Jeremiah
c. 650–580 BC
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.” — Jeremiah 1:5
The Argument
Jeremiah is the most autobiographical of the prophets and the most psychologically transparent. His laments — the Confessions of Jeremiah scattered through chapters 11–20 — are among the rawest expressions of prophetic suffering in Scripture. He curses the day he was born. He accuses God of deceiving him. He describes the word of God as a burning fire shut up in his bones that he cannot hold back.
The literary significance of Jeremiah for apologetics is precisely this transparency. He is a prophet who does not want to be a prophet, who delivers the message because he cannot not deliver it, who suffers the rejection of his generation and the vindication of history and does not find the vindication particularly consoling.
Writers who have dealt honestly with the relationship between faithfulness and failure are working ground that Jeremiah broke. He prophesied the new covenant in chapter 31 and then watched Jerusalem burn. There is no modern literature of conscience that does not owe something to what he opened.
The Literary Apologetic
New essays from the long tradition. No noise. Just letters worth reading.