Jeremiah ירמיהו הנביא
prophet of the First Temple's destruction, author of Lamentations
Yirmeyahu was a priest from Anatot who began to prophesy around 3298, in Yoshiyahu's thirteenth year, and served through the destruction and beyond. His calling is the conversation of a man who does not want it: «I do not know how to speak, for I am a boy.» The answer: «Before I formed you in the belly I knew you.»
His message stayed the same for forty years: change your conduct or the city falls, and resisting Babylon is futile. For this he was thought a traitor. He was put in stocks, thrown into a muddy cistern, tried for sedition, kept under guard. King Yehoyakim cut up the scroll of his prophecies and burned it; Yirmeyahu dictated a new one to Baruch ben Neriah.
At the height of the siege he did something absurd and great: he bought a field in Anatot and had the deed witnessed — «houses, fields and vineyards will yet be bought in this land».
After 3338 he stayed with the poor under Gedaliah, then was taken to Egypt. Lamentations is ascribed to him.