Among the many oracles produced by ancient Israel’s prophetic class, there was one social activist who not only deserves special attention, but who may well rival even Isaiah as the most profoundly important of any prophet ever born, bar none. That someone is Jeremiah. His was a voice who, like the earlier Isaiah, heralded not tri- umphalism, but the stern reality that the people divinely chosen to be a light to the na- tions were about to experience the darkest of nights.
