The call of Jeremiah, described in 1:6-10, came to the young man in the year 627-626 B.C. during the waning years of the Assyrian Empire. The emerging, neo-Babylonian power, in fact, would shortly break away from the Assyrian grasp to become an independent state. The situation in the Mesopotamian area had become what Gerhard Von Rad describes as "dangerously fluid" (The Message of the Prophets [New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1967], 161).

Von Rad goes on to observe that there were two primary factors which colored Jeremiah's prophetic witness. The first was the political exigencies related to Assyria's dominance in the Pan-Mesopotamian area and subsequent decline (Israel had long since ceased to be a state, subjugated by Assyria nearly a century before Jeremiah's call). The second was …