[War & Business] The Weeping Prophet

French painter James Tissot's painting "The Flight of the Prisoners." It depicts the scene of Jewish people being taken captive after the fall of Jerusalem due to the Babylonian invasion in 586 BC.
[Image source=New York Jewish Museum website]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] The Book of Jeremiah, which depicts the fall of the Kingdom of Judah, the last nation-state of the ancient Israelite people in the Old Testament, is famous as a historical record that vividly shows how complex the Middle Eastern situation was over 2,600 years ago. The protagonist, the prophet Jeremiah, is called the "weeping prophet" because he shed tears every time he prayed, praying for the survival of his people, but in the history of the Kingdom of Judah in the 6th century BCE, he was actually branded as a traitor to his country.

The reason Jeremiah was called a traitor was that he always preached that they must never fight Babylon and that submission to them was the will of the Lord. In fact, historically, he was driven out as a traitor and rebel, imprisoned several times, and tortured. At that time, the Kingdom of Judah was controlled by hardliners who were hostile to Babylon, a multi-ethnic empire. They feared that Babylon’s open culture would erode Israel’s traditional culture and completely eradicate Judaism and national identity.

The Kingdom of Judah deceived its people by claiming that the Israelite people, chosen by the Lord, could never be destroyed by any powerful enemy, but Judah’s fate was already in the hands of the two great powers of the time, Babylon and Egypt. The reason Babylon had not directly invaded Judah until then was not divine protection but to avoid a full-scale war with Egypt, which was backing Judah.

Jeremiah’s clear reason for advocating submission to Babylon was that although Egypt was geographically closer and a powerful nation, its national strength was already waning compared to Babylon. Babylon had conquered all the major central regions of the Middle East and was overwhelming other countries not only militarily but also culturally and politically.

However, the Kingdom of Judah continued to insist on resistance against Babylon, and Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, followed the majority of hardliners and declared war on Babylon. Babylon, prepared for a full-scale war with Egypt, attacked Jerusalem with hundreds of thousands of troops, and Egypt, overwhelmed, gave up intervention, resulting in the complete destruction of Jerusalem.

Today, 2,600 years later, the Israeli government’s announcement of normalizing diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a leading Arab League country and a main adversary in Middle Eastern wars, has angered Israeli conservatives. Jewish fundamentalists still insist that the only way to survive is to fully annex the West Bank and fight and defeat all Arab peoples. Those who read the Book of Jeremiah daily are deliberately ignoring its historical lessons.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.