'Jehovah exalts' (or 'loosens,' or 'establishes' — the root is uncertain). A priest of ANATHOTH in Benjamin, called in 627 BC (1:2) to a forty-year ministry that ran through the last five kings of Judah to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC and beyond. Known before the womb and made 'a prophet to the nations' (1:5), he was charged 'to uproot and to tear down… to build and to plant' (1:10) — a career mostly of warning a doomed nation to submit to Babylon, and mostly rejected for it: beaten, put in the stocks, thrown down a cistern, and finally carried off to Egypt. The 'weeping prophet,' whose anguished 'confessions' lay his inner life bare, and who was given the promise of a NEW COVENANT written on the heart (31:31-34). His scribe BARUCH wrote his words down (ch 36).