Jeremiah was a Judean prophet who was active from 629 to 587 BC. During this time, he authored the Book of Jeremiah, the Book of Kings, and the Book of Lamentations, with Baruch ben Neriah serving as his scribe.
Biography[]
Jeremiah as a boy
Jeremiah was born in Anathoth, the son of High Priest Hilkiah. As a boy, he fell in love with Judith bat Eliakim, but her family was condemned to imprisonment by their debtor Ezer after King Jehoiakim exercised ruthless judgment. In 629 BC, he received a dream of God calling him to be a prophet, but Jeremiah refused. In 610 BC, however, he called on the people to bow before God at Solomon's Temple, but they refused to repent, and he was arrested for cursing them. His prophecies decried the corruption of Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah and called on the Israelites to allow the Babylonians to conquer them, as Jehoiakim's dynasty had lost their mandate from God. The Israelites called Jeremiah a coward and traitor, and he was forced to flee to the wilderness due to plots against him. There, he met Baruch ben Neriah, whom he took under his wing as his scribe and disciple. Jeremiah came into repeated conflict with both the authorities - who arrested him on many occasions - and with false prophets who foresaw peace for Judah rather than destruction. On one occasion, Jeremiah visited the court of Zedekiah bearing a yoke and warned that the nation would soon fall under the yoke of Babylon. In 596 BC, the false prophet Hananiah broke the yoke over Jeremiah's neck and said that the Israelites would break the Babylonian king's yoke within two years, only for Jeremiah to prophesy that Hananiah had broken a yoke of wood but made instead a yoke of iron.
In 590 BC, Nebuchadnezzar II approached Jerusalem with his Babylonian army, and Zedekiah imprisoned Jeremiah for predicting the city's fall. Jeremiah was once cast into a cistern to die in squalor, but the Ethiopian Ebed-Melech rescued him from the well. Jeremiah witnessed Jerusalem's fall from a gibbet, and Nebuchadnezzar had him freed for having predicted his conquest of Israel. Jeremiah settled in Mizpah in the Tribe of Benjamin, and he continued to attempt to turn the Israelites back towards God until his death.