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• Chapter 1: View-The city from an outside view
• Chapter 2: Inside view
• Chapter 3: God’s view
• Chapter 4: Overall view
• Chapter 5: Future view: The prayer

In Matthew 16:13 Jesus was mistaken for Jeremiah.  Why?  Because they had one thing in common…their hearts were hurting for the people he loved.

¹³ When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

¹⁴ They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

¹⁵ “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

¹⁶ Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Chapter one:  We know that before this Lament Jeremiah mentioned Babylon as the instrument for judgment 164 times!  How many times will Jeremiah mention Babylon in Lamentations?   ZERO.  Babylon was just the instrument.

The Lord has brought her grief
    because of her many sins.
Her children have gone into exile,
    captive before the foe.

• Jeremiah first viewed Jerusalem’s destruction as an outsider looking in.
  • Verses 1-7 describe the extent of the desolation
  • verses 8-11 its cause.

(verse 1-7 broke my heart!)

Chapter 2:

17: The Lord has done what he planned;
    he has fulfilled his word,
    which he decreed long ago.

Before entering the Promised Land, God gave them a warning.  If you want to read it click here.  It is astonishing to see the fulfillment of it.

Verse 11-19 contains five pictures of Jerusalem’s condition. Notice the change from the third person, in the previous section, to the first person
in this one.

One verse that stopped me to reflect on was:

¹⁴ The visions of your prophets
    were false and worthless;
they did not expose your sin
    to ward off your captivity.
The prophecies they gave you
    were false and misleading.

I thought of it historically of course thinking about all the false prophets at the time speaking on their own behalf,  but then I started to think about when we minister to people (especially friends), and tell them what they want to hear.  Not Truth at times.  Trust me I am not talking about beating someone up with scripture, because I see that done by the self-righteous all the time, BUT I am talking about sharing doctrine or truth when needed.

Chapter 3:

So there I was with my pen circling the common words: “He” and “I” when suddenly I came to:

²² Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
²³ They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
²⁴ I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
    therefore I will wait for him.”

HOW MANY SONGS CAME OUT OF THAT??  What song came to mind??

Alright, this is an amazing chapter.  Here is the truth…I wanted to skip Lamentations just from writing the overview I thought to myself….” another weepy book” but Lamentations chapter 3 rocks!!

³¹ For no one is cast off
    by the Lord forever.
³² Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,
    so great is his unfailing love.
³³ For he does not willingly bring affliction
    or grief to anyone.

Rather than me copying all of chapter 3, click here and start at verse 22 and reread it.

If you did….let me say: This book was LONG.  I enjoyed it immensely and see God more loving and patient than I ever could imagine.  However, IF you are behind I want you to be with us.   In 39 days we will be in the New Testament.  In those 39 days, we are going to read TEN Books!  (I better buy stronger coffee)

1. Lamentations
2. Ezekiel
3. Joel
4. Daniel
5. Ezra
6. Haggai
7. Zechariah
8. Esther
9. Nehemiah
10. Malachi

So here is what you are going to do…you are going to watch this and jump in with us.  Why?  Why Not!!

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Jerusalem is mentioned 810 times in the Bible.  Clearly, a focal point.  However, Babylon is mentioned quite a bit too with 287 mentions.  164 of those 287 are in the book of Jeremiah.  So what is the take-home?  Well for me, God wants us to be very educated on the topic of Judgement.  We can’t ignore it.  We are judged individually and collectively as a nation.  We also need to consider the judgment that will fall on non-believers.

The last 2 chapters of Jeremiah:

• God appoints a judgment to come (is that a correct phrase? 🤪)
• God uses humans in that judgment
• The humans are not motivated by God, but by their own sinful desires
• God then brings judgment on those humans He used

Yes, I want to talk about each scripture…such good stuff in this read!  I will pick out some and the next time we do a read through we will pick out some more.

OK, a few chapters back I mentioned that Babylon would be destroyed and a King named Cyrus would let the Israelites OUT of captivity.  Do you remember that?  Do you remember what nation he was from??  Persia.

¹¹ “Sharpen the arrows,
    take up the shields!
The Lord has stirred up the kings of the Medes,
    because his purpose is to destroy Babylon.
The Lord will take vengeance,
    vengeance for his temple.

These “Medes” are God’s instrument to destroy Babylon, as punishment for destroying His temple. The fall of Babylon to the Medes was a fulfillment of this prophecy.  The Medes lived north of Babylon (in modern northwest Iran). The Medes had been allies of the Babylonians in the destruction of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, in 612 B.C. Seventy-three years later, they joined with the Persians to defeat Babylon.   Cyrus’ mother was a Mede, and Persians were linked together several times in the book of Daniel.

