NOTES for Jer 20:1-18

It sometimes happens that the content of a person's faith—what God requires of that person—comes into conflict with life itself. This happened to Jeremiah when, as persecution against him began, he realized that his prophetic ministry simply kept everyone from living as they wished. To him it was obvious that he brought people the saving Word from heaven, while they declared that they did not need it. His life had failed, and he cursed the day of his birth. In a sense, prophets' lives rarely succeed at all: it is difficult to imagine a prophet who rebukes the people and implores them to turn to God being loved by everyone and warmly thanked for his admonitions. But on the other hand, a person who lives in accordance with God's will, even when that will seems to him “incompatible with life,” already bears within himself true and complete life—the pledge of Resurrection.

Let us try to read carefully. Jeremiah says that at this particular moment he is in an extremely unpleasant situation, or more precisely, in danger. Nothing in his life has changed for the better since he learned of this danger. Why, then, is he praising the Lord? We keep thinking that we must wait until something extraordinary happens and only then offer praise. The prophet takes an entirely different approach: the Lord is righteous, the Lord always saves the poor, and therefore praise, glory, honor, and thanksgiving are due to Him, regardless of exactly when and how He sees fit to intervene in my situation. Jeremiah glorifies God without waiting... simply without waiting for anything. This is genuine praise.

The prophet's words about vengeance on his enemies may seem an example of what is sometimes called "Old Testament vindictiveness." Yet Jeremiah has no intention of taking revenge. He merely hands his whole situation, completely and entirely, into God's hands. He understands perfectly: the work entrusted to him by God is not his work, but God's work. And he himself, Jeremiah, is only an instrument in this work, an executor from whom neither an assessment of the people involved nor, still less, punishment or vengeance upon them is required. The prophet must simply do his work: go where God sends him, say what He has instructed him to say, and leave the rest to Him.

But there are people around who hinder Jeremiah from doing God's work. This is an objective reality. One may treat the people who hinder him in any way one likes, but objectively they are enemies of God. This is not vindictiveness and not hatred; it is a simple statement of an obvious fact. It would be foolish to ignore the obvious, and the prophet does not try to do so: he turns to God for resolution of the situation.

His words about enemies are not evidence of hatred or a desire for vengeance in the human sense in which they are often interpreted. For God's vengeance is not like human vengeance, just as God's punishment is not human punishment. Human punishment is a sanction for violating a norm; human vengeance is evidence of triumph over an enemy. God's punishment, however, is only the triumph of His love over human sinfulness and the pain caused by sin that seeks to prevent this triumph; God's vengeance is the triumph of His will over those who oppose it and the fulfillment of His plans despite His opponents. It is not a desire to humiliate or suppress an enemy for the sake of His own triumph: God has no need to affirm Himself at the expense of a defeated opponent. He simply puts everything in its place, including those who oppose Him.

But God does not want their destruction. He wants these people to turn and receive the fullness of life that He can give them. And this desire of His becomes vengeance only for those who reject it. But that is no longer God's vengeance - it is a human choice.

The prophet's words about vengeance on his enemies look to many people like only a tribute to the pre-Christian age, a kind of spiritual remnant out of place in New Testament times. But is everything so simple? It is not by chance that Jeremiah speaks of vengeance while linking it with the fact that he has entrusted his cause to God. In essence, he is no longer asking for himself, and he is not concerned with himself or with his own triumph over his enemies. He does not need triumph for triumph's sake at all; he does not thirst for revenge, and he has no desire to mock his enemies as they mock him. What matters to him, what he needs, is only the triumph of God's cause.

For Jeremiah, the defeat of his enemies is not the goal, but a necessary condition of that triumph. He understands that without the complete defeat of his enemies there will be no triumph of God, and he wants God's victory to become reality as soon as possible. One would think the prophet could not fail to understand that such a victory is possible only at the end of time, on the Day of Judgment and of the Messiah's coming. But for him the messianic Kingdom was already a reality, as it was for all the prophets.

A prophet is not a mystic or a predictor of the future. He is not a predictor because there is nothing to predict: God has no future written out in advance in every detail. He is not a mystic because mysticism presupposes the existence of at least two originally separated worlds, and from one world some people at certain moments manage to look into another, usually closed to us and therefore invisible to us. But God did not create two worlds or many worlds; He created one world, which was meant to be the Kingdom, revealing itself more and more in that quality over time.

The illusory division into two worlds is a consequence of the fall; it is not absolute. Even before Christ's coming, there were people in the world to whom this world was opened as God had intended it to be: whole and permeated by the breath of God. But the prophet's enemies did not fit into this world in any way. Not because they were Jeremiah's enemies, but because they were enemies of God and destroyers of His plans. And the prophet understands: the disappearance of his enemies, their destruction, will become not so much his own triumph as a sign of the approaching coming of the Messiah and the triumph of the Kingdom. These are events that could not fail to gladden any witness of God.

The question of the meaninglessness of a life already lived has tormented many people, and at very different ages. Jeremiah, as we see, was no exception: the question of the meaning of his own life arose before him too. It would seem that a person whom God called to ministry, and called with the complete certainty that distinguishes every genuine prophetic calling, has no need to doubt or regret anything, since his ministry by definition cannot turn out to be meaningless.

And yet, as we see, the matter was not so simple; besides God, there were also the people to whom the prophet addressed himself. The prophet's ministry is above all the ministry of a witness, and Jeremiah, as we see, evaluated the success of his ministry precisely from that point of view. And here things were bad: no one wanted to listen to the prophet; his preaching did not enjoy the kind of popularity that, for example, the preaching of his great predecessor Isaiah of Jerusalem enjoyed. Rather, he was in everyone's way: in the way of the authorities, whose religious policy Jeremiah did not accept; in the way of the crowd, whose imaginary religiosity he never tired of exposing; in the way of well-to-do townspeople, who wanted peace and confidence while the prophet's preaching constantly disturbed their peace and undermined their confidence. No authority, no popularity, only hatred and hostility! But the most tormenting thing for Jeremiah was that he apparently perceived this state of affairs as the failure of the mission entrusted to him by God.

And what could have served as consolation for a prophet whose witness was rejected? Perhaps only one thing: prophetic ministry, like every other service to God, has value in itself. The issue is not only who heard what, but also who said what. And Jeremiah clearly accomplished this task. Despite all the efforts of the people around him.