Seder Olama timeline of Jewish history
Person

Jeremiah ירמיהו הנביא

prophet of the First Temple's destruction, author of Lamentations

Yirmeyahu was a priest from Anatot who began to prophesy around 3298, in Yoshiyahu's thirteenth year, and served through the destruction and beyond. His calling is the conversation of a man who does not want it: "I do not know how to speak, for I am a boy." The answer: "Before I formed you in the belly I knew you."

His message stayed the same for forty years: change your conduct or the city falls, and resisting Babylon is futile. For this he was thought a traitor. He was put in stocks, thrown into a muddy cistern, tried for sedition, kept under guard. King Yehoyakim cut up the scroll of his prophecies and burned it; Yirmeyahu dictated a new one to Baruch ben Neriah.

At the height of the siege he did something absurd and great: he bought a field in Anatot and had the deed witnessed—"houses, fields and vineyards will yet be bought in this land".

After 3338 he stayed with the poor under Gedaliah, then was taken to Egypt. Lamentations is ascribed to him.

Chain of transmission

Link no. 20 of 40 in the enumeration of Maimonides (Introduction to the Mishneh Torah): “from Rav Ashi back to Moses our teacher — forty men”. Maimonides’ own count runs the other way, making this number 21.
Zephaniah son of Cushi → Jeremiah → Baruch ben Neriah

On the timeline

3298 · 463 BCEThe Prophet Jeremiah and His Warnings3303 · 458 BCEThe Torah Scroll Found in Josiah's Days, His Reform and the Hiding of the Ark3316 · 445 BCEThe Battle of Megiddo and the Death of Josiah3319 · 442 BCEThe First Exile to Babylon: Daniel and His Companions3327 · 434 BCEThe Exile of Jehoiachin and the Scholars—"the Craftsmen and the Smiths"3336 · 425 BCEThe Siege of Jerusalem and the Breach of the Wall

Places

Jerusalem

Related

JosiahEzekielDanielBaruch ben NeriahGedalyah ben AchikamYochanan ben Kareach

Sources

Tanakh

  • Eichah — the lament he wrote after the destruction
  • the Book of Yirmiyahu — forty years of warnings and the witnessing of the fall

Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar

  • Bava Batra 15a — he wrote his own book, Melachim and Eichah
  • Megillah 14b — his place among the prophets (the folio needs checking)
  • Seder Olam Rabbah 24–26 — the years of his ministry and of the destruction

Basis: stated in the Tanakh.

Эта статья по-русски →