Sefer Yirmiyahu, chapter 29. "And these are the words of the letter that Yirmiyahu the prophet sent from Yerushalayim to the remaining elders of the exile, and to the Kohanim, and to the prophets, and to all the people whom Nevuchadnetzar had exiled from Yerushalayim to Bavel."
Yirmiyahu sends a "sefer," meaning a letter, and letters were sent by the hand of runners. What does "sefarim" mean? Letters. Yirmiyahu sends a letter to the elders in the exile who are in Bavel, to the Kohanim, to the prophets, to all the people whom Nevuchadnetzar had exiled to Bavel. The exile is not yet complete, Tzidkiyahu is still here. We saw that a large part of the people is still in Yerushalayim, but the more distinguished portion had already been exiled. This was after Yechonyah the king and the queen mother and the officers, the ministers of Yehudah and Yerushalayim, and the craftsmen and the smiths had gone out from Yerushalayim. The finest and choicest of the city had already gone out.
"By the hand of Elasah son of Shafan and Gemaryah son of Chilkiyah, whom Tzidkiyahu king of Yehudah sent to Nevuchadnetzar king of Bavel, to Bavel, saying." By whose hand did Yirmiyahu send the letter? By the hand of Elasah son of Shafan and Gemaryah son of Chilkiyah, whom Tzidkiyahu king of Yehudah sent to Nevuchadnetzar king of Bavel, to Bavel, saying. In this letter the words that are stated below were written, saying.
"Thus said Hashem Tzevakot, the God of Yisrael, to all the exile that I exiled from Yerushalayim to Bavel." A command from Hashem. "Build houses and dwell, and plant gardens and eat their fruit." Build houses and dwell in them, and plant gardens, plant gardens and eat their fruit. Why? Because you are not going to leave Bavel in the near future. Do you hear what kind of prophecy this is?
Not only that. "Take wives and beget sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to men, that they may bear sons and daughters, and multiply there and do not diminish." He tells them, he tells them take wives and beget sons and daughters, take wives for your sons and give your daughters to men. Many people thought the exile was temporary, any moment now we are returning. We will see later that they even had false prophets there in Bavel. And therefore they said no, I will not marry now, I will set Yerushalayim above my highest joy, I will marry in Yerushalayim. We will not marry off our children here, we will marry them off in Yerushalayim when we return. Not here, this is temporary now, we are here in exile, this is not for this time. We will do it when we reach Eretz Yisrael, then we will marry. He tells them do not err, know that even your sons and daughters will also take wives in the exile, and you will multiply there, and they will bear sons and daughters, they will still have time to bear sons and daughters and will still be in exile. So do not refrain from being fruitful and multiplying because of some mistaken thought that, look, we are returning. You are not returning in the near future.
And not only this, even if you send them to marry in Eretz Yisrael, know that their end will be like the end of those in the Land. And what will be the end of those in the Land? They are destined to be exiled, as the prophet Yirmiyahu keeps informing them. Those here are destined to be exiled, only if they do not rebel will they remain. If they rebel they are destined to be exiled. So they too will have the pestilence and the famine and the exile and the death. Do not make such a mistake. Wherever you are, establish yourselves there, because the exile is still long.
"And seek the peace of the city where I have exiled you, and pray for it to Hashem, for in its peace you shall have peace." He tells them seek the peace of the city where I have exiled you. Chazal say, "Pray for the welfare of the kingdom, for were it not for the fear of it, a man would swallow his fellow alive." That is to say, everywhere there must be a king, even if this king is not a righteous king, but in any case the very fact that he holds the kingship with an iron hand prevents many troubles. Look at what happened in Iraq once they toppled Saddam. Every day cars explode there, factions, internal wars, murders, every day, every week dozens of people are killed. They long for the era of Saddam Hussein. He was a tyrannical, cruel king, but there was quiet. Were it not for the fear of the kingdom, a man would swallow his fellow alive. Anarchy is worse than anything. A kingdom is preferable, whatever kingdom it may be, the main thing is that there be no anarchy. Therefore he tells them, seek the peace of the kingdom, meaning the peace of the city, for in its peace you shall have peace. As long as you are there, when there is no war, you are saved. If there is a war then there are no clever tricks, you are part of the city. Therefore pray for the peace of the kingdom, and through their having abundance, that abundance, says the Malbim, will affect you as well.
