| Historical back drop | Jeremiah's life 627-586 |
| 627 - Josiah rules during a politically unstable situation: the Assyrian empire is faltering and the Babylonians, Scythians, and Medes seek territory | Jeremiah receives his call |
| 612 Ninevah falls to Babylon, and Egypt advances north. | |
| 609 Josiah, at age 39, meets the Egyptian army at Meggido and is killed. Egypt places Jehoiakim on the throne, and Jehoiakim allows Josiah's reforms to lapse. | Jeremiah, at 18, preaches his Temple sermon during Sukkoth (7-10) in which he states that the temple will be destroyed |
| 605 The Egyptian army is defeated by the Babylonians in N. Syria and Nebuchadnezzar returns to Babylon to claim his throne. | Jeremiah is banned from the temple. |
| 604 Nebuchadnezzar marches west to the Mediterranean and then south sacking Ashkelon and crushing Philistia. Jehoiakim pays tribute to Babylon. Nebuchanezzar meets Neco (Egypt's ruler) on the Nile Delta. Both armies suffer great losses, and Jehoiakim interprets the results as a defeat of Nebuchadnezzar and rebels against Babylon. Judah suffers from a prolonged drought during this period | Jeremiah and Baruch deliver the scroll containing God's message of condemnation to Jehoiakim. Jehoiakim burns the scroll. Chapter 36 |
| 598 Babylon marches against Judah. Jehoiakim dies and his son Jehoiachin comes to the throne. | |
| March 597 The king, his family and leading citizens are taken to Babylon as hostages. Babylon places a second son, Zedekiah, on the throne. | |
| Summer 594 Zedekiah calls for a conference of nations in Jerusalem to plot rebellion. | Jeremiah sends a letter to those in exile telling them to prepare for a long stay. He is placed in stocks. |
| January 589 Judah openly revolts with the support of the new pharaoh, Hophra. | Jeremiah is arrested and confined in a guarded court. |
| Spring 589 - The Babylonian siege of Jerusalem begins. Citizens begin to flee the city; food runs low; houses are demolished to build defenses. |
Jeremiah is thrown into a muddy cistern. Upon rescue by Ebed-melech the Ethiopian eunuch, he buys a piece of property in Judah. |
| July 587 Jerusalem falls. Zedekiah flees and is caught, blinded and carted off to Babylon to grind grain until his death. | |
| August 587 The palace and temple are burnt and the walls of the city are destroyed. Gedeliah is appointed governor and runs his administration from Mizpah. Gedeliah is assassinated by Ishmael. Johanan, a military commander, takes control but eventually flees to Egypt with a group of hostages. |
Jeremiah is imprisoned in Ramah.
Jeremiah is one of these hostages. Presumably, he dies in Egypt. |
Jeremiah as an anti-Moses
Jeremiah as Messianic Forerunner
"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
"Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." Matt 16:13b-14
1. Messianic Prophet Deut 18:18
| 2 Macc 15:12-16 -- In the story of Judas Maccabees' final defeat of Nicanor, the Syrian governor, the following account appears. "Onias, who had been high priest, a noble and good man, of modest bearing and gentle manner, one who spoke fittingly and had been trained from childhood in all that belongs to excellence, was praying with outstretched hands for the whole body of Jews. Then in the same fashion another appeared, distinguished by his gray hair and dignity, and of marvelous majesty and authority. And Onias spoke, saying,'This is a man who loves the family of Israel and prays much for the people and the holy city -- Jeremiah, the prophet of God.' Jeremiah stretched out his right hand and gave to Judas a golden sword, and as he gave it he addressed him thus: 'Take this holy sword, a gift from God with which you will strike down your adversaries." |
In the account of the repurification/rededication of the Temple in 164 b.c.e., we learn that the means for purification have been provided by Jeremiah who had hidden the ark and the altar of incense from the first temple in a cave (2 Macc 2:1-8).
Jeremiah's sword, cf. 12:12; *25:15-16, 29; 50:35-38.
