Jeremiah’s family and genealogy
By Mark Morgan | Family trees , Jeremiah

Jeremiah’s family / Jeremiah’s genealogy
Jeremiah was a prophet, but he was also a priest.[1] What do we know about Jeremiah’s genealogy? At the start of his book, he is described as the son of Hilkiah,[2] and we know that there was a High Priest called Hilkiah at that time. Was Jeremiah the son of the High Priest? Hilkiah is called “Hilkiah the priest”[3] and “Hilkiah the High Priest”,[4] but his father’s name is not mentioned. Listing the name of a man’s father name was commonly used to distinguish between people with the same name. Yet it is only when we look in the genealogy of the high priests that we find Hilkiah’s father was called Shallum. This consistent use of the name “Hilkiah” without saying who his father was suggests that saying he was a priest was enough to uniquely identify him. Continue reading