Jeremiah’s book spends far more time on a city that will not hear than on explicit messianic prediction. Yet its central speaker is the Lord of Israel. For Latter-day Saints, that is already a witness of Christ: Jehovah of the Old Testament is Jesus Christ in His premortal role.1
The Lord who calls, judges, and heals
The Lord is not a distant topic in Jeremiah. He calls the young prophet, pleads with His covenant people, judges their idolatry, and promises that exile will not be their final condition. The book’s severity is covenantal: the same God who judges is the God who says, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3).
The fountain of living waters
Jeremiah’s earliest image of the Lord is one of the book’s clearest witnesses: Judah has forsaken “the fountain of living waters” for broken cisterns (Jer. 2:13). The Old Testament manual identifies that fountain with Jehovah, Jesus Christ, and connects it with the Savior’s offer of living water in John 4.2
The image does more than announce a title. A cistern holds water someone has managed to collect; a fountain supplies living water. Jeremiah exposes the futility of replacing the living Lord with fabricated sources of security.
The shepherd and the Branch
Jeremiah condemns shepherds—leaders—who scatter the flock. A shepherd is one who cares for the Lord’s children;3 the failure of Judah’s rulers therefore prepares the promise that the Lord Himself will gather His people.
Into that failure comes the righteous Branch of David, a king who will reign wisely and execute judgment and justice (Jer. 23:5–6). The Bible Dictionary’s entry on Messiah identifies the expected Messiah as the anointed King in David’s line.4 Jeremiah’s Branch is thus not merely a better political ruler. In the Church’s reading, he is the Messiah who brings the Lord’s righteous reign.
The Shepherds and the Branch follows this promise from failed shepherds to the gathering Shepherd-King.
The new covenant
Jeremiah 31 does not offer a second chance at a merely external religion. The Lord promises a covenant written “in their inward parts” and on their hearts; He will be their God, forgive iniquity, and remember sin no more (Jer. 31:31–34). Chapters 30–33 are predictions of the latter-day restoration and the Lord’s new and everlasting covenant.5
The New Testament makes the Christ-centered implication explicit when Hebrews quotes the passage in describing Jesus as mediator of a better covenant (Heb. 8:6–12). Jeremiah supplies the promise; Christ makes its forgiveness and inward transformation possible.
The Covenant Written in the Heart traces the passage in its setting and its New Testament reception.
Potter, field, and future
The potter in Jer. 18 shows the Lord’s authority over a nation, but also the real moral contingency of prophecy: if a people turn from evil, the announced disaster need not proceed. The field Jeremiah buys in Jer. 32, while Babylon surrounds Jerusalem, gives that promise a material form. The city will fall; the Lord is not finished with His people.
Christ in Jeremiah is therefore not an ornament added to a book of doom. He is the covenant Lord whose judgment is true, whose mercy is purposeful, and whose final word is to build and plant.
Sources
- “Jehovah”, Bible Dictionary. ↩
- Chapter 23: As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap (Jeremiah 1–19), Old Testament Student Manual: 1 Kings–Malachi (2003). ↩
- “Shepherd”, Guide to the Scriptures. ↩
- “Messiah”, Bible Dictionary. ↩
- Chapter 25: Prophecies of a Latter-day Gathering (Jeremiah 23; 30–31; 33; 46–51; Obadiah), Old Testament Student Manual: 1 Kings–Malachi (2003). ↩