Known Before I Was Born

Jeremiah’s call begins with one of the clearest Old Testament witnesses of premortal life: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee” (1:5). His first response is honest: “I cannot speak: for I am a child” (1:6). The Lord doesn’t dismiss the feeling; He answers it: “Be not afraid… for I am with thee,” and He touches Jeremiah’s mouth (1:8–9). Then a small vision: a branch of an almond tree (1:11–12). In Hebrew, the word for almond sounds like the word for watching, and the Lord says He is watching over His word to fulfill it (the KJV says “hasten”). The chapter ends with a promise for a lonely calling: “they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee” (1:19). Enoch felt the same inadequacy at his call (Moses 6:31–32).

🔗 Cross-references

• Moses 6:31–32 ↗Enoch protests that he is but a lad and slow of speech, and the Lord promises to fill his mouth.
• Abraham 3:22–23 ↗Abraham sees noble and great spirits chosen before they were born.
• Alma 13:3 ↗Alma teaches that many were called and prepared from the foundation of the world because of their faith.

Jeremiah 2 opens tenderly. The Lord remembers Israel’s early devotion, “the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness” (2:2). Then comes the heart of the complaint: “they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (2:13). A cistern was a tank cut into rock to store rainwater; it took hard labor to dig, and a cracked one leaked everything. Chapter 3 is a long plea to come back: “Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings” (3:22). The Lord promises to gather “one of a city, and two of a family” and give “pastors according to mine heart” (3:14–15). Nephi saw that the fountain of living waters represents the love of God (1 Nephi 11:25).

🔗 Cross-references

• 1 Nephi 11:25 ↗Nephi learns that the fountain of living waters represents the love of God.
• John 7:37–38 ↗Jesus invites anyone who thirsts to come to Him and promises rivers of living water.
• 3 Nephi 9:13 ↗The risen Lord asks, “Will ye not now return unto me… that I may heal you?”

The Lord sends Jeremiah to stand at the gate of the temple and speak to the worshippers going in (7:2). The people had a slogan: “The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord.” Jeremiah calls it “lying words” (7:4), not because the temple was false, but because they trusted the building while oppressing the stranger, the fatherless and the widow (7:5–6). He asks, “Is this house… become a den of robbers in your eyes?” (7:11), words the Savior quoted when He cleansed the temple (Matthew 21:13). He reminds them of Shiloh, where the tabernacle once stood and fell (7:12). Jeremiah 26 records how nearly this message cost him his life (26:8, 24). The Lord’s desire is simple: “Obey my voice, and I will be your God” (7:23).

🔗 Cross-references

• Matthew 21:13 ↗The Savior quotes Jeremiah 7:11 as He cleanses the temple.
• Doctrine and Covenants 97:15–17 ↗The Lord promises His glory will rest on His house if it is kept undefiled.
• James 1:27 ↗Pure religion is visiting the fatherless and widows and keeping oneself unspotted from the world.

Chapter 16 opens hard: the Lord tells Jeremiah not to marry or have children, a living sign of the suffering coming to Jerusalem (16:2–4). Then the promise turns: a future gathering so great that people will speak of it instead of the Exodus, with the Lord sending “many fishers” and “many hunters” to find His scattered people (16:14–16). Chapter 17 offers two pictures. The one who “trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm” is like a scrub bush in a salt desert. The one who trusts the Lord is “as a tree planted by the waters,” green even in drought (17:5–8). Then an honest warning: “The heart is deceitful above all things,” but the Lord searches it (17:9–10). The chapter ends with a plea to keep the Sabbath free of burdens (17:21–22).

🔗 Cross-references

• 2 Nephi 4:34 ↗Nephi echoes Jeremiah 17:5: “I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh.”
• Psalm 1:3 ↗The righteous person is like a tree planted by the rivers of water, whose leaf does not wither.
• Doctrine and Covenants 1:19 ↗The Lord works through the weak so that no one trusts in the arm of flesh.

The Lord sends Jeremiah to watch a potter at work. The KJV says he “wrought a work on the wheels”; the Hebrew speaks of two stones, the upper wheel for shaping and the lower one turned by the feet. When the vessel is marred, the potter doesn’t discard the clay; “he made it again another vessel” (18:4). The Lord applies it: “as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand” (18:6). He also teaches that His warnings and blessings respond to people’s choices; if a nation turns, He turns (18:7–10), as Nineveh later learned (Jonah 3:10). The tragedy is Judah’s answer: “There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices” (18:12). In the next chapter, Jeremiah shatters a finished, hardened bottle (19:10–11). Soft clay can be reshaped; hardened clay can only break.

🔗 Cross-references

• Isaiah 64:8 ↗Isaiah prays, “We are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.”
• Jonah 3:10 ↗When Nineveh turned from evil, God turned from the destruction He had warned of.
• Ether 12:27 ↗The Lord gives us weakness so we will be humble, and promises to make weak things strong.

Chapter 20 shows the cost of Jeremiah’s calling. Pashur, a priest and chief officer in the temple, has him beaten and locked overnight in the stocks at the gate (20:1–2). Then Jeremiah prays one of the rawest prayers in scripture. He is mocked all day. He decides to stop speaking in the Lord’s name. But he can’t: the word is “in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay” (20:9). In the same chapter he says, “the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one” and sings praise (20:11, 13), then curses the day he was born (20:14). Faith and anguish sit side by side. Joseph Smith prayed with the same honesty in Liberty Jail (Doctrine and Covenants 121:1–6).

🔗 Cross-references

• Doctrine and Covenants 121:1–6 ↗Joseph Smith pours out his anguish in Liberty Jail: “O God, where art thou?”
• Luke 24:32 ↗The disciples on the road to Emmaus felt their hearts burn as the Savior opened the scriptures.
• 1 Nephi 7:14 ↗Nephi notes that the people of Jerusalem had cast Jeremiah into prison.

Come back to the beginning. Before Jeremiah was born, the Lord knew him, sanctified him and ordained him (1:5). That is foreordination: preparation in the premortal world for work on earth. It is not a guarantee; the Church teaches that it is fulfilled through faithful choices here, and Jeremiah still had to say yes. Notice what the Lord gave him for a frightening assignment: a promise of presence (“I am with thee”), a touch, and words in his mouth (1:8–9). Every covenant member of the Church has received a version of that. As you take the sacrament today, remember that the Lord who knew you before you were born has not stopped knowing you, and still has work for you to do.

🔗 Cross-references

• Doctrine and Covenants 138:55–56 ↗Joseph F. Smith sees that many were prepared in the spirit world before they came to earth to labor in the Lord’s vineyard.
• Moroni 4:3 ↗The sacrament prayer: to always remember Him and keep His commandments.
• Psalm 139:13–16 ↗The psalmist praises the God who knew him before he was formed.