Getting Biblical in Daily Life
Jewish Perspective
Since Jeremiah's part of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Jewish perspective will get the most air time in our analysis.
Jeremiah, as an eyewitness to the Babylonian invasion and destruction of Jerusalem, is an important and beloved prophet in Judaism because of his compassion for his suffering people and his encouragement about the eventual return from exile. In fact, there's a rabbinic midrash (a commentary on the Bible) that says that Jeremiah was so righteous that God couldn't bear to destroy Jerusalem while he was there to see it. So he sent Jeremiah back to his hometown for a while and destroyed the city while he was away.
Excerpts from the book of Jeremiah are read regularly throughout the year as part of the synagogue service. The book has emotional power for Jews because as a people, they've been victims of a lot of conquering and destruction—it didn't end with the Babylonians. So the consolation verses in Jeremiah, although pretty few and far between, have been a comforting reminder that, although at any given time God might seem distant, the relationship endures.
Some of J's Greatest Hits can be found in Jewish celebrations. Those words of 33:11 "the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride," are pretty popular on wedding invitations. On the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, the consolation verses about the return of the exiles reassures the congregation that, in that season of seeking atonement for sin, God will have mercy on his beloved people. And during every Sabbath service, the liturgy contains a blessing for the country's leaders and government—another legacy of Jeremiah's advice in 29:7 to pray for the welfare of Babylon while living there.
And on a more practical note, Jeremiah buys some property in chapter 32 as a way of demonstrating his faith that the exile will eventually end and the people will return to Judea. When the Talmud (Jewish law and philosophy and stories covering every single situation imaginable) was compiled by Jewish sages in the third to fifth century CE, they actually used chapter 32 of Jeremiah as a model for writing laws about buying and selling property. (Source.) So add "First Real-Estate Agent" to Jeremiah's job description.
Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz has written that Jeremiah's suggestions to the people to build houses, plant gardens, marry and create families in Babylon are a good practical guide to what makes a full life, regardless of whether people are in exile or at home. (Source.)
The modern Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel sees Jeremiah's importance in his call to turn inward and love God with all the heart (29:13), to return to God with "the whole heart" (3:10), and to remove all obstacles to closeness to God by removing the "foreskin of the heart" (4:4). Heschel sees Jeremiah as the best example of a prophet who totally assimilates God's consciousness:
The prophet is no hireling who performs his duty in the employ of the Lord. The usual descriptions or definitions of prophecy fade to insignificance when applied, for example, to Jeremiah. "A religious experience," "communion with God," "a perception of His voice." Such terms hardly convey what happened to his soul: the overwhelming impact of the divine pathos upon his mind and heart, completely involving and gripping his personality in its depth.
Heschel saw the God of Jeremiah less as a God of wrath than as a God of suffering, who cried out to the community to care for the poor and vulnerable. (Source.)
The influential Jewish philosopher Martin Buber believed that an intimate relationship with God was the essence of religious experience. He saw traditional religious practice as meaningless if it was only done out of obedience to a set of laws. So he definitely recognized a like-minded person in Jeremiah, who encouraged the Judeans to go beyond sacrifices and ritual to approach God with that circumcised heart and develop a real relationship with him. (Source.)
So you see the trend here? Temple sacrifices and obedience to the laws of Deuteronomy are fine, but if they're not done in the context of getting up-close-and-personal with God, they're not going to get you anywhere. Jeremiah knew that God wanted a relationship with a community. He also realized that many rituals would be impossible anyway, with the Temple reduced to rubble and the people living far away from Jerusalem. So he helped shape a solution that would allow the Judeans to keep their religious identity even in a foreign land full of Babylonian gods and goddesses. The law was to be held in the heart, and each person was responsible for developing closeness to God.
Another big change in ancient Judaism that we read in Jeremiah is the idea of God as being a universal God, the God of everyone. In the Hebrew Bible, God's the god of the Israelites, known by his unpronounceable name YHWH; he adopts them as his chosen tribe and promises them a homeland. But there's the understanding that even though he's their God, he's one of many out there. He has a few celebrity death matches with the others, which he usually wins hands-down, and the other gods are always described as false or less powerful gods. But they're gods nonetheless, and YHWH usually doesn't concern himself with the other nations unless he has to clear them out to make way for the Israelites.
By the end of Jeremiah, though, we've seen God take ownership of just about every nation around. He'll lay them all to ruin and set up his throne all over the known world. The other nations got the message, too. When Cyrus of Persia freed the Judeans from their Babylonian captivity, he did it because "The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the LORD his God be with him! Let him go up." (Chronicles 36:23)
So that's what modern-day Jews read from Jeremiah—the importance of loving God whole-heartedly, the idea that the God of Israel is everybody's God, and a lot of helpful hints about what it takes to be a thriving religious community. Not bad at all. Maybe Jeremiah would finally stop weeping if he could see how influential he was.
