egypt to hunt him down and kill him down there So urijah was a contemporary of jeremiah's in in israel Uh, but he got killed He was martyred now Perhaps one of the most important things for us to note is that jeremiah is very significant With reference to the new testament, which it can also be called the new covenant Not least in the fact that jeremiah is the one who predicted there would be a new covenant And jesus in the upper room told his disciples this cup is the new covenant in my blood And paul in second corinthians 3 and also the writer of hebrews in chapters 8 and 10 Referring to jeremiah's words about the new covenant Tell us that jesus has brought a new covenant and made the old covenant obsolete But that information that even that that terminology of the new covenant comes from jeremiah 31 And nowhere else in the old testament.

There are other places in the old testament Like ezekiel 37 and ezekiel 34 that where god says he's going to make an everlasting covenant And he is referring to the same thing that jeremiah is but the language of new covenant comes from jeremiah 31 and interestingly New covenant is the same thing as new testament So we have to say that jeremiah As a prophet is very significant to us who are in the new covenant And that he predicted the new covenant that jesus inaugurated and in many ways jeremiah like other Many other old testament characters is a type and a shadow of christ And I assume you know what it means when we say somebody is a type of christ. That means there it's a divinely Ordained pattern in their lives things about them that god ordained to foreshadow Similar things about jesus so that we see sort of a vague Shadowy representation of christ in some ways. It's almost like a Well some of the principles In in the life of christ are are they happen earlier in the person who's a type of christ david Is a very significant type of christ Isaac was a type of christ Moses is a type of christ in many respects Jeremiah also could be seen as a type of christ for a number of reasons one They have several parallels both of them are said to have been called To ministry before they were born Now is everybody in the ministry called before they're born? I don't know maybe but we're not told But jeremiah was told in chapter 1 verse 5 that god had called him from his mother's womb And called him to be a prophet we know from Matthew chapter 1 in verse 21 that jesus was named and Identified as the messiah before he was born also when the angel spoke to joseph About that so we know that jesus and jeremiah both Were singled out by god and the bible tells us specifically called to their ministries even before they were born Uh, jesus was never married just as jeremiah was never married and that was unusual for adult male jews Generally speaking the rabbis taught that a jew without a wife is half a man Uh, it was concerned that every jew ought to marry because it was part of their obligation to perpetrate the nation of israel with their offspring a jew who didn't marry Was either extremely unfortunate or rebelling against his calling to you know Repopulate that you know the holy people In another generation, but jeremiah unusually and jesus unusually were both unmarried men They both wept over jerusalem We find numerous places in jeremiah where we find him weeping Perhaps the first and most notable place is in jeremiah chapter 1 Excuse me chapter 9 verse 1 Where he says oh that my head were waters And my eye is a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people And jesus also wept over jerusalem for the same reason jeremiah was weeping because of the disaster in the holocaust that was coming on his people as The nation was going to be destroyed and the city burned down and the temple burned down by foreign invaders Namely the babylonians, but jesus anticipated the same thing happening only with different foreign invaders Namely the romans and he predicted it and he wept over the city because of it.

This is can be found in luke chapter 19 Verse 41 and following it says now as jesus drew near the city that is jerusalem He wept over it saying If you had known Even you especially in this your day the things which make for your peace But now they are hidden from your eyes for the days will come upon you when your enemies this will be the romans Will build an embankment around you surround you and close you in on every side And level you and your children within you to the ground And they will not leave in you one stone upon another because you did not know the time of your visitation So once again jeremiah and jesus both standing in parallel situations, you know the destruction of jerusalem in 586 bc jeremiah's time And the destruction of jerusalem in 70 ad Which was the generation that jesus was part of he didn't live through it But he he told his disciples some of them would live to see it He said these things will all happen in this generation when he predicted the fall of jerusalem and You know jesus and jeremiah were the precursors That god sent to warn of course. Jesus was far more Important and had a greater mission than jeremiah, but nonetheless jesus and jeremiah both Were sent before the destruction of jerusalem to warn the people that was coming because of their rebellion When you actually read of the destruction of jerusalem in 586 bc in the bible or read of it in josephus the 70 ad destruction It's amazing how point by point they are so similar. In fact It's probably not a coincidence, but it's an amazing thing That the fall of jerusalem In 586 bc happened on the jewish date the ninth of ab ab is a uh a month that kind of overlaps our months of july and august and the ninth of ab jerusalem fell to the babylonians in 586 bc In 70 ad jerusalem fell on the ninth of ab also How likely is that to happen by accident? obviously The fall of jerusalem in 586 bc was a type Of the fall of jerusalem in 70 ad and and jeremiah the one that god sent to warn of it And wept over it Is a type of jesus whom god sent to warn and to weep over the fall of jerusalem.

