{"id":71185,"date":"2020-03-04T14:12:07","date_gmt":"2020-03-04T12:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=71185"},"modified":"2020-03-04T14:15:27","modified_gmt":"2020-03-04T12:15:27","slug":"someone-cares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/someone-cares\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone Cares"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"71185","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":34250,"related_cahpter":"430","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"The prophet addresses the fear of abandonment: theirs, and our own\u00a0\r\n\r\n\u00a0\r\n\r\n","content":"

\u201cBut I will bring healing to you and cure you of your wounds, declares the LORD. Though they called you \u2018Outcast, that Zion whom no one seeks out.\u2019\u201d (Jeremiah 30:17)<\/span><\/p>\n

What happens to a person when no one seeks them out? When nobody cares to see how they are doing, to make sure they\u2019re okay?<\/span><\/p>\n

The obvious: danger. Those who call Zion \u201coutcast\u201d in this verse seem to be expressing their confidence that she has no protection: they can keep treating her as they like, with no repercussions. Bad things might happen to those left on their own.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the pain of abandonment \u2013 or apparent abandonment \u2013 goes deeper, as the prophet highlights in describing the end of the period of destruction and exile to come.<\/span><\/p>\n

The allusion to that depth may be found in Malbim\u2019s interpretation of Jeremiah\u2019s seemingly redundant assurance that God will \u201cbring healing to you and cure you of your wounds.\u201d While some readers brush this sort of repetition off as poetic style, Malbim will have none of that. Instead, he explains that the apparent synonyms are not in fact synonyms but refer to different types of pain: \u201chealing\u201d describes the external brokenness that requires [physical] healing, while \u201cyour wounds\u201d describes internal damage \u2013 perhaps of the emotional sort that comes from feeling abandoned.<\/span><\/p>\n

For although it is others who describe Zion as an outcast in this verse, one can only imagine that Zion\u2019s people themselves would feel alone in their exile, as if there is no one seeking their welfare or paying them any attention. (See verse 14 as well.) And among the greatest sources of emotional pain is that sense of loneliness, feeling one has been left to face all kinds of external and internal ills alone, as if no one cares.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the Talmud astutely points out (Sukkah 41a), the phrase \u201cwhom no one seeks out\u201d implies \u201cwho needs seeking.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t we all need to know someone seeks us out, that someone cares?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And don\u2019t we all sometimes feel that no one does?<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet \u2013 often there actually is someone, maybe Someone, interested and invested in our welfare, who will seek us out to \u201ccure our wounds.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In this prophecy of comfort, those who would rejoice in the idea that no one does care about Zion, that they can do what they want to her \u2013 they are in for a rude awakening. As in the preceding verse, \u201cAll who wanted to devour you shall be devoured, and every one of your foes shall go into captivity; those who despoiled you shall be despoiled, and all who pillaged you I will give up to pillage.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just about the physical payback to those who have harmed Zion physically, externally.<\/span><\/p>\n

The deeper comfort lies in what that payback tells the people: that somebody does care.<\/span><\/p>\n

That, as promised in Deuteronomy 11:2, God <\/span>always <\/span><\/i>\u201cseeks\u201d out the welfare of His land; \u201cHis eyes are always upon it.\u201d And upon His people, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

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