An elegiac (“sad, funereal”) book that partly recounts the persecuted life of Jeremiah, the central personality, and partly reports the decline of the nation of Judah. The overall story is the difficult life of a godly man who is forced to endure hard times. Oracles of judgment dominate the book, and the takeaway message for us is the need to avoid the mistakes that the people of Judah made in ignoring God’s call to reform their lives. Major archetypes include the wicked city and crime and punishment.