Jeremiah Devotionals
One for each chapter. Want to test what you read? Take the Jeremiah quizzes.
- Jeremiah 1: The Promise Behind the Call
Jeremiah's story begins before Jeremiah does. The LORD says he knew him and set him apart before he was formed in the womb (1:5). When Jeremiah protests that he cannot speak and…
- Jeremiah 2: Trading the Fountain for Cisterns
God opens his case against Israel with a memory. He recalls the devotion of their early days, when they followed him like a bride through the wilderness (2:2). Then comes a…
- Jeremiah 3: Calling Back the Unfaithful
Jeremiah 3 opens with a legal question. If a divorced wife marries another man, can her first husband ever take her back (3:1)? The expected answer is no, and Israel has gone…
- Jeremiah 4: A Ruin God Will Not Finish
God's call in Jeremiah 4 goes deeper than behavior. He tells Judah to break up its unplowed ground and to circumcise their hearts to him (4:3-4). An outward mark of belonging is…
- Jeremiah 5: Mercy Looking for a Reason
God sends Jeremiah through the streets of Jerusalem on a search. If he can find one person who acts justly and seeks the truth, God will forgive the whole city (5:1). Jeremiah…
- Jeremiah 6: Rest Down the Old Road
Jeremiah 6 is full of alarms: an army from the north, a siege ramp raised against a city that spills out wickedness the way a well spills out water (6:1-7). Yet its prophets and…
- Jeremiah 7: No Safety in a Slogan
God stations Jeremiah at the temple gate with an unexpected message. The worshipers must stop trusting the empty words that repeat the name of the LORD's temple over and over…
- Jeremiah 8: The Healing No One Sought
God asks a simple question through Jeremiah. When people fall, do they not get up? When someone turns away, does he not turn back (8:4)? Yet Jerusalem keeps turning away and…
- Jeremiah 9: Boasting in Knowing Him
Jeremiah longs for endless tears so he could weep day and night for his people (9:1), even as he wishes he could get away from their lies (9:2-3). The grief is not only the…
- Jeremiah 10: The God No Craftsman Made
Jeremiah 10 sets two kinds of gods side by side. One kind is cut from a tree, covered in silver and gold, and nailed down so it will not tip over (10:3-4). Helpless as scarecrows…
- Jeremiah 11: Leaving the Case with God
God reminds Judah of the covenant he made when he brought their ancestors out of Egypt: obey him, and they would be his people and he their God (11:4). He warned them again and…
- Jeremiah 12: Room for an Honest Complaint
Jeremiah opens with a complaint many believers have prayed. He grants that God is righteous, and then asks why the wicked prosper and the faithless live at ease (12:1). They talk…
- Jeremiah 13: Made to Cling to Him
God has Jeremiah wear a linen undergarment, then hide it in the rocks at Perath. Many days later he digs it up, ruined and useless (13:1-7). God explains that just as the garment…
- Jeremiah 14: Pleading His Name Alone
Drought grips Judah. Jars come back empty from the cisterns, and even the doe abandons her newborn fawn for lack of grass (14:3-5). Out of that thirst rises a prayer that does not…
- Jeremiah 15: The Promise Spoken Again
Jeremiah 15 opens with a hard sentence: even if Moses and Samuel pleaded, God's heart would not turn toward this people (15:1). Then Jeremiah breaks into lament, wishing he had…
- Jeremiah 16: A Greater Exodus Coming
God makes Jeremiah's whole life a message. He must not marry, go to funeral meals, or join feasts (16:2, 5, 8). Each loss is a sign that death and silence are coming (16:4-9).…
- Jeremiah 17: Healing for a Deceitful Heart
God draws two pictures. The one who trusts in human strength and turns his heart from the LORD is like a desert shrub in salty ground (17:5-6). The one who trusts in the LORD is…
- Jeremiah 18: Clay Still on the Wheel
At the potter's house, Jeremiah watches a vessel go wrong in the potter's hands. The potter does not throw the clay away. He shapes it into something new, as he chooses (18:3-4).…
- Jeremiah 19: When the Clay Has Hardened
Jeremiah 19 picks up the potter image and carries it one step further. Jeremiah takes a finished clay jar to the Valley of Ben-hinnom, with elders and priests watching (19:1-2).…
- Jeremiah 20: Praise and Despair Side by Side
The priest Pashhur has Jeremiah beaten and locked in the stocks overnight (20:1-2). Released, Jeremiah announces that Pashhur will die in Babylon (20:3-6). Then he pours out one…
- Jeremiah 21: Life Through Surrender
With Babylon's army at the walls, King Zedekiah hopes the LORD will do one of his past wonders and drive the enemy away (21:2). Instead, God himself will fight against Jerusalem…
- Jeremiah 22: Cedar Does Not Make a King
God sends Jeremiah to the palace with a plain message for the king on David's throne: do what is just and right, rescue the robbed, and protect the foreigner, the orphan, and the…
- Jeremiah 23: Righteousness Given a Name
God pronounces woe on the shepherds who scattered his flock and did not care for it (23:1-2). Then he promises to gather the remnant himself and give them shepherds who truly tend…
- Jeremiah 24: Good Figs in a Far Country
After King Jeconiah and Judah's leaders are carried off to Babylon, the LORD shows Jeremiah two baskets of figs, one very good and one too rotten to eat (24:1-3). The surprise is…
- Jeremiah 25: The Cup from His Hand
For twenty-three years Jeremiah has spoken the LORD's word again and again, alongside prophet after prophet (25:3-4). The people did not listen. So God will summon Nebuchadnezzar,…
- Jeremiah 26: The Door Left Open
God sends Jeremiah to the temple courtyard with orders not to leave out a word, and his reason is full of hope: maybe the people will hear and turn back, so that he can relent of…
