We begin the Book of Yirmiyahu. Before entering the text itself, two prefaces are in order: First, the Malbim's introduction, which addresses the poetic style of the prophet Yirmiyahu and the critique leveled against his form of expression. Second, the chronology: where Yirmiyahu is situated within the era of the prophets, the years in which he was active, the kings during whose reigns he prophesied, and what he endured. Once these foundations are set in broad strokes, we will study the book in its sequence, following our usual path according to the wonderful commentary of the Malbim. Anyone who finds these introductory matters burdensome may skip them and proceed directly to the beginning of the book.
The Malbim opens by citing "the Minister" - Don Yitzchak Abarbanel - from his introduction. The Malbim frequently quotes the Abarbanel and holds his commentary in high regard; at times he agrees with him and at times he differs, but he always values his opinion. The Abarbanel writes that three engravings are found within human beings: three types of faculties engraved upon the soul from which all human actions emanate. It is according to these three faculties that he evaluates the Book of Yirmiyahu.
The first is within the soul itself: the knowledge and wisdom engraved upon it. The strength of the soul is measured by its capacity to perceive things as they truly are. The wiser a person is and the more complete his prophecy, the more he grasps reality in its pure essence. Conversely, the more a prophet requires parables, allegories, and metaphors, the lower his level of prophecy; the more clearly he sees the truth, the higher his perception and the clearer his prophetic lens (ispaklaria). This is one dimension: the degree to which the prophet grasps the spirit of Hashem that speaks through him.
The second engraving is the power of language and speech - the ability to give expression to what one sees in his mind's eye. This is by no means a simple matter. There are Roshei Yeshiva regarded as immense geniuses, yet someone attending their shiur might say, "Lav kol mocha savil da" - not every mind can absorb this; not everyone can follow their train of thought. This does not reflect on their clarity; their understanding of the topic is profound, but they lack the pedagogical tools to bring it down to the students. At times, the opposite is true precisely because of the speaker's loftiness: the higher his level, the more difficult it is for him to articulate the visions and insights he beholds. These are two separate qualities: the depth of his comprehension, and the power of transmission, which is the faculty of speech.
In this respect, the Malbim notes, people differ greatly. There is one endowed with an eloquent tongue, termed a "learned tongue" (leshon limudim): he speaks with lucid language and pleasant rhetoric, conveying everything pictured in his soul without impediment. He possesses magnificent expressions to depict what is engraved within him, and he can vividly transmit to you all that he beheld in prophecy. This was the distinction among rhetoricians and poets - the splendor of rhetoric, composing sublime, elevated, and incisive verse that conveys the message directly to the listener. So it is with every wise-hearted person and prophet of Hashem: one prophet possessed an advantage over another in his linguistic style and the beauty of his eloquence. The more refined his words are in precise language and elegant prose, the more esteemed they are.
The third is writing. A scholar may be able to express himself with fine eloquence, yet lack proficiency in writing. This is evident in our own day: one might listen to someone's drasha and enjoy it immensely, yet upon reading an article by him, fail to understand anything. The art of writing and the art of spoken phrasing are two distinct disciplines. The reverse is also true: some write wonderfully, their articles are a delight to read, their prose sings, yet when you hear them deliver a lecture, you discover that their spoken delivery falls far short of their literary talent. The gift of writing and the gift of speech are two separate faculties.
Just as the soul's mental concept is the primary force shaping speech, so speech is the primary force shaping writing. Here, too, people differ: not merely in the calligraphic script and aesthetic form - relevant to scribes of holy texts (sofer STa"M) who do not compose but transcribe, producing clean and beautiful script - but also in grammatical precision and correctness, ensuring it is free of error. One must not write the masculine as feminine, the singular as plural, or the past as future and vice versa. For example, one might mistakenly use a feminine number with a masculine noun; a person must know how to express himself correctly, both in gender and in tense.