Christian Perspectives
Catholic Perspective
As is true for almost all Christians, Catholics typically interpret the "Righteous Branch" referred to in verse 23:5 of Jeremiah as being Jesus Christ, and the "new covenant" as being the covenant in Christ, which fulfilled the original one. The great Catholic philosopher St. Augustine, writing in his early 5th century work "The City of God," describes each passage in Jeremiah which he sees as prophesying the coming of Christ, the Lord's anointed. He also challenges a popular claim that the Greek philosopher Plato had somehow absorbed the teachings of Jeremiah, since Jeremiah spent his later years in Egypt and Plato supposedly traveled there. Augustine, however, says that the dates don't really match up: Plato lived about 100 years after Jeremiah. (Source.)
Protestant Perspective
Like Catholics, Protestants also think that Jeremiah speaks of the coming of Christ in his references to "The Righteous Branch" that will grow from the house of David. This is consistent with the general Christian approach to re-interpret the whole of the Hebrew Bible in light of the incarnation of Jesus. In the Christian perspective, the Hebrew and Christian scriptures are one great single narrative, each informing the interpretation of the other.
The wrathful vision of Jeremiah's God seems to have inspired some Calvinist thinkers. Take the famous 18th Century American preacher and theologian, Jonathan Edwards: "The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire… and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment." (Source.) Very Jeremiah-ish.
It would be an exaggeration to say that Edwards' famous "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God" sermon was some sort of majority Protestant perspective. It's just an example of how the wrathful rhetoric of Jeremiah probably influenced certain kinds of "fire and brimstone" sermons.
Latter Day Saints' (Mormon) Perspective
The Latter Day Saints see Jeremiah as important for many reasons specific to their own faith. For example, God tells Jeremiah that God knew him before he was born, and called him to be a prophet at that time (Jeremiah 1:4-1). Latter Day Saints usually interpret this as referring not to Jeremiah's existence in the womb, but to his existence as a soul before he was even conceived. This is because Latter Day Saints believe in the pre-existence of souls.
Prophets who appear in the Book of Mormon—like Nehi and Lehi—respect the writings of Jeremiah and suggest that he prophesied the coming of Christ in terms more explicit than those found in the Biblical version of the text. Mormons believe that parts were left out of the Book of Jeremiah, and that it's been somewhat corrupted from its original version. They believe that its viewpoint was once more closely aligned with their own doctrines. (Source.)
Jehovah's Witnesses Perspective
Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the Bible is "trustworthy and inspired by God" and that its depiction of history is true and accurate. They believe that the Book of Jeremiah offers support for this view, since it correctly predicted the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of Babylon as well as the eventual conquest of Babylon from "the north," i.e. the Kingdom of Persia.
A symbolic harlot in the book of Revelation is called "Babylon the Great." Because Babylon's depicted in Jeremiah (and Isaiah) as a nation that worships many different gods, Witnesses use this to help them understand Revelation. They believe that the harlot represents false religion, and that many of these false beliefs are present in many religions today. (Source.)
Muslim Perspective
Muslims also accept Jeremiah as a prophet, though he isn't actually mentioned in the Qur'an. But the tradition of commentary on the Holy Book and writings of the Prophet Muhammad has given rise to a fair number of anecdotes related to and sayings attributed to Jeremiah by Muslim sages.
For instance, there's a passage where Jeremiah asks God what kind of devotee he values the most. God responds: "Those who remember me most, away from remembrance of my creatures; those who are not thinking of death, nor speak of eternal living; those who, when they are allured by the riches of this world, despise them, and when they lose them are happy; those have my love, indeed, and I shall reward them more than they desired." (Source.)
Baha'i Perspective
Whereas Jews typically interpret the "Righteous Branch" (23:5) that God promises will rise from the House of David as referring to a Messiah or righteous king, and Christians interpret it as referring to Jesus, members of the Baha'i Faith interpret it as referring to the Manifestation of God and founder of their religion, Bahaullah.
The early 20th Century Baha'i convert, J.E. Esslemont, quotes Bahuallah's son, Abdul Baha, who wrote the following: "One of the great events which is to occur in the day of the manifestation of that incomparable Branch, is the hoisting of the Standard of God among all nations; meaning that all the nations and tribes will come under the shadow of this Divine Banner, which is no other than the Lordly Branch itself, and will become a single nation. The antagonism of faiths and religions, the hostility of races and peoples, and the national differences, will be eradicated from amongst them. All will become one religion, one faith, one race, and one single people, and will dwell in one native land, which is the terrestrial globe."