JEREMIAH, Sylvester Hassell Nineteen years before the accession of Jehoiakim, Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, a priest of Anathoth, three miles north of Jerusalem, in the territory of Benjamin, having before his birth been ordained of the Lord a prophet, had been called when a mere child to the sacred office. Naturally gentle, sensitive and timid, he was made, by the indwelling Spirit of God, strong and bold, and fearless—a defenced city, an iron pillar and a brazen wall—against the wicked king, and princes, and priests, and false prophets, and people of the land, to declare to them their religious superficiality and hypocrisy, to denounce their idolatries and corruptions, and to predict that God would for their abominations, carry them into seventy years’ captivity in Babylon; but that, though he would make a full end of their Babylonian oppressors, he would not make a full end of them, but in covenant faithfulness would visit them again and restore them to their own land.
Jeremiah was accused of being a traitor to his own people and a friend to the Babylonians: he was mocked and persecuted more than any other prophet— hated, taunted, derided, put in stocks and in a miry prison, and sought to be killed. Both literally and spiritually, more than any other servant of God in the Old Testament dispensation, he experienced the fellowship of the suffering of Christ—his whole life being one long martyrdom in the cause of truth. At times, when left to himself, he became bitterly despondent, and bewailed , like Job in his extremest agony, the day on which he was born—feeling that his whole life was a failure (as the people did not heed his warnings), and doubting whether his very mission was not a delusion, and thinking that he would afterwards keep silent; but the word of the Lord was like burning fire in his bones, and he continued to deliver his solemn prophetic messages, and his eyes became fountains of tears for the sins and coming calamities of his people.
Yet, “in that stormy sunset of prophecy, he beholds, in spirit, the dawn of a brighter and eternal day. He sees that, if there is any hope of salvation for his people, it cannot be by a return to the old system and the old ordinances, divine though they once had been (xxx.31).
There must be a new (and spiritual) covenant. The relations of God and man must rest, not on an outward law with its requirements of obedience, but on that of an inward fellowship with him, and the consciousness of entire dependence. For all this he saw clearly there must be a personal center”—the Messiah, the righteous and royal branch of David, the Lord our righteousness, bringing salvation to Israel, writing his law in their minds and hearts, making a personal and inward revelation of himself to them as their God, and forgiving their iniquities (xxiii.5,6; xxxi.31-34).
Of this Messiah, in his persecution by and suffering for his people there was no more striking human type than Jeremiah, who is believed to have been finally carried to Tahpanhes in Egypt, and there stoned by the Jews, irritated by his rebukes.” (Hassell’s History ppg 132, 133)