Just Making It Up As We Go Along
Am I a God near by, says the LORD, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the LORD. I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, “I have dreamed, I have dreamed!” How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back—those who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart? They plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal. Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the LORD. Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces? See, therefore, I am against the prophets, says the LORD, who steal my words from one another. See, I am against the prophets, says the LORD, who use their own tongues and say, “Says the LORD.” See, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, says the LORD, and who tell them, and who lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or appoint them; so they do not profit this people at all, says the LORD. (Jeremiah 23:23-32)
In the ancient world, most gods were rather small: they oversaw a particular plot of land, a particular profession, a particular city. There were gods of hills, gods of the sea, gods of the valleys. The Israelites easily came to view Yahweh in a very parochial way. But God tried to remind them that he was not so limited.
That had implications for one particular group of people: those who claimed, without warrant, to speak for God. Rather than speaking what God said, they would hear the words of a real prophet and just repeat them, claiming to have received it from God rather than from people. What they couldn’t steal from their neighbors, they just made up, pretending a line to God so that they could profit from the role of an oracle. They could charge money for sitting around all day and doing nothing. Such false prophets were misleading the people, turning them away from God, endangering people by giving them false comfort and false information. By lying, they would make their hearers less likely to take the true prophets seriously. As people became more jaded, more distrusting of the words of the so-called prophets, how were they to know when a real prophet was standing before them? What would keep them from turning away from God entirely? False prophets betrayed a trust.
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