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Babylonian Exile: Fleeting or Enduring?

In the interim period between the exile of Yekhonya and the exile of Yehuda in the days of Tzidkiyahu, a complex situation arose in which there were two Jewish centers: one in Bavel, which included the elite of Jerusalem, and one in Jerusalem, where the poorest of the people of the land remained. There was a king in both centers: Yehoyakhin in Bavel and Tzidkiyahu in Jerusalem. This complex situation raised the question of the status of each center and the relationship between them.

One perception arises in Bavel among the elders of Israel who come to Yehezkel thinking that the covenant between God and Israel has been annulled and that they should now integrate themselves among the nations.

In contrast stands the opposite position, expressed primarily in the words of the false prophets, which views the exile as a temporary and fleeting event that will come to a close in the near future.

Yirmiyahu proposes a third possibility, one that is different and more complex. Yirmiyahu argues that the exile is not a passing event, but rather a significant one. It is a long and extended process for which preparation is necessary. The people must settle into it and build upon it, while knowing that its goal is the return to Eretz Yisrael. Exile is a necessary condition for redemption. However, for the first time, Yirmiyahu also expresses the idea that will accompany exiled Jews for thousands of years – identification with the country in which they are found.

Historically, the complex picture that Yirmiyahu tried to fix in the nation's consciousness in the exile was not always successfully absorbed. Sometimes, Jews became overly settled in their lands and over-emphasized seeking the peace of exile; occasionally, they strongly opposed their country and preached rebellion. 

Abridged and adapted by HaTanakh.com Staff. For further reading, see the full article.

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True or False: Yirmiyahu vs. Hananya

Yirmiyahu hears the words of Chananya which negate his prophecy. He does not counter them, but merely warns Chananya against false prophecy. Moreover, Yirmiyahu who loves his people with all his heart, hopes and wants to believe that his own prophecy of calamity will be cancelled. Only after God speaks to him does he know that Chananya's speech was a false prophecy. A true prophet is aware of the possibility of change and of the dynamic quality of prophecy.

The decree is not fixed and absolute, but rather dynamic and conditioned on the situation.

In contrast, Chananya presents the opposite position. He extrapolates from prophecies he heard from others and attempts to draw conclusions from them. The falseness in his prophecy stems from his failure to understand that God's word does not fit every generation in the same way. In this regard, he is the total opposite of Yirmiyahu, the true prophet.

Abridged and adapted by HaTanakh.com Staff. For further reading, see the full article.

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Why does Yirmiyahu's Message Change?

Chapter 27 of the Book of Yirmiyahu contains a three part prophecy: The first to the kings of the nations who plan a rebellion against Babylon; another one to Tzidkiyahu king of Yehuda; and a third to the priest and the people. All three prophecies have a similar structure: They open with a positive command – to submit to the king of Babylonia – and then they warn against listening to the words of the false prophets who prophesy just the opposite.

King Nevuchadnetzar does not conquer countries by his own power. Rather, God puts them in his hands, and therefore anyone who rebels against Nevuchadnetzer rebels against God who gave him rule over the world. At the end, Nevuchadnetzer will be punished too since he did not act out of a sense of mission, but simply in an attempt to glorify his own name, he has no real right to do so, and he will therefore be punished for his actions.

Until the rise of the king of Babylonia, Yirmiyahu’s goal was to bring about the mending of Israel's ways so that they not become subjugated to the people from the north. However, now that this period has come to a close, Yirmiyahu's prophetic message changes. Now he preaches to accept the yoke of the king of Babylonia, and warns of the greater dangers that may fall upon the people should they try to turn back the clock and undo the decree.

Abridged and adapted by HaTanakh.com Staff. For further reading, see the full article.

 

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The Enemy from the North: Nevukhadnetzar's Ascent

After twenty-three years of prophecy during which Yirmiyahu and his fellow prophets warned about the impending calamity, the geopolitical situation becomes clarified: The "enemy from the north"(about whom Yirmiyahu had warned over the years of his prophecy) takes on concrete form in the figure of Nevuchadnetzar, king of Babylonia. Nevukhadnetzar functions as God's agent, and will come and punish the people for their refusal to hear God's words during those years.

Additionally, Yirmiyahu provides a long list of nations and kings who will fall into the hands of Nevuchadnetzar, and he thus highlights the global revolution that will take place in the wake of his conquests. After seventy years, though, Babylonia too will be destroyed.

Abridged and adapted by HaTanakh.com Staff. For further reading, see the full article.

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Moshe's Travel Log of Forgettable Moments

Some moments are unforgettable, some you work hard to forget, and then there are those for which forgetting just comes naturally. It is these last ones that Moshe feels compelled to record for posterity on the banks of the Jordan, in chapter 33.