Notice: there are things that go unnoticed in speech, but when put into writing, the error stands out immediately. If someone says in Hebrew "ani yelech" instead of "elech," one might hardly notice the spoken mistake; but once committed to writing, one immediately wonders who could write such a thing - it is a glaring error. In our day, unfortunately, the errors are even worse, and this generation hardly knows how to write. One could see a headline stating that something was "inherited from his father and around him" (u-misaviv), instead of "from his grandfathers" (mi-sabav). Anyone browsing a newspaper today is astounded by the ignorance. Thus, writing with proper precision is no simple matter.
We thus learn three fundamental dimensions: the quality of prophetic perception in the soul's mental conception, the elegance of spoken expression, and the precision of the written text. What the prophet perceives; how he articulates it in speech; and how meticulously it is rendered when committed to writing.
Based on these three foundations, the Abarbanel examined the words of our prophet in the crucible of analysis, investigating whether he was complete in all three forms of representation, and delivered his verdict. In the first representation - the power of the soul and its perception, seeing matters in their essence and perfection without the need for parables - Yirmiyahu soared far above all the seers of Hashem and His messengers, to the extent that his stature in this regard was close to that of the master of all prophets, the man of God. However, in the latter two representations, the power of speech and the power of writing, his standing in the Abarbanel's view fell short of the perfection of all other prophets.
These words are cited intentionally verbatim, even though it is difficult to utter such statements - we have never been accustomed to leveling criticism against great figures, and certainly not against our prophets - but it is necessary to present them, because the Malbim is about to refute them.
His first claim was that Yirmiyahu did not speak with polished eloquence and did not order his words according to the rules of grammar: he wrote el instead of al and al instead of el, masculine for feminine, mixed singular and plural, second person and third person, past and future, and substituted zot for zeh. The reason, in his view, was that because he began prophesying while still a youth, and as a youth his power of expression was not yet fully developed, these irregularities resulted. His second claim was that he had not mastered the rules of writing and scribal craft, which is why his book contains more instances of keri and ketiv than any other book of the prophets or throughout the Holy Scriptures. And he went to great lengths to bring proofs that Yirmiyahu had not perfected himself in matters of writing.
Here the Malbim steps forward and states, asking forgiveness parenthetically: "May forgiveness be granted by the master, who was among the faithful of Israel" - begging the Abarbanel's pardon for being about to refute his words. For we accept the good from him, but we do not accept the bad. Where he elevated the honor and stature of our prophet to the heights of the peaks alongside the foremost of prophets - that we accept, just as Chazal in their aggadot magnified and exalted him and placed his throne above all holy princes. But where he diminished the honor of his eloquence and the splendor of his book, as though he were lacking in poetic grace and the rules of language - to this we will not listen, nor will we consent.
Before responding to the specific claims, the Malbim clarifies a crucial hashkafic principle, especially relevant to anyone who draws their Tanach knowledge from universities and biblical critics - those who merely pay a fleeting visit to Scripture without ever truly inhabiting it. This entire endeavor of analyzing and critiquing the Holy Scriptures, which the prophets wrote under the hand and spirit of Hashem, grading their level - this prophet receives an eight, that one a nine, and another a ten - and passing judgment on their author as to whether he was complete in the three representations or deficient in them, is not our path at all. That is an academic approach to Tanach, and we are neither academics nor doctors of Bible.
The Ponovezher Rav zt"l once quipped, when told that someone was a "doctor of Talmud": A doctor of Talmud? The Talmud is not sick; it has no need for a doctor! Another sage, when told that someone was called "Rabbi Doctor," remarked: I know that when a doctor stands next to a rabbi, it is a sign that the rabbi is ill. If this rabbi needs the title "Doctor," it must mean the rabbi in him is sick. And how did one acquire that doctorate? How many years were squandered in environments of heresy and license, reading vanity and folly, just to purchase that title?
