How do we know who to listen to? Whom to trust?
This is a real problem for all of us, with so much conflicting information and sources surrounding us. It is one of the major sources of division in our world.
It turns out, this is nothing new.
This morning’s Torah portion, Shoftim, is primarily about leadership. It focuses on rules for judges and kings, as well as laws about the waging of war. One area that it covers is what to do when situations arise that the Torah does not anticipate. Who should be consulted for leadership and guidance? Who can be trusted?
To introduce this question, Moses first reminds the Israelites of what happened at Mount Sinai nearly forty years earlier. God’s Presence descended on the mountain in a tremendous cacophony of sound, light, smoke, and shaking.
The people freak out, telling Moses, “We can’t take it anymore. This is going to kill us. You go talk to God and report back to us. We’ll do whatever you say.”
Moses reports that God was pleased with the Israelites’ response. It seems that, in fact, this reaction was what God was aiming for all along. The purpose of the overwhelming display of power was to get the people to put their trust in God’s Prophet—Moses. Here in Deuteronomy, Moses expands on God’s words to him at that time, with an eye towards the future.
“…I will raise up a prophet for them from among their own people, like yourself: I will put My words in his mouth and he will speak to them all that I command him; and if anybody fails to heed the words he speaks in My name, I Myself will call him to account.
Deuteronomy 18:18-19
God’s plan, apparently, is to have prophets who will convey the Divine will to human beings. They carry the authority to speak in God’s name, and the people will be expected to follow their instructions.
But there is a problem, which God anticipates: what to do about fakes.
But any prophet who presumes to speak in My name an oracle that I did not command him to utter, or who speaks in the name of other gods—that prophet shall die.”
Deuteronomy 18:20
That seems straightforward enough. Of course, how are we supposed to know if someone is a fake? Again, Moses provides the answer:
And should you ask yourselves, “How can we know that the oracle was not spoken by the LORD?”— if the prophet speaks in the name of the LORD and the oracle does not come true, that oracle was not spoken by the LORD; the prophet has uttered it presumptuously: do not stand in dread of him. (Deut. 18:21-22)
If a prophet’s prediction does not happen, then they are not to be believed. Honestly, that does not seem like a very good test. What if the prediction is for something that is supposed to happen fifty years from now? Or ten years? Or even next month? How am I supposed to know, right now, whether to listen to this purported prophet?
The passage in Shoftim about prophecy seems so optimistic. God is pleased that the Israelites agree to listen to Moses and follows his instructions. And yet, if we actually follow the careers of the prophets through the Bible, we find that them to be a tragic lot.
To illustrate the problem, we turn to the book of Jeremiah. It is during the final decades of the First Temple, towards the end of the reign of the dynasty of King David.
Jeremiah was a tortured soul. He preached doom and gloom for several decades, speaking God’s word to several kings, along with the residents of Jerusalem. The great tragedy is that nobody listens to Jeremiah. In fact, there are a lot of other prophets running around preaching messages of hope and victory – the kinds of predictions that kings and the Jerusalem upper crust like to hear.
As a result of his prophecies, Jeremiah himself is sent to prison.
In one moment of exasperation, Jeremiah turns his rage to God.
Accursed be the day that I was born! Let not the day be blessed when my mother bore me! Accursed be the man who brought my father the news and said, “A boy Is born to you,” and gave him such joy! Let that man become like the cities which the LORD overthrew without relenting! Let him hear shrieks in the morning and battle shouts at noontide—because he did not kill me before birth so that my mother might be my grave, and her womb big [with me] for all time. Why did I ever issue from the womb, to see misery and woe, to spend all my days in shame!
Jeremiah 20:14-18
This is the great irony. The true prophet is not believed, and the false prophets are embraced. The rules in Parashat Shoftim do not appear to have been particularly effective.
The following story takes place early in the reign of King Zedekiah, the final king to rule over Judah before the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.
Jeremiah sends leather straps and wooden yokes to all of the surrounding kings, as well to King Zedekiah. The accompanying message is that they should submit to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, to whom God will be delivering all of their lands. There is no point in resisting.
To demonstrate the seriousness of his point, Jeremiah puts King Zedekiah’s yoke on his own neck and straps it closed. He had a flair for dramatic gestures.