(Mentioned again in verse 28)

Before Babylon was destroyed, it was protected by huge walls. Nebuchadnezzar further fortified the city with three rings of walls that were 40 feet tall. The walls of Babylon were so thick that chariot races were held on top of them. The city inside the walls occupied an area of 200 square miles, roughly the size of Chicago today.

Nebuchadnezzar built three major palaces, each lavishly decorated with blue and yellow glazed tiles. He also built a number of shrines, the largest of which, called Esagil, was dedicated to Marduk. The shrine stood 280 feet tall, nearly the size of a 26-story office building.

³⁷ Babylon will be a heap of ruins,
    a haunt of jackals,
an object of horror and scorn,
    a place where no one lives.

What….impossible!!

Not for God….here is today:

The irony is that Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government excavated Babylonian ruins and attempted to reconstruct certain features of the ancient city, including one of Nebuchadnezzar’s palaces.

But always remember that God’s hand, just like Babylon was used as the “instrument” for judgment (my mother was Italian, I think of it as the wooden spoon in a spanking) the same goes for Medes/Persia conquering Babylon.  They are just the spoon!

⁵⁵ The Lord will destroy Babylon;
    he will silence her noisy din.
Waves of enemies will rage like great waters;
    the roar of their voices will resound.
⁵⁶ A destroyer will come against Babylon;
    her warriors will be captured,
    and their bows will be broken.
For the Lord is a God of retribution;
    he will repay in full.

Chapter 52-

The chapter opens with Zedekiah, the last of Jeremiah’s kings.  This is a recap, we have already read it….HOWEVER, it gives us an intro to tomorrow’s book: Lamentation. Here is Solomon’s Temple being destroyed.

😢😢😢😢😢😢

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One more day of Jeremiah!  You got this.  You can do it!  Dig in!  I can see the finish line.

After you read this we only have ONE more day of the Book of Jeremiah so dig in…we got this.  We need to look at the big picture on this as we look around us and see enemy nations …where is God in all this?  You have to know this is personal for me.  I was headed in the direction of NYC when terrorists flew the planes into the twin towers.  Cell phones were down, I can’t find my husband, and my brother-in-law may have been in the building. I wasn’t a Christian in 2001.  Suddenly the world around me was saying things like “We will pray for those in the rubble”.  What??? That was ridiculous to me.  IF there was a God, WHY would HE let something like this even happen!  And IF there is a God- He must be terrible and I want NOTHING to do with Him.  Long story short…(too late)…God must have heard me think that and said “I have had enough out of you Trish….I am going to move you to the Bible Belt and put you on a dead-end street surrounded by Christians.  Oh, the humanity! (my poor neighbors).  I say all that to say, these last 4 chapters are a reminder that God does bring judgment on “Christian” nations, and He will use the surrounding nations to do it if He pleases…BUT they will get their Judgement too when God is ready.  AND… it’s a BIG,  AND….He uses judgment to His Glory.  Out of the ashes of 9/11 He put me on a path to be one of His Remnants.  I wonder how many others became Christ followers from that tragedy?

Jeremiah 49:  OK, yesterday we read about Egypt and Moab.  Today will be Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Kedar/Hazar, Elam…and then finally Babylon!  Look at this map: Basically, we are talking about ALL the surrounding nations of Judah

So what area is this today? Modern-Day Jordan!

Here is a birds-eye view: (Mind-blowing)

So the last verse in (verse 9) said: “Yet afterward, I will restore the fortunes of the Ammonites,” declares the Lord.  What????  WHY????  I will tell you why!  They have been an enemy of the Hebrews this entire time.  Ever since Lot’s daughter got him drunk and made babies.  (Wow, that seems like forever ago that we read that!!  Genesis 19….it was actually 218 days ago!.  Well in 1946 God restored the land of Jordan back to a sovereign state.  In May of 1967, Jordan signed a mutual defense treaty with Egypt. One month later, Israel obliterated the Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Jordanian militaries in the Six-Day War, and took the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. A few years later,  Jordan sent an army to Syria to help fend off the Israeli counteroffensive in the Yom Kippur War (Ramadan War) of 1973.  During the First Gulf War (1990 – 1991), Jordan supported Saddam Hussein, which caused a breakdown of US/Jordanian relations. 

