We continue discussing the prophecies of Yermiyah, and we are now in chapter 2.
One of the main thrusts of his opening speech is the lack of bitachon of the people, and the fact that they were idol worshippers.
We have to understand that just because they were idol worshipper, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t believe G-d created the world. Rather, they believed that G-d created the world, but that there were some intermediaries that had power, and they focused on those intermediaries.
Rav Yechezkiel Levenstein says that even now, in our generation, we can be guilty of idol worship in a certain sense. If there are other forces that we subjugate ourselves to, that we give credence to, and not to G-d, that, in a sense, is idol worship.
The Pele Yoetz quotes these same pesukim when he talks about our generations:
Yirmiyah says,
שְׁתַּיִם רָעוֹת עָשָׂה עַמִּי
My nation did a double mistake:
Firstly,
אֹתִי עָזְבוּ מְקוֹר מַיִם חַיִּים
They forsook Me, the Source of living waters
That was their first mistake. Hashem is the Source, but instead, they chose not a good pit or even mediocre quality pit, but rather,
לַחְצֹב לָהֶם בֹּארוֹת בֹּארֹת נִשְׁבָּרִים אֲשֶׁר לֹא יָכִלוּ הַמָּיִם:
They chose to dig broken wells that can’t even hold water.
What is the mashal and nimshal?
Imagine a person is given two choices for a plot of land as an inheritance. He can either get the Poland Spring itself, which has an endless supply of water, or he can go after the Poland Spring bottling factory that has a large reservoir that stores the Poland Spring water. He chooses the large storage reservoir over the spring itself. What’s more, the reservoir he chooses has a hole in it, so it can’t even hold water!
The nimshal is that Hashem is the Wellspring of everything. He is the source of everything- our money, our health, our happiness, our families, our security, our peace of mind, our honor, our respect, whatever we need- it all comes from Hashem.
And rather than go to G-d, who is the Source, we go to intermediaries that get the water, the money, the honor, from G-d. They don’t have anything of their own, yet we give them credibility and credence. Of course, we have to do our hishtadlut/our effort, but are we focusing on G-d, who is the Source, or are we focusing on the utensils that are filled with G-d’s bounty, but that didn’t make it on their own, and can’t even hold onto it?
That’s the first lesson that Yirmiyah gives. But before he says that, he talks about how it happened:
He says that וַיֵּלְכוּ אַחֲרֵי הַהֶבֶל
They followed the “hot-air”
The hot air is avodah zarah. It looks like something, but it’s just an illusion. Hot air on a cold day can’t be grasped. They chased hot air, and וַיֶּהְבָּלוּ-they themselves became unsubstantial.
What should they have done?
וְלֹא אָמְרוּ אַיֵּה ה' הַמַּעֲלֶה אֹתָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם
They didn’t say, “Where is G-d that took us out of Egypt?
הַמּוֹלִיךְ אֹתָנוּ בַּמִּדְבָּר בְּאֶרֶץ עֲרָבָה וְשׁוּחָה לֹא עָבַר בָּהּ אִישׁ וְלֹא יָשַׁב אָדָם שָׁם
that took us through the desert that was dry and uninhabited”
“I brought you into the land of Eretz Yisrael and you forgot about that.”
He goes on to say :הַכֹּהֲנִים לֹא אָמְרוּ אַיֵּה ה׳
The kohanim didn’t say, ’Where is G-d?’
The Chida explains that the Gemara tells us that for forty years prior to the churban, the miracles in the Bet HaMikdash weren’t the same as they had been. For example, it used to be that on Yom Kippur, when they did the lottery with the goats, the one that went to Hashem was in the right hand of the Kohen Gadol, as opposed to the one that went off the cliff, which was always in the left. But it no longer came out that way.
So Yirmiyah is asking,
Why didn’t you realize that something was wrong and that you were supposed to do Teshuva?
Furthermore, he said,
וְתֹפְשֵׂי הַתּוֹרָה לֹא יְדָעוּנִי
Those people that were learning didn’t know Me.
That means they learned, but they didn’t learn to connect to Hashem. Hashem wasn’t a part of their lives, or on their minds.
All of these words of mussar that Yirmiyah gave then, apply to us today. Any prophecy that wasn’t meant for later generations wasn’t written down.
So we read these prophecies during the three weeks, every single year, in order to get us back on track. We too have to remember these important lessons. And it starts with Bitachon; with realizing that Hashem is in charge of our lives. When things don’t go right, we have to ask why they aren’t going right. We have to ask where Hashem is.
The more we do this, the more we are able to correct the things we are supposed to be correcting.
B’Ezrat Hashem, we will reconnect to the Source, and once we reconnect to the Source, everything falls into place.
Have a wonderful day.