What Isaiah and Jeremiah Still Teach Israel

Every nation believes that its greatest danger lies beyond its borders.

For Israel, that belief is hardly surprising. Since its birth, the Jewish state has confronted wars, terrorism, regional hostility, and repeated challenges to its very existence. Today, public attention is fixed on Iran—its nuclear ambitions, its proxies, and the uncertain consequences of diplomacy or military confrontation. Few responsibilities weigh more heavily upon an Israeli government than preventing a hostile regime from acquiring the capacity to threaten the country’s existence.

Yet this preoccupation with external danger raises a question that is older than the State of Israel itself.

When the Hebrew prophets confronted threats no less formidable than those Israel faces today, why did they spend so little time discussing the enemy?

Isaiah lived under the shadow of Assyria, the greatest military power of its age. Jeremiah witnessed the rise of Babylon and the destruction of Jerusalem. Both understood the realities of war, diplomacy, and political power. Neither underestimated the dangers confronting a small nation surrounded by ambitious empires.

Yet neither begins there.

Isaiah opens his prophecy not with Assyria but with Judah. The nation itself stands accused. Worship continues, sacrifices are offered, religious festivals are observed, yet the prophet dismisses them as empty because they have become detached from justice. “Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” The crisis confronting Judah is therefore deeper than military vulnerability. It is the gradual erosion of the moral order upon which the nation’s life depends.

Jeremiah presses the point still further.

Standing at the gates of the Temple, he addresses people who believe they possess an absolute guarantee of national security. “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,” they proclaim, convinced that the existence of the Temple ensures Jerusalem’s survival.

Jeremiah’s response is both startling and profoundly political.

The Temple cannot preserve a nation that has ceased to preserve justice.

The prophet does not reject the Temple. He rejects the illusion that institutions, however sacred, can compensate for the ethical failures of the society they are meant to serve.

Later, Jeremiah turns to the kings of Judah. Remarkably, he does not evaluate them by military success, diplomatic skill, or........

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