Knowledge and Understanding of the Confessions of Jeremiah Essay

Outline your know leadge and understand of the Confessions of JeremiahJeremiah was the password of Hilkiah, and a member of a priestly family. He was a native of Judah and came from Anathoth, a sm each village in the north atomic number 99 of Jerusalem. His prophesieric ministry lasted from approximately 626 to 580BC, and is one of the longest of completely the writing prophets.The prophet Jeremiah began his long prophetic c beer in 626BC in the thirteenth family of Josiahs reign He was still a precise three-year-old man at this time. The narrative of his call is in a parley surrounded by Jeremiah and Yahweh. From this we batch perk up straight a dash that Jeremiah had a very intimate relationship with God from the outset. Unlike other prophets, Jeremiah seems to control been chosen to be a prophet before he was even born(p). forrader I formed you in the womb I knew you.Before you were born I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations. It seemed it was the pile of Jeremiah to be a prophet. According to Kidner, Jeremiah was handmade for the task. Similarly to Moses and Amos, at graduation Jeremiah was reluctant to consent to his mission, saying Ah superior God behold I do non know how to speak for I am wholly a youth, nonwithstanding his creed in Yahweh gave him faith in himself, and he accepted the role God asked of him. Perhaps this teaches us the importee of rising to face personal challenges. Yahweh said to Jeremiah Be not unnerved of them for I am with you to deliver you. This is very much the faith of believers to twenty-four hour period, that in times of trouble, God is constant in our lives.In Jeremiahs call, Yahweh outlines the purpose of his ministry. He says I have set you this day over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant. This summarizes the two main aspects of Jeremiahs mission. It was to be a twofold mission, having both a positive and negati ve mission, and promising reconstructive memory after dying. Yahweh intended to punish the pack for their sins and injustice, yet it would be this destruction that would create a new and holy people. In this aspect, we can see a similarity between Hosea and Jeremiah, in that Hosea also believed in saving(a) Judgement.Following the dialogue of Jeremiahs call, in that location were two wads. The first of these visions is the vision of the almond rod, and the second vision is one of the boiling pot confront away from the north. These visions both contained a message of judgement. The mouth of the put is confront towards the south, away from the north, which implies that the danger that Judah volition face testament coif from the north, and that these forces will destroy Judah. Yahweh says here And I will utter my judgements against them, for all their disgust in yielding me they have made their offerings to other gods, and worshipped the whole kit and boodle of their own han ds.In his visions, God speaks very frankly of judgement, expressing that it is going to take a chance soon, and that the destruction is going to come from the North. After this, Yahweh encourages Jeremiah again with the divine effect of his task. He is made aware(predicate) that be young and experienced, he would be resisted and persecuted by many, further that he would be upheld and strengthened by God.Jeremiah soundless sin in terms of the betrayal of love, and accused the people of being guilty of embracing pagan gods, and flirting with heathen empires. They succumbed to the corrupting influences of the nature cults. Jeremiah found their behaviour incredible, and failed to understand why after Yahweh had been so secure to the people during the time of exodus, they would desert him. He accused the people of forsaking Yahweh saying They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, sappy cisterns that can hold no water.In other quarr el, they had deserted Yahweh for gods which were unimportant to them. Jeremiah also outlined the futility of foreign alliances, and said that in times of semipolitical emergency, he remaining their honest protector. They lost faith in Yahweh, and this led to Assyria losing their religion independence. Jeremiah felt this was stupidity on their part, and appealed to the people to return to the covenant, but they paid him no heed. The call from Jeremiah is a call for repentance. Kidner said Judah had seen it all and followed suit, sinning with her eyes open. To make it worse she had put on a sanctimonious show of repentance and reform.Jeremiah says that the Jews were guilty of syncretism and apostasy, but that they were so conscientiously complacent that they were ignorant of their own sin. There was evidence of paganism and the people of Judah were confused. The nation had sunk to a dangerously low level of phantasmal impurity. They had become hardened, and unfeeling in relation to their conscience.Jeremiahs confessions are autobiographical. The book of Jeremiah is cut off into six different passages The passages in jeremiahs confessions have three things in common, they are in first person, they are directly addressed to God and not to the people or its rulers, and they express the deep suffering felt by the prophet in exercising his mission. These passages are what made Jeremiah unique amongst the Hebrew prophets. He is the yet prophet to notify the personal impact his role had on him. In the confessional passages we see a real, human being, whose frailty we can identify with and whose trauma we can understand. Rarely did other prophets give us a glimpse into their lives, but in the passages Jeremiah wrote, he revealed his soul.Throughout his ministry, Jeremiah was often in conflict with his own contemporaries. This conflict was not his choosing. We are reminded of Hosea, in the sense that Jeremiah was a man of intense sympathy and tenderness of the heart, and all he wanted was to feel the love and companionship of others. He scorn the conflict that deprived him of warmth and conflict that he craved, and so he became a depressed and hostile man. Yahweh said to Jeremiah You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons and daughters in this place. This was due to the impending crisis. In the ancient dear(p) east, sterility was considered to be a terrible curse, so we know from this that Jeremiahs celibacy would not have been down to personal choice. This shows how Jeremiah endured personal suffering, as a result of the nations wickedness.The first two passages in Jeremiahs confessions reveal a plot against his life, instigated by immediate family and acquaintances. The people saw Jeremiah, son of a priest, as a traitor. He reacted fiercely to this plot, and asked for the death of these men. The hap caused Jeremiah to reflect on his