Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 115:459 (Jul 1958)
Article: The Messianic Hope of Jeremiah
Author: George H. Cramer

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BSac 115:459 (Jul 58) p. 237

The Messianic Hope of Jeremiah

George H. Cramer

[George H. Cramer is Registrar and Instructor at Providence-Barrington Bible College. He has had home missionary experience in Arkansas.]

Little is heard and even less written on the Messiah as seen in the Prophet Jeremiah. This paucity is most evident in periodic literature; but also in many standard works on the prophet, where one might expect to find reference to the Messianic portions, there is disappointing silence. It is certainly not due to a lack of prophetic vision on the part of the weeping prophet, because the Book of Jeremiah gives abundant evidence of his fervent Messianic expectations.

The Messianic Portions

Let us first locate and scan in general the major Messianic portions of prophecy in this book. Some will receive fuller treatment than others because those more specific or classic passages will be discussed more thoroughly later on.

The first such block of teaching is found in chapter 3, verses 14–18. In these five verses Klausner of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, finds expressed “precisely and with complete clarity almost all the Messianic ideas of this prophet” (Joseph Klausner, The Messianic Idea in Israel, p. 96). On observation, we must admit that all of the Messianic ideas are implicit herein and these verses could well serve as a text for our topic.

Jehoiachin is written off as “childless” in chapter 22, and immediately in 23:7–8 the prophet speaks of the Branch (more accurately “sprout”) who will not only rule in equity and justice but will be called “THE LORD

BSac 115:459 (Jul 58) p. 238

OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” There are three chief themes in this portion, a rejection of the faithless rulers and a promise of faithful ones, a promise of the ideal king, and a prediction of restoration from exile (Willis Judson Beecher, The Prophets and the Promise, I, 71–72).

It is somewhat difficult to mark out the bounds of the next portion; some would consider chapters 30 and 31 a unit and 33:14–22 another, while others consider chapters 30—33 as one unit, considering Jermiah’s purchase of the field as an integral part of the message on restoration, dioramically presented. Stibitz calls this portion “a Book of Comfort” while...

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