D

uring the three weeks 
between 17 Tammuz 
and Tisha b’Av, as 
we recall the destruction of 
the Temples, we read three 
of the most 
searing passages 
in the prophetic 
literature, the 
first two from 
the opening 
of the book of 
Jeremiah, the 
third, next 
week, from the first chapter 
of Isaiah.
At perhaps no other time 
of the year are we so acutely 
aware of the enduring force 
of ancient Israel’s great 
visionaries. The prophets 
had no power. They were 
not kings or members of 
the royal court. They were 
(usually) not priests or 
members of the religious 
establishment. They held no 
office. They were not elected. 
Often, they were deeply 
unpopular, none more so 
than the author of this week’s 
haftarah, Jeremiah, who was 

arrested, flogged, abused, put 
on trial and only narrowly 
escaped with his life. 
Only rarely were the 
prophets heeded in their 
lifetimes: the one clear 
exception was Jonah, and 
he spoke to non-Jews, the 
citizens of Nineveh. Yet 
their words were recorded 
for posterity and became a 
major feature of Tanach, the 
Hebrew Bible. They were the 
world’s first social critics, 
and their message continues 
through the centuries. 
As Kierkegaard almost 
said: “When a king dies, his 
power ends; when a prophet 
dies his influence begins.” 
What was distinctive 
about the prophet was not 
that he foretold the future. 
The ancient world was full 
of such people: soothsayers, 
oracles, readers of runes, 
shamans and other diviners, 
each of whom claimed inside 
track with the forces that 
govern fate and “shape our 
ends, rough-hew them how 
we will.” 

Judaism has no time for 
such people. The Torah 
bans one “who practices 
divination or sorcery, 
interprets omens, engages 
in witchcraft, or casts spells, 
or who is a medium or 
spiritist or who consults the 
dead” (Deut. 18:10-11). It 
disbelieves such practices 
because it believes in human 
freedom. The future is not 
pre-scripted. It depends 
on us and the choices we 
make. If a prediction comes 
true, it has succeeded; if a 
prophecy comes true, it has 
failed. 

RELATING TO TIME
The prophet tells of the 
future that will happen if we 
do not heed the danger and 
mend our ways. He (or she 
— there were seven biblical 
prophetesses) does not 
predict; he or she warns.
Nor was the prophet 
distinctive in blessing or 
cursing the people. That 
was Bilaam’s gift, not Isaiah’s 
or Jeremiah’s. In Judaism, 

blessing comes through 
priests not prophets.
Several things made the 
prophets unique. The first 
was his or her sense of 
history. The prophets were 
the first people to see God in 
history. We tend to take our 
sense of time for granted. 
Time happens. Time flows. 
As the saying goes, time 
is God’s way of keeping 
everything from happening 
at once. But, actually, there 
are several ways of relating 
to time, and different 
civilizations have perceived 
it differently.
There is cyclical time: time 
as the slow turning of the 
seasons, or the cycle of 
birth, growth, decline and 
death. Cyclical time is time 
as it occurs in nature. Some 
trees have long lives; most 
fruit flies have short ones; 
but all that lives, dies. The 
species endures, individual 
members do not. Kohelet 
contains the most famous 
expression of cyclical time 
in Judaism:
“The sun rises and the 
sun sets, and hurries back 
to where it rises. The wind 
blows to the south and turns 
to the north; round and 
round it goes, ever returning 
on its course … What has 
been done will be done 
again; there is nothing new 
under the sun.”
Then there is linear time: 
time as an inexorable 
sequence of cause and effect. 
The French astronomer 
Pierre-Simon Laplace gave 
this idea its most famous 
expression in 1814 when 
he said that if you “know 
all forces that set nature in 
motion, and all positions of 

The Prophetic Voice

32 | AUGUST 1 • 2024 
J
N

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

