Greetings brother, allow me to add the following that I just looked up...
Biblical Imagery in the Book of Jeremiah
The first edition of Jeremiah’s prophecies was reduced to ashes by king Jehoiakim (
Jer 36:1-6). Perhaps this explains why the organization of the book of Jeremiah is difficult to understand. The divergences between the Septuagint (the Greek OT) and the traditional Hebrew text in length and arrangement of the book suggest that there was some fluidity in these areas.
The structure of the book is loosely historical, although some of the material is arranged thematically, perhaps by Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch (
Jer 36:27-32;
45:1-5). The book is perhaps best described as an historical anthology. In addition to prophecy and historical narrative, the finished work includes a legal brief (
Jer 2:1-3:5), a sermon (Jeremiah’s famous “Temple Sermon,”
Jer 7:1-15;
26:1-6), a letter from home (
Jer 29:1-23) and a series of soliloquies (Jeremiah’s heart-rending “Confessions,”
Jer 15:10-18;
17:9-18;
18:18-23;
20:7-18).
The broad emphases of Jeremiah’s prophecy are easily discernible. They appear already in the prophet’s call, which uses figurative language to describe his commission to proclaim both
judgment and
salvation to Judah and the nations. Jeremiah’s call came as early as 627 b.c., although his ministry was centered around the desperate situation that existed just before, during and immediately following the collapse of Judah and Jerusalem in 587/6 b.c.
Jeremiah’s call employs words that picture the nations as edifices or
plants that were to be established or destroyed: “See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant” (
Jer 1:10 NIV;
see Build, Building;
Tear Down). This predominantly negative imagery recurs like a refrain throughout the book, describing the
judgment of Judah and other nations as well as Judah’s ultimate
restoration (e.g.,
Jer 12:14-17;
18:7-10;
24:6;
31:28;
42:10;
45:4).
Two visions immediately follow the call narrative. The first involves a wordplay on an observed almond branch
(sqd), signifying God’s watching
(sqd) over his word to bring it to pass (
Jer 1:11-12). In the second vision, Jeremiah was shown “a boiling pot, tilting away from the
north,” representing the coming divine judgment against Judah for her sin (
Jer 1:13-14 NIV).
In the book of Jeremiah, God’s central charge against the people of Judah was that they had broken their
covenant with him and had turned instead to other
gods (
Jer 11:1-10;
22:8-9). Judah had been established in a special relationship with God, like a
bride (
Jer 2:2). She is described as the
firstfruits of God’s
harvest (
Jer 2:3), his
vineyard (
Jer 12:10), his
flock (
Jer 13:17) and his firstborn
son (
Jer 31:9,
20). However, she had forsaken the spring of living
water and had dug out her own
cisterns that could not hold water (
Jer 2:13).
Jeremiah presented the family of the Rechabites (
Jer 35:1-19) and their faithful adherence to the prohibitions imposed by their forefather as a visual example of the
obedience that God desired but had not found in Judah. Instead, Judah had given her allegiance to idols, and these are the subject of many of Jeremiah’s oracles. He charged that
idolatry had proliferated until it was widespread (
Jer 11:13) and acceptable even within and around the holy
temple (
Jer 7:30-31;
19:5-6;
32:33-35). He accused entire families of idolatrous practices (
Jer 7:17-19) as well as every level of officialdom (
Jer 2:26-28). These idols are compared to a “scarecrow in the melon patch” (
Jer 10:5 NIV). They are worthless and fraudulent-no comparison to the Lord Almighty who created all things (
Jer 10:1-16). Jeremiah likened Judah’s unfaithfulness to God to that of an
adulterous woman (
Jer 3:20;
5:7) or a
prostitute (
Jer 2:20;
3:1-3;
4:30;
13:26-27), whose appetite for foreign gods is compared to the desire of a she-camel or wild
donkey in heat who sniffs the
wind in her lust (
Jer 2:23-24).
In addition to idolatry, the nation’s abandonment of God’s law manifested itself in social decay and immorality (
Jer 5:1-9;
7:5-8), including unspeakable acts of violence in the valley of slaughter (
Jer 7:30-32). Jeremiah accused the false prophets of abetting this spiritual decline (
Jer 14:14-16;
23:9-40). The prophets prophesied “peace, peace, when there was no peace” (
Jer 6:14;
8:11). Jeremiah urged the people of Judah to turn away from their faithlessness by describing in fearsome imagery the judgment God must otherwise bring on the nation. That judgment would be like a scorching, scattering desert wind (
Jer 4:11;
13:24), like eating bitter
food and
drinking poisoned water (
Jer 8:14;
9:15;
23:15), like the violence and
shame of
rape (
Jer 13:22) or the
pain of childbirth (
Jer 4:31;
13:21;
see Birth), like a furious
storm (
Jer 23:19) or the very disintegration of all order into the precreation
chaos (
Jer 4:23-26).
But Jeremiah did not limit his exhortation to repentance to words. His first trip to the
potter graphically illustrated that just as the potter can alter his intentions for the vessel he is forming on the wheel, so God can revise his plans for a nation on the basis of their actions (
Jer 18:1-2). If Judah would repent, judgment could still be averted.
