Jeremiah is the only Old Testament prophet whose inner life we see in sustained, unguarded detail.

He prophesied during the last decades of Jerusalem’s existence, from Josiah’s reign through the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. He knew the catastrophe was coming. He could not stop it.

He delivered the Great King’s covenant lawsuit faithfully while the community refused to hear, and he lived to see the outcomes of covenantal unfaithfulness. The people rejected the Great King and so they suffered the negative consequences of a broken suzerain-vassal treaty exactly as the covenant had specified.

The book opens with a verse the LDS reader will recognize immediately: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee; and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5).

The word translated knew is yadaʼ, which means intimate, covenant relationship, the deep knowing that comes from being in covenant with someone.

The Great King knew Jeremiah before his physical formation. The Great King established his commission before he was born.

Doctrine and Covenants 138:55–56 draws from this verse directly: the valiant in the pre-mortal existence were foreordained to covenant responsibilities in mortality.