A young man is told he was appointed before he was born, objects that he cannot speak, and is overruled in a single sentence. Then God shows him two things — a branch and a cooking pot — and the whole forty years is already in them.
A study in Jeremiah 1 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 13 min read
A Priest Who Never Served In The Temple
“The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin.”
Jeremiah 1:1
The book opens with an address, and the address is doing more work than it looks.
Jeremiah is a priest’s son. By birth he belonged to the one family in Israel with a guaranteed place, a guaranteed income and a guaranteed role. And he was born in Anathoth — which is not a neutral detail. Anathoth is where Solomon banished Abiathar the priest, telling him he was worthy of death but would be spared for the ark’s sake. It was the town you were sent to when the temple was closed to you.
So the man God calls to speak against the temple crowd is a priest from the priestly family that lost the temple. He has every credential and no platform. That is the shape of his whole ministry, stated in the first sentence.
The dates matter too. The word came to him in “the thirteenth year” of Josiah and continued “unto the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month.” That is roughly forty years of preaching, spanning the best king Judah had left and the worst, ending with the city in ruins.
Forty years, and the book records almost no one who listened. Keep that in view when the call is given, because God tells him in advance that this is what it will be. He is not sent to succeed. He is sent to speak.
Before I Formed Thee In The Belly
“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”
Jeremiah 1:5
Three verbs, and God is the subject of every one of them. I knew. I sanctified. I ordained. Jeremiah is the object throughout. He does not appear in this verse as anything but the one being acted upon.
Notice the order, because it is not the order we would write. We would say God formed him and then came to know him. Scripture reverses it: before I formed thee… I knew thee. The knowing is older than the making.
Then sanctified — set apart, marked off for a purpose — and only then ordained, given the office. Set apart before appointed. The purpose came before the job.
It is worth saying plainly what this verse is and is not doing. It is God’s word to one specific man about one specific commission. Jeremiah is not being told that everybody is born a prophet to the nations. But the verse does tell us something about how God works, and Paul evidently read it that way — he describes God in almost the same words, as the One “who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace” (Galatians 1:15).
And here is why it is said at all. It is said to a man about to argue that he is not qualified. God does not open with encouragement about Jeremiah’s gifts. He opens by moving the entire question out of Jeremiah’s hands and back a lifetime, to before there was a Jeremiah to have an opinion.
Ah, Lord GOD! I Cannot Speak
“Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORD.”
Jeremiah 1:6-8
The objection is two-part: I cannot speak, and I am a child. One is about ability, the other about standing. Together they are the complete case for someone else being sent.
God’s answer is remarkable for what it does not contain. He never tells Jeremiah that he is able. He does not correct the self-assessment. He does not say you are more capable than you think. He says “Say not, I am a child” — not you are wrong, but stop raising it. The objection is not refuted. It is ruled out of order.
Then comes the substitution, and it is total. Thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Jeremiah supplies the feet and the voice. The destination and the content are not his.
It is worth putting this beside Isaiah’s call, because the two are often blurred together and they are not the same. Isaiah sees the throne, cries “Woe is me!”, is touched with a live coal from the altar, and then volunteers: “Here am I; send me.” Jeremiah does not volunteer. He objects, and is sent anyway.
Two men, two callings, and God is the one who moves in both. Neither man began it. One said yes gladly and one said no first, and both went. If you have ever assumed that a genuine call feels like Isaiah’s, this chapter is the correction.
And notice what the promise in verse 8 actually is. “Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee.” Not they will like you. Not you will not be frightened. There will be faces, and they will be worth being afraid of. The remedy offered is not the removal of the danger but the presence of God inside it.
He Touched My Mouth
“Then the LORD put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.”
Jeremiah 1:9
Jeremiah said I cannot speak, so God touches the mouth. The answer is aimed exactly at the objection.
Isaiah’s mouth was touched too — with a coal from the altar, and the problem there was uncleanness: “I am a man of unclean lips.” The coal took something away. Here the problem is emptiness, and the touch puts something in: “I have put my words in thy mouth.”
Same organ, opposite operation. One mouth needed cleaning out, the other needed filling. God diagnoses individually, and He supplies precisely what is missing rather than a standard issue of grace handed to everyone alike.
This also settles the authority question before the book begins. Everything Jeremiah says from chapter 2 onward, every unpopular sentence that gets him beaten, stocked and dropped down a well, traces back to this verse. They are not his words. He is quoting.
Four Verbs To Pull Down, Two To Build
“See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.”
Jeremiah 1:10
Six verbs. Count them by direction and the commission comes into focus: four of demolition, two of construction.
Root out. Pull down. Destroy. Throw down. Then build, and plant.
The proportion is honest advertising. Most of what Jeremiah is given to say is negative, and the book bears that out — page after page of warning, with the consolation gathered into a few chapters near the middle. Anyone who expects a prophet’s work to be mostly encouragement has not read the job description.
But look where the list ends. It does not end in rubble. The last two words are build and plant, and a list ends where it is going. The demolition is not the goal; it is the clearing. You cannot plant in ground that is still full of what was there before, and four verbs’ worth of pulling down is what it takes to get two verbs’ worth of planting.
