Jeremiah 11: Jeremiah's Hometown Blues

And Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown" (Luke 4:24).

Jesus may have had in mind the travails of Jeremiah.  We learned earlier that Jeremiah is from the town of Anathoth, a few miles north of Jerusalem (1:1).  Anathoth was in the land assigned to the tribe of Benjamin.

However, rather than supporting the ministry of their prophet, Anathoth rose up in opposition to Jeremiah.  Jeremiah muses in verses 18-19 about an incident in which he was "like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter."  Apparently there had been a conspiracy to silence him and kill him so as to end his prophetic messages of gloom and doom.  Their message to Jeremiah was an ultimatum: "You shall not prophesy in the name of the Lord, or you will die by our hand" (vs. 21).   In response, Jeremiah calls out for vindication to the Lord: "But you, O Lord of hosts, who judge righteously, who try the heart and the mind, let me see your retribution upon them, for to you I have committed my cause" (vs. 20).

God rouses Himself on Jeremiah's behalf and pronounces judgment on the men of Anathoth for their rebellion against the Lord's prophet.  "Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts; I am going to punish them; the young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine; and not even a remnant shall be left of them.  For I will bring disaster upon the people of Anathoth, the year of their punishment" (vs. 22-23).  This was indeed fulfilled as only 128 men returned to it from the Babylonian exile (Nehemiah 7:27).

In addition to his difficult burden of delivering a message of woe and judgment to his nation, Jeremiah also had to face rejection, scorn, and even death threats from his own hometown.  Jesus knew a little bit about what that was like, too, for no prophet of the Lord is accepted in his hometown.