Chalk this one up to something like a scriptural version of the frequency illusion.

Here’s what happened. I was recently reading a book that quoted Matthew 16:13–16, and I’m sure because Jeremiah was on my mind for the purposes of this blog post, something in that Matthew passage caught my attention like never before.

“Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” Jesus asked his disciples.

“Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some Elijah; and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”1

I realized that, as far as I could remember, I had never asked myself, Why would the people who were hearing Jesus—and hearing of Jesus—associate him with Jeremiah? Think he might even be Jeremiah returned? I could remember in the past thinking, Why John the Baptist? Or why Elijah? But not that I could recall, Why Jeremiah?

It didn’t take long to discover that I had read books that had treated that very question,2 but nothing about those previous encounters had stuck with me until now. It dawned on me that the very fact that Jeremiah had been on my mind made me notice something that had always been there. It was the scriptural equivalent of learning a new word and suddenly hearing it everywhere or buying a new car and suddenly noticing that every fourth driver on the freeway seemed to own the same car.

That’s the frequency illusion, and it has given me some things to think about this week.

For one thing, it was yet another reminder in general of the value of a close reading of scripture. I need constantly to be asking myself, What other details and rich avenues for exploration are right here, right now—and have always been there?

But for these past few days specifically, it has been an interesting exercise to think about this connection between Jesus and Jeremiah. What was it about Jesus’ ministry that reminded his hearers and associates of Jeremiah? What can this tell us about early reactions to Jesus’ work and words?

Parallels in Their Ministries

It doesn’t take long to see that the thematic parallels in their ministries seem everywhere.

Here are just a few very initial thoughts:

  • The gospels’ chronology of this is not easy to pin down with any definitiveness, but the Gospel of John suggests (differently than the synoptic gospels) that Jesus also drove out the moneychangers and merchants from the temple early in his ministry (see John 2:13–22). If that timing were the case, what Jewish witness of Jesus’ actions and words would not have heard echoes of Jeremiah’s indictment of what was happening in the temple in his day? The synoptic gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple even have Jesus paraphrasing Jeremiah (see Matthew 21:13; Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46): “Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?” (Jeremiah 7:11) As word spread of Jesus’ actions at the temple, would the connection with Jeremiah’s indignation have seemed almost unavoidable?
  • The connections to the temple go even further. One of the most sobering of Jeremiah’s prophecies asked Judah to look at what had happened to Israel just a century before, and to Shiloh specifically: “But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. . . . Therefore will I do unto this house [in Jerusalem], which is called by my name, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh” (Jeremiah 7:12, 14). And we remember that one of the chief accusations brought against Jesus was that he had predicted, or even called for, the destruction of the temple (see Matthew 26:61). Even though his accusers had missed the deeper meaning of Jesus’ words (see John 2:19–21), it would make sense that his listeners might have thought, “This sounds a lot like Jeremiah.”
  • Jeremiah 2:13: “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” At a tense season in Jesus’ ministry—at the very time when “there was much murmuring among the people concerning him, for some said, He is a good man: others said, Nay; but he deceiveth the people”—Jesus spoke these words in the temple, “Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me?”; and “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:12, 19, 38).
  • Jeremiah’s strong rebuke of the religious leaders of his day made him unpopular on all sides. Pashur, the “chief governor in the house of the Lord,” even “smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin” (Jeremiah 20:2). But that painful humiliation didn’t cow Jeremiah. He came out of the stocks with a “thus saith the Lord” message for Pashur: Judah would be conquered by Babylon, “and thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thine house shall go into captivity: and thou shalt come to Babylon, and there thou shalt die, and shalt be buried there, thou, and all thy friends, to whom thou hast prophesied lies” (Jeremiah 20:6). And then we remember moments when “all they in the synagogue, when they heard” what Jesus said, “were filled with wrath” and tried to “[lead] him unto the brow of the hill whereon the city was built, that they might cast him down headlong” (Luke 4:28). Or moments when they “took . . . up stones to cast at [Jesus]” (John 8:59).

Beyond Boldness

There is a lot more to say here, but maybe this is enough of a start, because what strikes me overall in this exercise is something more impressionistic than anything. Matthew 16’s reference to Jeremiah could reveal something about a general attitude toward (and appreciation of) the fearlessness that observers associated with Jeremiah—and likewise saw in Jesus. It’s the spirit of Matthew 15:12–14: “Then came [Jesus’] disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?” Jesus seemed undisturbed. “But he answered and said, Every plant that my Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” When Jeremiah was first confronting the implications of his prophetic calling (and confronting his own self-doubt), he accounted for his subsequent and unflinching resolve this way: “Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:9–10).

All of this was not without a cost, for Jeremiah or for Jesus. In Jeremiah 20, Jeremiah lamented the day he was born: “Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?” (Jeremiah 20:18). It was a heavy burden to speak the word of the Lord. Jesus, too, was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief (see Isaiah 53:3).

It’s easy to imagine the way society’s underdogs might have cheered for Jesus as they saw him doing what they understood Jeremiah to have also done so many centuries earlier: dishing out a plate of comeuppance to the powerful. It would have been easy to admire that kind of courage to call out the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of those who tithed mint and cumin (Matthew 23:23) but ignored the weightier matters of the law. But what Jesus was about was much more than that—and so, too, was Jeremiah.

No, of course Jesus was not Jeremiah returned, but they were motivated by very similar concerns.

The Bible Dictionary entry for Jeremiah has this beautiful line: “After Josiah’s death he tried to stem . . . the tide of idolatry and immorality, of self-deception founded on superficial reforms, and of fanatical confidence in the Lord’s protection, in which all classes were carried away.” I’m struck by the notion that Jeremiah was worried about self-deception and superficial reforms that seemed so universally problematic. It was more than just boldness for boldness’s sake, more than being a disrupter for disruption’s sake. It was about getting past the surface.

“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time,” Jesus told everyone who would listen, as he reviewed points of the law. “But I say unto you,” what about anger, lust, contention, revenge, integrity, humility (Matthew 5:21–48)? Superficial reforms were not good enough, could never be good enough. “Hypocrites! For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. . . . cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also” (Matthew 23:25–26).

Knowing that truth, it’s no wonder that Jeremiah felt the “word . . . in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, . . . and I could not stay” (Jeremiah 20:9).

That was true for Jeremiah, and it was true for Jesus—and all the better for us. That kind of boldness might be just the thing we all need to prompt us to confront our own tendencies toward self-deception.