“Thus saith the Lord the maker thereof, the Lord that formed it, to establish it; the Lord is his name” (Jeremiah 33.2).…”Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not” (Jeremiah 33.3). We can call on the Creator and depend on His promises.

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Jeremiah’s prophecy resembles Isaiah’s in many ways, even though they certainly never met; Isaiah wrote in the 700s BC, while Jeremiah wrote more than a century later, in the late 600s and early 500s. But they have the same focus: the sin of Judah and the coming judgment by Babylon. (Incidentally Ezekiel is Jeremiah’s contemporary, but he’s writing from Babylon, while Jeremiah is in Judah. Ezekiel has little to say about Creation theology, unless one counts his reference to the creation of the king of Tyre/Satan in chapter 28.)

Jeremiah uses Creation as evidence for the Creator’s power and sovereignty in 4 passages. Because 2 of them are quite similar, I’ll discuss them together.

Jeremiah 10.12

In this chapter Jeremiah is mocking the makers and worshipers of idols for the evident stupidity of their practices: “the customs of the people are vanity [empty]” (Jer 10.3). They cut down a tree and decorate it (Jer 10.3-9), but they themselves know that this piece of wood and metal did not create the cosmos (Jer 10.11). On the contrary, God did (Jer 10.12), and he maintains, empowers, and directs it at his will (Jer 10.13). And it is this God who will direct Judah into judgment (Jer 10.17-25). As in Isaiah, the opening narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures is the basis for God’s judgment on their idolatry.

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