Jeremiah

Jeremiah
Birthplace	Anathoth
Occupation	Prophet

Jeremiah

, persons in the Bible

Jeremiah (jĕrĭmīˈə), in the Bible. 1 Prophet of the book of Jeremiah. 2 Father-in-law of Josiah. 3 Rechabite contemporary with Jeremiah the prophet. 4, 5, 6 Three who joined David at Ziklag.

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Jeremiah

, book of the Bible

Jeremiah a book of the Bible, comprising a collection of prophetic oracles attributed to Jeremiah, a prophet who preached (c.628–586 B.C.) in Jerusalem under King Josiah and his successors. His message indicts his contemporaries for social injustice and religious apostasy. Jeremiah realistically opposed resistance to Babylon, and his insistence on speaking unpalatable truths brought him to prison and the stocks. When Jerusalem fell to Babylon (586 B.C.), Jeremiah was allowed to stay with the Jews who remained, who subsequently took him to Egypt. The oracles of the book were preserved by the prophet's secretary, Baruch. They are not in strict chronological order, and there are important differences in the Hebrew and Greek texts. In the Septuagint, chapter 25 is followed by chapters 46–51 of the Hebrew order with some rearrangement and omission of individual oracles. The New Revised Standard Version text follows the ordering of the material found in the Hebrew text. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain Hebrew fragments of Jeremiah that bear witness to both traditions. One analysis of the book would be as follows: introduction; oracles against Judah and Jerusalem denouncing social injustice, immorality, and breaking covenant with God with warnings of imminent destruction of the city—Jehoiakim's reign (609–598) is probably the setting for most of these oracles; oracles dating from the reign of Zedekiah; Babylon as God's agent in the coming destruction; Baruch's memoirs, including Jeremiah's letter to the first group of exiles; the prophecy of a new covenant replacing the one now irreparably broken; oracles against the nations; historical appendix. A series of laments, sometimes known as the confessions of Jeremiah, are interspersed throughout the book. These reveal something of the personal cost to the prophet of his ministry of confrontation. See also Lamentations.

Bibliography

See studies by R. P. Carroll (1986) and R. E. Clements (1988); see also bibliography under Old Testament.

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Jeremiah

 

Born circa 650 B.C. in Anathoth, the Kingdom of Judah; died after 586 B.C. in Egypt. The second of the so-called great prophets of Judaism. He began his work as a prophet as a youth in 626 B.C. A great number of Jeremiah’s sermons were devoted to the political situation of the Kingdom of Judah. Jeremiah preached of the necessity for peace with the most powerful of Judah’s enemies, Babylon; he preferred dependence on Babylon to the destruction of Judah. After the capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 B.C. , Jeremiah was allowed to remain in his homel and, but opponents of Babylonian rule forcibly took him to Egypt. Jeremiah’s sermons and sayings form the basis of the book of the Old Testament that bears his name. Some of them were written down by Jeremiah himself and some by his associate Baruch, who also included his own narratives about Jeremiah in the book. The final editing of the text was most probably carried out in the second century B.C. The Book of Jeremiah is an important source for the history of the Near East of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.

It cannot be proved that Jeremiah wrote even one of the poems that make up the Old Testament book The Lamentations of Jeremiah. The traditional attribution of The Books of the Kings to Jeremiah is fallacious.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jeremiah

the Lord’s herald. [O.T.: Jeremiah]

See: Prophecy

Allusions—Cultural, Literary, Biblical, and Historical: A Thematic Dictionary. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jeremiah

Old Testament

a. a major prophet of Judah from about 626 to 587 bc

b. the book containing his oracles

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005