"For thus said Hashem Tzevakot, the God of Yisrael: Let not your prophets who are among you deceive you, nor your diviners, and do not listen to your dreams that you dream." Thus said Hashem Tzevakot, the God of Yisrael. Let not your prophets deceive you. Where have we seen the term "hasha'ah"? "The serpent deceived me and I ate." What is "hishiani"? He incited me, he enticed me. Let not your prophets deceive you, meaning do not let your prophets, that is, the false prophets, incite you and entice you, and also your diviners, those who perform various sorts of magic supposedly to confirm their words, and do not listen to your dreams that you dream. What is the meaning of "your dreams that you dream"? The meaning, explains the Radak, is that you cause the prophets, in quotation marks, to dream dreams. Why? Because you listen to their dreams, and this then encourages them to dream all kinds of dreams so as to come and tell the dreams in order that you will be influenced by them. So you dream, you as it were cause them to dream. There is another explanation: "you dream" means asking a dream question. A dream question means, through a person asking, he is answered from Heaven. This is called dreams that you dream, meaning you cause the dream. They ask a question and receive an answer from Heaven. In my book on the study of dreams I bring several ways they had in their times for how they would perform dream questions and receive answers to them, and also various examples of dream questions they would ask in the past and answers they would receive. So it turns out, then, that you bring about the dreams through the dream question you ask. Or another explanation, says the Malbim, you bring about the dreams by dwelling on the matter throughout the day, as the Gemara brings, "He dwelt on this all day, and at night he saw it." Most of a person's dreams stem from what? From the thoughts of his heart. So you dwell on it all day and in the end you dream. So it turns out, as it were, that these are induced dreams. You as it were cause yourselves to dream the matter. And therefore do not listen and do not heed your dreams that you dream, that you cause to be dreamed.
"For it is in falsehood that they prophesy to you in My name; I did not send them, says Hashem." What they say in My name is falsehood. I did not send them, says Hashem. "For thus said Hashem: When seventy years are completed for Bavel, I will remember you, and I will fulfill for you My good word, to return you to this place." Do not listen to the prophets who tell you that they will return immediately and any moment now the exile of Yechonyah will be restored and any moment now the king of Bavel will return you to Eretz Yisrael. Do not listen to them, this is a false prophecy, I did not send them, says Hashem. And know, the exile is still long. I will give you a target date, and it is the exact one. When seventy years are completed for Bavel, I will remember you. When a time comes that seventy years will pass from the day Nevuchadnetzar reigned, until the time of Koresh, when the kingdom of Bavel was abolished, then I will remember you. What is "I will remember you"? That Koresh will awaken, the people will then be roused to the redemption. But the enemies of Yehudah and Binyamin will come and cause them troubles, and following this Koresh will cancel the initial approval he gave for building the Beit HaMikdash, and another 19 or 18 years will pass, and then exactly 70 years will be completed from the destruction of Yerushalayim, and then the redemption will come. And so it truly was. After the 19 years came the era of Daryavesh, and who was Daryavesh? The son of Esther, and then he renewed the permit to go and build the Beit HaMikdash, this was 18 years afterward. And so it turns out that exactly 70 years were completed from the destruction of Yerushalayim. So the entire delay by the enemies of Yehudah was intended so that exactly this would be fulfilled.