There's a very close parallel there interestingly, too jeremiah Speaks about how israel will come or judah will come under the yoke of babylon. This is an imagery of bondage a yoke of bondage Now a literal yoke of course was a wooden bar that goes over the neck of an animal or two animals together Or more to pull a cart to pull a plow A yoke is something that brings animals into servitude To do the work of their master, you know, it brings them into bondage and therefore the metaphor of a yoke For the idea of going into bondage is not unique to jeremiah It's in other parts of the bible too, but it's strong in jeremiah and jeremiah actually made an ox yoke and wore it In order to illustrate said, you know, this is how the nation is going to go into under the yoke of babylon Now did jesus do that? Well, jesus didn't do quite that but justin martyr uh a church father from second century Knew of a story about jesus youth that is not found in the bible It may be true. No one knows if it's true, but justin martyr was not far from the events And no doubt had the story from earlier generations So it may be true he said that When jesus was growing up in the carpenter shop the carpenter shop that each each tradesmen In their shop would have certain specialties and the specialty that joseph and jesus made were ox yokes and uh And justin martyr says that they actually had a shingle outside their shop that says my yokes fit.

Well That was that was their their slogans sort of like, uh You know, you deserve a break today or or just do it or some businesses have these different slogans. So the slogan uh the motto for jesus Carpenter shop when he was growing up according to justin martyr was My yokes fit well and of course in jesus ministry In matthew chapter 11. He actually said my yoke is easy take my yoke upon you And learn of me my yoke is easy.

My burden is light. It's just interesting It's not the same use of the term that jeremiah had but both jesus and jeremiah Unlike frankly most other persons in the bible I had made some kind of use of the imagery of a yoke Jeremiah actually wearing one for a little bit there. Um Uh, both of them were messengers of the new covenant Jeremiah is the one who invented the term or introduced it That there would be a new covenant that god would make in jeremiah 31 31 And jesus, of course in the upper room luke 22 verse 20 Said this cup is the new covenant in my blood So both of them are messengers of the new covenant jeremiah predicts it from a distance jesus inaugurates it There's also some phrases in jeremiah That seemed to well, we know that jesus quoted some of the phrases and and may have used some without quoting them.

For example When jesus did talk about my yoke is easy Which as I said Could be seen as having some kind of connection to the concept of yokes In jeremiah, but we know that when jesus said that he went further and used an actual line from jeremiah Because in matthew 11 29 Jesus said take my yoke upon you and learn from me for i'm gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls That phrase rest for your souls is directly borrowed from jeremiah 6 16 Where the prophet said Thus says the lord stand in the ways and see and ask for the old paths Where the good way is and walk in it, then you will find rest for your souls so Jeremiah said you'll find rest for your souls if you walk in the in the good old ways Of obedience to god. Jesus says you'll find rest for your souls if you put on my yoke and learn from me But the expression rest for your souls is a jeremiah Expression which jesus borrowed likewise when jesus cleansed the temple In matthew 21 13. He said You've made my father's house.

Well, he said my house should be called house of prayer for all nations But you have made it a den of thieves Well that idea that the temple is called the den of thieves comes from jeremiah. Also. He's quoting jeremiah 7 and verse 11 Where Jeremiah says has this house and he's talking about the temple Which is called by my name become a den of thieves in your eyes so Jesus is picking up this these terms from jeremiah Who alone uses them other than jesus? I mean and use them, you know, almost 600 years before jesus did But jesus is connected with jeremiah.

He's jeremiah's like a type of jesus I believe even the word gehenna, which is fairly frequent in jesus teachings If you don't know the word gehenna, it's it's the word that many times is translated hell in the teaching of jesus There are a number of greek words translated hell in the new testament. One of them is hades one is gehenna and one is tartarus but gehenna Is a word for hell that's used only in the gospels and only by jesus With one exception james uses it When he says that the tongue is a fire set on hell set on fire, uh from from gehenna but Which is not very not specifically talking about hell really but In many of the places I think about 12 or 13 in the gospels Where the word hell is found in our english translations the greek word in the in the gospels is gehenna. It's always jesus speaking And it's always threatening that those who do not Follow him and do not make the sacrifices to come into his kingdom are going to end up being thrown into gehenna now gehenna Is a greek word that literally means the valley of hinom It doesn't mean hell Well, it might mean it but it doesn't translate into those terms many people believe that the valley of hinom Became an image for hell so that when jesus said gehenna, which means the valley of hinom He really was talking about hell But that's only a theory Because the valley of hinom was an actual valley still is If you go to jerusalem today, you can walk in the valley of hinom in gehenna Uh, it's got green grass there now, but at one time it was a apparently a garbage dump a lot of Things burning in it garbage from the city and also a place Where in times of battle where there was a huge body count The dead bodies were often thrown into gehenna as sort of a mass grave where they were burned Criminals are allegedly burned there But also if there's a whole bunch of war dead and there's not enough people to bury them They just burned them in gehenna in the in the valley of hinom now jeremiah spoke of this And so did jesus jesus threatened The the rebels of his day with gehenna if they don't repent jeremiah had done so earlier in jeremiah chapter 7 And verse 32 Jeremiah said therefore behold the days are coming says the lord When it will no longer be called toffet or the valley of the son of hinom Which is the valley of hinom But it'll be called the valley of slaughter for they will bury and toffet until there's no room They're saying this valley that you call toffet the word toffet is hebrew for drum And that valley was actually where manasseh had set up an image to moloch And it actually burned his own children and many jews worshipping moloch had burned their children alive in uh To moloch in in the valley of hinom when josiah had become king He tore down such an image he defiled the valley it is thought that he's the one who made it into a garbage dump And it was no longer the place of the drum.

Apparently they pounded drums when they worshipped Moloch and they called the place the drum toffet But he says the time is coming. You're not going to call that place toffet You're not going to call it the valley of hinom even you're going to call it the valley of slaughter because of how many people will be buried there So jeremiah said that the valley of hinom which in greek is gehenna Was going to be the place where the dead Who were slaughtered by the babylonians would be cast in great numbers No other prophet well, I will say this Isaiah had also spoken of the valley of hinom as a place where many dead would be buried But he he was speaking about the assyrians Who were killed by the angel of the lord? Outside jerusalem that they would their corpses be thrown into gehenna or in the valley of hinom So both isaiah and jeremiah spoke of the valley of hinom as a place where the war dead would be thrown Isaiah spoke of assyrian dead Jeremiah spoke of jewish dead and then no other prophet speak until jesus comes along and he's telling his people you guys If you don't repent you're going to go to gehenna, too. You'll be in the valley of hinom to your corpses seemingly I won't I won't defend that interpretation I'll only present it because that seems the natural way to understand it But the point is that jeremiah and jesus both warned the rebels of their day that The valley of hinom is pretty much where they can expect to go if they don't repent The book of jeremiah is the longest of the prophetic books It doesn't have as many chapters as isaiah.

Isaiah has 66 Jeremiah only has 52 but the chapters in jeremiah are longer chapters There's more pages more words in jeremiah than in isaiah. And so it's the longest of the prophetic books Its main theme is the impending judgment of god on judah And it also has a section in it about the age of the messiah Essentially, all the prophets have sections about the age of the Messiah or passing references Jesus was the fulfillment of all the law and all the prophets And it would be very difficult to find a prophetic book in the bible that you could not find a reference in some way or Another to the messiah even jonah, which just tells a story Jesus indicated that jonah being three days and three nights In the belly of the fish is a type of himself being three days and three nights in the heart of the earth So, you know, you can pretty much find jesus in all the prophets And that includes jeremiah and he has some chapters In there, uh about the age of the messiah, especially chapter 23 verses three through eight A very important passage and then more important still a longer section of four chapters Chapters 30 Through 33 Are about the age of the messiah and it's within that context that we read of the new covenant that god would make also Which he made through jesus And Jeremiah preached orally without writing down his prophecies for a long time for 20 years. In fact It was 20 years into his preaching ministry that he actually had Uh, his prophecies begin to be written down And baruch his scribe Transcribed them for him.

He had to write some of the prophecies twice All the early prophecies were written down in a book and they were taken to king jehoiakim By baruch and jehoiakim had them read to him by some reader in his presence And every time a page or a portion was read Jehoiakim would take that page and cut it with a knife and throw it in the fire. So the whole Prophecy of jeremiah for his first 20 years or whatever was thrown in the fire by king. Jehoiakim but that didn't Bother jeremiah that much he just went ahead and wrote him down again and added more words to them, too He said so he his prophecy was written twice and his There are several other books of the bible That quote from jeremiah There's a lot of allusions to jeremiah But some actual quotes are found for example in daniel 9 2 where daniel What kind of paraphrases that jeremiah said that the captivity would be 70 years long He's referring to jeremiah 25 verses 10 and 11, I believe it is and Then we have not only daniel, but also Jesus or I should say matthew first Quoting from jeremiah in chapter 2 of matthew verse 18 a strange prophecy of jeremiah About rachel weeping in her grave at the time when herod killed all the babies of bethlehem under two years old Uh is said to be fulfilled In that event then in matthew 27 9 a strange quotation When jesus was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver Matthew tells us that that fulfilled the prophecy of jeremiah It's not entirely clear which prophecy of jeremiah he had in mind The quotation he gives comes mostly from zechariah chapter 11 And scholars have had various ways of explaining how matthew In matthew 27 quoted primarily from zechariah And attributed it to jeremiah Now, of course one answer that some people thought Matthew was just mistaken.

It wasn't jeremiah at all. It was uh, zechariah and he forgot he thought it was jeremiah who said it But other answers have been suggested It's not unknown elsewhere in scripture for uh, a gospel writer to combine two old testament prophecies Into one quotation One from a minor prophet one from a major prophet and to attribute it only to the major prophet for example The book of mark opens with a prophecy that is has part of isaiah chapter 40 and part of malachi chapter 3 Kind of combined into one prophecy and mark tells us that was isaiah the prophet who said it Well part of it was isaiah. The other part was from malachi Uh, so to sort of combine the words of democrats boy michael's here today I think we better not have this here in the future.

I don't think I need that there. Thank you Just thought it'd get you to wake up have to do something once in a while to wake you guys up Um some feel that In in quoting zechariah and attributed to jeremiah what matthew was doing was alluding to something in jeremiah Uh, but but mostly quoting zechariah, but given the credit to jeremiah because he's the major prophet The illusion in jeremiah is thought perhaps to be when jeremiah bought a field Uh in in the face of an impending doom of jerusalem That's one of the things that god told jeremiah to do to show that his prophecy is about restoration He's willing to put his money where his mouth is Even though everybody's land is to be lost including his he is predicting that god will bring him back So he's going to actually put some money down and buy some property there in that doomed land. Well Uh, the 30 pieces of silver that judas got was also used to buy a field Near jerusalem.

So some think okay Jeremiah's action and zechariah's words are combined there and and treated by matthew as a prophecy of jeremiah. That's possible And there are other other ways. This has sometimes been argued that I won't take The time all I want to say is that matthew does attribute Prophecy to jeremiah in matthew chapter 7 9 and then twice in once in first corinthians and once in second corinthians paul uh quotes or paraphrases a passage from jeremiah 9 uh It's in corinthians 1 31 and second corinthians 10 17 and the passage he's referring to What he actually quotes is let him that glory is glory in the lord That is a paraphrase because in jeremiah 9 23 and 24 we have the prophecy that jeremiah that paul's referring to which is very inspiring if you read the whole thing Uh in jeremiah 9 23 and 24 says let not the wise man glory in his wisdom Let not the mighty man glory in his might nor let the rich man glory in his riches But let him who glories glory in this That he understands and knows me that I am the lord Exercising loving kindness judgment and righteousness in the earth for in these I delight says the lord now paul paraphrases that is Let him that glory is glory in the lord and he does so twice in his writings both to the corinthians both epistles Then the other quotations in the new testament of jeremiah come from the book of hebrews and twice twice the book of hebrews quotes the passage in jeremiah 31 about a new covenant And actually in hebrews chapter 8 The entire passage about four or five verses long is quoted in hebrews 8 and occupies half of the chapter Half of hebrews 8 is a quotation from jeremiah 31 and then a smaller portion of the same material is quoted again In hebrews chapter 10, so paul and the writer of hebrews As well as daniel and matthew Do make use of passages in the book of jeremiah in various ways Oh, I was getting to like that All right, so a few things I want to say and then we're done here with jeremiah and i'll give give you the break There are several visions in jeremiah Three in particular that might require a little bit of attention In jeremiah 1 11 and 12 God says to jeremiah right after he calls him to be a prophet God says Jeremiah says moreover the word of the lord came to me saying jeremiah.

