I would like to know why Jeremiah is called the "weeping prophet"

I have looked in Scripture, but I cannot find the answer.


The extent to which Jeremiah is known as the 'weeping prophet' is so entrenched that there is even an Englsh word - jeremiad ("a sad lamentation") - that enshrines the concept.

Jeremiah's weeping traditionally comes from his authorship of the book of Lamentations (his other book!), which is a jeremiad (if you'll pardon the pun), mourning the capture and destruction of Jerusalem in 587BC. If you read Lamentations, you will hear Jeremiah's anguish, and yes, tears, in his works.


Jeremiah is commonly known as the "weeping prophet," based on his wish to have a "fountain of tears" with which he might weep for the slain of his own people (9:1). It is this trait of deep empathy for those he continually chastises that differentiates him from others When God called him, he received a six-fold task, to "pluck up and pull down," to "destroy and overthrow," and "to build and to plant. But within the huge collection of prophetic oracles that make up the fifty-two chapters of Jeremiah's witness, one finds more than tears, more than frank admissions of pain, and more than convictions about the evils of Judah. One also finds startling promises of hope, hope found not merely in the possibility of human repentance, but grounded squarely in the amazing grace of God. Such a passage is 31:27-34.

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