The Call of Jeremiah
627 BC, estimated dateEstimated date
In the thirteenth year of King Josiah, Jeremiah, of a priestly family at Anathoth, is called to be a prophet to the nations. For some forty years he warns Judah of disaster from the north, and he promises a new covenant written on the heart.
Jeremiah son of Hilkiah belonged to a family of priests at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, a short distance north-east of Jerusalem. The word of the Lord came to him in the thirteenth year of King Josiah (Jeremiah 1:1–2).
He tells it in the first person. The Lord said that he had known him before forming him in the womb and had appointed him “a prophet to the nations”. Jeremiah answered that he did not know how to speak, for he was only a child. He was told not to be afraid. The Lord touched his mouth, said, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth”, and set him over nations and kingdoms “to uproot and to tear down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:4–10).
Two visions followed. An almond branch meant that the Lord was watching over his word to carry it out. A boiling pot tilting from the north meant that disaster would break out from the north on everyone living in the land (Jeremiah 1:11–16). Jeremiah was to stand against the kings, officials, priests and people of Judah like a fortified city. They would fight him and not prevail (Jeremiah 1:17–19).
His work lasted through the reigns of Josiah’s sons to the fall of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 1:3). Standing in the gate of the temple, he warned the worshippers not to trust in the cry “Yahweh’s temple, Yahweh’s temple”. If they did not do justice, the Lord would do to this house what he had done to his sanctuary at Shiloh (Jeremiah 7:1–15). A second account of the sermon dates it to the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign and says that priests and prophets demanded his death for it (Jeremiah 26:1–11).
He also promised a new covenant, unlike the one broken since the exodus: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart” (Jeremiah 31:31–34).
Both sayings are taken up in the New Testament. Jesus uses the temple sermon’s phrase “a den of robbers” when he drives the traders from the temple (Jeremiah 7:11) (Matthew 21:13). The letter to the Hebrews quotes the promise of the new covenant in full (Hebrews 8:6–13), and in Luke and Paul the cup of the Last Supper is called “the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20) (1 Corinthians 11:25).
How this is dated
Estimated date. A scholarly estimate from primary evidence, with a margin of years.
Jeremiah dates his call to the thirteenth year of Josiah (Jeremiah 1:2). He later counts twenty-three years from that year to the fourth year of Jehoiakim, which he equates with the first year of Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 25:1–3). Nebuchadnezzar took the throne in 605 BC (Babylonian Chronicle 5 obv. 9–11). Josiah reigned thirty-one years (2 Kings 22:1) and was killed when Pharaoh Necho marched to the Euphrates (2 Kings 23:29), a march the Babylonian chronicle places in 609 BC (Babylonian Chronicle 3 year 17). Both counts put the thirteenth year at 627/626 BC.
William L. Holladay, Jeremiah 1 (Hermeneia, 1986), noting how few of Jeremiah’s sayings can be placed in Josiah’s reign, takes 627 BC as the year of his birth and begins his preaching later. Most commentators keep the plain sense of the heading.
Primary sources
Scripture
In context
Leads to
- 16 March 597 BC, firm date
- AD 30 or 33, estimated date