Jeremiah lived around 650-570 BC, during one of history’s most turbulent periods. While he was warning his people about coming disaster, the great city of Babylon was becoming the world’s first metropolis with over 200,000 residents. Around the same time in Greece, Aesop was writing his famous fables about tortoises and hares.
Born in Anathoth—a small village about three miles northeast of Jerusalem in modern-day Israel—Jeremiah came from a family of priests. He never married, never had children, and spent his entire adult life delivering a message nobody wanted to hear.
He watched his beloved city of Jerusalem get destroyed exactly as he predicted. He saw his people dragged off to exile in Babylon. He was kidnapped and taken to Egypt, where most historians believe he died.
Jeremiah wrote two books of the Bible: the book named after him and Lamentations, a collection of funeral poems for his destroyed nation. He’s often called “the weeping prophet” because of how deeply he felt the pain of those who rejected him.