Looking for the Right Prophet - Reflections on Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7, Pentecost 18, Year C

by John C. Holbert on Friday, June 20, 2025

         We are living in difficult and divided times in 2025. I am writing this reflection on the day when Israel attacked Iran, and the Iranians have returned fire with missiles against civilian Israeli targets. This is the most serious weapons exchange between the two countries for many years, and threatens to spiral into a wider Middle Eastern war. In our own country, the Trump administration has continued its incursions in multiple areas of the US, seeking undocumented immigrants, even using National Guard troops and US Marines to enforce their raids in my city of Los Angeles. Such use has been deemed illegal by certain courts, but another court has ruled against the first court, and has stated that a more decisive ruling must wait for some days as the Guard and the Marines are still in LA, under federal control.

         I have begun to receive on my computer inquiries from Donald Trump and his allies that I need to support him in his endeavors to rid the country of immigrants, many of whom he claims are criminals. Any of you who have read my essays over the years will know that I am no supporter of President Trump; I stand against nearly everything he stands for, and was appalled that he was elected again in 2024. I find his behaviors odious, cruel and near-criminal since that election, and I hope mightily that so much of that behavior may be blunted by courts and by the concerted actions of an aroused public. In fact, tomorrow, June 14, I will march here with many thousands, proclaiming a “No King” day, making it as clear as we can that the president’s actions amount to those of a would-be king. We want none of that in US America.

         Now that I have made my own stance vis-à-vis the current administration, I can return to the biblical text of the day, a recounting of a letter written by Jeremiah to the exiles of Judah, living now in Babylon. The city of Jerusalem has fallen, many of its structures destroyed, including the temple and the king’s palace, and that king, Zedekiah, along with members of the royal court, carted off to Babylon for a long stay in that vast city. Jeremiah has spent the forty years of his prophetic mission warning Judah that it had no real future in the land due to its continuous evil oppressions of the poor and marginalized among them, its rejection of YHWH as God, and their flirtation with other gods. One might well imagine that a letter from this prophet would include further accusations of a similar sort.

         If that would be our expectation, we would be quite wrong. “These are the words of the ‘letter’ (Hebrew is sepher, that also means scroll or book) that Jeremiah, the prophet from Jerusalem, sent to the surviving exiled elders, priests, prophets, and to all the people that Nebuchadnezzar exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon” (Jer.29:1) The content of this missive, far from an assault against the new Babylonian residents, is instead very surprising. “Thus says YHWH of the armies, the God of Israel, to all those exiles, who have been sent from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live there; plant gardens and eat their fruit. Choose wives and have sons and daughters. Then take wives for your sons; give your daughters in marriage that they may bear sons and daughters. Increase there, do not become fewer. Seek the shalom of the city where you have been exiled, and pray to YHWH on its behalf, because in its shalom you will find your shalom” (Jer.29:4-7).

         I find this letter nothing less than astonishing, yet eminently practical and wise. In vss.8-9 Jeremiah warns the exiles not to listen to other prophets and magicians among them who are offering very different advice through false dreams and worthless prophecies. In the previous chapter 28 of Jeremiah, we read of a prophetic contest between Jeremiah and a rival prophet named Hananiah, the latter of which claims that the coming exile will be brief, perhaps one or two years, because YHWH would never subject the chosen people to live so long away from Jerusalem. Jeremiah, on the other hand, warns that the exile will in fact consume many years. Jer.29’s letter reaffirms that conviction. If sons and daughters are to be born, and if husbands are to be chosen for those daughters, and wives for those sons, at least two generations must elapse. And Jeremiah’s advice to “pray for Babylon’s shalom” suggests that many more generations in foreign lands may well occur. Actual history states that the exile lasted some 50 years, at least those two generations, ending in 539BCE with the victory by Cyrus of Persia over Babylon, the comments in Jeremiah’s letter suggest that it could have lasted much longer. Indeed, Judaism’s history has made it clear that exile from Jerusalem has in fact last more than two millenia for many Jews.

         Just how is one to know which prophet to believe and follow? Is the Trump administration correct in its fear of persons who come from other countries, persons whom we cannot trust, who do not possess the correct documents, who speak other languages and look different from many other US Americans and thus may be expelled from our land? Or are we to believe and follow our convictions that immigrants make us all better, stronger, more beautifully diverse, that our nation is in fact a nation of immigrants, and that US America has long been a nation that welcomes the stranger among us, aids their life here, and seeks their shalom, because in the long run it is at the same time our shalom. 

         I say that the current adminstration’s attitude and actions are misguided, cruel, and unacceptable in the country we love. It is not patriotic to exclude persons from our shores, but is instead monstrous and short-sighted. Pray for their shalom, and stand up for their inclusion among us. Jeremiah’s letter remains valuable even now, 2600 years after its first delivery.