ΤΟ

I. Life.-The materials for a biography of Jeremiah are supplied in his collected writings with unusual fulness. We know more of his personal history than we do of that of Isaiah or Ezekiel, much more than of that of the minor prophets, who have left for the most part only a few chapters as the record of their work. With the help of inferences from acknowledged facts, and of a few fairly authenticated traditions, we are able to enter into the circumstances in the midst of which he worked, and into the joys and sorrows, the hopes. and fears, of which they were the occasion. Of him it may be said, more than of any other of the goodly fellowship of the prophets, that his whole life lies before us as in an open scroll.

It will be convenient to arrange the main facts of the history thus laid open to us under the reigns of the several kings with whom he was a contemporary.

1. UNDER JOSIAH (B.C. 638-608).-In the thirteenth year of this king the prophet speaks of himself as still a child." That word is, however, somewhat vague in its significance, extending from infancy, as in Exod. ii. 6; 1 Sam. iv. 21, to adult manhood, as in 1 Sam. xxx. 17; 1 Kings iii. 7. All that it can be held to imply is that the prophet felt himself to be relatively young for the work to which he had been called, that he had not attained the average age of a prophet; and this, it may be inferred, was not far distant from that at which the Levites entered on their work, which varied, at different periods, from twenty to thirty (Num. iv. 3. viii. 24; 1 Chron. xxiii. 3, 24). We may reasonably infer, then, from the way in which the prophet speaks of himself, that he was, at the time when he felt himself called to his high and perilous work, somewhere between twenty and twenty-five, i.e., that the first seven, or, it may be, the first twelve years of his life, were passed in the reigns of Manasseh and his son Amon. He is described, further, as being the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were in Anathoth" (Jer. i. 1). That name, it will be remembered, was borne by the high priest who played so prominent a part in Josiah's reformation. (2 Kings xxii. 8.) There are, however, no sufficient grounds for identifying that Hilkiah with the father of the prophet. The manner in which the latter is named, without any mention of special dignity, is against it. The priests of Anathoth were of the line of Ithamar (1 Kings ii. 26; 1 Chron. xxiv. 3), while the high priests, from Zadok downwards, were of the line of Eleazar. The identity of name may, however, be regarded as probably indicating some close connection of affinity or friendship. Other coincidences point in the same direction. The uncle of Jeremiah, Shallum (Jer. xxxii. 7), bore the same name as the husband of Huldah the prophetess (2 Kings xxii. 14). Ahikam, the son of

BOD

Shaphan, the great supporter of Hilkiah the high priest and Huldah in their work (2 Chron. xxxiv. 20), was also throughout the protector of the prophet (Jer. xxvi. 24). The strange Rabbinic tradition that eight of the persons most conspicuous in the history of this period (Jeremiah, Baruch, Seraiah, Maaseiah, Hilkiah, Hananeel, Huldah, Shallum) were all descended from the harlot Rahab (Carpzov, Introd. in lib. V.T. Jerem.) may possibly have been a distortion of the fact that the persons so named were united together, as by community of feeling, so also by affinity or friendship. regard to two others of the number, we know that both Baruch and Seraiah, who appear as disciples of the prophet (chap. xxxvi. 4, li. 59), were sons of Neriah, the son of Maaseiah, and that Maaseiah (2 Chron. xxxiv. 8) was governor of Jerusalem, acting with Hilkiah, Huldah, and Shaphan in the reforms of Josiah.

as

66

With

With these facts we can picture to ourselves some of the influences which entered into Jeremiah's education, and prepared the way for his prophetic mission. The name given to him by his father, with its significance Jehovah exalts," or "is exalted," or "Jehovah throws down" (the latter meaning resting on the more accurate etymology), may fairly be looked on as embodying what was contemplated and prayed for as the ideal of his life. It may be noted that the name was common at that time, e.g., in the case of the father of the wife of Josiah (2 Kings xxiii. 31), and of one of the Rechabites (chap. xxxv. 3). That name may be thought of, accordingly, as not without its influence on the prophet's early years. As he grew to boyhood he would hear of the cruelties and the apostasy of Manasseh and of Amon. For him, as for Isaiah, there would be a training in the law and literature of Israel, in whatever form it then existed, in Job, and Proverbs, and such of the Psalms and the writings of the earlier prophets as were then extant. The so-called Alphabetic Psalms (ix., XXV., xxxiv., xxxvii., exi., exii., cxix., cxlv.) may have helped to form the taste and style which afterwards displayed themselves in the alphabetic structure of the Lamentations. The writings of the greatest of his predecessors, Isaiah, at least, as far as chaps. i.-xxxix. are concerned, could scarcely have been otherwise than familiar to him. His early manhood must have coincided with the earlier reforms of Josiah, whose life would seem to have run parallel with his own, each being apparently about the same age when the prophet received his call, Josiah having ascended the throne at the age of eight (2 Kings xxii. 1). The reverence with which he looks on the Rechabites, the fact that one of those Rechabites bears the same name (chap. xxxv. 3), the probability that one trained in the household of a devout priest would not be unmindful of the teaching of Isaiah