Jeremiah;- Dreams and burdens (ch23)

Jeremiah has assembled a collection of messages about false prophets, following on from a collection of messages about the kings. In the second half of ch23, he presents two long messages based upon two words.

Dreams vv23-32

The normal assumption in modern times is that dreams come from the subconscious mind. Yet God has been known to speak to people in dreams, according to the Bible. There is room for both explanations, for different dreams, and perhaps they overlap. I’m coming to the conclusion that God speaks to the unconscious minds of people even more frequently than he speaks to their conscious minds. That’s how he prompted the high priest to speak about “one man dying for the people”, and gave Cyrus the idea of trying to conquer Babylon, and nagged Paul about surrendering to Christ (causing him to “kick against the pricks”) even before the event on the Damascus road. Which makes it very plausible, to my mind, that God may speak in the dreams that come out of the unconscious mind.

However, prophecy based upon dreams should be treated with caution.

One reason is that the dream may not be correctly interpreted. This problem is illustrated in the second chapter of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar called his “wise men” together to explain a disturbing dream, but since the dream itself had gone from his memory, he wanted them first to tell him what had happened. There was more sense in this demand than you might think. As they rightly say, only the god who sent the dream knows what the dream contained. But by the same token, only the god who sent the dream knows what it really means. If they know the god who sent the dream, they can supply both kinds of information. If they can’t give an account of the dream, then they can’t give a true interpretation either.

Another problem is illustrated by the existence of the “Dreams and prophecies” subforum on this site. People can get over-enthusiastic about looking for prophetic meaning in the normal confusion of “subconscious” dreams. If thinking about conspiracies is part of your waking life, they.re going to get into your dreams as well. In all my life, my dreams have contained no more than one sentence that I was able to understand as a message from God. “You can do something before you go”, if you must know..

One more reason for caution is illustrated by the W.W. Jacobs story “The Dreamer”. The title character, a ship’s cook, got into the habit of inventing prophetic dreams about his shipmates. He “dreamed” that Bill Foster fell off the foretop and broke his leg. A couple of days later, Bill fell off the foretop and broke his leg. As he was being carried off the deck, he struck out at the cook’s head; “’That’s for dreaming about me!’, he ses.”

It seems that the professional prophets of Jeremiah’s time were relying on dreams as the source of their prophecies, and this massage is a long rebuke about the practice.

The Lord begins by pointing out that he is keeping a very close eye on what they do. He is a God “at hand”, not a God “afar off”, so they can’t hide themselves from him. He has heard all the words of these prophets, and he knows that they are prophesying lies, out of the deceits of their own hearts. Specifically, they “think to make my people forget my name through their dreams” A prophet telling a dream, and a man who has the word of the Lord speaking the word faithfully, are two different things, as different as straw and nourishing wheat. His true word at this time would be like fire, like a hammer breaking a rock. Not the soothing encouragement which these men are giving.

He is against them because they “steal my words from one another”. That is, their substitutions prevent his word from being heard. “Bad money drives out good” (Gresham’s Law). He is against them because they attach “Thus says the Lord” to the inventions of their own tongues. And because they are leading people astray in their reckless teaching.

My guess is that they are reporting dreams promising that God will keep them safe and there will be no judgement on the land. Perhaps also that there is no need to repent, and no harm in offering sacrifice to other deities, just to be on the safe side.

.Burdens vv33-40

“Burden” must have been the current buzzword for a prophetic message, more particularly for a prophetic message not yet delivered.

Cliche talk has a way of getting irritating, especially when used so glibly that the real meaning is almost lost, and pretending to be interested in the Lord’s word could become a meaningless convention. Ezekiel’s people often asked him about his prophetic message, but they did not really care. They were driven partly by curiosity, but they were getting entertainment out of him rather than instruction. They would call to each other “Come and hear what the word of the Lord is”, and they would sit in front of him in expectation, but “You are to them like one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they will hear what you say but they will not do it” (Ezekiel ch33 vv30-32).

So the next time a prophet or a priest or anybody else asks Jeremiah “What is the burden of the Lord”, he is allowed to respond with brutal word-play; “YOU are the burden!” In fact that expression is now banned, and the Lord will punish anyone who uses it. Instead, they are to ask questions like “What has the Lord spoken?” or “What has the Lord answered?”, which would force them to think about what was happening in the experience of prophecy.

The objection is that the professional prophets are using the word “burden” for the messages they were inventing out of their own minds., and thus perverting the words of the Living God. The rest of the passage is something of a rant repeating these points. The continued use of the word “burden” will be one of the reasons why God will cast the city away from his presence. In short, he doesn’t like it.

P.S. I’m aware that Christians have resumed saying that they “have a burden”, e.g.. in the context of prayer. So it’s worth acknowledging that the objection to the word “burden” is localised, brought out by a particular set of circumstances. There is no need to be legalistic about this. Christians who use the word now are not in trouble.

face palm