The Malbim explains that Abarbanel's approach could only be accepted if we agreed that the prophets receive a vision from Hashem, but their grasp of the matter is like that of wise students receiving from their teacher. If that were how one approached the scriptures, one could say: the student did not understand everything, did not pick up on all the nuances, and perhaps the prophet, too, did not fully fathom the matter or express it properly. But if we treat the words of the prophets as a Divine message, as prophecy entirely bestowed by Hashem - how is it conceivable to criticize words that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave and transmitted in this manner?
How could it enter the heart of anyone whole in his Torah and faith to compare the Divine, prophetic flow - wherein Hashem pours out His spirit upon His seers and messengers, reveals His secret to them, and sends them on His mission - to the flow of human intellect, which is prone to error by virtue of being material and limited? What has straw to do with grain? What a person receives from Hashem is clear, clean, upright, and pure. How can one compare this to a student who received from his master, whose understanding was lacking, and some of the words became distorted in his mouth?
And if Hashem has poured out upon you a spirit of deep slumber - upon you, who expound and analyze according to human intellect alone - and shut your eyes from looking toward God, did He also veil the prophets and your leaders, the seers who behold Divine visions, so that the words of Hashem became to them like a sealed book? Could one imagine that the Holy One, blessed be He, delivers a prophecy to a prophet, and the prophet fails to understand it, does not know how to express it, stumbles over it, and conveys it improperly? Surely of this it is said: "Do not touch My anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm."
The Malbim has already discussed on several occasions that human comprehension always proceeds from the later to the earlier. How does a scientist approach the question of the creation of the world? He takes matter, examines it, observes its changes and the effect of time upon it, and deduces: if this happened over a hundred years, what happened over a thousand years, or two thousand? From this, he attempts to deduce what occurred thousands of years ago. Such comprehension will always remain deficient. It would have been far better had we possessed a film recording of the creation of the world, enabling us to comprehend from the earlier to the later. And we do not even need a recording, for the Creator of the universe Himself describes for us what He did.
This is the difference between us and the scientists: they try to comprehend from the later to the earlier, which is why they have theories that they replace every other day. At first they believed the world had always existed, then they spoke of gradual development, and ultimately they concluded that there was a "Big Bang" - coming very close to what the Torah says, that the world was created in a single instant. Thank you very much to them. There are still a few things they have not yet arrived at, but if we give them time, they will eventually reach "In the beginning God created" as well. The conclusion is that when you deduce from the later to the earlier, you make many mistakes along the way; but when it is described for you from the earlier to the later, you know where everything began.
When the seer contemplates the word of Hashem, he achieves a sudden comprehension, from the earlier to the later, completely divested of physical matters, for Hashem places His spirit upon him in a manner transcending the natural order. Intellectual comprehension is not only from the later to the earlier, but also gradual: one learns another concept, advances a little further, deepens one's understanding, and gradually the matter becomes clear. We would be overjoyed if we woke up in the morning to find that someone had uploaded the entire Torah onto the "hard drive" of our brain - that is spiritual comprehension, which is not gradual, but in a single instant one knows everything. And that is the prophet.
Physical matter is limited and cannot absorb everything in a single moment; it must acquire things slowly. The spirit is not like that. What happens to a person in a dream? In a single second he perceives everything, experiencing a dream that feels like an hour or two within mere seconds. And what happens to someone who undergoes a near-death experience? He describes seeing his entire life like a movie, and sometimes even the Heavenly Court and everything he went through, all within a matter of seconds. In spiritual reality, there are no limitations of space and time; everything happens in an instant. Such is the prophet's comprehension: the Holy One, blessed be He, elevates his spirit, as it were, and in a single moment the prophet receives the message.
Therefore, the Malbim defines it: the bestowal of prophecy depends on the Divine will and His great power, which creates a new creation, transcending the grasp of an intellect bound to physical matter. The soul of the prophet departs and separates from the company of matter, becoming like one of the Separate Intellects - the term used by the early sages for angels - who have no screen or barrier preventing them from gazing upon the luminous light. A human being within a physical body cannot behold Godliness, but the prophet transcended his body and attached himself to spirituality, for the cloud and thick darkness departed, the shadows fled, as the spirit of Hashem passed over and purified them.
