Page 36 - Non-violence and peace-building

Learn from History

realistic efforts, they were led to think that emotionally-
driven efforts would solve their problems.
At this very time, some people emerged among the
Jews whom the Bible tells us were true prophets. They
exhorted the Jews to be realistic. They pointed out their
internal weaknesses. They told them that they would gain
nothing from their false pride, and that in God’s world,
truthful action has value, not false pride and wishful
thinking. But the Jews did not like what they said to
them. Instead of listening to them, they were attracted
by men who fed them with false hopes and imaginary
expectations. Stirred up by the latter’s rhetoric, the Jews
were provoked against their enemies. But this reaction
only resulted in their defeat and further degradation.

This facet of Jewish history is described in considerable
length in the Bible, in the Book of Jeremiah (Chapters
27-30).
From these details in the Bible we learn several things:

1. The Bible attributed the responsibility for the
repeated defeat and destruction that the Jews
faced in the period of their decline entirely to
the Jews themselves. In the pages of the Bible
that tell of this history, there is no ranting and
raving against the oppression and conspiracies of
other communities. Rather, the Jews themselves
were told that whatever they were faced with was
only a consequence of their having angered God.
The situation that they had to confront was a
divine warning, rather than strife and persecution
engineered by their human foes. And so, what the

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