... because the Lord would not always suffer [the people] to take happiness in sin (Book of Mormon | Mormon 2:13)2.Today, there are street-preachers, pastors, podcasters, watchmen, et al. in the style of the old prophets lamenting the state of our degraded world, followed by rejection and lamentation from many of their hearers. Just listen to the activists and advocates preaching social / power consensus and self-as-sovereign while stridently decrying transcendent / divine — another déjà vu of lamentation on both sides.3
Yes, we are told to be of good cheer,4 but also to study Isaiah, one of the prolific lamenters of the world; and not just Isaiah, but to “search the prophets,”5 which if we do, exposes us to litanies of lamentation.
Here are some Heschel insights about these lamenters:
The prophet is not only a prophet. He is also poet, preacher, patriot, statesman, social critic, moralist (p. xxii).So where is our lamentation? the “sighing and crying” of Ezekiel 96? OR the self-centrism and clamour of “Do not challenge my or society's ways and beliefs”? “Do not speak of judgment or punishment, only of love”?
The prophet was an individual who said No to his society, condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency, waywardness, and syncretism. He was often compelled to proclaim the very opposite of what his heart expected. His fundamental objective was to reconcile man and God. Why do the two need reconciliation? Perhaps it is due to man’s false sense of sovereignty, to his abuse of freedom, to his aggressive, sprawling pride, resenting God’s involvement in history (p. xxix).
The things that horrified the prophets are even now daily occurrences all over the world (p. 3).
Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice—cheating in business, exploitation of the poor—is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence: to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world (p. 4).
Their breathless impatience with injustice may strike us as hysteria. We ourselves witness continually acts of injustice, manifestations of hypocrisy, falsehood, outrage, misery, but we rarely grow indignant or overly excited. To the prophets even a minor injustice assumes cosmic proportions (p. 4).
The prophet’s words are outbursts of violent emotions. His rebuke is harsh and relentless. But if such deep sensitivity to evil is to be called hysterical, what name should be given to the abysmal indifference to evil which the prophet bewails? They drink wine in bowls, And anoint themselves with the finest oils, But they are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! The niggardliness of our moral comprehensions, the incapacity to sense the depth of misery caused by our own failures, is a fact which no subterfuge can elude. Our eyes are witness to the callousness and cruelty of man, but our heart tries to obliterate the memories, to calm the nerves, and to silence our conscience (p, 5).
The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man; no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words (pp. 5-6).
The mouth of the prophet is “a sharp sword.” He is “a polished arrow” taken out of the quiver of God (Isa. 49:2).
Tremble, you women who are at ease,
Shudder, you complacent ones;
Strip, and make yourselves bare,
Gird sackcloth upon your loins. Isaiah 32:11
Reading the words of the prophets is a strain on the emotions, wrenching one’s conscience from the state of suspended animation (p. 8).
Israel’s history comprised a drama of God and all men. God’s kingship and man’s hope were at stake in Jerusalem. God was alone in the world, unknown or discarded. The countries of the world were full of abominations, violence, falsehood. Here was one land, one people, cherished and chosen for the purpose of transforming the world. This people’s failure was most serious. The Beloved of God worshiped the Baalim (Hos. 11:1–2); the vineyard of the Lord yielded wild grapes (Isa. 5:2); Israel, holy to the Lord, “defiled My land, made My heritage an abomination” (Jer. 2:3, 7) (p. 17).
The prophet hates the approximate, he shuns the middle of the road. Man must live on the summit to avoid the abyss. There is nothing to hold to except God. Carried away by the challenge, the demand to straighten out man’s ways, the prophet is strange, one-sided, an unbearable extremist (p. 19).
It is embarrassing to be a prophet. There are so many pretenders, predicting peace and prosperity, offering cheerful words, adding strength to self-reliance, while the prophet predicts disaster, pestilence, agony, and destruction. People need exhortations to courage, endurance, confidence, fighting spirit, but Jeremiah proclaims: You are about to die if you do not have a change of heart and cease being callous to the word of God. He sends shudders over the whole city, at a time when the will to fight is most important (p. 20).
They had to remind the people that chosenness must not be mistaken as divine favoritism or immunity from chastisement, but, on the contrary, that it meant being more seriously exposed to divine judgment and chastisement (p. 39).
How does one reconcile the tenderness of divine love with the vehemence of divine punishment? Clearly it is not a love that is exclusive and that ignores the wickedness of the beloved, forgiving carelessly every fault. Here is a love grown bitter with the waywardness of man. The Lord is in love with Israel, but He also has a passionate love of right and a burning hatred of wrong (p. 61).
But where is the love in neglecting to assure a wandering, confused soul that God “also has a passionate love of right and a burning hatred of wrong” — that His are the standards that govern; that repentance triggers His mercy and grace?
Where are the latter-day lamentations?
The prophets of Israel proclaim that the enemy may be God’s instrument in history. The God of Israel calls the archenemy of His people “Assyria, the rod of My anger” (Isa. 10:5; cf. 13:5; 5:26; 7:18; 8:7). “Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, My servant” whom I will bring “against this land and its inhabitants” (Jer. 25:9; 27:6; 43:10). Instead of cursing the enemy, the prophets condemn their own nation.-------------------------------------/
What gave them the strength to “demythologize” precious certainties, to attack what was holy, to hurl blasphemies at priest and king, to stand up against all in the name of God? The prophets must have been shattered by some cataclysmic experience in order to be able to shatter others (Heschel, p. 14).
1. Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Prophets. (1962) HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
2. Book of Mormon | Mormon 2:13 (full verse)
13 But behold this my joy was vain, for their sorrowing was not unto repentance, because of the goodness of God; but it was rather the sorrowing of the damned, because the Lord would not always suffer them to take happiness in sin.
3. https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2024/02/,moral-orientation-where-are-we.html
https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2024/02/moral-orientation-part-ii-social-power.html
https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2024/02/moral-orientation-part-iii-self-as.html
4. New Testament | John 16:33
33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
5. Book of Mormon | 3 Nephi 23:1-5
1 AND now, behold, I say unto you, that ye ought to search these things. Yea, a commandment I give unto you that ye search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah.
2 For surely he spake as touching all things concerning my people which are of the house of Israel; therefore it must needs be that he must speak also to the Gentiles.
3 And all things that he spake have been and shall be, even according to the words which he spake.
4 Therefore give heed to my words; write the things which I have told you; and according to the time and the will of the Father they shall go forth unto the Gentiles.
5 And whosoever will hearken unto my words and repenteth and is baptized, the same shall be saved. Search the prophets, for many there be that testify of these things.
6. Old Testament | Ezekiel 9:4
4 And the LORD said unto him [v. 3 the man clothed with linen, which had the writer's inkhorn by his side] Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.
See also:
https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2018/04/sighing-and-crying.html
https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2017/11/seest-thou-what-they-do.html
https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2016/02/where-is-anguish.html
https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2011/05/dont-worry-be-happy.html