Thus, one cannot compare a student's grasp from his teacher to a prophet's grasp from his God at all. And even according to what the Rambam wrote in the Guide for the Perplexed, that prophecy rests according to the prophet's preparation, the Rambam did not agree with the philosopher's view that whoever is prepared by nature must inevitably receive prophecy; rather, the will of Hashem is required, and according to what Hashem wills to bestow upon him. If so, there is no place at all to critique the prophet regarding whether he wrote accurately or adhered to grammatical precision, for none of this depends on him; rather, everything was imparted to him by the hand of Hashem.
Could it be conceived that the prophet did not see well when Hashem was showing him? That he did not express himself properly when Hashem was speaking through his mouth and placing the words in his mouth? Did the Holy One, blessed be He, deliver His words deficiently? Would it occur to anyone to critique the words of the Torah and claim that incorrect or imprecise things are written in it? Do you know better than the Holy One, blessed be He? If you see something lacking, know that the deficiency is in you. The Holy One, blessed be He, is the pinnacle of perfection, and you come to correct Him? "And if it is empty - it is from you": the deficiency lies in your understanding, your perception, and your mode of critique, not in what the Holy One, blessed be He, delivered to the world, which is perfect without any flaw.
And not only the core message itself, but also the language with which the prophet delivered the prophetic mission to the people, the beauty of the poetry and rhetoric, and the specific words with which he recorded these matters in a book - the prophet did not invent them from his own wisdom and intellect. Rather, they were placed in his mouth and in his pen through the spirit of Hashem upon him. Hashem placed His words upon his tongue and told him: So shall you speak, and so shall you write with a holy pen; do not diminish and do not add. These are explicit verses: "And I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak"; "The spirit of Hashem spoke through me, and His word was on my tongue"; "He dictated all these words to me with his mouth, and I wrote them in the book with ink" - for Yirmiyahu would recite before Baruch, and Baruch was a skilled scribe, and he did not have permission to correct even a single letter. There is no room here for human conjectures or rhetorical flourishes, once the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded that it be written this way.
And if it should occur to you that there are errors in them - let us come and "correct" all the books of the Prophets, lay a hand upon them, raise critiques, emendations, and corrections wherever it seems appropriate to us according to grammar! Then the holy books would become like a breached city without a wall, where foxes that ruin vineyards would prowl, to destroy, corrupt, uproot the saplings, and swallow up the holy. One person would say that this is not written correctly here, another would find something to correct, and another would argue that the beauty of style requires replacing one word with another or achieving a rhyme. Yet the Masorah set a hedge and fence around the holy scriptures, a fortified wall all around, for all was in writing from the hand of Hashem upon him, giving understanding. How then can one say something so baseless - to weigh the wind and evaluate the stature and standing of the books of the Prophets on a human scale?
And if you observe differences in phrasing and variations in style from prophet to prophet - this was the will of Hashem Who prophesied through him, that this one be recorded in this style and that one in another style. No two prophets prophesy in the identical style, and the Holy One, blessed be He, gave one prophet this style and another prophet a different style, for the Divine emanation has boundaries, levels, and orders known to Him, and each receives according to his vessel. The Malbim concedes that it is not heresy to say that the words were formulated in accordance with the prophets' preparation and according to the will of Hashem Who prophesied through them. But to say that the text is defective, Heaven forbid, because the prophet was deficient, or that the writing is flawed because the prophet did not know how to write properly - that is impossible, for nothing defective ever emerges from Hashem, blessed is He.
And if you were to suggest that Hashem gave over the words in perfection, but the prophet, due to his deficiency, wrote them down like this - could such a thing even be contemplated? Would a prime minister ride in a sputtering car that must pull over to the side of the road every ten minutes because of smoke pouring out of it? And if you would never imagine such a thing for a prime minister, would the Holy One, blessed be He, use a defective instrument to convey His prophecies to the people? A person with a speech impediment who does not know how to speak? Does the Holy One, blessed be He, lack perfected individuals who can deliver His words accurately and fittingly?
