Day 210 - Wednesday after the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Read |  Day 210 | Wednesday | July 29 |

2   Kings 21: 1-9 

2   Chronicles 33: 1-9 
2   Kings 21: 10-17 
2   Chronicles 33: 10-19 
2   Kings 21: 18 
2   Chronicles 33: 20 
2   Kings 21: 19-26 
2   Chronicles 33: 21-25 
2   Kings 22: 1-2 
2   Chronicles 34: 1-7 
Jeremiah 1: 1-3, 4-19 
Jeremiah 2: 1-13, 14-22 

Date | 687 BC

Background | JEREMIAH
name and canonical status
The book of Jeremiah, the second scroll among the major prophets alongside Isaiah and Ezekiel, is a compilation of prophetic oracles edited by members of the Deuteronomistic school and a ributed to the prophet by that name. For the diff erent placement of the prophets in Hebrew and Christian Bibles see the essay on “The Canons of the Bible.” 

historical context
Jeremiah lived during the critical years spanning the “golden age” of the Judean king Josiah (640–609 bce) and the subsequent fall and destruction of Jerusalem and the deportations of the Judean population into captivity (597–586 bce), all at the hand of Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon. Some scholars think that Jeremiah was born in 627 bce and began his prophetic ministry only in 609 bce following the death of King Josiah. The traditional assumption, however, suggested by the text itself and followed here, is that he began his ministry in 627 bce (Jer 25.3) and prophesied until well a er the deportation of 586 bce and the subsequent murder of Gedaliah and flight of a major group of Judeans to Egypt. Jeremiah, along with his friend and scribal colleague Baruch, was forcibly taken by this group as a hostage to Egypt, where he is last heard speaking judgment oracles against the community in the years following 586 bce. 

Jeremiah was born during the final years of the reign of King Manasseh (ca. 645 bce) and began his ministry during the initial period of Josiah’s reform movement. At this time the youthful king Josiah was rejecting the “accommodationist” pro-Assyrian policies of his early advisers and beginning to flex his ambitious nationalistic policies directed against his Assyrian overlords and toward the reunification of Israel and Judah (2 Chr 34.1–7). 

As a part of these ambitious political goals, Josiah’s thoroughgoing religious reform movement a ttempted to remove the syncretistic elements of the accommodationist rituals, purge worship of non-Yahwistic practices 
and elements, and reunify the country around the central power-base of Jerusalem, similar to the goals of the reform movement of his great-grandfather, Hezekiah (2 Kings 18.1–8). Jeremiah, deeply steeped in the Deuteronomistic tradition of many of the prophets, was likely an early advocate of Josiah’s reform, and Jeremiah held Josiah in esteem as an exemplar of the righteous king (Jer 22.15–16), a view shared with the Deuteronomistic Historians (2 Kings 22.2; 23.25).

Source | Coogan, Michael D.; Brettler, Marc Z.; Perkins, Pheme; Newsom, Carol A. (2010-01-20) | The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (Page 1057) | Oxford University Press | Kindle Edition. 

Reading | Manassah - Judah - 679 to 687 BC; dies in 643 BC; Amon - Judah - 643 BC - bad; Josiah - Judah - 641 BC - did right in eyes of the Lord; Jeremiah calls God's judgement against the people because of their unfaithfulness; results of Israel's sin.

Source | Tyndale | The One Year Chronological Bible NIV | ISBN 978-1-4143-5993-9

Additional Reading | John J. Collins | Introduction to the Hebrew Bible | © 2004 Fortress Press| Click here

Next | Day 211 | Thursday | July 30 | 

Jeremiah 2: 23– 3: 5 
Jeremiah 3: 6-10, 11– 4: 2 
Jeremiah 4: 3-18, 19-22, 23-31 
Jeremiah 5: 1-19

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