I know I am boring you….but wait for it…Why would God restore them???  He ALWAYS has a plan.

The US withdrew aid from Jordan, causing economic distress. To get back in international good graces, in 1994 Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel, ending almost 50 years of declared war.

And there it is!!   WOW right??

Let’s move on to Edom… I promise not to Geek out and bore you again.  Who are the Edomites??  C’mon…I know it rings a bell.

They are from the line of ESAU!  (the clue is in verse 10).  I won’t drag this out BUT try to think back to the book of Obadiah and the city of Petra.  This is why this section talks about things like clefts, caves, rocks, building your nest high….

Damascus is the capital of Aram:

No not the video game but that would be interesting research…ain’t nobody got time for that!!  Aram is Modern-day Syria.  Why am I telling you all the Modern-day?? Because we know that Jeremiah’s prophecies have a short-term message and a long-term message too.  God is not done yet!

Kedar (and Hazor) verses 28-33-

“Arise, and attack Kedar
    and destroy the people of the East.
²⁹ Their tents and their flocks will be taken;
    their shelters will be carried off
    with all their goods and camels.
People will shout to them,
    ‘Terror on every side!’

Nomadic Arabs: Currently Saudi Arabia.

Elam (34-39) The Southwest part of Iran

³⁸ I will set my throne in Elam
    and destroy her king and officials,”
declares the Lord.

OK….this is for the “seasoned” Christian who has done a read-through before….you know who you are!  What might this be referring to??  I will give you a clue:

Anyone??

“Wealth did not save the Ammonites (sorry America), they were not able to buy their way out of judgment. Wisdom did not save the Edomites, nor did their military might. Fame did not save the Arameans because God is nore respecter of persons, independence did not save the Bedouins, God found them in the wilderness and destroyed them just the same, weapons did not save the Elomites” – Philip Ryken

Chapter 50.  (feel free to read chapter 51 too…they go together)

Babylon-This will definitely have a HUGE split-screen view.  Babylon will fall to the Persian empire BUT Babylon is also symbolic of the final defeat of the Enemy in End Times.

Now that God has allowed Nebuchadnezzar to bring judgment on the nations,  look at the size of it.  Major wealth and world power.

“Announce and proclaim among the nations,
    lift up a banner and proclaim it;
    keep nothing back, but say,
‘Babylon will be captured;
    Bel will be put to shame,
    Marduk filled with terror.
Her images will be put to shame
    and her idols filled with terror.’
³ A nation from the north will attack her
    and lay waste her land.
No one will live in it;
    both people and animals will flee away.

Her idols will be put to shame translates in Hebrew to “balls of excrement”.  Their idols were full of *%#!!  😂😂😂

By verse 4 we see a shift to the Restoration of Judah that we will see in Revelation.

They will come and bind themselves to the Lord
    in an everlasting covenant
    that will not be forgotten.

I just read the next verse about scattered sheep and I know you are about to kill me because this is so long so I will let you go on with your day…❤️

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STAY WITH ME…We are 40 days away from the New Testament!!!

You may read this and “check out” a little.  These are not necessarily in chronological order but it doesn’t matter.  You need to look at these from God’s perspective.  Jeremiah was a prophet to all nations (not just to Judah).  We look at these same nations TODAY and think “The Middle East is out of Control”.  Ummm, no it’s not.  God is completely in control.

Chapter 46 is a message to Egypt.  In 605 BC, at the Battle of Carchemish Babylon and Egypt, the two major world powers fought.  Now, before the battle even began we know who is going to win because we have read that God is going to use Nebuchadnezzar as a tool for his purposes.  Babylon crushes Egypt- or we can say God crushes Egypt 😉.    BUT during this time of major world unrest, He will keep His loving hand on His people.  (He will deal with them and their idolatry too…but He will keep His hand on them)

²⁷ “Do not be afraid, Jacob my servant;
    do not be dismayed, Israel.
I will surely save you out of a distant place,
    your descendants from the land of their exile.
Jacob will again have peace and security,
    and no one will make him afraid.
²⁸ Do not be afraid, Jacob my servant,
    for I am with you,” declares the Lord.
“Though I completely destroy all the nations
    among which I scatter you,
    I will not completely destroy you.
I will discipline you but only in due measure;
    I will not let you go entirely unpunished.”

Chapter 47-48

As Jeremiah speaks of the destruction of foreign nations (and I know this is not one of those reads that you hang on every word), look for some keywords:

¹³ Then Moab will be ashamed of Chemosh,
    as Israel was ashamed
    when they trusted in Bethel.