That is also the shape of the book. It ends with a new covenant and a field bought in a besieged country — planting, both of them, done while the demolition was still going on.
A Rod Of An Almond Tree
“Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of an almond tree. Then said the LORD unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I will hasten my word to perform it.”
Jeremiah 1:11, 12
On the face of it this is a strange exchange. Jeremiah sees a branch. God says well seen, and then talks about hastening His word. The branch and the hastening do not obviously belong together.
In English they do not. In Hebrew they nearly rhyme. The word for almond and the word for watching over sound almost the same, and God is answering the sight with the sound of it: you saw an almond — I am watching. It is a pun, and it is the point.
An English reader cannot hear that, which is exactly why it is worth explaining. But the picture works even without the wordplay, because of what an almond tree actually is. It is the first tree in that country to wake up. It blossoms in the dead of winter, before anything else has stirred, while every other branch is still bare. If you wanted a natural symbol for early, awake, ahead of everyone else, that is the tree you would pick.
So the first vision is not about judgment at all. It is about God’s timing, given to a man who is going to spend forty years being told he is wrong. Nothing will appear to happen for decades. The almond says: it is already awake.
There is one more almond branch in Scripture worth remembering here. When the tribes disputed Aaron’s priesthood, twelve rods were laid up before the LORD overnight, and one of them “brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds” (Numbers 17:8). A dead stick that produced almonds settled who had been chosen. Jeremiah — a priest with no temple — is shown an almond branch on the day he is told who he is.
A Seething Pot Toward The North
“And the word of the LORD came unto me the second time, saying, What seest thou? And I said, I see a seething pot; and the face thereof is toward the north. Then the LORD said unto me, Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.”
Jeremiah 1:13, 14
The second vision is domestic and awful at once: a cooking pot at the boil, tilted, about to pour — and it is tipped away from the north, so its contents are coming this way.
Babylon lay east of Judah, not north. But no army marched west across that desert; they followed the water up the Euphrates and came down through Syria, so invasion always arrived from the north. Jeremiah’s hearers would not have needed the geography explained. Out of the north meant one thing.
Then the reason, and it is the charge sheet for the entire book:
“And I will utter my judgments against them touching all their wickedness, who have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods, and worshipped the works of their own hands.”
Jeremiah 1:16
Three counts, and they run in order. Forsaken me — first, and everything else follows from it. Burned incense unto other gods — because the space does not stay empty. Worshipped the works of their own hands — the end of the road, bowing to something they manufactured themselves.
That sequence is not unique to Judah, and it is not ancient history. It is the order every time. Leaving God is never the last step; it is the first, and something always moves into the vacancy. The final stage is the strangest and the most human — worshipping a thing you made, and knowing you made it.
An Iron Pillar, And Brasen Walls
“For, behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brasen walls against the whole land… And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the LORD, to deliver thee.”
Jeremiah 1:18, 19
Read the promise carefully, because it is easy to hear something warmer in it than what is there.
“They shall fight against thee.” That is stated as fact, not risk. The opposition is guaranteed. And the list of who is coming is comprehensive — kings, princes, priests, and the people of the land. There is no group left over to be on his side.
“But they shall not prevail against thee.” The promise is not exemption from the fight. It is the outcome of it. He will be attacked by everyone and outlast all of them — and the book shows the cost of that in detail: a pit, stocks, a dungeon, a burned scroll, an assassination plot from his own town.
Now hold the imagery against the history. Jeremiah is made a defenced city… and brasen walls. He is preaching to a city with real walls, which is confident because of them, and which is about to watch them come down. Jerusalem had walls and fell. Jeremiah was made walls, and stood. The one who was told he could not even speak outlasted the fortifications everyone was trusting in.
There is a condition attached, and it is worth not skipping: “be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them” (verse 17). The iron pillar is not a temperament he is given to enjoy passively. He is told to gird up and stand, and warned what happens if he does not.
What The First Chapter Has Already Settled
Before a single sermon is preached, chapter 1 has answered the questions the next fifty-one chapters will raise.
- Who chose him? God did, before he existed. The call never rested on Jeremiah’s assessment of himself, which is why his objection could be overruled rather than argued with.
- Whose words are they? God’s, placed in his mouth. Every unpopular sentence in the book has its licence in verse 9.
- What is the work? Four parts demolition to two parts building — and it ends on building.
- Will it seem to be working? No. Hence the almond branch, which blossoms while everything else still looks dead.
- What is coming? The pot from the north, and the reason for it is stated in one verse before any of it happens.
- What is promised? Not safety. Survival. They shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail.
What is missing from the chapter is any appeal to Jeremiah’s qualifications. He is never told he has what it takes. He is told, four separate times and in four different ways, that God is with him — and that is offered not as encouragement but as the entire basis of the commission.
The man in this chapter is the reason the book is worth reading. Not because he was strong, but because he was not, and said so, and went anyway. The weeping prophet is introduced here as someone who tried to decline.
Next in this study: They Have Forsaken Me, The Fountain — Jeremiah 2 and 3, where the charge of verse 16 is opened out into two evils and a broken cistern.
