Week 29 Jeremiah 5
A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy lies, and priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way.
Prophets prophesied lies.
Priests ad-libbed the rules.
And the people loved being misinformed.
This meant that when Jeremiah spoke to people in Jerusalem their instinct wasn’t to sit down and evaluate what he said. They didn’t ask: is what I’m hearing true? They did ask: is what I’m hearing what I want to hear?
It sounds like the people were using an ancient near-eastern version of the Data Assessment & Confirmation Procedure (it’s a test that’s still in use in Alberta). There’s five-steps:
One: I listen to Message X
Two: I ask myself ‘is Message X the message I want to hear?’
Three: if Message X is what I want to hear then it qualifies as an acceptable message
Four: if Message X is not what I want to hear then it’s an error and irrelevant
Five: I can move on to Message Y.
Jeremiah’s point wasn’t that people had been tricked or deceived. It was that being deceived was their natural preference. Being tricked or deceived was about equal to – or maybe better than – not being tricked or deceived. It was an instinctive and normal and natural response even though it was like preferring a mirage to a spring of water.
Note: quote from Jeremiah 5:30-31 (NIV)