But because the people of Judah had
eyes but could not see and
ears but could not hear (
Jer 5:21), they rejected Jeremiah’s visual and vocal message. The nation did not repent of its wickedness. Unlike the storks,
doves, swifts or thrushes, who know their appointed migratory times and routes (
see Birds), Judah is described as being as directionless as a
horse in battle (
Jer 8:4-7). The prophecy of Jeremiah therefore turns to a pronouncement of impending judgment. Thus, Jeremiah’s second trip to the potter was for a visual depiction of God’s verdict against the nation. Judah would be smashed just as the potter’s jar was smashed (
Jer 19:1-13). Judah had been planted in the land like a choice vine of sound and reliable stock but had become a corrupt, wild
vine that had to be uprooted (
Jer 2:21).
Jeremiah also symbolized and represented the coming judgment of which he spoke in his own person and actions. He buried a
linen belt until it became rotten and useless to demonstrate that Judah had become rotten (
see Decay) and was no longer able to be used by God to bring himself
honor (
Jer 13:1-11). Jeremiah remained unmarried and childless and was prohibited from entering a house where there was mourning or rejoicing in order to demonstrate that the offspring of Judah would perish and that there would soon be neither mourning for the dead nor rejoicing with newlyweds in the land (
Jer 16:1-9). The inevitability of the nation’s judgment was further signified by God’s denying to Jeremiah his intercessory role as a prophet (
Jer 7:16;
11:14;
14:11-12). Jeremiah’s arrest, beatings (
Jer 20:1-2) and imprisonment in the king’s dungeon (
see Prison) and his later near-death in the cistern (
Jer 37-38) point toward the coming captivity and near extinction of the nation of Judah at the hands of the
Babylonians (
Jer 39). Toward the end of his ministry, when the exile had already begun, Jeremiah encouraged the people of Judah to submit to Nebuchadnezzar by placing on his own neck a yoke of straps and crossbars (
Jer 27). Even the emotions of Jeremiah, which have earned him the moniker “the
weeping prophet,” not only manifest his melancholy but also demonstrate God’s own sorrow over having to so severely judge his chosen people (e.g.,
Jer 4:19;
13:15-17).
The positive side of Jeremiah’s message, corresponding to the “building” and “planting” of his prophetic call, involves the motif of a
remnant (e.g.,
Jer 3:14;
23:3;
30:10-11;
50:20) that would be delivered from captivity and returned to the land of promise (
Jer 3:18;
16:14-15;
29:10-14;
30:17-31:40;
50:19). After seventy years of captivity (
Jer 25:12), a righteous Branch would come to rule on David’s throne (
Jer 23:3,
5-6;
33:14-26). The proclamation of this future
restoration centers in the portion of the book of Jeremiah known as the Book of Consolation (
Jer 30:1-33:26). Jeremiah communicated this positive message of restoration visually by buying a field in the besieged land of Judah in order to demonstrate that “houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land” (
Jer 32:15 NIV). Indeed, Jeremiah’s own deliverance from prison (
Jer 40) pointed toward the future deliverance of the people he represented from their Babylonian captivity.
The images in which Jeremiah’s twin messages of judgment and restoration find their fullest expression are the images of the
cup of the
wine of God’s wrath and the new
covenant. Jeremiah was commanded to take from God’s hand the cup filled with the wine of his wrath and make the nations to whom God sent him drink it (
Jer 25:15). This cup represents God’s judgment and was to be taken to “all the kingdoms on the face of the earth” (
Jer 25:26 NIV). At the top of the list were Jerusalem and the towns of Judah (
Jer 25:18). Judah would be handed over to the army of Nebuchadnezzar, described as a
lion coming out of his lair (
Jer 4:7), whose unstoppable advance would be “like the roaring sea” (
Jer 6:23 NIV), or “like the clouds, his chariots like a whirlwind, and his horses swifter than
eagles” (
Jer 4:13 NIV). His soldiers are all mighty warriors, whose quivers carry as much certainty of death as an open
grave (
Jer 5:16). A “tester of
metals” would assay Judah, the ore (
Jer 6:27). The Gentile nations too would experience God’s judgment, and this forms the substance of Jeremiah’s “oracles against the nations” (
Jer 46-51). However, the universal and final character of the prophesied judgment forces one to look for its ultimate fulfillment at a later time.
The situation is similar with the image of the new covenant (
Jer 31:31-34). Jeremiah described this new covenant with God as involving an intimate personal relationship, the forgiveness of sins and a disposition toward God that would no longer be characterized by intransigent and rebellious hearts upon which sin is permanently “engraved with an iron tool, inscribed with a flint point” (
Jer 17:1 NIV), but rather by receptive hearts on which the law of God is written. This new covenant, like the cup of the wine of God’s wrath, would also be extended to the Gentile nations (
Jer 3:17).
The book of Jeremiah ends, however, on a negative note. There was turmoil within the tiny community that remained in the land of Judah, and despite Jeremiah’s protests, they eventually fled to Egypt (
Jer 40-44). The realization of this prophesied new covenant, therefore, was also to be experienced in a later day.
The NT authors find the ultimate fulfillment of Jeremiah’s images of the cup of the wine of God’s wrath and the new covenant in the person and work of Jesus Christ (cf.
Mt 26:27-28). Jesus drank from the cup of God’s wrath to experience the full judgment of God against the sin of humankind (
Mt 26:39;
Jn 18:11). In so doing, he opened the way for the redemption of a remnant into an everlasting, new covenant with God, whose laws are written on their
hearts (
Heb 8:6-13).
See also Babylon;
Build, Building;
Covenant;
Heart;
Jerusalem;
Judgment;
Prophecy, Genre Of;
Remnant;
Restoration;
Tear Down.
Dictionary of Biblical Imagery.
I am aware of Digital Imagery, Similies and the like but to date have not spent a lot of time in them, it is another open book on my electronic desk
