Jeremiah and Jesus

Another prophet who surely influenced our Lord was Jeremiah of Anathoth. Although Jeremiah was born and lived just a short distance from Jerusalem and Jesus grew up some 70 miles to the north in the small village of Nazareth in the region of Galilee, there are a number of fascinating parallels between these two prophets.

As a jumping off point (recall our previous blog!), it's worth calling to mind that many of Jesus' contemporaries thought he might in fact be Jeremiah come back from the dead. While in the region of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked his disciples: "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"(Matt 16:13). Their reply is fascinating: "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets." (Matt 16:14). What was it about Jeremiah and Jesus that caused some to make this identification? I want to offer a couple of responses to this question, especially since I've now begun teaching on the book of Jeremiah in my class at JUC.

Jeremiah and Jesus do share some common characteristics. For example, both prophets were not afraid to take on popular but mistaken views at variance with God's revealed will. In fact, Scripture records a sermon by both prophets that cuts against the grain of cherished belief and incensed the listeners.

In the case of Jeremiah, we have two versions of the same sermon, chapters 7 and 26. Whereas chapter 7 provides the essential content of Jeremiah's famous "Temple Sermon," chapter 26 narrates the outraged response of those who heard it. Jeremiah sounds an urgent alarm: unless there is genuine repentance, the city and its temple are doomed (Jer 7:14-15, 20, 32-34). The people held out hope that just as the LORD had spared Jerusalem in the days of Sennacherib the Assyrian (See Isaiah 36-37), so too the LORD would deter Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian army. Jeremiah dashes this vain hope by reminding them of what happened in the days of Eli to Shiloh and the Ark of the Covenant (Jer 7:14; cf. 1 Sam 4). This was precisely what the people didn't want to hear! They clung in desperation to any words of hope thrown out by false prophets like life lines tossed to sailors whose ship has sunk. Jeremiah cuts off all such false hopes of deliverance. It takes real chutzpah to do this sort of thing! As you might expect, the initial reaction of the audience was to put him to death: "You must die!" (Jer 26:8). Had not the LORD provided a few friends in high places, Jeremiah would almost certainly have perished that day (Jer 26:17, 24). This episode strikes a similar note to Jesus' sermon in his hometown of Nazareth (Luke 4) that I mentioned in my last blog.

But even more strikingly, Jesus also challenged the religious leadership of his day in the very place where Jeremiah had done so centuries before, only this time in the splendid Second Temple. After his entry on what we now call "Palm Sunday," (Matt 21:1-11), he proceeded to the Temple Mount and "drove out all who were buying and selling" and "overturned the tables of the money changers" (Matt 21:12). Significantly, he justified his actions by quoting none other than Jeremiah the prophet, indeed, from Jeremiah's Temple Sermon: "My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers." (Jer 7:11). Matthew tersely comments that the chief priests and teachers of the law "were indignant" (Mat 21:15). This time, however, the Lord did not provide human protectors for his beloved Servant; five days later the religious authorities arranged to have Jesus of Nazareth crucified. As we recall from Isaiah 53:9, "it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer."

Jeremiah, like Jesus, faced bitter opposition. Poor Jeremiah found himself a lonely voice shouted down by the numerous false prophets who condemned and ridiculed him all the while offering the people delusions and platitudes (Jer 23). Similarly, John's Gospel vividly portrays the contempt heaped upon Jesus by the religious leadership of Jerusalem. For example, in John 5:16 it says "the Jews persecuted him."[Note carefully that John typically uses the term "the Jews" in his Gospel to refer to the religious leaders and not the Jewish people as a whole. This must be constantly kept in mind when reading John's Gospel lest anti-Jewish or even anti-Semitic sentiments be encouraged or entertained] On another occasion, a crowd, largely in sympathy with the religious leaders in Jerusalem, accused Jesus of being demon-possessed (John 7:20). One time the Pharisees, in frustration at the power and impact of Jesus' works and words upon the ordinary people of Jerusalem, dismiss this admiration with utter disdain: "Has any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But his mob that knows nothing of the law--there is a curse on them." (John 7:48). The rhetoric reaches a fever-pitch in the eighth chapter of John when the religious leaders indirectly accuse him of being an illegitimate son (John 8:41), being a Samaritan [whom most Jews bitterly hated] and being demon-possessed!(John 8:48). Jeremiah and Jesus knew what it was like "to be despised and rejected by men" (Isaiah 53:3).

There are so many fascinating parallels between these two prophets I could fill several blogs, but I'll be content with two more links. The first, in fact, links together three famous prophets, Samuel, Jeremiah and Jesus. The Hebrew Bible uses the term na'ar for both Samuel and Jeremiah when the LORD called them to be prophets (1 Sam 3:1; Jer 1:6). There is general agreement that a na'ar would be in the range of 12-17 years of age, that is, before being on one's own and still dependent upon a father for support. Jeremiah actually lived only 3 miles, the way the crow flies, from the home of Samuel in modern al Ram. Remarkably, Dr. Luke tells us that, like Samuel and Jeremiah, at the tender age of 12, Jesus already displayed a profound understanding of spiritual matters (Luke 2:42). Interestingly, most believers come to personal faith during this same time frame. I was baptized when I was ten years old.

Finally, Matthew finds what at first sight seems a most obscure connection between Jeremiah and Jesus. It has to do with Judas' betrayal of Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, his tossing the coins into the temple treasury in remorse, and the religious leaders purchase of a field in which to bury foreigners outside Jerusalem with this "blood money" (Matt 27:6-10). Matthew says: "Then what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: 'They took the thirty sliver coins, the price set on him by the people of Israel, and they used them to buy the potter's field, as the LORD commanded me" (Matt 27:10).

A quick check to discover the source of this quotation reveals an interesting fact. Matthew has apparently brought together in one quotation two passages, Zechariah 11:12, 13 and Jeremiah 32:6-9. This illustrates a technique found in rabbinic exegetical tradition whereby two passages having common terms or concepts are conflated into one citation with only one source being actually cited. What we have in these two passages are the notions of buying a potter's field, paying a price which is so low as to be insulting, and throwing the coins to a potter in the temple precincts. Because Matthew sees the Old Testament prophets as foreshadowing and anticipating the coming of the Messiah, he sees here a correspondence between what happened in Jeremiah and Zechariah's day with what happened in Jesus' day. Jeremiah bought a potter's field for a price set by the people of Israel. Jesus was "sold out" by Judas for a price agreed upon by the leaders of the people of Israel.

Here is a bit of irony. Jeremiah never took possession of his property; he was forced into exile in Egypt and died there. Neither was Jesus buried in the field for foreigners (Acts 1:18-19). In fact, Jesus borrowed the tomb of a rich man for a few days--three as it turns out--and then he was exalted to the right hand of his heavenly father.