Jeremiah
Jeremiah is sometimes called the “weeping prophet” because of his statement that his eyes were a fountain of tears (9:1). That is somewhat of an appropriate title because nearly all of Jeremiah’s message is negative. He spoke just before the Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians (in 586) and the people were carried off into exile. Jeremiah’s main message was: you are wicked and you deserve God’s judgment. To us today, it gets a bit weary reading lots of negative things over and over again. But repetition was important because the consequences of disobeying were (and still are) severe.
Your head should pop up when you get to chapter 30. The next four chapters (30-33) really stand apart in the book because they are long messages of hope. And it’s not flimsy hope either. These are some of the richest passages of hope, particularly when you realize that Jeremiah was giving them to a people about to be carried away to Babylon. But God made some promises to his people and he intends to keep them. One of the most remarkable ones is that he will make a New Covenant with his people. This New Covenant will be different from the Old Covenant because it will cause the person’s heart to be changed so that he fully obeys God’s word. This means that the people will never be carried into exile again because they won’t disobey.
Lamentations
Tradition says that Jeremiah wrote this book after he saw the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. It is a series of five lament poems, each of the first four written as an acrostic (each letter beginning with the next letter in the alphabet). Most of this book is a sad memory of what happened, but pay attention to the few verses that give hope for the future. Notice what the basis of this hope is—the very character of God himself.