2. Messianic Priest: Jeremiah 33:14-26
| Mal 2:4-7: Know, then, that I have sent this command to you, that my covenant with Levi may hold, says the Lord of hosts. My covenant with him was a covenant of life and well-being, which I gave him; this called for reverence, and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in integrity and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the lord of hosts. Cf. also 3:2 |
| Sirach 45:6-7, 15: He exalted Aaron, a holy man like Moses who was his brother, of the tribe of Levi. He made an everlasting covenant with him, and gave him the priesthood of the people. He blessed him with stateliness, and put a glorious robe on him. He clothed him in perfect splendor, and strengthened him with the symbols of authority, the linen undergarments, the long robe, and the ephod.... Moses ordained him, and anointed him with holy oil; it was an everlasting covenant for him and for his descendants as long as the heavens endure, to minister to the Lord and serve as priest and bless his people in his name. |
Testament of Levi 18
|
Qumran Community CD 8.20; *6.19; 20.12; 1QS 5.5; 1QS 9; 1QpHab 2.3
3. Messianic King: Jeremiah 30:9; 33:15 (righteous branch); 33:17 (affirmation of 2 Sam 7)
In the Christian tradition, we have tended to acknowledge the tradition of the Davidic messiah to the exclusion of the other two. The role of the Davidic messiah, however, is secondary to that of the priest in much of the intertestamental literature. That messiah establishes the peace in which the priestly messiah rules.
Jeremiah's Laments and the Psalmist
He is placed in stocks (20:16).
The plot to kill him (23:12).
Prophets in exile request that he be put in stocks (29:24-32).
He is arrested and placed in the guard's room (32:2)
He is banned from the Temple (36:5).
He is thrown into a muddy cistern and generally abused (37-38).
He is imprisoned by Gedeliah at Ramah (50-51).
He is taken hostage by Ishmael and then again by Johanah.
He dies in Egypt -- a place where he has proclaimed that God's holy name will no longer be uttered -- at the age of 40.
11:18-19 I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter. And
I did not know it was against me that they devised schemes saying,
"Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off
from the land of the living, so that his name will no longer be
remembered!"
12:1--4 Why does the way of the guilty prosper... You plant them,
and they take root; they grow and bring forth fruit... Pull them
out like sheep for the slaughter, sand set them apart....
15:15-19 O Lord remember me.. Your words were found, and I ate
them... under the weight of your hand I sat alone... Why is my
pain unceasing, my would incurable ... you are to me like a deceitful
brook, like waters that fail.
20:7-14, 15-18 "Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed...
I have become a laughing stock... Cursed be the day on which I
was born!... Cursed be the man who brought the news to may father...
Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and
spend my days in shame.
Baruch's lament 45:1-5 Woe is me! The Lord has added sorrow to
my pain; I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest.
In 1921, Friedrich Heiler, Das Gebet, p. 360, could say of Lamentations that he found it a "shockingly blasphemous lament" and, in 1954, Norman Gottwald, Studies in the Book of Lamentations, p.93, could suggests lament, "naively seems to believe that God does not see atrocity or misfortune unless his special attention is called to it." In other word, lament presupposes a theological error.
More recent work on the form of lamentation has taken a different stance.
Claus Westerman, Praise and Lament in the Psalms, (Atlanta:
John Knox Press, 1981) demonstrates that the psalms of thanksgiving
are restatements of the laments after the crisis as passed. Jeremiah,
in the midst of crisis, seems to restate the psalms of thanksgiving
and praise.
The source of Jeremiah's images seems to be Psalms 1 and 23 and
perhaps a psalm like (:15-16
He parodies them in the case of Psalm 1 by pointing out the truth that must be recognized about all dualism. Truth falls somewhere in between. In the case of Psalm 23, he over reads the metaphor. Why do shepherds take such good care of their flocks and find the richest pastures? If God is a stream that feeds the righteous tree, then he is a deceitful brook for Jeremiah is a righteous tree that has been chopped down by the wicked. If God is the shepherd tending the flock, he is leading his lamb to the slaughter.
Walter Brueggemann "The Costly Loss of Lament" In The Poetical Books edited by David J. A. Clines (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) pp.84-97, asks the question: "what difference does it make to have faith that permits and requires this form of prayer?" He answers his own question: "it shifts the calculus and redresses the redistribution of power between the two parties, so that the petitioner party is taken seriously and the God who is addressed is newly engaged in the crisis in a way that puts God at risk. " (88)
He then asks, "What happens when the speech forms that redress power distribution have been silenced and eliminated? The answer, I believe, is that a theological monopoly is re-enforced, docility and submissiveness are engendered, and the outcome in terms of social practice is to re enforce and consolidate the political-economy monopoly of the status quo. ... Where lament is absent, covenant comes into being only as a celebration of joy and well-being... The greater party is surrounded by subjects who are always "yes men and women' from whom "never is heard a discouraging word." Breuggemann argues that this does not "square with reality" and is "a practice of denial, cover-up and pretense." (89)
If we apply these insights to our reading of Jeremiah several things come into view quickly.
