Main news for 21 September 2021

What do the words of Baruch concerning "the grieving of Jerusalem" mean? What says the prophet about God is in general comprehensive: the fact that the people of God forgot the One, Who made them to be a nation, was spoken by several prophets. And what it is "the grieving of Jerusalem"? It would have of course been possible to think that it is about the Temple, which was the place of God's presence, and these abominations which sometimes occurred in the city, in fact before the face of God, of course did not give Him joy. But is it only in that the problem? It is enough to remember, what was the general and spiritual situation in the city shortly before the Babylonian invasion. It was question neither of any repentance, nor any conversion.

All, on the contrary, were possessed by a certain, absolutely incredible, spiritual and daily frivolity, such that nobody of the inhabitants took seriously the danger looming over the city, succumbing easily to the promises of the “prophets" appeared in great quantities in the city, promising a miraculous victory over all the enemies. And the yahviste tradition badly understood and perverted became the basis for such mentalities. The roots of the problem, apparently came from the time of those persecutions, which stroked the followers of Isaiah of Jerusalem (we sometimes called them "the poor") under the reign of Manasseh. At that time, the yahviste community of the city was divided in fact into two parts, among which one supported the government, and the other one was persecuted. Such a betrayal of the coreligionists, of course did not remain without spiritual consequences: throughout the next century, the spiritual level of yahvistes communities of Jerusalem fell quite noticeably and tremendously.

The ancient, even before the yahviste era, legends of the enchanted walls of the city, which will resist any siege had become at this time the element of the mass religious consciousness, confidence in their own orthodoxy, in the fact that God will never leave Jerusalem, which after the religious reforms led by Josiah had become the only place on earth where were possible yahvistes sacrifices. With all this the inhabitants of the city felt themselves as heirs, carriers and successors of the great tradition going back to Moses and David, thinking that it is enough just to be born Jewish and to come few times in a year to the Temple to perform the due sacrifices, which ends with a pompous and cheerful celebration.

Such degeneration is really a great tradition, the transformation of the holy city into a caricature of itself, of course could not bring joy either to God, or to these few righteous men, who still remained in Jerusalem. On such background, the catastrophe that befell the Judea becomes a completely natural event: nothing else should be expected with this spiritual state of the people, in which they were on the eve of the Babylonian captivity.