“Mine heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath overcome, because of the LORD, and because of the words of his holiness” (Jeremiah 23:9 KJV). 

The anthological reading of the Scriptures is easy for everyone: but it does not honor the Bible that we read. If badly used, this method becomes harmful because the verse taken out of context becomes a pretext. 

I heard preaching on this verse to justify religious exuberance, but the experience of Jeremiah must be contextualized to fully benefit from it. It would be wrong to say that an enthusiastic, emotional Bible reading corresponds to what the prophet lived. Jeremiah addressed a strong rebuke against false prophets. It is for this reason that his heart is broken! I was struck by the prophet's reference to the heart. 

Elsewhere, he was somewhat pessimistic about this topic: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 KJV). 

Is there a contradiction in Jeremiah? Not at all. Here we must contextualise what he wrote: The Hebrew word Leb means the heart as the inner man, therefore the will. When he speaks of his own heart, Jeremiah makes it clear that it is in harmony with God. The Prophet did not write that his heart is like that of others, so the believer should not understand his heart as perpetually corrupt. 

If we believe that the Holy Spirit has been poured out into our hearts (Romans 5: 5), then there can be no pessimism about our new life in Christ. 

The holy words involving Jeremiah were not the complete written Bible we possess today. They were oracles of God transmitted to him, called to be spokesman of the Lord. 

Studying the life of this prophet does not leave the reader indifferent: Jeremiah was a man of God, unpopular, but true. And this condition is the same for the preachers of the Gospel: “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ” (Galatians 1:10 KJV). 

That of the prophets was not an easy life, and I am not referring only to the unpopularity as to the particularity of their experience with God: 

“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 KJV). 

When I read this, God's declaration to Jeremiah, I think of the evidence that vocation is something external to us: we can not create it for ourselves. The life of the prophets is addressed to everyone, but it is not for everyone. Everything that I have shared with you here is not intended to discourage believers from being passionate about the Word of God.

But I conclude with this exhortation: 

“Rather than being drunk from the Bible, we must be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18).

M. Soranno