Daily Prophets
Day 119
“The officials were furious with Jeremiah; they beat him and put him in prison…Then King Zedekiah sent for him and the king questioned him secretly in his palace. He asked, “is there any word from God? There is, Jeremiah replied and he said, into the hands of the king of Babylon you will be given…What wrong have I done to you…that you have put me in jail? So King Zedekiah gave instructions to house Jeremiah in the prison compound and to supply him with a loaf of bread daily… And Jeremiah remained in the prison compound.”(Jeremiah 37:15,17,18,21).
Jeremiah made everyone mad because he kept telling the people the truth from God. Jeremiah, as with all prophets, could only speak the words that God gave him to speak. This reminds me of Bilaam and Bilak in the Torah. Bilaam, like the prophets, could only speak the words that God gave him to speak and the king did not like the truth being spoken. Here too, the king and the people in power were not denying the words of Jeremiah and the words of God, they just didn’t want to hear them. Hearing the words and being moved to action would mean change and they did not want to/were unable to change their ways.
Beating Jeremiah satisfied a primal urge of the officials, to strike out at the one who speaks the truth they don’t want to hear. Beating Jeremiah, in the minds of the officials, would stop the truth from being spoken and stop the prophecy from occurring. This need to buy and propagate the BIG LIE has, unfortunately, continued to this day. We have the opportunity to change, we have the call to change, and as long as we continue to give in to our urges, our disease of self-deception as Rabbi Heschel teaches; we will continue to buy the BIG LIE and sabotage our freedom and our decency, our integrity and our soul.
The king of Judah, however, knows the truth of Jeremiah’s prophecy and is acutely aware of Jeremiah’s connection to and with God. The split of Zedekiah is so apparent in these verses: he puts Jeremiah in a terrible prison and has him beaten and he sends for him to hear the truth; he knows the truth of Jeremiah’s words and is afraid for him to preach it to the people so he keeps him in prison, just a nicer one with bread/food to keep him comfortable. Zedekiah is so paralyzed by the split/war going on inside of him, he cannot make a decision regarding Jeremiah-kill him or heed him. To Zedekiah, his inner war is so great that he tries to appease both voices inside of him and does this to his ruin. We all have contradictions in us, we all have this war go on in us; do the next right thing or do the expedient thing, follow God or follow our desires and our egos. Our heroes are the people who choose to follow God and do the next right thing even though the other voice is pretty strong.
Rabbi Heschel teaches:”Judah’s defiance against a power that crushed Assyria was as foolhardy as her reliance on Egypt was self-deceptive. The new empire did not threaten Judah’s existence… Judah could have survived under Babylonian overlordship even more easily than it did under Assyrian or Egyptian tutelage.”(The Prophets pg 138). Rabbi Heschel is informing us of the BIG LIE that Judah bought into. We are fighting for our soveignty, our freedom, when they were paying and had been paying tribute to either Assyria or Egypt for years. Babylon was less likely to impose hardship on Judah and all the kingdom had to pay was tribute/taxes to a different boss. Yet, because they bought the BIG LIE and they would not turn back to God and truth, their self-deception destroyed themselves and all the people they were supposed to care for. Their self-deception destroyed the symbol of their freedom and their connection to their history and to God, the Holy Temple. This is what self-deception and the BIG LIE brings to all of us.
In recovery, we let go of the BIG LIE and we continually check in to make sure that we are listening to God, to the people who bring us the words of God, and search our innermost soul to root out the self-deception that destroys us and another(s). In recovery, we know the hardships and the pain that self-deception cause and we are committed to not imprisoning our “Jeremiah’s”, rather we appreciate and extol them. In recovery, we are grateful to the people who spoke truth to us in our non-recovery, we are grateful to the people who continued to speak God’s words to us, no matter how awful we were to them and we show our gratitude by continually seeking out their wisdom and vision. In recovery, we seek truth daily, we seek guidance daily and we experience growth, compassion, kindness and love daily.
In my own experience, I have been beaten and extolled, sometimes by the same people for speaking truth. And I have tried to deny truths that are inconvenient to me. My recovery has lessened my denials and/or made them last shorter and I am aware that I have been like the officials in the first verse above. I have also experienced the beating by the officials as well as them trying to muzzle me and, I continue to speak the words that I hear from God and pray I am doing justice to God’s will for me. The saddest is the experiencing of the last two verses, counsel sought out and remaining in prison/exile because of fear. I always have a choice and I choose to leave self-deception quickly once I realize it and stay with truth and God, no matter how painful the experience may be. Stay Safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark