Jeremiah is sometimes known as “the weeping prophet.” For forty years, he was tasked with declaring that the end was nigh for the nation. Time after time, the Lord had reached out to his people and pleaded with them to return to him but to no avail. Jeremiah knew the suffering that was to come at the hands of the Babylonians, and he cried out, “My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh the walls of my heart! My heart is beating wildly; I cannot keep silent, for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Crash follows hard on crash; the whole land is laid waste. Suddenly my tents are laid waste, my curtains in a moment. How long must I see the standard and hear the sound of the trumpet?” (4:19-21). Concerning the message he must proclaim, the prophet laments, “I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary of holding it in” (6:11).
Oh, that rather than following after the idols, Judah might have, with us, sung:
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Come unto me and rest;
lay down, O weary one,
lay down your head upon my breast.”
I came to Jesus as I was,
so weary, worn, and sad;
I found in him a resting place,
and he has made me glad. -- Horatius Bonar (1846)