NOTES for Jer 4:1-31
Jeremiah is a prophet of catastrophe: not only because the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah and the fall of Jerusalem took place before his eyes, but also because of how vividly and clearly he sees the approaching threat. It is as if he already hears the enemy trumpets and the shouts of soldiers.
All the more astonishing is that behind the inevitability of war and Judah's national collapse he sees the possibility of salvation: repentance, turning to God and His commandments. He perceives history as a living process of the relationship between God's people and God, a process in which spiritual renewal can stop war, and the reverse as well. He connects the moral condition of people and the most complex historical processes into one whole, proceeding not from sociological or political premises, but from knowledge of God as the Creator of history, and of the human being, on whose relationship with the Creator this history so strongly depends.