Jeremiah's Job

Sooner or later, those who are interested in the philosophy of liberty run across Albert J. Nock’s essay, "Isaiah’s Job." Taking as an example two Old Testament prophets, Isaiah and Elijah, Nock makes at least two important points. First, until society seems to be disintegrating around our ears, not many people are going to listen to a critic who comes in the name of principled action. The masses want to get all the benefits of principled action, but they also want to continue to follow their unprincipled ways. They want the fruits but not the roots of morality. Therefore, they refuse to listen to prophets. Second, Nock pointed out, the prophet Elijah was convinced that he was the last of the faithful, or what Nock calls the Remnant. Not so, God told the prophet; He had kept seven thousand others from the rot of the day.

Elijah had no idea that there were this many faithful people left. He had not seen any of them. He had heard no reports of them. Yet here was God, telling him that they were out there. Thus, Nock concludes, it does no good to count heads. The people whose heads are available for counting are not the ones you ought to be interested in. Whether or not people listen is irrelevant; the important thing is that the prophet makes the message clear and consistent. He is not to water down the truth for the sake of mass appeal.

Nock’s essay helps those of us who are used to the idea that we should measure our success by the number of people we convince. We are "scalphunters," when we ought to be prophets. The prophets were not supposed to give the message out in order to win lots of public support. On the contrary, they were supposed to give the message for the sake of truth. They were to witness to a generation which would not respond to the message. The truth was therefore its own justification. Those who were supposed to hear, namely, the Remnant, would get the message, one way or the other. They were the people who counted. Lesson: the people who count can’t be counted. Not by prophets, anyway.

A Sad Message

The main trouble I have with Nock’s essay is that he excluded another very important prophet. That prophet was Jeremiah. He was a contemporary of Isaiah, and God gave him virtually the same message. He was told to go to the highest leaders in the land, to the average man in the street, and to everyone in between, and proclaim the message. He was to tell them that they were in violation of basic moral law in everything they did, and that if they did not turn away from their false beliefs and wicked practices, they would see their society totally devastated. In this respect, Jeremiah’s task was not fundamentally different from Isaiah’s.

Nevertheless, there were some differences. Jeremiah also wrote (or dictated) a book. He was not content to preach an unpleasant message to skeptical and hostile people. He wanted to record the results of their unwillingness to listen. His thoughts are preserved in the saddest book in the Bible, the Book of Lamentations. Though he knew in advance that the masses would reject his message, he also knew that there would be great suffering in Israel because of their stiff necked response. Furthermore, the Remnant would pay the same price in the short run. They, too, would be carried off into captivity. They, too, would lose their possessions and die in a foreign land. They would not be protected from disaster just because they happened to be decent people who were not immersed in the practices of their day. He wrote these words in response to the coming of the predicted judgment: "Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people" (Lam. 3:48). He knew that their punishment was well deserved, yet he was also a part of them. The destruction was so great that not a glimmer of hope appears in the whole book.

What are we to conclude? That everything is hopeless? That no one will listen, ever, to the truth? That every society will eventually be ripe for judgment, and that this collapse will allow no one to escape? Is it useless, historically speaking, to serve in the Remnant? Are we forever to be ground down in the millstones of history?

One key incident in Jeremiah’s life gives us the answer. It appears in the thirty-second chapter of Jeremiah, a much-neglected passage. The Babylonians (Chaldeans) have besieged Jerusalem. There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that the city would fall to the invaders. God told Jeremiah that in the midst of this crisis, his cousin would approach him and make him an offer. He would offer Jeremiah the right, as a relative, to buy a particular field which was in the cousin’s side of the family. Sure enough, the cousin arrived with just this offer. The cousin was "playing it smart." He was selling off a field that was about to fall into the hands of the enemy, and in exchange he would be given silver, a highly liquid, easily concealed, transportable form of capital—an international currency. Not bad for him, since all he would be giving up would be a piece of ground that the enemy would probably take over anyway.

