BOOK OF JEREMIAH BIBLE STUDY

He thus could say, "I sat alone," with God's hand upon him. Jeremiah had periods of despondency when he expressed the wish that he had never been born or that he might run away and live alone in the desert. He reached the point of calling God "a deceitful brook,…waters that fail" and even accused God of deceiving and overpowering him.

Yet there were times of exaltation when he could say to God, "Thy words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart," and he could speak of Yahweh as "a dread warrior" fighting by his side.

As a prophet, Jeremiah pronounced God's judgment upon the people of his time for their wickedness. He was concerned especially with false and insincere worship and failure to trust Yahweh in national affairs. He denounced social injustices but not so much as some previous prophets, such as Amos and Micah.

He found the source of sin to be in the weakness and corruption of the hearts of men—in what he often called "the stubbornness of the evil heart." He considered sin to be unnatural; he emphasized that some foreign nations were more loyal to their pagan (false) deities than Judah was to Yahweh (the real God), and he often contrasted nature's obedience to law with man's disobedience to God.