The prophet Yermiyahu’s (Jeremiah’s) messages oscillate between despair and hope. In this week’s haftarah, he stands unmistakably as the harbinger of impending destruction, striving with all his might to avert it. His task, as he sees it, is to awaken the people to their disloyalty to God, to the covenant, and to the moral foundations of their society. Religious betrayal and social decay are, for Yermiyahu, inseparable, and together they threaten to unravel the nation from within.

His imagery conveys the depth of his anguish. The people’s attachment to idolatry is expressed in a striking and somewhat obscure verse:

While their children remember their altars and sacred posts by verdant trees upon lofty hills.  (Jeremiah 17:2, NJPS)

This translation, following the Targum Yonatan, reads the verse as a description of........

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