They abhor him who speaks the truth. –Amos 5:10
For the Prophet, God’s presence is not a comfort; God’s presence is a challenge – an incessant demand. The Prophet reminds us that God is compassion, not compromise; God is both Justice and Mercy. The Prophet is not infallible for the Prophet’s predictions can always be proved wrong if people change their conduct. What is certain, however, is God’s unceasing compassion and love for all.
Unlike God, the Prophet does not speak in whispers. The Prophet’s word is a scream in the night. While the world is asleep the Prophet is awake, aware and disturbed.
The Prophet faces a coalition of established authority, and undertakes to stop a raging river with mere words. Too often we forget that a major purpose – perhaps ‘THE’ major purpose – of prophecy is to change the inner person and thus to change the nation.
There have been and continue to be many false-prophets. Those pretenders who predict peace and prosperity…if only… Those offering cheerful words. The true prophet predicts disaster, pestilence, agony and destruction. Jeremiah was clear: You are about to die if you do not have a change of heart and if you do not cease being unheeding of the word of God. Pretty stern stuff!
I am not a scholar but it seems to me that none of the Prophets were actually enamored with being a Prophet. What drove Jeremiah, for example, to be a Prophet? Let’s hear what Jeremiah said:
Cursed be the day
On which I was born! . . .
Because He did not kill me in the womb,
So my mother would have been my grave, . . .
Why did I come forth out of the womb
To see toil and sorrow,
And spend my days in shame? Jeremiah 20:14, 17, 18
Being a Prophet is often more of an affliction than a distinction. The mission is distasteful to him and repugnant to others, no reward is promised him and no reward could temper its bitterness. The Prophet bears scorn and reproach. He is frequently stigmatized as a mad-person by his contemporaries; some modern scholars view the Prophet as abnormal. Amos (5:10) reminds us: They hate him who reproves in the gate/They abhor him who speaks the truth.
Jeremiah was mocked, reproached and persecuted. He thought, more than once, of casting away his task:
If I say, I will not mention Him,
Or speak any more in His name,
There is my heart as it were a burning fire
Shut up in my bones,
And I am weary with holding it in,
And I cannot. –Jeremiah 20:9
Now, it is also important to remember that the Prophet is never abandoned by God. When Jeremiah was chosen to become a Prophet the Lord said to him: ‘And I, behold, I make you this day a fortified city, an iron pillar, and bronze walls, against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land.’ [Jer. 1:18] Later on Jeremiah is reassured: ‘They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you.’ [Jer. 15:10]
You have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear…–Jeremiah 25: 3