Daily Prophets
Day 110
“But the prophet Hananiah removed the yoke from the neck of the prophet Jeremiah and broke it. Hananiah said in the presence of all the people, thus says God: So will I break the yoke of King Nebuchadnezzar….in two years. And the prophet Jeremiah said to the prophet Hananiah; Listen Hananiah, God has not sent you and you have made this people trust in a lie.”(Jeremiah 28:10,11,15).
We are faced in this chapter with a war between two prophets, one sent by God and one sent by himself and purporting to speak in God’s name. Since the days of Torah at Sinai, we have been warned by God to be careful not to buy into the lies of false prophets. Yet, we continue to buy into their lies because facing the alternative, truth and heeding true prophets seems too difficult.
Hananiah, wanting to impress the king and the priests and the powerful not only lied in God’s name, he broke the yoke that God commanded Jeremiah to wear. This is the ultimate in “thou shall not take the name of the Lord, your God in vain”, the third commandment. When we purport to be speaking in God’s name and really are speaking for our benefit, this is taking God’s name in vain. When we tell someone to go against the word of God as God has spoken, in Torah, Bible, personal experience, we are taking God’s name in vain.
Hananiah is trying to build himself up by lowering Jeremiah’s stature and status in the eyes of the people. Hananiah is puffing himself up by using Jeremiah’s ways of prophesy without the power of God behind his ways and his words. After God had declared that Babylon would reign for 70 years, he is saying it will only be 2 years. The decree was made, the purifying time was set and Hananiah was going to change it.
Jeremiah had been arguing on behalf of mercy for the people with God forever and saw that the people would not do what was necessary; return to God and God’s ways, to bring the grace and mercy that God wanted to give the people. Hananiah broke the yoke on Jeremiah and desecrated God’s Name, not sanctified it. So, Jeremiah had to hold him accountable.
The last verse above is so important. Jeremiah calls out Hananiah’s lies and his betrayal of the people he purports to serve. Jeremiah is not about to do this in public, as Hananiah did, he speaks to him privately and makes him hear truth, whether he admits it or not, we don’t know. We do know that, as Jeremiah tells him in the next verse, Hananiah did not live out the year. He died for spreading false rumors in God’s name. Hananiah’s false prophecy encouraged the people who wanted to fight to the bitter end and destroy the city of Jerusalem, rather than allow it to be ruled by Babylon, left intact and the people go about their business. Mendacity destroyed the city and the people, I believe.
Rabbi Heschel teaches: “The certainty of being inspired by God, of speaking in His name, of having been sent by Him to the people is the basic and central fact of the prophet’s consciousness… To use such expressions without being inspired was condemned by the prophets as “a falsehood”, a lie.”(The Prophets pg 426/7). Rabbi Heschel’s words echo Jeremiah’s above. The prophet was so sincere and so devoted to spreading the word of God and when someone would come along and deceive the people it was/is enraging. Yet, false prophets would not keep arising if we, the people, did not want to be deceived by them. Just as the people of Judah and Jerusalem wanted to believe Hananiah and the other false prophets, we too in America and across the globe want to be deceived by the lies of the false prophets of our time. As Pete Seeger asks: “When we ever learn?”
In recovery, we hear the call of God daily because we seek God out daily. We hear God’s direction through the words and guidance of another(s), we have a commitment to stay loyal to God and not to the lies we tell ourselves nor the lies others try to sell us on. In recovery we welcome and proudly wear the yoke of God and we only try to break the yoke of slavery and deception from the shoulders of another(s) when they ask for our help.
I am ashamed at how, prior to my recovery, I was Hananiah-spreading deceit and falseness for my own gain and the ruin of another(s). Studying this today reminds me of those days in a different light-I took the gift God gave me, twisted it and used it for my own sake-I desecrated God’s name in the same way Hananiah did, I was that false prophet and false witness. In my recovery, I am not that person. I may not get it right, I do not, however, give false testimony nor prophesy falsely. I, like Jeremiah and many others have been shunned for my prophesy and trying to save people from their own self-deceptions, my heart hurts at the hostility and abuse I have experienced because people believed the false witness and the false prophet. Yet, I know that while my reactions are not always good, I stay with God, I stay with truth and I stay my course. I am begging everyone to stop following the path of Hananiah-falseness, self-deception and mendacity and follow the path of Jeremiah-truth, God and service. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark