The Call of a Prophet - Reflections on Jeremiah 1:4-10, Pentecost 11, Year C

by John C. Holbert on Saturday, June 7, 2025

         We begin today a rather long foray into the work of Jeremiah, a Judean prophet, who spent forty years of his life, primarily in Jerusalem, attempting to speak the word of YHWH to a people who could have cared less. As we will see, he had few friends, no family, and many enemies, including and especially the king and his court. Still, he persisted in the work of YHWH, though at times the angry prophet hoped against all hope that he could be freed of his call, which was often odious and painful to him. The prose introduction to the book, probably written sometime after the collection itself was assembled, tells us the approximate length of the prophet’s work. His divine call was apparently sometime during the reign of the reforming King Josiah, who died tragically in the year 609BCE, and it ended after the sack of Jerusalem at the hands of the forces of Babylon under the great king and general Nebuchadnezzar in 587BCE. Jeremiah was thus witness to a resurgence of political and religious power under Josiah and also saw the horrifying end of the temple and the city of Jerusalem, and may well have seen the humiliation of Judah’s last king, Zedekiah, blinded after the murder of his family, and herded off to Babylon into exile. 

         Jeremiah’s call has long been seen as a sort of model of prophetic calls, borrowing as it does from Moses at the famous bush, and echoing the summons of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and others in various ways. “The word of YHWH came to me, and said, ‘Before I shaped you in the belly, I knew you; even before you came from the womb, I consecrated you (lit: “made you holy”); I made you a prophet to the nations.’” (Jer.1:5). This opening bears close affinity to Deut.18:18 where YHWH speaks to Moses, and promises that God will one day bring forth another prophet like Moses: “I will raise up for them a prophet (or “prophets”) like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet who shall speak to them everything that I command.” 

         The fact that Jeremah is said to have been reared in Anathoth, among priests, (Jer.1:1) is significant. Anathoth was in effect a retired preacher’s home. It was founded by the exiled priest, Abiathar, last priest of Eli’s family, who was sent by David to Anathoth, because Abiathar had supported Solomon’s rival, Adonijah, as the king who should follow David. The small community apparently continued for some years, because Jeremiah’s birth “among priests” suggests that the ways of YHWH were much discussed in Anathoth. Jeremiah was surely destined for some form of religious service. However, when called by YHWH, he was decidedly reluctant. “What? Lord YHWH—look! I do not know how to speak, because I am a boy” (Jer.1:6) The brief sentence could also be read, “I do not know anything, because I am only a boy,” the Hebrew for “word” also being a word for “thing.” If the Mosaic analogy is important, and I imagine it is, Jeremiah’s reluctance due to his fear of “speaking” sounds just like Moses’s fourth lame excuse why he ought not go back to Egypt: “Moses said to YHWH, ‘O my Lord, I am not a man of words, neither in the past nor now that you have spoken to your servant, because my speech, yes even my tongue, both are heavy’” (Ex.4:10). Jeremiah would have known this famous line from Exodus, one can imagine, and he, like Moses, was having none of this divine call business.

         But YHWH is having none of Jeremiah’s reluctance either! “Do not say, ‘I am a boy, because all to whom I send you, you will go, and all that I command you, you will speak. Do not be afraid of their faces (literally), because I am with you to deliver you’” (Jer.1:7-8). The Exodus story sounds again, both in the line about “speaking all commanded,” and in the use of the famous Exodus word “deliver.” “Then YHWH sent forth the divine hand which touched my mouth, and said to me, ‘Look! I have put my words in your mouth” (Jer.1:9). This not only recalls Moses, but also Isaiah 6 when the great six-winged seraphim touches his mouth with a live coal from the altar of the temple, a direct (not to mention painful!) delivery of YHWH’s words to the prophet.

         And now comes the content of those words. “See, this very day, I appoint you (literally “I have visited you”) over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to annihiliate and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jer.1:10). And there is a summary of the work every prophet is called to do; such work always involves announcements of the pain that must be paid by sinning people, but equally involves the hope of a better future of new building and new planting. Jeremiah is without doubt the new Moses promised by YHWH in Deuteronomy 18, but he is also his own man. We will witness his ups and downs, his fears and hopes as over the next weeks we make our way through his extraordinary collection of oracles. It will surely prove a trip well worth taking.