"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." (Jer 1:5, NRSV)
Jer 1:5 is a common “proof-text” by Latter-day Saints to support our belief that everyone, not just Jesus, personally (not merely notionally) pre-existed. I am not wont to appeal to this verse and some other biblical texts LDS sometimes appeal to as support for the doctrine as, at best, such would serve as implicit but not explicit evidence for such a belief. Furthermore, a much better case can be made, not on the case of biblical proof-texting, but Christology. For a discussion, see:
Notwithstanding, it is a great text that shows the truly personal nature of God and his loving relationship to mankind. As J.A. Thompson wrote in his commentary on Jeremiah:
The clear consciousness of a call came to Jeremiah in the form of a dialog. That was not an unusual occurrence in Israel. Israel’s calling involved a dialog (Isa. 6) as did the call of Ezekiel (Ezek. 1-3). It was important for Jeremiah to be able to claim that his call had dome direct from Yahweh since he was to encounter other prophets during the long years of his ministry. Of particular importance to Jeremiah was the awareness that he had been predestined to occupy the prophetic office since his birth, indeed before his birth. Yahweh’s word was,
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you intimately;
Before you were born I set you apart,
And appointed you a prophet to the nations.
Before you were born I set you apart,
And appointed you a prophet to the nations.
This opening word of the dialog is deeply significant. If ever Jeremiah in later days were overtaken by despair he could know that the divine purpose for him reached back before his birth. The three verbs used here are also significant. The verb yāḏa’, “know,” often carried considerable depth of meaning in the OT, for it reached beyond mere intellectual knowledge to personal commitment. For this reason it is used of the intimate relations between a man and his wife (Gen. 4:2). It was used of Yahweh’s commitment to Israel: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth” (Amos 3:2). It was Yahweh’s deep sorrow that there was no knowledge of God among his people (Hos. 4:1), for the knowledge of Yahweh was far more important than burnt offerings (Hos. 6:6). Yahweh’s deep commitment to his servant, then, reached back before his birth.
The second verb, “set apart” (hiqdîš), gathers about it another aspect of commitment. Basically the root qdš is concerned with setting something apart from all other uses to a specific use. It is therefore of significance in the religious sphere where persons, places, things, days, seasons can be set apart (consecrated) for Yahweh. Once set apart, these items were for the sole use of Yahweh, and it was an act of blasphemy to remove them from Yahweh’s sovereign right to them. Jeremiah made use of the noun qōḏeš, “holiness,” in reference to Israel’s early acceptance of Yahweh’s covenant . . . Israel by that act had been set apart for Yahweh alone. She was his very own portion. Jeremiah understood himself in a similar light. Yahweh had set him apart for a particular task. That awareness was to sustain him in many dark hours, and when he cursed the day of his birth he was really casting doubts upon his call (cf. 20:14-15).
The third verb, “appoint” (ntn), refers to the specific assignment of Jeremiah to a particular task, that of being a prophet to the nations. A more normal verb would have been pqd, but the verb ntn is used in a number of important passages in the OT to describe this sort of special appointment (cf. Gen. 1:17; 17:5; Exod. 7:1; Isa. 49:6). Jeremiah’s special appointment was to the nations (plur.), not simply to Judah alone. There were no limits to Yahweh’s sovereignty and therefore there were no limits to the scope of Jeremiah’s ministry. In the book of Jeremiah a large section is devoted to his oracles to the nations (chs. 46-51). Other prophets took the nations within the ambit of their concern, for example Amos (chs. 1-2), Isaiah (chs. 13-23), Ezekiel (chs. 25-32), Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk. These last four had only a single nation in focus. But it would be generally true that all the prophets had some reason to refer to the nations. Clearly, if Yahweh was the God of the whole earth one would expect some of Yahweh’s servants to express Yahweh’s mind about the nations. (John A. Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah [New International Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1980], 145-46)
