Week 24 Jeremiah
The troops are lined-up like Davy Crockett & Jim Bowie.
King Zedekiah is staring over the ramparts. Looking straight at national disintegration.
Coming up on zero hour.
And Jeremiah is prophesying: everyone who stays in Jerusalem will die from war, famine, or disease, but those who surrender to the Babylonians will live.
Back in April I read the story of Micaiah – he preached a Doomsday forecast to Jehoshaphat & Ahab. On their side Ahab’s prophets prophesied A Sweetness-and-Light forecast. So Micaiah’s Prophecy was offset by a Contrary Prophecy.
That’s not what happened with Jeremiah. No other prophet was tipping the balance with an alternate story. Instead a group of officials just told the king: this man must die! That kind of talk will undermine the morale of the…fighting men, as well as that of all the people.
No one was asking is-Jeremiah’s-prophecy-true? The question was…how does his prophecy make us feel?
So it looks like back in Jeremiah’s day they were using a kind of Audience-Emotional-Response Feedback Scale. A prophecy is given, and then if the audience felt upset annoyed fearful de-motivated anxious or like that then the prophecy was automatically wrong. It’s a pretty handy way of arriving at right-wrong – if the message makes me feel disconsolate it’s just disregardable noise.
Poor old Jeremiah. Not pliant enough to adjust. Not able to make a concession. Not a team-guy. I’m not sure how successful he’d be in Alberta.
Note: quote from Jeremiah 38:2, 4 (NLT). The Micaiah story is in 1 Kings 22.