Consider that even though Moshe Rabbeinu was heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue, not a trace of stuttering was recorded in the Torah, and no one would ever imagine that just because the Holy One, blessed be He, spoke His prophecy through Moshe's mouth, things would be recorded in the Torah in an imperfect manner. The word of Hashem always comes in absolute perfection, and when it is written in a book, it is written in perfection. If it seems to you that in one of the prophets' statements there are missing words or expressions that do not conform to rhetorical rules, you must attribute this to the limitation of your own understanding, not to the words of the living God, which are complete and pure, devoid of anything crooked or perverse.
Thus far, the Malbim has established the proper hashkafah. Now he addresses the specific arguments: "And now I will turn aside and see" the proofs of the critic, from which he deduced that our prophet was not versed in the rules of rhetoric, language, and writing. He found several instances of substitutions: el ("to") instead of al ("upon"), masculine and feminine intermingled, singular and plural, second and third person alternating without order, and concluded that this stemmed from the fact that he began to prophesy while still a youth, and a youth is not yet perfected in the nuances of language.
Let this gentleman answer: would even a youth make errors like these? And we are not speaking of the youth of our days, but of a youth living thousands of years ago in biblical times. Could it be conceived that he would confuse masculine and feminine, or interchange el with al? Even today, a youth would not say "put it to the table" when he means "on the table," nor would he say "on the tables" when referring to a single table. A youth does not get confused about such basic things. Perhaps a new immigrant might get confused, but the prophet was certainly not a new immigrant.
Furthermore: how long did he prophesy while still a youth? After all, Yirmiyahu was a prophet for forty years. Granted, he may have prophesied at first when he was young; but by the time he reached thirty, forty, and fifty, he had surely mastered the language thoroughly and was no longer a youth. And when one examines the text, one sees that the majority of Yirmiyahu's prophecies were delivered late in his life - and as we will see later, we can generally identify what was said early in his prophecy and what came toward its end. If so, this entire argument could apply at most to a small portion of the prophecies, whereas he delivered most of them when he was already elderly, seasoned, and fluent.
On the contrary, upon examination one discovers that the very "flaws" identified by Abarbanel and the critics appear specifically in his later prophecies, whereas his early prophecies, delivered when he was still a youth, are the ones that are strictly precise according to the rules of grammar and style. This completely inverts their claim: according to their approach, we should have found the flaws in the early prophecies, but in fact the early ones are meticulously crafted, while the complaints are directed at the later ones, delivered when he was no longer a youth at all. There is no greater proof than this to refute all the claims of the critics.
The Malbim raises yet another question: the author of our book authored other books as well. Yirmiyahu famously authored Megillat Eichah, and he also authored Sefer Melachim. Yet in Melachim, no one found any flaw, nor any of those supposed defects they claim to find in Sefer Yirmiyahu. How could one explain that there he suddenly learned how to speak, while here he forgot how to speak? And as we have seen, this cannot be attributed to chronology, for the supposed flaws are found precisely at the end of his career.
The Malbim concludes with a promise: in truth, these are considered flaws only according to the interpretations of those commentators. But according to the explanation I am about to show you, you will see that these anomalies vanish and fade away, leaving only a tiny fraction; and what was loathsome in the eyes of those commentators will become for us delicacies sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. On the contrary, what they perceived as a flaw - I will show you how much inwardness, beauty, splendor, and majesty it contains. You will see that the grammatical variation is neither accidental nor an error, but rather the prophet deliberately chose this precise expression and phrasing to convey a wondrous allusion.
And even the few anomalies that remain, those expressions that may still seem strange to you in the prophet's manner of speech, are not a twisted thing that cannot be made straight, if you take to heart that God has spoken and opened His lips with you, and Hashem will reveal to you the secrets of wisdom shrouded and covered in strange garments. This is so that you may penetrate their depth and recognize that wisdom has two sides, and that beyond the literal meaning, there is still more to speak on God's behalf. And it is precisely in the places that seem strangest to you that the deepest secret resides.
And such is the nature of any riddle: when things are written simply, one understands them simply and does not search beneath them for pearls. But when a riddle is presented, one says: wait, I do not understand what is written here, this must be deciphered. When the Torah writes, "And Hashem spoke to Moshe, saying," no one searches for hidden allegories. But where one says, "It is not clear to me what is written here" - that is the very place of depth; that is the riddle waiting to be unraveled. In the Malbim's words: the precious sons dressed in strange attire are themselves the delightful children who dwell within the inner chambers of the King's palace.
When the Gemara describes a bird that landed on a tree and laid an egg, and the egg shattered and drowned so many cities and towns - no one imagines that this was meant literally, that there was actually a bird whose egg drowned whole cities. Indeed, one of the Sages was once questioned by an emperor regarding the aggadot of Rabbah bar Bar Chana and similar accounts, which seemed exceedingly bizarre to him. The Sage replied: if it were written that a drop of ink from the emperor's pen drowned thousands of villages and towns, what would you understand? You would understand that the emperor issued a royal decree and signed it, and as a result, destruction was decreed upon so many villages and towns. Figuratively speaking, one says that the drop of ink drowned them.
Now, someone might come along five hundred years later, read that "a drop of the emperor's ink drowned them," and exclaim: what kind of pen is this? How can a drop of ink drown villages? These people were talking nonsense! Yet one who lived in their era and understands the idiom and metaphor knows that with a single stroke of a signature, ruin was brought upon thousands of villages and towns. It is an allegory, a parable that must be understood accordingly. So too here: whenever you see something that appears strange on the surface, dig beneath and you will find pearls; dig inward and you will discover immense depth.
This is an essential principle articulated by the Malbim in his work *HaTorah VeHaMitzvah*, where he laid down the rules of biblical language: anything departing from standard grammatical rules and the foundations of rhetoric is a hidden vault and a rich treasury of precious pearls handed down by word of mouth, dwelling in the secrecy of the tent, and "the search of their glory is glory." Searching their glory brings honor to Hashem, as one uncovers the hidden depths of the Torah, and matters that initially seemed incomprehensible through ordinary understanding are suddenly revealed in all their profundity and inner meaning.
The sage [Abarbanel] further objected that our book contains twice as many instances of *Keri* and *Ketiv* as other books, and sought to deduce from this that the prophet was unversed in writing: he wrote one expression when he ought to have written another, and therefore what he wrote was classified as the *Ketiv* [what is written], while the grammatically more precise expression was recorded in the margin as the *Keri* [what is read] - as though someone came along, proofread the book, and corrected its flawed expressions. But according to the principle we have explained, everything written was written in absolute perfection. If it appears to you that a passage lacks words or does not conform to the rules of rhetoric, attribute this to a deficiency in your own understanding, and not to the words of the living God.
The Abarbanel identified three engraved faculties in the human soul: the power of intellectual comprehension, the power of speech, and the power of writing, evaluating Yirmiyahu favorably regarding the first, but critically regarding the latter two. The Malbim accepts the praise and utterly rejects the criticism. First, from a hashkafic standpoint: divine prophetic flow cannot be compared to a student's comprehension from a teacher, for a prophet's apprehension is sudden and spiritual, moving from cause to effect, and both the spoken language and the written text were placed into his mouth and pen by the spirit of Hashem. Second, from the textual evidence: a youth does not make such errors, most of his prophecies were delivered in his old age, the alleged "defects" appear specifically in his later prophecies, and in Sefer Melachim, which he also authored, no flaw was ever found. Above all, anything that departs from conventional rules of language is not a defect but a treasure, serving as a sign that an inner allusion lies hidden there. From here onward, having set forth the chronological background, we will proceed to study the book in order according to the commentary of the Malbim.