One of the many other prophets, Hananiah son of Azzur, comes to the Temple to offer a counterprophecy. This is what he says:
Thus said the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: I hereby break the yoke of the king of Babylon. In two years, I will restore to this place all the vessels of the House of the LORD which King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took from this place and brought to Babylon. And I will bring back to this place King Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim of Judah, and all the Judean exiles who went to Babylon—declares the LORD. Yes, I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.
Jeremiah 28:2-4
Basically, “Don’t worry about Nechudnezzar. We got this.”
Jeremiah, who is present for this speech, turns to the assembled priests and Israelites, reminds them to watch out for false prophets, and offers a test for identifying one. This test, as we will see, is a clarification of Moses’ test in Parashat Shoftim.
The prophets who lived before you and me from ancient times prophesied war, disaster, and pestilence against many lands and great kingdoms. So if a prophet prophesies good fortune, then only when the word of the prophet comes true can it be known that the LORD really sent him.”
Jeremiah 28:8-9
If a prophet predicts death and destruction, you’d better listen. But if a prophet says that everything is going to be great, it would be best to wait and see if it comes true before following said prophet.
Not to be dissuaded, Hananiah breaks the wooden yoke from Jeremiah’s neck, and declares:
Thus said the LORD: So will I break the yoke of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon from off the necks of all the nations, in two years.
Jeremiah 28:11
Jeremiah confronts Hananiah once again,
“Listen, Hananiah! The LORD did not send you, and you have given this people lying assurances. Assuredly, thus said the LORD: I am going to banish you from off the earth. This year you shall die, for you have urged disloyalty to the LORD.”
And the prophet Hananiah died that year, in the seventh month.
Jeremiah 28:15-17
Even Hanahiah’s death does not convince the people to heed Jeremiah’s warnings.
Overall, the Israelite prophets were not especially successful in their own day. They underwent immense personal hardship and suffering. They were despised by their neighbors. Kings did not especially appreciate their warnings. And when they tried to convince the people and/or the rulers to follow God’s will, nobody really listened.
The prophets failed in all of their major endeavors. They were unable to save the united kingdom from splitting. They did not prevent the Northern Kingdom from falling to the Assyrians. They did not prevent the Temple from being destroyed by the Babylonians.
Perhaps this is what leads the Rabbis to officially declare the era of the prophets over.
Rabbi Avdimi from Haifa says: From the day that the Temple was destroyed prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to the Sages.
BT Bava Batra 12a
The subsequent discussion concludes that Sages are and were always superior to prophets in the first place. The pursuit of wisdom, the preoccupation of the Sages, offers a path towards propehcy. A prophet may or may not have wisdom, but a wise person can access the Divine will. (It is a nice idea, especially if one is a Sage.)
Rabbi Yoḥanan offers a different insight.
Rabbi Yoḥanan said: From the day that the Temple was destroyed, prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to imbeciles and children.
Ibid.
What is this suggesting? Perhaps that prophecy, the revelation of the true Divine will, is only given to those who are destined to not be taken seriously.
In this, perhaps, not much has changed. As exemplified by Jeremiah, the tragedy of the true Prophet is that the truth that the prophet pronounces is not accepted by those who most need to hear it. People are much more likely to listen to what they already know, or what they want to hear.
I fear not much has changed. The ancient prophets were the social and political critics of their day. Most of them would have met the criteria—either Moses’ or Jeremiah’—of the false prophet.
What concerned the true prophets? They worried about the nation’s allegiance to God. They warned against the adoption by the leaders of immoral practices. They worried about the mistreatment and the neglect of the poor, both by the leaders and the population at large. They spoke out against immoral behavior by the population. They tried to convince the people to return to the moral path.
Today, how do we determine who to listen to? I fear that the determination is made, more and more, by an algorithm designed to feed us that to which we are most likely to respond positively, a phenomenon strikingly similar to the false prophets who fed the king and the people the message that they thought would be most well-received (and would be most likely to keep them from being jailed or executed).
It is the fools and children, those who, in their naivete, are less concerned with how their words will be received; or the wise, those whose allegiance to the pursuit of truth outweighs the desire for fame and fortune, whose words we perhaps ought to listen for.