Daily Prophets
Day 122
“And the captain of the guard took Jeremiah and said to him, the Lord your God has pronounced this evil upon this place. And now, behold, I free you this day from the chains…If it seems good to you to come with me to Babylon, come; but if it seems ill to you…don’t come. Then Jeremiah went to Gedaliah, son of Ahikam to Mizpah and dwelt with him among the people who were left in the land.”(Jeremiah 40:2,4,6).
This is an amazing beginning of this chapter. Do the Babylonians believe in Adonai, the One God? It doesn’t seem as if they did. Yet, they knew that the only way for them to win the war and conquer Jerusalem was if God had used them to get the people’s attention. They also realize that what has happened was an evil to the place, not just the people. While they did not believe in God, they had respect for the God of the Jews.
This is why, I think that Jeremiah kept telling people to not resist so the city/country was not destroyed totally. He knew that Babylon would allow the Jews to worship God and they would have to pay tribute/tax. They would have some autonomy and, most of all, they could return to God and wait out the 70 years. Yet, the Jews in charge would not listen and destruction occurred.
The “fact” that they freed Jeremiah and spoke to him with such kindness and care points to their respect for prophets and prophecy. They were willing to have him come to Babylon if he wanted to-they gave him his choice of places to live and provisions to live on. Jeremiah is being treated with more respect and care by strangers, supposedly pagans, than by his own people; the people of Judah.
Rather than trying to change Jeremiah, the Babylonians wanted him to have a place of respect, befitting a prophet of God, unlike his own people who imprisoned him. This is the foreshadow of Jesus’ words: "A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.”
Jeremiah, however, is not swayed by the promise of good fortune in Babylon nor the promise of respect and dignity there. Rather, Jeremiah decides to stay with his people, the Jews. He is in mourning for what has happened to his city, Jerusalem, and his country, Judea. He knows that he can be of benefit to Gedaliah and he listens to the call of his soul to stay home and help rebuild his people’s connection to and observance of God’s Will.
Rabbi Heschel teaches: “At a crucial moment of history, Jeremiah was the hope, the anchor, and the promise. The slaying of Jeremiah would have meant the death blow to Israel as well, a collapse of God’s mission.”(The Prophets pg. 158). In our text above, the Babylonians were more aware of Jeremiah’s worth, dignity and need to spread the word of God than the kings of Judah and their courtiers were! How amazingly stupid of the people of Judea. Yet, aren’t we that stupid today? We erudite, educated, God-fearing, authoritarian seeking, etc people don’t see nor hear nor take in the words of Jeremiah any better than the people of Judea did! We still follow the false gods of our intellects, our special interests, our ‘progressive values’ that robs others of their dignity, our devotion to self-deception and mendacity, our following the leader no matter what the truth is, our seeking and worshiping of power at the cost of our dignity and against God’s will. I agree with Rabbi Heschel, we need to study the prophets and live their warnings and their words more each and every day-then, maybe, we will be worthy of the love and redemption that God gives us.
In recovery, we recognize that our way of God and to God is not the only ‘right’ way. Paths to God are not a one-size fits all, we all get to hear God and follow God’s will in our own unique manner, just like the Israelites at Mt. Sinai all heard God’s words as an individual experience. In recovery, we also know relapse is an option and we choose to stay in recovery, with “our people” because we constantly need to hear the call of God and follow the messages we hear from God through other people. One of the amazing and frightening experiences in early recovery is how the group frees us from the prison of our suffering and how they shower us with the gift of love, direction, compassion and kindness. In recovery, we are given the choice to take a seat with “our people” and we never have to give it up, we never have to leave our ‘home’ and we are always welcome and we belong.
Upon my release from Prison in 1988, Rabbi Mel Silverman told me that I was free and I could go anywhere I wanted. He reminded me of my choices, continue the path of Recovery and Redemption, continue to do T’Shuvah and change the course of my former way of living, or I could return to this prison. God did not want me in prison, so stay free and stay connected to God. I have since put myself in my own prisons of anger and hurt, which I choose today to be free of with the help of God and “my people”. I have been imprisoned by seeing what I wanted to, rather than what is and been betrayed by my belief in the wrong people. I have been released because God has given me a new pair of glasses again. I choose to stay with “my people” and continue to fight with them for the sake of God, not Mark. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark