Introduction: Who Can Heal You?
We are in Chapter 2 of Megillat Eicha, at verse 14. In the preceding verse, the author of the lament concluded with a desperate cry: "For your ruin is as vast as the sea; who can heal you?" - who is there to heal us from our afflictions? To this, our verse responds by pointing precisely to those who were supposed to be the healers, yet were themselves part of the disease.
נְבִיאַיִךְ חָזוּ לָךְ שָׁוְא וְתָפֵל, וְלֹא גִלּוּ עַל עֲוֺנֵךְ לְהָשִׁיב שְׁבוּתֵךְ, וַיֶּחֱזוּ לָךְ מַשְׂאוֹת שָׁוְא וּמַדּוּחִים. (איכה ב, יד) - Your prophets envisioned for you vanity and foolishness; they did not expose your iniquity to restore your captivity, but envisioned for you false prophecies and delusions. (Eicha 2:14)
The author of Lechem Dimah explains: You might say, perhaps the prophets will heal us? To this the lamenter answers: How could that be? It was the prophets themselves who brought us to this state! "Your prophets envisioned for you vanity and foolishness" - instead of prophesying the truth to us, forewarning of exile, sorrow, and afflictions, and admonishing us so that we would mend our ways, they envisioned falsehood and trivialities, and "did not expose your iniquity."
"Your Prophets" - The Prophets You Chose for Yourself
Notice the wording: "Your prophets." Which prophets is this referring to? The prophets you chose for yourself. Yirmiyahu was thrown into the prison courtyard; they refused to listen to him. Whom did they want to hear? The false prophets. Those who came and spoke what sounded pleasant to the listeners' ears: You have nothing to worry about, Hashem will not do anything, do not let those fanatics scare you with apocalyptic descriptions of the War of Gog and Magog. Everything will be fine; Hashem loves His people Israel forever; the Beit HaMikdash will never be destroyed; nothing compares to Hashem's love for His people - everything is sweet as honey, everything is pleasant. Continue living as you please, and if there are problems with Halachah, we will appoint a rabbi who suits us, and he will find a way to validate it, and everything will be fine.
Thus, it was those false prophets who brought us into this misfortune. Instead of exposing our iniquity, instead of restoring our captivity and bringing us back in teshuvah, instead of telling us that we would pay a price and admonishing us - they comforted us and lulled us into complacency. "And envisioned for you false prophecies and delusions [maduchim]" - "masa'ot" refers to prophecies; "maduchim" means they prophesied visions that seduced and led us astray (mediḥot) from the ways of Hashem.
The Difference Between a True Prophet and a False Prophet
This is precisely the difference between true prophets and false prophets. True prophets are not afraid to speak words that are unpleasant to the hearer's ear, because their purpose is to speak the truth and awaken the people. False prophets, however, say: Let us speak of what unites us; why speak of what divides? Let us look at what is beautiful about Am Yisrael; let us look at our remarkable youth. True, there are such-and-such crime rates, and there are terrible occurrences, and a million children do not even know the Shema - but leave that aside, let us talk about the wonderful qualities of the Jewish people.
One who wants to sweep things under the rug, and who, Heaven forbid, brings calamity upon the Jewish people, speaks in this manner. But one who knows that these matters touch our very soul cannot remain silent. He stands and cries out: The house is on fire! And that is the voice of the Gedolei Yisrael. Yet "your prophets," those whom you appointed as your prophets - media commentators and public figures of all kinds - "envisioned for you vanity and foolishness": Everything will be fine, do not terrify us, there is nothing to worry about.
The False Prophets in the Service of the Monarchy
The Alon Bachut cites: In the days of the First Temple, the false prophets were functionaries on behalf of the monarchy, and their role was to bolster the royal court. A true prophet would come and proclaim that the Holy One, blessed be He, was destined to exile the kingdom and its princes, and immediately the false prophet would deny it: There is nothing to worry about; there will be no exile and nothing will happen. Only the true prophets, like Achiyah HaShiloni who rebuked Yarov'am ben Nevat, or Eliyahu who called Achav the "troubler of Israel" and said to his face, "Have you murdered and also taken possession?" - only they spoke the unvarnished truth without fear. All the other false prophets said only what people wanted to hear.
And what did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He repaid them measure for measure. For it is written there that the spirit of Naboth said: "I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets." And so that Tzidkiyah ben Kenaanah made iron horns for himself, and the spirit of Naboth was in the mouth of all four hundred prophets, and they all prophesied with one voice: "Go up to Ramoth-gilead and succeed." And we all know how the story ended. The true prophet told him: Know that this is the spirit of Naboth, a lying spirit in the mouth of your prophets, and you will not return alive from the battle - "I saw all Israel scattered upon the mountains, like sheep that have no shepherd"; the shepherd will not return from the war. And so it was: Achav did not listen, went out to battle with Yehoshaphat, and in the end the dogs licked his blood, just as had been foretold in the prophecy.
So too at the time of the Destruction: the false prophets consoled the people and reassured them, telling them they had nothing to worry about - rebel against the conquering king! Meanwhile, the true prophets said: Do not rebel against the conquering king; nothing will come of this except trouble; the Holy One, blessed be He, brought him upon us in order to bring us back in teshuvah. The people did not listen and did not accept these words. And this is the meaning of "they envisioned for you false and seductive burdens" - they envisioned false prophecies for them that seduced and led them away from the service of Hashem.
Two Types of False Prophets: "Shav" and "Tafel"
The Allon Bachut explains further: There were two types of false prophets. There was the false prophet who fabricated lies from his own heart from start to finish - entirely fabricated claims containing not a shred of truth. "Where did you hear this?" - "In a dream at night." He dreams dreams to himself, comes and tells stories, invents fabrications, and claims that Hashem revealed Himself to him this way. In contrast, there were other prophets who were more sophisticated. They knew they could not afford to look like outright frauds, so what did they do? They would go and listen to a true prophecy from the mouth of a true prophet, draw their own conclusions from his words, and convey those conclusions to the people - so that when the events came to pass, people would say: Look, this prophet said so!
For example, Chananyah ben Azzur heard Yirmeyahu prophesying in the upper marketplace, "Behold, I will break the bow of Elam," and he made a kal vachomer: If Hashem will break the bow of Elam, all the more so Babylon. And this is the meaning of "envisioned for you falsehood (shav) and folly (tafel)": shav corresponds to the first group, whose entire prophecy was a lie from start to finish; tafel corresponds to the latter group, for tafel is related to litpol, attaching one thing to another. They attached and glued their prophecy onto a true prophecy, derived their own conclusions from it, and came to deliver them. Yet ultimately, all of these alike are "false and seductive burdens" - all of them seduce and draw you away from the service of Hashem.
The Explanation of the Akeidat Yitzchak: They Saw You in Vanity and Did Not Rebuke You
The Akeidat Yitzchak explains differently: "Your prophets envisioned for you vanity and folly" - meaning they saw you engaging in vanity and emptiness; they saw you busying yourself with frivolous and meaningless pursuits instead of serving Hashem - "and they did not uncover your iniquity." They saw you, the Congregation of Israel, preoccupied with vanity and empty matters, yet they did not rebuke you, they did not tell you: You are engaging in vanity and folly. "And they did not uncover your iniquity to restore your fortunes" - in order to bring you back in teshuvah. On the contrary, "and they envisioned for you false and seductive burdens" - they saw you committing acts of vanity and seduction and did not guide the people of Israel onto the proper path.
Ahavat Tzion: They Did Not Reveal the Cause of the Calamity
In Ahavat Tzion, it is explained: "And they did not uncover your iniquity" - we simply understand this to mean that they did not point out your sins. But he interprets: they did not reveal to you that the cause of the calamity was because of your iniquity; they did not tell you that everything you are suffering is coming upon you because of your sin. As Yirmeyahu says: "Know and see that it is evil and bitter, your forsaking Hashem" - that is, the evil and bitterness you suffer is because of your forsaking Hashem. Had we known that the calamity was coming because of this, we might have returned in teshuvah. But they did not reveal the true cause to us. And this is "and they did not uncover your iniquity to restore your fortunes" - for by knowing the cause, we would have returned in teshuvah. Instead, on the contrary, "they envisioned for you false and seductive burdens" - they showed you false prophecies until they seduced you away from the path of Hashem.
An Explanation by Way of Remez: "Velo Galu (They Were Not Exiled) for Your Iniquity"
One can also add an explanation by way of remez and derash. The false prophets would reassure the people and say: "Envisioned for you vanity and folly" - look, it is true that you have vanity and folly, full of sins. "And they did not uncover (velo gilu) your iniquity" - do not read gilu ("uncovered"), but rather galu ("were exiled"): Tell me, are you righteous today? No. And is there an exile? No. How long have you already not been righteous? Decades, centuries. And what happened? Nothing. Do not be frightened, do not panic.
In other words, your prophets tell you: Behold, see, you have endless vanity and folly, sins and evil deeds - and yet you have not gone into exile on account of these sins, you have not reached a state of exile. So why are you afraid of the words of the prophets who come to frighten you?
And if you ask: Are the other prophets just speaking without reason? To this they reply: The other prophets are fanatics, alarmists, people who merely want you to repent. To get you to do teshuvah, they will tell you anything - they will conjure up Gog u'Magog, spin tales about the end of the world, and describe dire prophecies and brutal wars. Did Hashem really tell them these things? Just see how untrue it is: until today you have lived wickedly, and nothing happened.
And this is the continuation of the verse: "to overturn your captivity" - for should you say, "We have other prophets who say that catastrophe and destruction are imminent, so what do you say to that?" To this they reply: All those other prophets have an agenda; they are biased, wanting only to bring you to repentance, and that is why they terrify you. "And they envisioned for you burdens of falsehood and misleading things" - thus they envision for you all sorts of delusions, threatening doom and gloom about impending disasters, and all merely "to overturn your captivity," to push you to repent. Do not be swayed by this; these are not true prophecies. What we are telling you is the truth, and the facts on the ground speak for themselves - until now you have sinned and nothing happened, so you have nothing to worry about; continue on your wayward path and nothing will befall you. This, in essence, was the entire argument of the false prophets.
In summary: Verse 14 points to the root of the destruction: not only the sins themselves, but those who were supposed to sound the alarm and instead kept silent or lied. "Your prophets" - those whom the people chose for themselves, who told them only what was pleasant to their ears; some fabricated falsehood from beginning to end ("shav"), while others attached their own conclusions to a true prophecy ("tafel"). They did not reveal that the troubles were coming because of sin, they did not rectify the people and did not turn back their captivity, but rather comforted, reassured, and mocked the alarm-sounders as though their sole purpose was to frighten. A true prophet is not afraid to speak the truth even when it is unpleasant, and one who knows that our very lives are at stake stands up and screams that the house is on fire. This is the call emerging from the verse for our generation as well.