Yirmiyah 1-6
Perek Summaries:
Perek 1: Introduction to the times in which Yirmiyah lived (era of king Yoshiyahu). HaShem having appointed Yirmiyah as a true prophet, and Him telling Yirmiyahu not to fear the people when admonishing them. Warning of destruction coming from the North, and that Yirmiyah’s mission is to avoid this tragedy by making the people repent.
Perek 2: HaShem ‘remembering’ the glory days of Klal Yisrael, in comparison to how unfaithful to Him they have become. Bneu Yisrael’s idol worship and Bnei Yisrael’s denial on their wrongdoings and of the tragedies and destruction that the real prophets are forecasting. Instead, the people want to believe the false prophets who are telling them that everything will be ok.
Perek 3: Bnei Yisrael’s disloyalty to HaShem (in serving idols) compared to a woman’s disloyalty to her husband. This will cause the Land to become desolate and destroyed. A call for Bnei Yisrael to repent and enjoy HaShem’s Presence in Yerushalayim, etc.
Perek 4: Another (/a continued) call for the people to repent. Prophecy of future punishment and destruction which Yirmiyahu sees.
Perek 5: Yirmiyahu laments that the people are not heeding his message, and there is a list of Bnei Yisrael’s evils and the repercussions that will ensue as a result.
Perek 6: Yirmiyahu tells the residents of Yerushalayim that they will be forced to flee the invasion from the North, and the people are not moved whatsoever.
DVAR TORAH:
There is so much to speak about in the opening 6 perakim here. For example, there is the principle learnt from the words ‘they went after nothingness and they became nothing’ (2:5) that what one desires/does is they way that the person is defined. But we are going to focus on one issue. In perek 1 (1:5), we are told that HaShem had hand-picked Yirmiyah from his womb as a future prophet. This raises an important question; in order to have a doctrine of reward and punishment, one must have free will. There is no reward if one is merely an actor in a pre-written bechirah-less script. If Yirmiyahu already had tendencies for greatness/prophecy in his mother’s womb, surely he had no free will; he had to become a holy person and a prophet. The same issue crops up with Yaakov and Eisav, so we shall explain the issue via them.
The midrash[1] quoted in Rashi (25;22)says that when Rivkah was pregnant, whenever she would go past the yeshiva, Ya’akov would kick to try and get out of her womb, whilst whenever she went past a place of idol worship, Esav tried to kick out. It was this contradictory behaviour that caused her to seek advice from Shem, and she was told that she is mothering twins who have opposite futures ahead of them, as reflected in their different behaviours. The problem from the aforementioned midrash is the following: It seems that even before Esav was born, HaShem created him with a tendency towards serving idols; surely this means that he has no free-will – he was created and born with an ingrained attachment to idolatry. This is problematic for two reasons; firstly because this lack of free-will obviates reward and punishment, and secondly, we are told that Esav’s marriage to two idol-worshipers was a great source of distress for Yitzchak and Rivkah (26;34-35, Rashi), who saw this as a rebellion of sorts. But if Rivkah knew (from Shem) that she was going to have a son with ‘idol-worshipping genes,’ why get particularly upset and view Esav’s actions as rebellious; Esav was surely merely following his ‘genetic’ characteristics and had no free-will anyway so is not to blame? [A variation of the question is why did Rivkah like Ya’akov more than Esav (25;28) if both were merely actors in a pre-written bechira-less script?]
The answer[2] is as illuminating as it is contemporarily practical. Free-will does not mean that there is a completely equal pull to do good as there is to do bad; it does not mean a 50-50 choice between good and bad. Rather, as long as it is not one hundred percent inevitable to pick one option, there is still free-will. What this means is that someone might have an overwhelming tendency (even genetic) to do something wrong, but as long as it could have been possible to resist, he is held responsible for his actions for they were made out of free-will. A 99%-1% choice between good and bad is still free-will. This is of contemporary interest, with several court cases presenting the accused as being not to blame because ‘they were brought up to do this.’ Rav Efrati proves this principle from the fact that the Ramchal says that after Adam HaRishon’s sin, our spiritual make-up changed to the extent that our religious souls were less potent and it was easier to be drawn into sin. Does this constitute a removal of free-will? No, because even though the shift moved from 50-50 to (let’s say) 70-30, free-will still exists, for it is still possible to choose either bad or good, no matter how much effort each choice entails. Therefore, to answer our question, Esav did have a tendency towards idol worship, but this did not negate his free-will, for it was still possible to choose to go against this inclination and do good.
There are two other illustrations of this principle. Firstly, HaShem hardened Phaorah’s heart in Egypt so that he would not allow the Jews to go free. Was this not a removal of free-will, and if so how could HaShem have punished Pharoah with the plagues? Again, one can answer that HaShem did not remove all ability to choose from Pharoah in hardening his heart; He merely made Pharoah more susceptible to refusing and holding steadfast to his view despite the awesome power of the plagues. Similarly, each morning[3] we daven to HaShem to ‘force our yetzer hara to serve You.’ Is this not davening to remove our free-will, and if so how can we expect reward for the mitzvos we subsequently perform? Again, the answer is that this is not a removal of free-will; we are davening that it should be easier to do mitzvos than sin, but there is still a possibility to sin and so there is still free-will. Another proof that this principle is true is that there are periods in life where we receive special Divine assistance to perform mitzvos; this means the balance between good and bad is not 50-50, yet there must still be free-will. For example, Rav Yonassan Eibshitz writes[4] that someone who decides to repent receives special assistance from HaShem to achieve their repentance, but then later HaShem removes this assistance and tests them, in order to provide them with a spiritual challenge and make sure that their repentance will endure. Thus, we see different balances between the choices of good and evil in a person’s life, but free-will remains throughout the changes in the balance proportions.
[2] The principle of the answer is taken from Rav Binyamin Efrati in his notes to the Hebrew Feldheim edition of the Ramchal’s sefer ‘Derech HaShem,’ chelek alef, perek 3;8.
[3] Vechof es yitzreinu lehistabed lach in the bracha of hagomel chassadim le’amo yisrael
[4] Sefer ‘Ya’aros D’vash,’ drash alef; on chodesh elul
p.s To leave everyone with a question, which we will pG return to at one point. There were false prophets in Yirmiyah’s time, who were prophesising that everything would be alright and no tragedies would befall the people. The Sanhedrin were around at the time, so why were the people swayed by the false prophets; why did they not just go to the Sanhedrin and ask for a halachic ruling as to who was a real prophet and who was a fake?
