It can be a daunting task tackling the books of the Prophets, or the Nevi’im (נְבִיאִים‎) as they are called in the Hebrew bible. They are famed for their messianic prophecies, moments of poetic genius and their dramatic narrative insertions, but they are generally poorly understood. In a way this is not the fault of the reader, but rather the result of an approach to reading the Bible that has emphasised the need for daily inspiration over a serious engagement with the texts. In the end, by taking the harder route, the results are more lasting and life changing.

The first six chapters of Jeremiah make difficult reading and perhaps represent some of most challenging texts in the Old Testament. The young prophet Jeremiah is called by God, in the first chapter, to take a message of coming disaster to the people of Judah and Jerusalem; the prophet begins his ministry in the streets of Jerusalem, during the reign of king Josiah (640 to 609 BC). The chapters under consideration in fact represent two prophetic moments, one in 627 (Jeremiah 2 to 3:5) and the other in the following year, 626 (3:6 to the end of chapter 6).

There was no absolute chronology in the ancient world and most ancient kingdoms like those of the Neo-Assyrians and Neo-Babylonians simply recorded the year of a king’s reign in their chronicles – in fact, the Neo-Assyrians used the successive number of the king’s annual campaign (palû) – which, it turns out, were not always annual. Similarly, in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the year was measured by the regnal year of the king, and in the books of Kings and Chronicles, these were held up against one another, thus providing a relative chronology - albeit a chronology that needs much work to unravel.