Jeremiah in the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon mentions Jeremiah by name three times. The first is after Nephi obtained the brass plates and he and his father began to search them. He recorded that it contained “the prophecies of the holy prophets, from the beginning, even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah; and also many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah” (1 Nephi 5:13). So the brass plates contained some of the writings of Jeremiah, which makes sense since he had been an active prophet in Jerusalem for nearly three decades by the time that Lehi left the city. We know that Baruch the scribe wrote down the words of Jeremiah in the fourth year of King Jehoiakim, which would have been about seven years before the departure of Lehi (i.e. the first year of the reign of Zedekiah). They were read publicly, and after the king burned the scroll, Baruch wrote down a second expanded scroll of the words of Jeremiah. It is possible that those words were then copied onto the brass plates before Nephi obtained them or that what the brass plates had was from an earlier time. According to the Bible Dictionary, chapters 1-20 as we have them today in the book of Jeremiah were written before the reign of Zedekiah, so those all could have been on the brass plates. Some of the later passages could have also been on there since it doesn’t appear to be totally in order (the scroll burning in Jeremiah 36, for example, obviously is about a time before Zedekiah was king).

            The second mention of Jeremiah in the Book of Mormon was by Nephi to his brothers. As they were journeying back from Jerusalem to the wilderness with Ishmael’s family, Laman and Lemuel rebelled and wanted to go back to their homes. Nephi said this to them about the wickedness of the people there: “For behold, the Spirit of the Lord ceaseth soon to strive with them; for behold, they have rejected the prophets, and Jeremiah have they cast into prison. And they have sought to take away the life of my father, insomuch that they have driven him out of the land” (1 Nephi 7:14). The clear imprisonment that is referred to in the Old Testament of Jeremiah came towards the end of the reign of Zedekiah, a decade later then when most would presume that Lehi left Jerusalem. But as two Book of Mormon scholars pointed out, Jeremiah could have easily been imprisoned previously as well. What Nephi referred to may be this imprisonment that Jeremiah alluded to: “I am shut up; I cannot go into the house of the Lord” (Jeremiah 36:5). Or this passage might have indicated an imprisonment: “Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the Lord” (Jeremiah 20:2). Or the imprisonment Nephi mentioned may not be recorded at all in the Bible, for clearly Jeremiah was not liked by either King Jehoiakim or King Zedekiah. He was constantly persecuted, and the Book of Mormon confirms that he was imprisoned more than just in the final days of Zedekiah.

            The last mention of Jeremiah in the Book of Mormon came much later. Nephi, the son of Helaman, sought to teach the people that the prophets knew of the coming of the Savior. He said to them, “And now I would that ye should know, that even since the days of Abraham there have been many prophets that have testified these things; yea, behold, the prophet Zenos did testify boldly; for the which he was slain. And behold, also Zenock, and also Ezias, and also Isaiah, and Jeremiah, (Jeremiah being that same prophet who testified of the destruction of Jerusalem) and now we know that Jerusalem was destroyed according to the words of Jeremiah. O then why not the Son of God come, according to his prophecy?” (Helaman 8:19-20) This means that not only did the Nephites have the words of Jeremiah on the plates of brass, but they contained a clear prophecy of the coming of the Son of God. As I have written before, I do not think this prophecy is one that we still have in our Old Testament. But, like Lehi, Jeremiah knew of the coming of the Messiah and surely found strength in that fact despite the terrible difficulties he faced.

            These three passages in the Book of Mormon together affirm the importance of the prophet Jeremiah and the value of his words. They highlight that Jeremiah, like so many other prophets, suffered for his testimony of the Son of God and that his words are of value to the faithful even hundreds of years after his life.