Jeremiah's critique of the religious leaders is that they say, "Peace, peace, when there is no peace." (6:14; cf 14:13-18). His criticism that the temple is serving as a hide out suggests that the cult is masking crimes (7:11).
Brueggemann applies a theory of child development to the role of the lament psalms and suggests that without lament one ends up with "a bad faith which is based in fear and guilt and lived out as resentful or self deceptive works of righteousness. The absence of lament makes a religion of coercive obedience the only possibility." (89-90). Brueggemann suggests that lament allows for a "radical discernment of this God who is capable of and willing to be respondent and not only initiator." (90)
Again elements of Jeremiah come into closer focus.
It is through Jeremiah's lament that he comes to the realization
that he is being abused and is thrown into a pit because others
are not treating God as the living stream but are treating God
as a cracked cistern. If one follows the laments carefully, a
narrative or story line appears. Just as Jeremiah laments, God
laments.
God and Jeremiah share a lament
20:14-18 would then appear to be out of place because Jeremiah has become reconciled with the Lord. Scholars have long found these verses perplexing. In his recent article, Joep Dubbink, "Jeremiah: Hero of Faith or Defeatest? Concerning the Place and Function of Jeremiah 20:14-18," JSOT 86 (1999) 67-84, points out that 20:14-18, unlike the laments, has no addressee and it is a "curse in the form of an 'interior monologue" (68). In his summary of scholarship, our attention should be drawn to the fact that Jeremiah is not lamenting his own plight but this is his response to having to be the harbinger of ill-will. As Dubbink puts it, "Jeremiah struggles with his commission" (79), but he does not commit suicide. "The prophet goes his way to the end as one called. The word that almost crushed him by the great force it exudes, also takes him along on the way where he is going."
Breuggemann 's second point is that the absence of lament stifles the question of theodicy. (90) He suggests that the Old Testament is more concerned with dike than with theos, more committed to questions of justice than to questions of God." (90)
According to Breuggemann, when things are not as they should be, one of two things happen in the psalms. One appeals to God for hesed because it is not coming from one's neighbors (Ps 109) , or the appeal can be "addressed to god against God" (Psalm 88). (91-92) "The witness of the tradition is that Yahweh hears and acts (cf Ps. 107.43)." (93)
Brueggemann suggests that if we do not bring justice questions before the divine throne, we tend to take them to court, and God becomes the guarantor of the status quo rather than its transformer. (93-94)
The Book of Jeremiah makes clear that God does not sanction
the status quo.
Deuteronomy and Jeremiah
Who are God and Jeremiah's common enemies? The false prophets
God's authoritative word has not been treated authoritatively. The sort of authority granted to the prophet by Debt 18 has not been heeded, and the word of God is endangered. Jeremiah is being accused of being a false prophet deserving of the sentence of death.
Jeremiah's commission 1:9 with its leitmotif "today I appoint you over the nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant." (Cf. 12:1; 18:7-11; 24:5-6; 31:27-28; 38-440 ; 42:9-11; 45:4 Baruch) alludes to or fulfills "the prophet like Moses." Deut 18:15-22.
False prophets are being heeded. Denunciation of false prophets 1:13-18.(Jeremiah:16; 28:10; 29:30-31).
When the word of God takes a written form, it is consigned to the flames. The story of Jehoiakim and the burning of the scroll can be treated as paradigmatic of the human propensity to try to destroy scriptural authority.
What are the ways in which we consign God's words to the flames?
The story of Jeremiah is the story of a people struggling with the idea of authority. Cf. Jeremiah 26:16-19. What authority does one give to this emerging institution, scripture? (Remember that Josiah finds a Torah scroll, presumably Deuteronomy, in the temple.) Jeremiah is self-consciously about writing. "Everything written in this book that Jeremiah prophecies (25:12). God commands Jeremiah to write his message in a book (30:2). The covenant is written on the tablets of the heart (17:1-4).
How does Jeremiah express his belief in the authority of scripture? It becomes his vocabulary; it provides the images with which he makes sense of his reality; he enters into dialogue with it.
Deuteronomic Parallels
Every seven years according to Deut 31:10-11, the Torah was read publicly during the festival of Sukkoth, a festival that commemorated God's guidance of the Israelites as they wandered in the dessert and Solomon's dedication of the Temple (1 Kings 8). Jeremiah preaches his sermon about covenant violation and the destruction of the Temple in the Temple at Sukkot.
Jeremiah "if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own jut, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that i gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever. Cf. Deut 10:18-19; 24:17-22; 27:19.
Song of Moses Deut 32
4 - The Rock, his work is perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he.
Jeremiah questions this in his laments.
9 The Lord's own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share.
Jer 10:166 Not like these is the Lord, the portion of Jacob.
15 Jacob ate his fill; Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked. you grew fat, bloated, and gorged
Jer 5:28 They have grown fat and sleek. They know no limits in deeds of wickedness; they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
17 They sacrificed to demons, not God, to deities they had never known
Jer 5:7 How can I pardon you? Your children have forsaken me, and have sworn by those who are no Gods (Debt 6:13)
18 You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you; you forgot the God who gave you birth
Jer 2:27 who say to a tree, "You are my father,' and to a stone, "You gave me birth."
21 They made me jealous with what is no god and provoked me with their idols
Jer 8:19b Why have they provoked me to anger with their idols with their foreign idols?
24-25 - the Deuteronomic image of God's punishment is the cup of wrath (usually pestilence and also poison wine) and the sword.
Wasting hunger, burning consumption, bitter pestilence. The teeth of beasts I will send against them, with venom of things crawling in the dust. In the street the sword shall bereave, and in the chamber terror, for young man and woman alike, nursing child and old gray head.
Jer 14:12 Although they fast, I do not hear their cry, and although they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I do not accept them; but by the sword, by famine and by pestilence I consume them.
and 6:11 But I am full of the wrath of the lord; I am weary of holding it in ( cup image) Pour it out one the children in the street,and on the gatherings of young men as well; both husband and wife shall be taken, the old folk and the very aged.
32 Their vine comes from the vine stock of Sodom from the vineyards of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison, their clusters are bitter.
Jer 2:21 Yet I planted your as a choice vine, from the purest stock. how then did you turn degenerate and become a wild vine?
37 Then he will say: Where are their gods, the rock in which they took refuge, who are the fat of their sacrifices, and drank he wine of their libations? Let them rise up and help you, let them be your protection!
Jer 2:27-28 Who say to a tree, "You are my father," and to a stone, "You gave me birth." For they have turned their backs to me and not their face, but in the time of their trouble they say, "Come and save us!"
Deuteronomy 32 represents the shape of the whole book. This is a vision of covenant established, violated and renewed. The book of Deuteronomy provides a pattern for covenant renewal.
Jeremiah follows this pattern
Deut 10:16 Circumcise the foreskin of your heart
Deut 30:6 And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring
Jer. 4:4 ; 9:25 and 31:31-34
Deut 5:33 In exactly the way the lord your God has commanded you, you shall walk, so that you may live and it may be well with you.
Jer 7:23 Walk in exactly the way I command you, so that it may go well with you.
Deut 27 curse and amen pattern
Jer 11:1-14 follows same pattern
Deut 26:5 A wandering Aramean was my father.
Jer 50:6 A wandering sheep were my people.
Deut 24:1-4 ... her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled; for that would be abhorrent to the Lord, and you shall not bring guilt on the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession.
Jer 3:1-5 If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's wife, will he return to her/ Would not such a land be greatly polluted?
Jeremiah on Idolatry
Based upon Deuteronomic teachings, Jeremiah emphasizes not only the exclusive worship of God as part of the covenant, he asserts monotheism. The other gods are gods who are no gods. "Their idols are like scarecrow in a cucumber field and they cannot speak; they have to be carried, for they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor is it in them to do good." Jer 10:5.
"Does the snow of Lebanon leave the crags of Sirion? Do the mountain waters run dry. the cold flowing streams? But my people have forgotten me, they burn offerings to a delusion; they have stumbled in their ways, in the ancient roads, and have gone into by paths, not the highway, making their land a horror, a thing to be hissed at forever. All who pass by it are horrified and shake their heads. Like the wind from the east, I will scatter them before the enemy. I will show them my back, not my face, in the day of their calamity." (18:14-17).