Long-Range Planning

What were God’s instructions to Jeremiah? Buy the field. So Jeremiah took his silver, and witnesses, and balances (honest money), and they made the transaction. Then Jeremiah instructed Baruch, a scribe, to record the evidence. (It may be that Jeremiah was illiterate, as were most men of his day.) Baruch was told by Jeremiah to put the evidences of the sale into an earthen vessel for long-term storage. "For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land" (32:15). God explained His purposes at the end of the chapter. Yes, the city would fall. Yes, the people would go into captivity. Yes, their sins had brought this upon them. But this is not the end of the story. "Behold, I will gather them out of all countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: And they shall be my people, and I will be their God" (32:37-38). It doesn’t stop there, either: "Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them. And fields shall be bought in this land, whereof ye say, It is desolate without man or beast; it is given into the hand of the Chaldeans" (32:42-43).

What was God’s message to Jeremiah? There is hope for the long run for those who are faithful to His message. There will eventually come a day when truth will out, when law will reign supreme, when men will buy and sell, when contracts will be honored. "Men shall buy fields for money, and subscribe evidences, and seal them, and take witnesses in the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, and in the cities of the mountains, and in the cities of the valley, and in the cities of the south: for I will cause their captivity to return, saith the Lord" (32:44). In other words, business will return because the law of God will be understood and honored.

God had told them that they would be in captivity for seventy years. It would be long enough to make certain that Jeremiah would not be coming back to claim his field. Yet there was hope nonetheless. The prophet is not to imagine that all good things will come in his own day. He is not to be a short-term optimist. He is not to conclude that his words will turn everything around, making him the hero of the hour. He is told to look at the long run, to preach in the short run, and to go about his normal business. Plan for the future. Buy and sell. Continue to speak out when times are opportune. Tell anyone who will listen of the coming judgment, but remind them also that all is not lost forever just because everything seems to be lost today.

The Job Is to Be Honest

The prophet’s job is to be honest. He must face the laws of reality. If bad principles lead to bad actions, then bad consequences will surely follow. These laws of reality cannot be underestimated. In fact, it is the prophet’s task to reaffirm their validity by his message. He pulls no punches. Things are not "fairly bad” if morality is ignored or laughed at. Things are terrible, and people should understand this. Still, there is hope. Men can change their minds. The prophet knows that in "good" times, rebellious people usually don’t change their minds. In fact, that most reluctant of prophets, Jonah, was so startled when the city of Nineveh repented that he pouted that the promised judgment never came, making him look like an idiot—an attitude which God reproached. But in the days of Elijah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, the pragmatists of Israel were not about to turn back to the moral laws which had provided their prosperity. It would take seven decades of captivity to bring them, or rather their children and grandchildren, back to the truth.

Invest long-term, God told Jeremiah. Invest as if all were not lost. Invest as if your message, eventually, will bear fruit. Invest in the face of despair, when everyone is running scared. Invest for the benefit of your children and grandchildren. Invest as if everything doesn’t depend on the prophet, since prophets, being men, are not omniscient or omnipotent. Invest as if moral law will one day be respected. Keep plugging away, even if you yourself will never live to see the people return to their senses and return to their land. Don’t minimize the extent of the destruction. Don’t rejoice at the plight of your enemies. Don’t despair at the fact that the Remnant is caught in the whirlpool of destruction. Shed tears if you must, but most important, keep records. Plan for the future. Never give an inch.

A prophet is no Pollyanna, no Dr. Pangloss. He faces reality. Reality is his calling in life. To tell people things are terrible when they think everything is fine, and to offer hope when they think everything is lost.

To tell the truth, whatever the cost, and not to let short-term considerations blur one’s vision. The Remnant is there. The Remnant will survive. Eventually, the Remnant will become the masses, since truth will out. But until that day, for which all prophets should rejoice, despite the fact that few will see its dawning, the prophet must do his best to understand reality and present it in the most effective way he knows how. That is Jeremiah’s job.