Elmer A. Martens - Commentary on Jeremiah: From The Baker Illustrated Bible Commentary

Elmer A. Martens

Introduction

The book of Jeremiah is one of unusual intensity. The destiny of Gods people is at stake. A prophet, against great odds, alerts his people to a monumental crisis. He argues persuasively, sometimes feverishly, for a specific course of action to avert the impending doom. His counsel, though given in the name of God, is rejected, and the catastrophe about which he has warned happens. Life is miserable. People are killed or deported. The peoples king is tortured. Property is destroyed. The temple is burned. Their land is lost. A 350-year national history has come to an end.

Historical Context

What brought on the political crisis in the land of Judah at the turn of the sixth century was a moral and religious depravity traceable to the long reign of Manasseh, Judahs most evil king (686643 BC). Manasseh reintroduced Baal worship and set up altars to foreign gods in the Jerusalem temple area, not to mention other practices of the most bizarre kind (2 Kings 21:6). For offenses not nearly as gross, Israel, Judahs northern neighbor, had been invaded by the Assyrians in 722 BC. Its capital, Samaria, had been captured. Judah, the prophet Jeremiah warned, would face a greater tragedy.

Yet crisis could hardly describe Judah during Josiahs reign (641609 BC). Manasseh before him had been a vassal of the Assyrians. But with Assyrian power waning, Josiah enlarged Judahs territories. Times were prosperous. It even seemed that Josiah would turn the nation to God. When the scroll, possibly Deuteronomy, was discovered in the temple in 622, he took strong measures to reform Judahs religious life (2 Kings 2223). But the reforms turned out to be temporary. A number of prophetic oracles in the first six chapters of Jeremiah date from Josiahs reign. They claim that the situation, for all its apparent calm, is serious.

To aggravate matters, Jehoiakim (609597 BC), Josiahs son, reversed the direction set by Josiah. He, in fact, returned to pagan idols and even practiced child sacrifice. Despite wealth being drained to Egypt, to whom Judah had become a vassal, Jehoiakim built himself a showy palace. He failed to compensate the laborers, nor did he care for societys poor. He callously disregarded the God of Israel, whose message was read to him from a scroll prepared by Jeremiah. He sliced the written columns as they were read and tossed them into the fire (Jeremiah 36).

Such brazen disregard for God propelled the people into a national crisis both religious and political. Josiah, the highly respected king, had been killed in 609 BC at Megiddo in an attempt to halt the Egyptians, who were moving northward to the aid of an ailing Assyria. A fast-moving Babylonian, Nabopolassar, had captured Nineveh, Assyrias capital, in 612 BC. With a decisive victory over Egypt at the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar, who succeeded Nabopolassar to the throne, was about to swallow the little countries of Syria-Palestine, including Judah.