"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says Hashem, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says Hashem. The meaning is, He tells them, know that all My thoughts that I think about you are thoughts of peace. That is to say, what I tell you, that you will be 70 years in exile, is not for your harm, but on the contrary. What does the Torah say? "Then their uncircumcised heart will be humbled." Exile has a purifying element. I did not exile you for no reason, it is not a punishment, it is not revenge. He tells them these are thoughts of peace, and therefore I will extend it 70 years for you so that afterward you will have hope that in the end you will return here to the Land. But if I were to leave you here, would that be good for you? What does the Gemara say? How long did the Holy One, blessed be He, tell them until they would be exiled from the Land? How long did Moshe tell them would pass until they would be exiled from the Land? "When you beget children and grandchildren and you grow old (venoshantem)." How much is "venoshantem"? 852. Incidentally, the Gemara says, "and you will quickly perish from the good Land." Within how much time did they perish? How much? From when they entered the Land? 850 years. The Holy One, blessed be He, advanced the end by two years. Rava said, from here you learn that the "quickly" of the Holy One, blessed be He, is 850 years. Do you hear? So if a person says, Master of the world, that the Holy One, blessed be He, should destroy Nasrallah quickly. The Creator of the world says no problem, within 850 years the matter is settled. Do you understand? A person has no patience. Now, quickly. The Holy One, blessed be He, says My "quickly" is 850 years. So if Hashem says I have time, that means He can take 2,000 and 3,000 years. But what is our trouble? That we are impatient. We need it now, this very moment. That is the trouble of a person. But the Holy One, blessed be He, says when I do something quickly it is 850 years. So what is "quickly"? It means still on the same day. "For a thousand years in Your eyes are like yesterday when it passes." A thousand years is a day. So then when Hashem does it quickly it is still the same day that He completed the matter. That is called quickly. In any case, what do you see from here? 852 years, "and you grow old in the Land," then Hashem says that you will perish. What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He advanced the end by two years so that we would not reach the count of "venoshantem," and through this we did not perish. Had we reached 852, God forbid, the end of the verse would have been fulfilled in us, that we would perish. Hashem advanced it. What do you see? That sometimes advancing the exile is for our benefit. A person will say, ah, exile, another two years in the Land, we would have accepted that. They tell you no, if you had stayed another two years it would have been a greater trouble. Be glad that you were exiled earlier. On the contrary, sometimes what seems like exile is for the good. And this is what He says, I think toward you thoughts of peace, because I want that in the end when you return here you will endure. But if I return you before the time, before you draw conclusions, before you accept upon yourselves to correct and improve your ways, before your uncircumcised heart is humbled, then afterward there would be a harsher exile. Why is that? How is that good? Therefore, on the contrary, it is good for you to remain longer in exile. 70 years is a considerable time, during this time take wives, beget children, marry off your sons, build yourselves houses, plant vineyards, you still have enough time in exile.
The Malbim says, what is the meaning of "to give you a future and a hope"? What is meant by "a future and a hope"? The Malbim says, "acharit" (the end/future) always denotes the final happiness and the ultimate purpose. The wicked have a beginning. The righteous have an end. Why? The wicked succeed in this world, but in the end their future is lost. Right? As there is a verse in Mishlei, "there shall be no future for the evil one," "for behold, the future of nations is a wasteland." In contrast, the righteous, where is their success? At the end. "To do good for you in your end." "And there is hope for your future, and the children shall return to their border." Right? Always the success of the righteous is in the end. As they say, all's well that ends well. In contrast, regarding the wicked, what is written about them? "They will flourish like grass." What is grass? It grows fast. A little water drips on you from the air conditioner, within two days you see such a big patch of weeds. A little sun, everything dies. The water runs out, just as it rose so it fell. Like Yonah's kikayon plant. In contrast the righteous, "a righteous man will flourish like a date palm." Until you see dates from the palm, you sweat a great deal. Ah, but once it has already grown, it endures. It endures, it remains for generations. This is what it is telling you, the wicked have a beginning, they have no future. And this too, whoever wants to reflect, this is a point worth paying attention to. Whoever looks at the secular world can see exactly this definition. Let us look, the secular world supposedly appears to us as those who have a good time. The pleasures, the desires, the, let us say, unbridled ones, this supposedly is found there. One cannot argue about the fact that the desires of the world are supposedly open before them. But let us see what the period of the good time is. If we want to make a calculation, it is roughly from age 15 to age 30, 35 at most. You reach age 35...
