The Flight of the Prisoners (1896) by James Tissot; the exile of the Jews to Babylon
I said I’m getting close to finishing James Kugel’s book about How to Read the Bible, and I am. I’m in the last 100 pages. (It’s taken me months because I just read a few pages at a time during meals. Just a few pages give you a LOT to digest. It’s very deep.)
Anyway, over breakfast this morning, during a chapter about Jeremiah, I ran across one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible. I wrote about this bit before in 2009. Right after I got laid off, Rep. Nathan Ballentine brought it to my attention, for which I am grateful. I’d never read it before.
It’s in Jeremiah 29. Here’s the part I got from Nathan:
11 For I know well the plans I have in mind for you—oracle of the LORD—plans for your welfare and not for woe, so as to give you a future of hope.
But I like the whole chapter, which Jeremiah aimed at the Hebrews during their Babylonian exile. Especially this part:
4 Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon:
5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their fruits.
6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters. Increase there; do not decrease.
7 Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare your own depends.
In other words, however bad you think things are, don’t give up on life. Embrace it, wherever you are. Build houses. Have children. Marry them off so you can have grandchildren. Don’t moan about being so far from Jerusalem. Stand in the place where you live. In fact, you should even “Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you.”
This may look like the end, but as long as you engage life positively, things will be better someday.
The people of Judah returned to Jerusalem about 70 years after Nebuchadnezzer dragged them away, thanks to Cyrus the Great.
These are good words to ponder in the Trumpist era. Maybe I won’t get to return to the America I knew all my life before 2016. (The problems that caused his election are complex, and likely to outlive him.) If not, I still hope for my children and grandchildren. In the meantime, I’m living my life in this world with joyful gratitude for my blessings, and all the energy I can muster…
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