Anathoth

The Yakut Shimoni records a poignantly beautiful midrash.

When the time came for the destruction of Yerushalayim, Hashem sent Yirmiyahu out of the city to his hometown of Anathot.

And once he was gone, an angel descended and kicked in the walls of the city, allowing the enemy to enter through the breach.

As the enemy conferred, trying to decide the fate of the Temple, what should they do, four angels armed with torches descended from heaven and set fire to the four corners of the Beit Hamikdash.

At that very moment, Yirmiyahu was leaving Anathot and heading back to Yerushalayim.

And when he saw the smoke coming from Har HaBayit, the Temple Mount, his very first thought, even after all his prophecies of doom, was perhaps the people have repented and the smoke of the ketoret, the daily incense offering, is once again rising from within the Temple.

And only when he approached the city and witnessed its stones falling did he begin to bemoan its fate.

So with these three points in mind, let's begin Perek Alef.

The sons of Netufa, 56.

The sons of, or the people of Anatot, 128.

The sons of Asmavet, 42, verse 25.

The sons of Kiriat-Arim, Kephira uv erot, 743.

Cry out, daughter Galem.

Listen, Elisha, poor Anathoth.

Madmanah is in flight.

The people of Gebum take cover.

In chapter 10, you've got basically a very dramatic and scary geographical countdown to the threat against Jerusalem.

In, in Isaiah 10, what you see is essentially that the Assyrians are coming city after city, and they're all in the Jerusalem area: Aiath, Mikmash, Ramah, Gebim, Saul, Anathoth.

And in verse 32 it says, "He shall remain at Nob," the Assyrians.

"He shall shake his hand against the mount of the daughter of Zion." In other words, the Assyrians will do this.

He was the son of Hilkiah.

They were priests in Anathoth, which is about three miles northeast of Jerusalem.

And his job would have been to be in the priesthood, but God called him instead to be a prophet and to serve the Lord and to do a very difficult job, and that is to call God's condemnation down upon the The people of Judah and Jerusalem, which is the capital.

The northern tribes in Israel had already been taken away into exile by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. And now Nebuchadnezzar is coming against Jerusalem in three different exiles already in, I believe, 605 B.C. Daniel and Ezekiel had been taken away to Babylon, and so that just leaves pretty much, you want to call them the leftovers, and Jeremiah is with the leftovers trying to get the king to turn his people back to God in the time they have short.