Scripture Daily

Context No. 1936 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 14:10-16: in context

10The LORD says to this people: “Even so they have loved to wander. They have not restrained their feet. Therefore the LORD does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity, and punish them for their sins.” 11The LORD said to me, “Don’t pray for this people for their good. 12When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and meal offering, I will not accept them; but I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.” 13Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, the prophets tell them, ‘You will not see the sword, neither will you have famine; but I will give you assured peace in this place.’” 14Then the LORD said to me, “The prophets prophesy lies in my name. I didn’t send them. I didn’t command them. I didn’t speak to them. They prophesy to you a lying vision, divination, and a thing of nothing, and the deceit of their own heart. 15Therefore the LORD says concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name, but I didn’t send them, yet they say, ‘Sword and famine will not be in this land.’ Those prophets will be consumed by sword and famine. 16The people to whom they prophesy will be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword. They will have no one to bury them—them, their wives, their sons, or their daughters, for I will pour their wickedness on them.

God tells Jeremiah that he will not accept this wandering people, and even instructs him not to pray for their good. Jeremiah objects: but the prophets tell them they will see no sword or famine, that God will give them assured peace. And God answers: the prophets prophesy lies in my name; I did not send them or command them or speak to them; they prophesy a lying vision, the deceit of their own heart. And both the lying prophets and the people who welcomed their lies will be consumed by the very sword and famine they were promised they would escape.

There is a mutual guilt in this passage worth noticing: the false prophets told lies, and the people welcomed them. The prophets prophesied peace, assured safety, no sword or famine, comforting messages that were pure invention, the deceit of their own hearts. And the people loved to hear it; they preferred these soothing lies to the hard truth Jeremiah spoke. Both are judged, the prophets who told the lies and the people who wanted to hear them. For the people were not merely passive victims of deception; they had an appetite for the comforting falsehood, and that appetite made them complicit in their own deceiving. There is a searching truth here about our own responsibility for the lies we are told. We are surrounded by voices offering us comforting falsehoods, telling us what we want to hear, assuring us that all is well, that no hard road lies ahead, that we need not change or sacrifice or face the truth. And it is easy to think ourselves innocent victims of these deceptions. But Scripture suggests we bear responsibility, too, for wanting to hear them. The people welcomed the lying prophets because the lies were pleasant; they preferred the comforting falsehood to the hard truth. Paul warned of a time when people would gather teachers to suit their own desires, having itching ears, wanting to be told what they wished to hear. And Isaiah heard people say to the prophets, do not tell us the truth; tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. The appetite for comforting lies is itself a fault, and it makes us complicit in our deceiving. This calls for honest self-examination: do I prefer the comforting lie to the hard truth? Do I gravitate toward voices that tell me what I want to hear and away from those that tell me what I need to hear? The safeguard against being deceived is not only to beware of deceivers, but to examine our own appetite, to want the truth even when it is hard, rather than the pleasant falsehood. The people of Jeremiah's day loved the lies that soothed them, and were judged with the liars; and the appetite for comforting falsehood over hard truth is a fault we must guard against in ourselves, cultivating instead a love for the truth, however hard it is to hear.

Do I prefer the comforting lie to the hard truth, gravitating toward voices that tell me what I want to hear and away from those that tell me what I need to hear, and can I recognize that the appetite for pleasant falsehood is itself a fault, cultivating instead a love for the truth even when it is hard, so that I am not complicit in my own deceiving?

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