Chemosh was Ammon’s God (one of them anyway).   Hmmmmm.  Looks like characters in Comic or Marvel Movies we watch today….

He is compared to Bethel?  I thought Bethel meant “The House of God”?  Bethel was a place that Abraham made an altar to the Lord!!

However, as time passed, the people polluted Bethel with idolatry.  I know you have absorbed  A LOT so I will remind you: during the time of the divided kingdoms, King Jeroboam of Israel established two temples for the northern kingdom, one at Bethel and the other at Dan. In these temples, he set up golden calves (1 Kings 12:26–33). God often sent prophets to preach at Bethel warning them that this was a bad idea!  Bethel is compared to Chemosh.  If you were a pastor today I bet you could make a sermon out of this!!

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I thought the beginning of this read was hard to follow…(for me anyway, I kept getting confused with all the names).  BUT the rest of the read was like reading a suspense novel- I hung on every word!

So we left off in Jeremiah 40 with:

Johanan offered to assassinate Ishmael secretly, so Gedaliah would not die, and harm would not come to the remnant community.

And the read ends with:

¹⁶ But Gedaliah son of Ahikam said to Johanan son of Kareah, “Don’t do such a thing! What you are saying about Ishmael is not true.”

TO BE CONTINUED!! Commercial Break!

Gedaliah refused to permit Johanan to carry out his assassination plot, because he thought Johanan was misjudging Ishmael. Gedaliah was too trusting and naïve, even though he was a capable ruler and, apparently, a man of faith. His commitment to his own people seems to have blinded him to the political plots that were swirling around him.  Big Mistake.

In short (lol, too late), Ishmael (power-hungry to be a new leader after the captivity) killed Gedaliah (the appointed leader) and his men.  Eighty men were mourning the Captivity but still made their pilgrimage to Jerusalem for one of the Fall Festivals (the temple had been destroyed so animal sacrifices could not happen so they brought grain offerings).  Ishmael then killed them!  The cistern that Ishmael filled with dead bodies was one that King Asa of Judah had constructed while battling King Baasha of Israel (1 Kings 15:22). ‘Good’ King Asa had built the cistern to preserve life, but ‘wicked’ Ishmael now polluted it by filling it with corpses. To give these pilgrims such a burial showed no respect for them.

Ishmael escaped when the remnant leaders looked for him.  The remnant leaders asked Jeremiah to obtain the Lord’s instructions concerning their proposed flight to Egypt.  WAIT!  Flag on the Field!!!!  EGYPT?  They want to go back to the very place God delivered them from Exodus?? Here is what the Lord said:

If you stay in this land, 

• I will build you up and not tear you down;
• I will plant you and not uproot you, for I have relented concerning the disaster I have inflicted on you.
• Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you now fear. Do not be afraid of him, declares the Lord, for I am with you and will save you and deliver you from his hands
• I will show you compassion so that he will have compassion on you and restore you to your land.’

If you are determined to go to Egypt and you do go to settle there:

•  then the sword you fear will overtake you there,
• and the famine you dread will follow you into Egypt, and there you will die.
• all who are determined to go to Egypt to settle there will die by the sword,
• famine and plague; not one of them will survive or escape the disaster I will bring on them.’ 

Hmmm…what to do…what to do…  I will admit, when I was reading today I thought to myself…surely after the Babylonian Captivity, they will listen to the Lord now….

Chapter 43- I guess it is not shocking when I think about how much of God’s scriptures I ignore.  Chapter 43 in summary…They WENT 😢😵

Chapter 44- I read it twice!  I am unglued!!  I want to copy and paste the whole thing! But it ends with:

you made a fatal mistake when you sent me to the Lord your God and said, ‘Pray to the Lord our God for us; tell us everything he says and we will do it.’ ²¹ I have told you today, but you still have not obeyed the Lord your God in all he sent me to tell you. ²² So now, be sure of this: You will die by the sword, famine and plague in the place where you want to go to settle.”

(The Lord) I mean what I say and I say what I mean!! 

BUT remember GOD also promised a Messiah. Even though we NEVER keep our Promise…He always does.  HE LOVES US.

‘This is what the Lord says: I will overthrow what I have built and uproot what I have planted, throughout the earth. ⁵ Should you then seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the Lord, but wherever you go I will let you escape with your life.’”