The miraculous splitting of the sea is given three words. The giving of the Torah, the manna, the quail, the great military victories- none. Nor do we hear about the complaints, the sins, the ensuing plagues. The highs and the lows are easy to remember; they don't require mentioning now. We do hear of a whole list of places that have been unmentioned until now. The period between the second and 40th year in the desert, during which nothing of note happened, during which God's voice was not heard in the camp, finally gets some attention. But why? Wouldn't it be better to let those days sink easily into oblivion?

No, teaches Moshe. "And Moshe wrote the starting points of their journey (motza'eihem lemaseihem) by God's word, and these are their journeys to their starting point (maseihem lemotza'eihem)." If you want your journey to bring you to a whole new point of departure, you need to understand exactly where it began. If you want to know where you are, you have to know where you've come from. Every step of the journey until now has brought you to this point. The good, the bad, certainly, but especially the boring and the mundane. It is in these that can be found the small moments of chesed, God's for us, and our own as well. "Thus says the Lord:  I remember for your sake the loving-kindness of your youth, the love of your newlywed days, when you walked after me in the desert, in an unsown land" (Yirmiyahu 2:2).

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It’s Not the Journey, it’s the Purpose

 

“There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but only one view.”  -Harry Millner

In my mad rush to book a last minute flight to Israel, I had to study multiple itineraries, websites, schedules and jump through too many web hoops. Flights that I finally managed to reserve suddenly changed prices and eventually disappeared altogether. Reservations that were made were then canceled by the airline. Finally, I got a flight which, as of this writing, I hope will still see me through on my journey to the Holy Land.

Netziv on Numbers 33:1 notes that the term “their journeys” is repeated three times at the introduction of the summary of the stops which Israel made since leaving Egypt until they were about to enter Canaan. He explains that each repetition represents a different purpose for the journey, that the purpose defines the journey and each journey or path requires a separate introduction.

The first leg of the Israelite journey was the Exodus from Egypt with a stopover at Mount Sinai to receive the divine revelation of the Torah, with the final purpose of entering the land of Canaan. However, the mission of the spies went awry and doomed the tribes of Israel to wander in the desert for forty years. The wandering was the second leg of their journey. The third and final leg of the journey was the resumption of the initial purpose – to enter the land of Israel.

Sometimes the journey is defined by its purpose, and to fulfill it, you have to reach the destination. The journey itself becomes secondary.

 

courtesy of ben-tzion.com

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False Prophets: Yirmiyahu's Criteria

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.

Adapted and abridged by HaTanakh.com Staff. Find the full article here.

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The Davidic Kingdom - Absolute or Conditional?

Chapters 21-23 of the Book of Yirmiyahu contain a collection of prophecies that Yirmiyahu delivered to the last kings of Yehuda. The institutions of the Beit HaMikdash and the Davidic dynasty are perceived by the people as stable, absolute, and unassailable. Both rely on a Divine promise regarding their eternity, and the two promises are intertwined. However, the biological continuity of the descendants of David does not in itself entitle them to the kingdom, but only when coupled with its moral continuity. Only then can they truly sit on the throne of David. In contrast, the non-realization of the moral purpose will lead to the destruction of the house of David, just as it will lead to the destruction of the house of God.

In contrast to the ideal description of the monarch at the beginning of the chapter, Yirmiyahu traces the debased moral situation in the days of Yehoyakim. This rebuke revolves around the building of Yehoyakim's magnificent royal palace, which involved the breach of the most fundamental principles of morality and justice.

The future of Yehoyakhin’s seed is described in bleak terms by Yirmiyahu, but that is contradicted by his descendant Zerubavel who takes a leadership role in the Return to Zion. In contrast, Tzidkiyahu is described by Yirmiyahu as a potential Mashiah, a role that his poor decisions do not allow him to realize.

Adapted and abridged by HaTanakh.com Staff. Find the full article here.

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Yirmiyahu's Prophetic Joy and Agony

God prohibits Yirmiyahu from partaking in normative life cycle events. He may not go to comfort mourners, attend wedding celebrations nor may he marry or procreate. As with Hoshea and Yehezkel, the command regarding his marital relations is a negative sign of the calamity that will strike the people. But in contrast to Hoshea and Yehezkel, Yirmiyahu is commanded to abstain from marriage from the outset.

Prophecy is described here as the prophet's fate, from which there is no escape. Prophecy is forced upon Yirmiyahu and he has no choice but to utter it with his mouth, lest it burn him from the inside. The word of God fills Yirmiyahu with joy and gladness, as he is called by His name. At the same time, however, the hand of God isolates him and fills him with deep rage. Yirmiyahu feels ostracized from society, and he can cannot sit and rejoice in the company of other people, owing to the heavy burden of prophecy and the calamity that is expected to arrive.

Adapted and abridged by HaTanakh.com Staff. Find the full article here.

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Yirmiyahu and the People

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.

Adapted and abridged by HaTanakh.com Staff. Find the full article here.

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