Before Jeremiah Was: Divine Election in the Ancient Near East
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A BYU scholar explores Jeremiah 1:5 and ancient claims of divine election, and how the Restoration’s teaching of premortal foreordination makes sense of them.
In this chapter from A Witness for the Restoration: Essays in Honor of Robert J. Matthews (Religious Studies Center, 2007), BYU professor of ancient scripture Dana M. Pike looks at Jeremiah 1:5, "before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee," and at the wider idea of divine election in the ancient world. The full chapter is freely readable on the Religious Studies Center website, and it pairs well with this week's Come, Follow Me reading in Jeremiah.
What "election" means
Pike uses divine election as the scholarly term for God choosing people for a role or opportunity in mortal life. He notes that many people today dismiss the idea as arrogant or arbitrary, and that even some Latter-day Saints feel uneasy with it. He argues that a Restoration view, with its teaching of premortal life and foreordination, gives the doctrine a sounder footing.
Election in the Hebrew Bible
He surveys the Hebrew word for "choose" and related terms such as "know," "call" and "treasured possession." Key passages include the call of Abraham in Genesis 12, the Lord's offer to Israel at Sinai in Exodus 19 (which, he notes, depended on ongoing obedience), and Jeremiah's call. Jeremiah 1:5 stands out, he explains, because it is one of the few passages that says when the choosing happened: before birth.
Echoes in other ancient texts
Pike then compares claims made by Mesopotamian and Egyptian rulers, who often said the gods had named or chosen them, sometimes before birth. Hammurabi's law prologue, for example, presents him as named for kingship by the gods long before his reign. Unlike the Bible, these texts apply election only to political rulers.
A Restoration reading
Pike's conclusion is that the restored gospel explains both the biblical passages and the foreign parallels. Election generally took place in premortal life, it exists so that the chosen can serve and bless others, and it rests on faithfulness rather than favoritism. Drawing on teachings of President Joseph F. Smith and Elder Neal A. Maxwell, he suggests the non-biblical claims are distorted remnants of truths once revealed to Adam and Noah. He ends with Joseph Smith's teaching that those called to minister were ordained to that purpose in the Grand Council of heaven.
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