...you enjoyed, you had a good time. Suddenly you find yourself without a wife, without children, without a family, you are essentially a lonely person. You are a lonely person. Same with a woman. She enjoyed the parties and the good times, but suddenly she reaches age 32, 33, she begins to feel the biological clock ticking. And suddenly she looks in the mirror and she sees that this is not the same one who gazed out at her there 10 years ago. And with women the aging is also faster. And then suddenly they start to feel pressured. But where are the good times and parties and the sea and... this window of opportunity is very short. The pleasure is very short. In contrast, when one begins to mature, a person already reaches age 40, he is already wrinkled, he now begins to look for how to start building a home, now begins to bring children into the world. When your child is 15 you will be 55. You are already old, you are already tired of raising children. Meanwhile your mitzvah-observant neighbor, you can say he had one wife, yes, he did not have a good time, in quotation marks. But when you reach age 35, his child has already had a bar mitzvah, and he already has five and six and seven children, and he has an orderly home, he has somewhere to return to. And afterward when you are already 40, 45, he is already marrying off his children, and afterward he is already a grandfather. While you are still a lonely person, looking for the good times, for the pleasures of life. That is to say, the window of life's pleasures is short. There is no hope for your future. When you are already 50, he already has grandchildren around him, he is already a grandfather, he has a large family. And you, what? Still looking for someone else who will look at you. So these people are actually pitiful. And even if he marries, at what age will he marry? And even if he marries, his eyes are always wandering outward, so does he enjoy what he has? Is he content with what he has? After all, he was always accustomed to looking outside. So the period of the good time is a short period. Afterward the person's end is pitiful. It is simply pitiful. You see people, even those who have children, when he did not raise them according to the Torah, so he has one son in Los Angeles, he has a daughter here, and he tells you that when I call him I feel the child is looking for how to end the conversation. All the more so, who even thinks about him. If he is not feeling well, ah, suddenly everyone shows up. Why? Any moment there is an inheritance. Who seeks him out? Who really cares about him? How many people do you really know who are far from mitzvot where the children truly appreciate their parents and are attached to them and care about them and call them and worry about them? Not that there are none, but it is not the majority. It is not the majority. When a person raises children toward disdain, when a person raises children without values, then this is usually the reality. The reality, I am not talking about the previous generation. The previous generation had respect for parents even if he was far from mitzvot. I am talking about today's generation. Where he does not care about his father, does not care about his mother, just let them not disturb him, and how they can bring him money. He looks at them as an ATM. It is about these that I speak. So this person as it were enjoys, has a good time in life, but it is a short period. Afterward everything dissipates. This is what the Malbim is telling you. The righteous succeed in the end. You say, listen, now I am having a good time, he is now stuck in yeshiva. True, you are right. At the beginning it is toil. At the beginning it is an investment, but later we will see about you. Later we will see about you. You sit across from a person on some bench, counting buses. And that person will "still bear fruit in old age, they will be full of sap and fresh," he reaches the study hall, sits, engages in Torah, he has pleasure, he has a family, he has children, he has grandchildren, he already has great-grandchildren. And that person is still, still counting buses. It all depends on what a person invests. If a person invested in the beginning, he will have an end. But whoever thinks of the beginning as just having a good time, then there is no hope for his future.
Let us proceed. Verse 12. "And you shall call Me, and you shall go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you." The Holy One, blessed be He, says, when you call Me, meaning you repent, then the Holy One, blessed be He, says you shall pray to Me and I will listen to you. Then I will listen to you and return you and redeem you. The meaning is, do not think that you require the Beit HaMikdash. Even if you have no Beit HaMikdash, even if you are in exile, your prayer will still be heard. And this is actually a condition for the redemption. What is the condition? "And you shall call Me, and you shall go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you." Their uncircumcised heart must be humbled. How will their uncircumcised heart be humbled? "And you shall call Me." As long as you were here, you would bow eastward toward the sun with your backs to the Sanctuary of Hashem. Terrible and dreadful, they would expose themselves toward the Beit HaMikdash, may the Merciful One save us. You despised Hashem your God. But then when you are in exile and you call Me, this itself will be a reason for the redemption.
"And you shall seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart." And then when you seek Me, what is "and you shall seek"? "And you shall seek," say Chazal, is like a person seeking a lost object. "And find Me." Like a person seeking a lost object and finding a treasure. So the Holy One, blessed be He, says, I will return to you. "When you search for Me with all your heart." The condition will be that the searching and seeking be with all your heart.
