Hitchhiker’s Guide to Babylon (6)
“Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.” Jeremiah 29:5-7 NASB
Seek – The complete upside-down command. The absolute opposite of what you would expect. The total reversal of common sense and human intuition. But here it is. Seek the welfare of your captors! How can this be? How can God expect any of us who are true to Him to actively promote the benefit of those who oppose Him? This will take some serious investigation.
Back to Exodus. Actually, back even further—to Joseph and Pharaoh. What was Joseph’s relationship with Pharaoh? Joseph was a slave elevated to the second most important person in the kingdom because he was 1) patient, 2) obedient, 3) trustworthy, 4) benevolent, 5) truthful and 6) clearly used by God. Joseph did not complain about his unjust captivity (Israel deserved captivity). Joseph waited for God to act (Israel had a history of operating outside of God’s plan). Joseph showed remarkable personal integrity despite isolation (Israel never maintained its monogamous relationship with God even when He consistently demonstrated His compassion and love). Now Israel is back in Egypt. Well, almost. Babylon was not Egypt. Even though Israel was captive, the people had protection and certain liberties. God was at work in Nebuchadnezzar’s heart. Imagine what life would have been like if Babylon’s attitude toward Israel was the same as the second Pharaoh. God was still involved with His people even in their displacement. But now He gives them a set of guidelines that will insure a positive relationship between captors and captives. God sets up Israel to become the next Joseph.
Pretend for a moment that you are a powerful Babylonian master. You have many, many slaves. Which ones do you listen to? The ones who constantly demonstrate attempts to flee your ownership or the ones who faithfully act for your prosperity? The answer is obvious. If God wants these captives to have a voice with the people around them, they will have to act in ways so that the people around them consider them friends, not slaves. They will have to seek the welfare of their captors before their captors will be open to the welfare of the slaves.
There is an important distinction in the Hebrew verb used in God’s instruction here. Darash and baqash can both be translated “seek,” but they have different objects. While darash is about seeking cognitive understanding, baqash describes moral pursuit.[1] In this verse, God uses darash. Why? Because He is not suggesting that Israel seek moral alignment with Babylon. He does not want assimilation. He wants Israel to understand why Babylon is Babylon in order that Israel can point the way to a different paradigm, namely, fellowship with the Hebrew God.
That’s where we are, isn’t it? We need to employ darash in order to have anything valuable to say to those who do not share our paradigm. If we don’t know how they think and feel, why would they listen to us? But this is not baqash. We don’t jeopardize our own moral seeking in the process. We remain true to the God of Israel and His calling even when we act in ways that promote the welfare of the captors.
And, by the way, it should be obvious that “welfare” is shalom. We don’t just seek (darash) their prosperity. We seek their well-being. That, of course, means that we gently move them toward the real source of shalom. Did you notice that God’s promise in this verse is relevant. “. . . for in its welfare you will have welfare.” You want shalom in captivity? Great. Go about bringing shalom to your captors and you will find it.
Topical Index: seek, darash, baqash, shalom, Jeremiah 29:5-7
[1] More about this distinction can be found here: https://skipmoen.com/2016/11/seek-and-find/
I think we modern humans are used to living in a world where everything is relative; where even the notion of understanding others has to do with where they are at relative to us – in other words, the very epitome of synthesis. In synthesis (as it appears that the world sees it, anyway) the dialectic – where something is torn from its original roots and set in opposition to its torn other half, – seeks to arrive at a compromise based upon what the two sides have in common; in other words, the lowest common denominator. And, truly, this is the best the world can do. People, who are in opposition to each other in the flesh live in an artificial, manufactured peace derived from the lowest things they share; mostly things like a mutual desire to get ‘ahead’, don’t rock the boat, I do my thing and you do yours, etc.
In a true understanding of the other, however, I have suspected that there must be an absolute standard that both parties must be measured against. This is NOT relativity, even though that absolute standard may delineate common interests and characteristics both sides share. What makes us human lies in a standard of humanness that comes from beyond us. The ancient Greeks seemed to appreciate this fact when they observed that we must ascribe to this other ideal to be who we are. They conceived of it as the ideal form of the human, which we should conform our actions toward becoming. This notion would be hard to find in today’s relativistic world, I bet. I mean, how many people still dream of being the ideal perfection of a human? They just want what they want. But isn’t this degeneracy because, post Enlightenment, people realized that the ideal a: does not really exist in a form that people can attain, and b: that people don’t want to go to such extreme effort? In other words, we live in disillusionment. Now we don’t want anything from beyond the self. Period. But I think that the dialectic succeeded brilliantly here because we were persuaded to toss BOTH moral standards out and settle for the dregs that were left. I can see that, in throwing out the ideal form, we succeeded in throwing out the moral standard baby with the ideal form bathwater. Now, we don’t want to hear about either, but in doing so, we are left with no true way to get along with others. Problem.
Israel, like us, fell for the temptation to want what their neighbors wanted, but what people want is to duck the standard. Without that standard, there is no way to truly underSTAND each other, however. The command to come to a true understanding with the other forces us back to the only Standard of humans there is; Torah. To truly treat others and sympathize with them requires Torah. People the world over, even if they have no access to the application of Torah because they have no access to its Author, are still not immune to love. This is our strength in the world. To get along with lost people is guaranteed to reteach us how to apply love. Solution.
It’s one thing to know your a slave in other countries, I have heard believers cry out to YhWh that understand exile. It’s a tough go when you live in a country where you are a very happy slave and feel the things of Yah are irrelevant . We do not cry out like we should. Apathy is are worse curse. Obedience is a word we throw around but do we truly understand what that means. May we learn from our brothers and sisters who have so little but love so much and truly know what it is to obey I stand in awe of so great a faith.
I never saw this before, but it appears that what Jeremiah was saying about seeking the welfare of pagan neighbors is repeated in the New Testament by Messiah himself. That little command, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” is not some foreign or “New” concept/covenant introduced by a torah-abolishing Messiah. [Isn’t it interesting that those who seek to abolish the Torah seek to establish a new torah as taught by Messiah? In the legal world, we term this type of faulty reasoning “approbation and reprobation,” i.e. using both sides of the same coin to win the coin toss.] But do we even practice this inside the new covenant community? How many Christians do we know who use the New Testament to bash their theological opponents? How many believers promote and parade their form of righteousness or theology over another believer’s inferior form? Has the world changed in 2000 years? In 2600 years? Is Jeremiah’s command not as relevant for us today as it was when he penned those words? If we cannot seek the welfare of those within the ekklesia with respect, how can we ever expect to treat those outside differently?