Jeremiah
Jeremiah introduced the 'new covenant,' one written on the heart instead of stone tablets.
Read this if you…
- want the most emotionally raw prophet — the original 'jeremiad,' bewailing a destruction he saw coming for forty years and couldn't stop
- like the autobiographical bits: thrown in a cistern, mocked, plotted against, watching Jerusalem burn while telling everyone he'd warned them
- care about a prophet who hated his own job — 'his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing'
Skip this if you…
- don't want to read explicitly religious/Christian texts
Why It Matters
Jeremiah introduced the 'new covenant,' one written on the heart instead of stone tablets. The New Testament quotes that passage more than any other Old Testament text (Hebrews 8). The word 'jeremiad,' a prophetic rant against moral decline, comes straight from him.
Where to go next
- Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville. Jeremiah shaped it. - Melville named the ship that saves Ishmael after one of this book's most piercing lines - The *Rachel* — searching for her lost children, refusing to be comforted — enacts Jeremiah 31:15 directly: "Rachel weeping for her children, because they were not" - Father Mapple's drumbeat of "woe" is prophetic borrowing too, pulled from Jeremiah and his fellow prophets
Depicted in Art
A monumental, white-bearded Jeremiah looms over the seated Baruch, who poises his quill above an open scroll to take down the prophecy.
Washington Allston, 1820
Jeremiah slumps on his marble throne, beard untrimmed, head sunk on one hand, gazing downward in brooding silence while two mourning women flank him.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1512
An aged Jeremiah leans his head on his hand, propped against a gleaming pile of temple gold, while Jerusalem burns dimly in the dark distance behind him.
Rembrandt van Rijn, 1630
A white-robed Jeremiah sits crumpled on a stone block amid colossal toppled columns and shadowed temple wreckage, head bowed into his hand.
Horace Vernet, 1844
A balding, gaunt-faced Jeremiah stands in a heavy tunic, weight on one leg, head turned sharply left, mouth slightly parted as if mid-rebuke.
Donatello, 1436
A faithful color reproduction of Michelangelo's brooding seated Jeremiah, head sunk on his hand, scroll across his knees.
Marian (after Michelangelo)
A bespectacled Jeremiah in heavy robes stands on the hexagonal base of a monumental crucifixion well, clutching an unfurled scroll inscribed with words from Lamentations.
Claus Sluter, 1403
A grey-bearded Jeremiah in robes stands holding a scroll on a stone ledge crowded with books, a flickering oil lamp burning beside him.
Barthélemy d'Eyck (Master of the Aix Annunciation), 1445
A wild-haired Jeremiah throws his head back and cries out, arms half-raised, surrounded by the rubble and smoke of the fallen city.
Ilya Repin, 1870
Recommended Editions
King James Version
Cambridge University Press · 1611
The most influential and commonly quoted translation in English. The prose rhythm everyone else is responding to, even modern translations.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.”
“Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?”
More by Jeremiah
- Lamentations
c. 586 BCE · Elegy
- Kings
c. 550 BCE · Scripture — Narrative