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Who are the Rechabites?    The Rechabites were a nomadic people group (from Moses’ father-in-law’s family) known for their strict rules: to abstain from wine, from building houses, from sowing seed, and from planting vineyards.  The Rechabites were faithful to follow these rules through the generations, all the way from the time of Jehu to the time of Jeremiah —over 200 years.

You will see Jehu on the left side—-all the way to Jeremiah on the right side.  That is how long they have been obedient.  The point of offering them the wine was to show the people that the Rechabites were faithful to a vow from a man…yet God’s people would not be faithful to the Lord.

¹⁴ ‘Jehonadab son of Rekab ordered his descendants not to drink wine and this command has been kept. To this day they do not drink wine, because they obey their forefather’s command. But I have spoken to you again and again, yet you have not obeyed me.

Chapter 36 is one of my FAVORITE chapters.  Jeremiah sent his scribe to read the scriptures (Jeremiah was probably banned from the temple at this point.)  When Baruch goes and reads the scriptures, the people feared what they heard and took it to the King.

Picture the scene!!  They bring the scriptures to the King and He reads a few columns and the King says “Hey scribe, can I borrow the knife you use to sharpen your quill?” After he reads it the king cuts out the part he does not like, throws it in the fire!  So Baruch reads a bit more, and the king calmy cuts that part off and throws it in the fire…

²³ Whenever Jehudi had read three or four columns of the scroll, the king cut them off with a scribe’s knife and threw them into the firepot, until the entire scroll was burned in the fire. ²⁴ The king and all his attendants who heard all these words showed no fear, nor did they tear their clothes.

COULD YOU IMAGINE!  Actually yes I can…not only has it happened historically (BUT we do it every day!!  We cut out the parts we don’t like!!

By the way, it never ends well for “Bible Burners”…

Greater men than Jehoiakim have burned Bibles or made them illegal through History.  You can destroy paper you cannot destroy the Word of God!

The grass withers, the flower fades,
    but the word of our God will stand forever.

So back to Jeremiah 36:

³⁰ Therefore this is what the Lord says about Jehoiakim king of Judah: He will have no one to sit on the throne of David; his body will be thrown out and exposed to the heat by day and the frost by night. ³¹ I will punish him and his children and his attendants for their wickedness; I will bring on them and those living in Jerusalem and the people of Judah every disaster I pronounced against them, because they have not listened.’”

Chapter 37

I love the beginning…Have you ever had that person in your life that “lives la vita loca” and when troubles come their way they say “can you pray for me?”

So this chapter we kind of talked about the other day when the Jews were under attack so they freed their slaves but then when the Babylonians got distracted dealing with Egypt and ignored attacking Jerualsm they took their slaves back thinking they were in the “clear….you think God is going to ignore his warning for 100s of years because of a small Egyptian distraction…

Jeremiah was imprisoned and king Zedekiah tiptoed in to talk to Jeremiah “pssst, psssst….hey Big J (his nickname)….have you heard from the Lord lately??  Can you tell me what he is saying??”

¹⁶ Jeremiah was put into a vaulted cell in a dungeon, where he remained a long time. ¹⁷ Then King Zedekiah sent for him and had him brought to the palace, where he asked him privately, “Is there any word from the Lord?”

Ummmmm the message did not change…..

“Yes,” Jeremiah replied, “you will be delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon.”

I think this story is hysterical!!

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Chapter 32. A bit of a strange chapter…So Jeremiah is in prison for his doom and gloom prophecies which the King did not like.  His cousin comes to sell him land.  Strange right??  NOT AT ALL. The Babylonians were already attacking the land  (burning the fields, plundering anything of value..) so this land was worthless!  Was it??  Jeremiah was a man of FAITH.  He knew that God would restore the land with the restoration of His people just as He promised.  It is called TRUST….FAITH…in God’s promises.  If you were Jeremiah would you have bought the land?  He was in prison, he couldn’t even inspect the land.  Was it already in the hands of the enemy?  It did not matter to Jeremiah….He trusted the Lord that a remnant would come back and reclaim the land!  What is worthless today will be restored by God.  Think about that in your own situation.

The chapter then summarizes the sins of Israel and Judah. Will they be given Salvation too??

Chapter 33- Yup….there it is.  Restoration!

For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were before,’ says the Lord.

Anytime I see a Messianic Prophecy as clear as this I get goosebumps.

¹⁴ “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah.

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³¹ “The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
    “when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
    and with the people of Judah.
³² It will not be like the covenant
    I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
    to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
    though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.
³³ “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
    after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
    and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.
³⁴ No longer will they teach their neighbor,
    or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
    and will remember their sins no more.”