mission, and on the very meaning of human existence.As Jeremiah asked for no more than justi ce, God upheld his fierce reaction saying I am going to punish themFor I will bring incident upon the people of Anathoth. This punishment however is not for vengeance, it is for reform. It is here that Jeremiah shows us a different side of him. He exaggerates the gloom, and welcomes the thought of retribution. Yahweh tells him that he has to keep his faith and courage during his sufferings, because they are little compared to what is to come. God knows only too come up the pain in the neck of ingratitude desertion from a spouse defiance of a son, a daughter. A parallel is evident between the familys rejection of Jeremiah, and the nations rejection of Yahweh.In the third passage, we see a new effusion and pleading by Jeremiah as he describes the inner crisis he is facing. He believed that everything he did seemed to bring him into conflict with his expletive men. It is here that Jeremiah laments on his mother, saying woe is me, my mother that you ever bore me, a man of passage of arms and contention to the whole land. As Jeremiahs call predates his birth, to curse the day of his birth would mean a rejection of his mission. His persecution arises from the message he has to deliver. Jeremiah was depressed by his work and often wondered about its purpose. In his eyes, all it caused was contention with his fellow Jews, and made him considered a troublemaker. The reaction the people of Judah gave him meant he became bitter, and saw himself condemned to a life of loneliness.The people reacted in such a hostile way to Jeremiah because he told them what they didnt want to hear. He foretold disaster and the people remained distrustful of what he was saying, which only caused Jeremiah to fall even further into depression. As a result of the personal persecution and enforced loneliness, Jeremiah became vindictive and actually prayed for vengeance on those who treated him so poorly. This desire for vengeance only further reveals the valet de chambre of Jeremiah. Th e third confession also indicates that Jeremiah faced an inward struggle with Yahweh, as well as an outward struggle with men. He was torn between obligation and magnetic dip.He felt obliged to work as a prophet, and continue to live the sort of life that would lead to conflict with others, but due to the stress his prophetic work caused him, he felt given over to avoid it. In the beginning, the quarrel of Yahweh brought Jeremiah joy. Your words were found, and I ate them and your words became to me a joy and the de bring down of my heart, but this has all permuted now. Jeremiah has been left an object of ridicule, and Gods words no longer gave him joy. He felt God used him as instrument to announce pain and destruction on people he felt love for, and at times he was almost blasphemous, accusing Yahweh of overpowering and misleading him. Oh Lord though hast deceived me, and I was deceived, thou art stronger than I and thou hast prevailed. Yahwehs reply renews and confirms he pro phets mission, using the very words from his call. And I will make you to this people a fortified contend of bronze. It is made clear however, that this will only happen when Jeremiah has converted, and regained confidence indoors his mission.In the last of the confessional passages, Jeremiah tells us of his most dramatic inner crisis, heavily believing that Yahweh has tricked him. Oh Lord you have enticed me and I was enticed you have over supply me and you have prevailed. He fears being classed as a faithlessly prophet, which would have been devastating because he is one of the biggest critics of them. These false prophets were Jeremiahs greatest competition, and promised a shortcut to divine restoration. They spoke of peace, and attempted to heal the wound of the people mildly, but their remedies failed to touch even the root of the problem. Jeremiah says the complete opposite to these false prophets. Jeremiah believed that Yahweh would intervene in human history to punish , where as the false prophets proclaimed that God was uninterested in human affairs, and on that pointfore that he wouldnt intervene in them.Jeremiah believes that they feed the Jews with false hope, whenever doom is inevitable, and without the destruction they cannot be rebuilt. According to Bright, these prophets are nothing but wind. The role of a true prophet was often to act as a contestant to the stipulation quo. The people of Judah did not like the challenge that Jeremiah was presenting them with. Jeremiah remained insistent however, that in light of Judahs perversity, she would be punished. Although here he is clearly presented as a prophesier of Doom, this is only one aspect to his mission, and like other prophets, he does have a message of hope. Similarly to Amos, Jeremiah is warning the people what is to come if they do not repent, he is giving them warning so change is a possibility. It is for this reason he is also known as the Prophet of Repentance.He feels doubtfu l in relation to his message, and feels he is crying skirt chaser in regard to his mission, by proclaiming a message of judgement which has not yet come to pass. Once again we are reminded of the conflict with Jeremiah in relation to obligation and inclination. Here Jeremiah describes his obligation to speak in a prophetic voice as a fire burning inwardly him, forcing him to go on with his prophetic work despite the feeling that his inclination was to stop. Jeremiah speaks of his struggle saying If I saw I will not mention him, or speak anymore in his name, the n inside me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I am weary with holding it in and I cannot.When Jeremiah says But the Lord is with me like a dread warrior therefore my persecutors will stumble, he seems to have come to realise that within him there was the potential to move forwards and cope with what he thought was impossible. He finally realised that he was not alone, and that God would always be w ith him. Although Jeremiah at times curses the day he was born, the one thing that get up him out of his depression was the deep conviction that Yahweh would always be there for him. Kidner says on Jeremiah He goes on to his worst ordeals with never a faltering or a word of doubt.In conclusions, the outpourings from Jeremiahs heart that we witness in his confessions could be said to reveal imperfections about his human character, such as vindictiveness towards his fellow men and irrelevance towards God. However as Jeremiah was aware of his own perfections, by repenting Yahweh would help him cover all of his human imperfections. If only the Jews had have realised the need to repent, then Yahweh could have help them overcome their imperfections through prayer and dialogue.