- Jeremiah 27: Restored in His Own Time
Wearing a yoke of leather straps, Jeremiah sends a message through envoys from five nations (27:2-3). His message for their kings is that the LORD made the earth, its people, and…
- Jeremiah 28: Truth Over Welcome News
Hananiah stands in the temple and announces exactly what everyone wants to hear. Within two years, he says, the LORD will break Babylon's yoke and bring back the exiles and the…
- Jeremiah 29: A Future Promised to Exiles
Jeremiah writes to exiles in Babylon who are hearing prophets promise a quick return (29:8-9). God tells them something harder. Build houses and plant gardens. Marry, raise…
- Jeremiah 30: A Ruler Brought Near to God
God tells Jeremiah to write in a book that he will bring Israel and Judah home (30:2-3). First comes a day of terror, the time of Jacob's distress, and yet he will be saved out of…
- Jeremiah 31: A Law Written Within
Jeremiah 31 is full of homecoming. God tells his scattered people that his love for them is everlasting (31:3). Rachel weeps for children who are gone, and God tells her to dry…
- Jeremiah 32: Hope Signed and Sealed
Babylon's siege ramps are against Jerusalem's walls, and Jeremiah is confined in the courtyard of the guard (32:2). Then God tells him to buy a field. Jeremiah weighs out…
- Jeremiah 33: Joy Promised to a Ruin
Still confined in the courtyard of the guard, Jeremiah hears God invite him to call, with a promise to answer and show him great things he could never search out alone (33:1-3).…
- Jeremiah 34: Freed People Who Free Others
With Babylon's army at the gates, Jerusalem does something good. King Zedekiah leads the people in a covenant to free their Hebrew slaves, made in the LORD's house and sealed by…
- Jeremiah 35: Faithful to a Lesser Word
God sends Jeremiah to bring the Rechabite family into a room of the temple and set wine before them (35:2-5). They refuse. Generations earlier their ancestor Jonadab told them…
- Jeremiah 36: The Word That Outlasts Fire
God has Jeremiah write down everything he has spoken since King Josiah's day, hoping the people will turn from their evil and be forgiven (36:2-3). Baruch writes as Jeremiah…
- Jeremiah 37: The Same Word in Private
When Babylon's army pulls back as Egypt approaches, King Zedekiah asks Jeremiah to pray for the city (37:3-5), though neither he nor the people intend to obey what the LORD has…
- Jeremiah 38: The King Who Feared Everyone
Jeremiah keeps urging surrender to Babylon, and the officials want him dead for it (38:2-4). King Zedekiah hands him over, saying the king can do nothing against them (38:5). They…
- Jeremiah 39: Spared Because He Trusted
Everything Jeremiah warned about happens in a few verses. The wall is breached, Zedekiah flees by night and is caught, his sons are killed before his eyes, and he is blinded and…
- Jeremiah 40: Summer Fruit Among the Ruins
At Ramah the Babylonian captain Nebuzaradan finds Jeremiah in chains and frees him (40:1, 4). First, though, he tells Jeremiah that the LORD announced this disaster and then…
- Jeremiah 41: Where God Goes Unmentioned
Jeremiah 41 is dark, and strangely quiet about God. Neither the LORD nor Jeremiah speaks in it. Ishmael, of the royal family, shares a meal with Gedaliah and then murders him,…
- Jeremiah 42: Planted Where It Felt Unsafe
The survivors ask Jeremiah to pray and show them the way to walk, vowing to obey whether the answer is pleasant or not (42:2-6). Ten days later the word comes (42:7). It is one of…
- Jeremiah 43: The Word Follows to Egypt
As soon as Jeremiah finishes speaking, the leaders call him a liar and blame Baruch for turning him against them (43:2-3). They take everyone, Jeremiah and Baruch included, and go…
- Jeremiah 44: Reading Hard Times Backward
In Egypt, God reminds the Judeans through Jeremiah that Jerusalem lies in ruins because the people kept burning incense to other gods, though prophet after prophet pleaded with…
- Jeremiah 45: A Smaller Promise Kept
This brief chapter returns to when Baruch wrote Jeremiah's words on the scroll (45:1). Baruch is worn out. He complains that the LORD has added sorrow to his pain and that he can…
- Jeremiah 46: The Power Judah Leaned On
The oracles against the nations begin with Egypt. Its army arms for battle, then breaks in terror and flees (46:3-5). Egypt rose like the Nile in flood, boasting that it would…
- Jeremiah 47: A Sword Under Orders
The word against the Philistines is short and stark. A flood rises from the north. At the thunder of hooves and chariot wheels, fathers are too weak to turn back for their own…
- Jeremiah 48: A Lament for an Enemy
Moab had made Israel an object of ridicule (48:27), and Jeremiah 48 announces its ruin town by town (48:21-24). The charges are clear. Moab trusted in its own works and treasures…
- Jeremiah 49: Room for Widows in Edom
Five peoples pass under judgment in quick succession. Ammon trusts in its riches and asks who could ever come against it (49:4). Edom's pride has deceived it; though it nests high…
- Jeremiah 50: A Redeemer Who Pleads
This long oracle is aimed at Babylon, the empire God had used to judge his people. Now its idols will be shattered (50:2). Those who devoured Israel excused themselves by saying…
- Jeremiah 51: Remembering Zion From Far Away
Babylon seemed unshakable, rich in treasure beside many waters (51:13). God had used it like a gold cup and a war club in his hand (51:7, 20-23). Now he announces its sudden fall,…
- Jeremiah 52: Every Word Accounted For
Chapter 51 closes by noting that the words of Jeremiah end there (51:64). Then chapter 52 retells the fall: siege, famine, a blinded king, a burned temple (52:4-14). The narrator…