What do you see? And I said I see a branch of an almond tree Then the lord said to me you have seen well for I am ready to perform my word Now that's the end of that one Did you get anything out of that? What do you see an almond tree? Cool You saw correctly i'm ready to perform my word Well, what's that got to do with an almond tree? Well, there is a word play in it for one thing The word almond in hebrew means wakeful like being not sleepy, but wide awake And that word is actually used in verse 12 the word ready where it says I am ready to perform my word in hebrews I am wakeful to perform my word. So it's a play on words of almond, but I think more significantly the almond tree was the first of the fruiting trees In israel to awaken from uh the winter In the spring when the trees started to come alive again After the winter was over the almond tree was the first And therefore in seeing an olive tree with almonds budding on it was uh, portending the You know the spring it was like a sign that something's happened just like when jesus said When you he says consider the olive tree And all the trees i'm sorry the fig tree he said consider the fig tree and all the trees When they begin to blossom put up their shoots, you know that summer is near So when you see all these things begin to happen know that it is nigh even near the doors now basically That's in a prophecy. Jesus is making about the destruction of jerusalem in matthew 24 and in luke 21 and in mark 13 And so jesus talks about seeing a tree that's budding as a as as portending The spring or the summer and that's kind of what this is about too.

You've seen all almond tree. You're seeing uh a sign that something Predictable is about to happen mainly spring in this case and in this case, no doubt. He's saying Namely the prophecies that have been anticipated for a long time because isaiah had been prophesying this and other prophets had but it hadn't come but now it's The almond tree just as the almond tree budding shows you that spring is coming So this vision shows you that I am about ready to bring about These prophecies that have been a long time sleeping as it were slumbering um Then the next vision he sees is of a boiling pot and it's in the next verses chapter 1 Verse 12 then the lord said to me you've seen well verse 13 And the word of the lord came to me a second time saying what do you see and I said I see a boiling pot And it was facing away from the north And the lord said to me out of the north calamity shall break forth On all the inhabitants of the land now the babylonians were coming from the north.

And so this cauldron full of boiling contents Was being poured out from the north toward, you know going to be flooding south to judah and scalding and Hurting and killing And he says it's this uh, this boiling cauldron being poured out from the north upon you Is like god's wrath god's judgment being poured out from the north through the babylonians. That's what it's referring to in chapter 24 He sees two baskets of figs. This is another vision he has And some some of the things are great.

The other basket of figs so bad. He says no one could eat them. They're horrible And and god says well those figs that are Are good Are those jews who have already been taken into babylon people like daniel people like ezekiel the ones who were taken in 605 bc The ones who were taken in 597 bc the ones who were already there before 586 bc Those jews were the the good ones They were like good figs God liked them But he said the ones who are still here in jerusalem.

They're bad figs And they're going to be destroyed And The meaning of this was of course to counter again What some of the prophets the false prophets are saying namely that? You know jerusalem's not going to go into captivity Yeah, we know some jews have already gone but they were the bad people They're the ones that god was angry with he took them away because he's judging them because they're bad We are the good people. We're here in the city. We'll be protected and god says no the basket of figs that was Horrible and putrid that's like you jews who are still in the city the good figs are the ones are already gone It's the opposite of what the false prophets were suggesting now Uh, I just want to say there's several acted parables In the book of uh, jeremiah, and I won't go over them now.

I would if we had more time, but I I won't uh They are fairly self-explanatory Sometimes you may want to look for more meaning in them than there is to be found in them sometimes when ezekiel or jeremiah or Jose or someone does, uh, you know an acted parable acted prophecy Uh, it's just to make one simple point And we're always looking for a lot more deep meaning in it than is there but many times It's just a very simple thing Uh And and your notes contain those things so i'm gonna have to close down this introduction to jeremiah There's some more information in the notes than I was able to cover