Prophet Jeremiah (Judah)

Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, of a priestly family from Anathoth in Benjamin, was called as a youth in Josiah's 13th year (−627), protesting "I am only a boy." For four decades he warned that Babylon would destroy Jerusalem. He preached in the Temple that it would end like Shiloh and was nearly executed, was beaten and put in the stocks, dictated his prophecies to the scribe Baruch son of Neriah only to see King Jehoiakim burn the scroll column by column, and wore a wooden yoke to urge submission to Nebuchadnezzar. He wrote to the exiles of −597 to "build houses and plant gardens... seek the welfare of the city," and during the final siege bought a field in Anathoth as a pledge that fields would again be bought in this land. Officials threw him into a muddy cistern, and Ebed-melech the Cushite pulled him out.

After the fall in −586 he stayed with the governor Gedaliah at Mizpah, and after Gedaliah's murder was taken to Egypt against his will. Tradition credits him with Lamentations, chanted on Tisha B'Av. Excavations in the City of David have yielded clay seal impressions of Jehucal son of Shelemiah and Gedaliah son of Pashhur, two of the officials who, in Jeremiah 38, demanded his death.