Culture of Deceit

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1. The Personal Dimension of Yirmiyahu’s Prophecy

   Part II

   Rabbi David Sabato

   In the analysis of the personal dimension that are found in the chapters of Yirmiyahu, one encounters  the complicated relations between Yirmiyahu and his neighbors, the agony that he suffered as a result of his prophecies, and his resignation from and reappointment to prophecy.

   The descriptions in Yirmiyahu of the prophet’s conflicts with those who wished to stop him from prophesying raise another dimension of Yirmiyahu's personal tragedy: Yirmiyahu's twofold roles and identities – his being a member of his people and his mission as a prophet – not only cause a profound mental crisis, but also create a severe disconnect between him and the people. A false image is created of him as enemy of the people who seeks their harm, when there is nothing further from Yirmiyahu's true goal. The budding opposition and the attempted assassination at the beginning of his prophetic mission in Anatot herald the great dangers and challenges that await him in the future and prepare him for them.

2. Yirmiyahu and the False Prophets

   Rabbi David Sabato

   Clashes between true and false prophets take place in many places in the Bible. But for no other prophet does this type of confrontation play such a central role in his world as it does for Yirmiyahu.

   Yirmiyahu highlights four distinctions between the true prophet and the false prophet.

   Personality of the Prophet:

   One cannot separate the prophet's personality from his prophecy. Prophecy is not a profession external to the prophet's person; rather, it must fill his entire world. Hence, a prophet who sins in his personal life cannot be a true prophet in his public life.

   Purpose of the Prophecy:

   The role of the true prophet, from the days of Avraham, is to speak out against the faults of society and try to fix them, thus trying to prevent the moral deterioration so that it not be destroyed like Sedom. The false prophets, on the other hand, work in the opposite manner: They turn Jerusalem into Sedom by way of their false prophecies of reassurance, thus betraying their role as prophets.

   Wording of the Prophecy:

   The authenticity of a prophecy is reflected in the unique style of the prophet who delivers it. He receives the word of God and then formulates it in his own words and his own personal style. The uniform style of the false testifies to its inauthenticity and the absence of inner connection to the prophet himself.

   Experience and Clarity of the Prophecy:

   The realm of dreams is by its very nature a place where the boundary between reality and imagination becomes blurred; a person is liable to think that he received a prophecy from above, when in fact he merely had a dream and imagined fantasies in his mind. The experience of prophecy, on the other hand, is unequivocal; a prophet who experiences the intensity of prophecy – "like a burning fire shut up in my bones" cannot be mistaken about it. The inner distinction between imagination and prophecy is sharp and clear, and anyone can distinguish between the two in himself.

3. The Good Figs and the Bad Figs

   Rabbi David Sabato

   The prevalent mood among those who remained in the Land of Israel after the exile of Yehoyakhin was that their brothers had been exiled from the land and they viewed themselves as heirs to the land. Yirmiyahu struggled against this perception, arguing that it is precisely the exiles, who are likened here to good figs, who will return to the land and inherit it, while those who remained in the land, who are likened to bad figs, will become diminished in numbers and disappear.

   There are several lines of similarity between the vision concerning the figs in Yirmiyahu's prophecy and the dreams of Pharaoh that were interpreted by Yosef. Yosef interprets Pharaoh's dream and reveals to him that a great calamity is about to fall upon Egypt. However, Yosef, who was sold as a slave to Egypt, succeeds in saving his family in the years of famine and sustaining them in the exile of Egypt. 

   In the same way, Yirmiyahu, the prophet of destruction and exile, stands before a great calamity that is threatening to befall the people. In this vision, Yirmiyahu reveals that it is precisely in the depths of the calamity that we find a bright spot in the form of the good figs, the exile of Yehoyakhin, who were "picked" at an earlier stage, before they became ruined, in order to constitute a base for the renewal of the people after the destruction and after the exile in Babylon.