Jeremiah appeared to be preaching defeatism. He said the people and their rulers were themselves the authors of their danger through their wickedness. The enemy was merely the instrument of God’s wrath, and was thus bound to prevail. This seemed like black fatalism: hence the notion of the ‘Jeremiad’. But what his contemporaries missed was the other part of his message, the reasons for hope. For Jeremiah was saying that the destruction of the kingdom did not matter. Israel was still the chosen of the Lord. It could perform the mission given to it by God just as well in exile and dispersal as
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