The first chapter of this great book introduces the prophet to the reader and records his calling by Yahweh into the prophetic ministry.
In Jeremiah, prophecies concerning foreign nations come at the end of the book. In the other major prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel, they come after oracles against Israel and or Judah and before oracles dealing with Israel's restoration. Oracles against foreign nations appear in every prophetical book except Hosea. Collections of them appear in Amos 1-2, Isaiah 13-23, Ezekiel 25-32, and Zephaniah 2:2-15, as well as here. Jeremiah follows a generally geographical order dealing first with a nation in the west and then moving east.542The fact that the prophets of Israel and Judah gave oracles about other nations reflects Yahweh's sovereignty over the whole world.
"The OAN [oracles against nations] had three main purposes: (1) to pronounce doom on a foreign nation, sometimes for mistreatment of Israel; (2) to serve as a salvation oracle or oracle of encouragement for Israel; (3) to warn Israel about depending on foreign alliances for their security . . .
"While in some OAN in the prophetic books foreign nations are condemned for their mistreatment of Israel and Judah, it is remarkable that, with the exception of the Babylon oracle . . ., none of the foreign nations in the OAN in Jeremiah is to be judged for such mistreatment. The oracles are not clearly nationalistically motivated, and thus it cannot be shown that they functioned primarily, if at all, as salvation oracles for Judah. In six of the oracles in Jer 46-49, no reasons are given for judgment. The language about destruction is not strident; it gives no hint of xenophobic hatred. . . ."543
By common scholarly consensus, these chapters contain some of the finest Hebrew poetry in the Old Testament.
This chapter has many similarities to 2 Kings 24:18-25:30 with the exception of 25:22-26, the story of Gedaliah's assassination (cf. chs. 40-41). This chapter forms a fitting conclusion to the book since it records the fulfillment of many of Jeremiah's prophecies of Jerusalem's destruction, the Exile, and the hope of restoration. Time proved Jeremiah right and the false prophets wrong.
Two unusual features mark this chapter. First, the material seems to have been borrowed from 2 Kings. A similar phenomenon appears in Isaiah 36-39 that retells the events recorded in 2 Kings 18-20 with little variation. Second, Jeremiah does not appear in this chapter. However, Jeremiah does not appear in several other chapters in this book (e.g., ch. 41). The main character in this book is not Jeremiah but God.