"And I will be found by you, says Hashem, and I will restore your captivity and gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says Hashem, and I will return you to the place from which I exiled you." And then the Holy One, blessed be He, tells them, I will fulfill your request, I will restore your captivity, meaning I will bring you back to Eretz Yisrael, I will perform an ingathering of the exiles, and you will be able to merit to pray here, where? In the Beit HaMikdash. You will be able to come here, "and I will return you to the place from which I exiled you." The Malbim explains, and the Malbim has a principle that we will also see, with Hashem's help, in Sefer Daniel and also in Sefer Ezra, and in Sefer Nechemyah he also repeats this principle. The Malbim says that the redemption that occurred in the era of Ezra and Nechemyah was an initial redemption. It was not a complete redemption. It was an initial redemption. Who knows how many went up from Bavel? 42,000. This initial redemption was a kind of preparation for the final redemption. If the people of Yisrael there in the initial redemption had prayed to Hashem and repented with complete repentance, it being a kind of trial period, and done the will of Hashem, then the people of Yisrael would have merited the final redemption, the absolute redemption. That is to say, even when they speak to us of 70 years, that after 70 years the exile will end, they are not speaking here, says the Malbim, about the final redemption. They are speaking here about the initial redemption that would first and foremost return you to the Land. And here, when you are here and the Beit HaMikdash is built for you and you pray to Hashem, you would be worthy, you would receive the final and absolute redemption. This is essentially what was told to them in the prophecy. So He tells them, here I will return you and I will gather you from all the places where I have driven you, says Hashem, and I will return you to the place from which I exiled you. The meaning is, afterward, in the end, I will perform an ingathering of the exiles and return everyone back to the Land. This would be in the second stage of the redemption, not the first stage. In the first stage not everyone returned. The redemption was not complete. But to our sorrow we did not reach the second stage. Because in the first stage we failed. The Beit HaMikdash was built, it stood for 420 years, but during those 420 years they acted wickedly. During those 420 years there was baseless hatred among them. During those 420 years they were deserving of a further exile. Not only were they not worthy of the complete redemption, but they were even deserving of the fact that they themselves were no longer entitled to the Beit HaMikdash, and the Second Temple was destroyed as well. So essentially the original plan to bring the complete redemption in the wake of the partial redemption, this plan did not come to fruition.
"Because you said: Hashem has raised up prophets for us in Bavel." He tells them, what I am telling you, that in 70 years I will remember you, know that this is the truth. But when I tell them these things, what do they actually claim to me? Hashem has raised up prophets for us in Bavel. Here Hashem has raised up prophets for us in Bavel, and what do these prophets prophesy? Any moment now we are returning. What do you mean 70 years? Within two years Hashem will break the yoke of the king of Bavel, the yoke of the king of Bavel, He will return the vessels, He will return the people. You say, ah, we already have prophets in Bavel. And in fact the prophecy of these prophets is much more attractive. You tell us sit for 70 years, settle in the Land, beget children, take wives. The other prophets come and tell them much more pleasant things. And we said that this was one of the greatest troubles of the prophets of Hashem, that their words were not popular. They were not popular. They always spoke of bad things, difficult things that were destined to happen. We said, to say something good, what is the point? What need is there to prophesy a good prophecy? Ah, let the good come, when the good comes we will see it. But to say something bad, that is necessary, so that you can prevent the coming of the evil by doing good deeds, by repenting. So the prophets were never popular. They stoned them, they punished them, they persecuted them, "I gave my back to those who smote, and my cheeks to those who plucked, I did not hide my face from disgrace and spittle." They disgraced them, they put Yirmiyahu in the courtyard of the prison, they almost drowned him in the mud. They suffered many troubles, many troubles, they were persecuted. Persecuted by the people. Those false prophets, they were the media, right? They always said only good things, only pleasant things. How wonderful this nation is, what nice youth we have, the candle youth, the town-square youth, how high-quality they are, how good they are. Ah, but they do not pass the tests? Let us lower the bar. Ah, but the readings are not appropriate? It is not covered. Ah, but this... no, one must not see only the bad, one must also look at the positive. And in short, everything is wonderful, everything is good, everything is excellent. This is what people love to hear. Start speaking about things that are not good, about the situation deteriorating, the spiritual situation in a harsh decline, do not say bad things, do not say bad things. Who does not remember poor Rav Peretz, when he spoke about matters of Shabbat, Shabbat desecration, when he spoke about the Russians, that 80% of them are gentiles, now they said 90%. He spoke about the fact that 80% of them are gentiles, what an uproar they raised against him. No one likes to hear bad things. So you come and say, here we have prophets who prophesy good prophecies for us, saying that any moment now we are about to return.