More Intertexuality
The Hollow Men
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat's feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.
Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer.
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom.
III
This is the dead land
This is the cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdom.
In the last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper.
- T. S. Eliot (1925)
Jeremiah's Remnant
In chapter 30, Jeremiah's prophecy turns to the promise of restoration.
He begins with vivid pictures of Israel and Judah's suffering:
Thus says the Lord; We have heard a cry of panic, of terror, and no peace. Ask now, and see, can a man bear a child? Why then do I see every man with his hands on his loins like a woman in labor? Why has every face turned pale ? (30:5-6)
Thus says the Lord;
A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. (31:15)
Jeremiah paints a picture of a penitent Israel:
Indeed I heard Ephraim pleading: "You disciplined me, and I took the discipline; I was like a calf untrained. Bring me back, let me come back, for you are the Lord my God. For after I had turned away I repented: and after I was discovered, I struck my thigh; I was ashamed, and I was dismayed because I bore the disgrace of my youth." (31:18-19).
Jeremiah's remnant are survivors who have found grace in exile and in the dispersion (the remnant includes Israel and Judah):
"Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant of Israel," See I am going to bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together, a great company, they shall return here. With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back, I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble; for I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn..... He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd a flock." For the Lord has ransomed Jacob, and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him. They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again. (31:7b-12)
God establishes a New Covenant:
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt -- a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the Lord," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. (31:31-34)
Jeremiah demonstrates his confidence in God's promise by buying a field during the siege of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah's Prophetic Acts
What is the nature of a prophetic act?
Is it merely symbolic? Does it simply point beyond itself to another meaning.
13:1-11 Jeremiah is told to buy a loin cloth and to wear it without dipping it in water, to hide it in a cleft in a rock at the Euphrates and to retrieve it when it has decayed.
What does this mean? An unsoaked loin cloth does not do an adequate job. Leather will rot in some climactic conditions.
As a symbol, it means perhaps that Israel's faith is inadequate to cover its impurity. Israel has been immodest, and its sense of pride or honour will be eroded by the experience of being exiled to Babylon.
Can prophetic acts also be performative? What happens in the doing of the act?
In Toward of Philosophy of the Act, M.M. Bakhtin argues that two worlds confront each other in the performance of the act: the "never repeatable uniqueness of actual living" and "culture." The act is a cultural statement that abstracts from life; it creates a stasis; it embodies in the concrete the meaning of the unrepeatable. Bakhtin focuses upon the way that the performative act satirizes its object and on how it demystifies the power of the elite or the status of reality or whatever exerts the most powerful hold on the imagination.
The pride of Israel, its sense of honor and shame, is reduced to the absurd pantomime drama of the loin clothe. The power of the state to liberate becomes the humiliating bond of the yoke.
Jeremiah 18:1-11: When Jeremiah smashes the pottery does this act signify an accomplished fact: Jerusalem and Judah will be smashed.
Do we need a more adequate understanding of symbols? We treat symbols as "a finger pointing to the moon." They are then metaphors. When we say that God is a lion, we do not mean that the lion is in any way divine. Do the symbols, the things in themselves participate in the reality more concretely.
Jeremiah's prophetic call is to the tasks of plucking up and breaking and planting and building. His prophetic acts actually fulfill these tasks.
| 13:1-11 | The spoiled loin cloth |
| 16:1-13 | Jeremiah is celibate and does not mourn |
| 18:1-11 | Jeremiah goes to the potter's house to signify that God can reshape his people |
| 19:1-13 | Jeremiah smashes pots |
| 27-28 | Jeremiah wears a wooden yoke; Hananiah breaks it; Jeremiah puts on an iron yoke |
| 29 | Jeremiah writes to the exiles and instructs them to build homes and plant gardens |
| 32:6-15 | During the siege of Jerusalem, Jeremiah redeems a field that is part of his family's property |
| 43:8-13 | Jeremiah takes large stones and buries them in the clay pavement at the entrance to Pharaoh's palace, proclaiming that Nebuchadnezzar will set his throne above these. |
| 51:59-64 | Jeremiah instructs Seriah, Zedekiah's quartermaster, to tie a stone to a scroll that describes God's future judgment against Babylon and then throw it it the middle of the Euphrates. |