Jehovah’s Word Is Alive

Highlights From the Book of Jeremiah

HOW shocking the catastrophes that Jeremiah proclaimed to his own people must have sounded! The glorious temple that had been a center of worship for over three centuries would be burned to the ground. The city of Jerusalem and the land of Judah would lie desolate, their inhabitants taken captive. A record of these and other judgment proclamations appears in the second-largest book of the Bible, the book of Jeremiah. It also relates what Jeremiah personally experienced as he faithfully carried out his 67-year-long ministry. The information in the book is presented, not in chronological order, but by subject.

“TWO BAD THINGS THAT MY PEOPLE HAVE DONE”

(Jeremiah 1:1–20:18)

Jeremiah is commissioned as a prophet in the 13th year of the reign of Josiah, the king of Judah, 40 years prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 607 B.C.E. (Jeremiah 1:1, 2) Proclamations made mostly during the remaining 18 years of Josiah’s reign expose Judah’s badness and pronounce Jehovah’s judgments against her. “I will make Jerusalem piles of stones,” declares Jehovah, “and the cities of Judah I shall make a desolate waste, without an inhabitant.” (Jeremiah 9:11) Why? “Because there are two bad things that my people have done,” he says.​—Jeremiah 2:13.

The message is also about the restoration of a repentant remnant. (Jeremiah 3:14-18; 12:14, 15; 16:14-21) The messenger, though, is not well-received. “The leading commissioner in the house of Jehovah” strikes Jeremiah and puts him in stocks overnight.​—Jeremiah 20:1-3.