Jeremiah 1

Jeremiah 1 tells how a young man from a priestly village became the prophet who would watch his nation die. The call comes without warning: before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart, I appointed you a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah's answer is the answer of nearly everyone God calls in the Bible: I do not know how to speak; I am only a child. God does not argue about his age. He tells him where to go and what to say, promises to be with him, and touches his mouth. The commission that follows is unsettling. Jeremiah is appointed over nations and kingdoms to uproot, tear down, destroy, and overthrow, and only then to build and plant. Most of his book will be the first four verbs. Two visions confirm the call. An almond branch, the first tree to wake in spring, becomes a pun on God watching over his word to do it. A boiling pot tilting from the north becomes Babylon, the disaster that will pour over Judah for its idolatry. Then God tells Jeremiah to get ready and not to be intimidated, and gives him the only protection a prophet gets: I have made you a fortified city, an iron pillar, bronze walls. Kings, officials, priests, and people will fight you. They will not win. I am with you. That promise had to last forty years, and it did.