What is Your Hope?
This week’s name is Miqweh Yisrael, the Hope of Israel. In her book Praying the Names of God for 52 Weeks, Ann Spangler quotes one of my favorite passages.
5 “This is what Yahweh says:
Cursed is the person who trusts humans,
who makes flesh and blood his strength
and whose heart turns away from Yahweh.
6 He will be like a bush in the wilderness.
He will not see when something good comes.
He will live in the dry places in the desert,
in a salty land where no one can live.
7 Blessed is the person who trusts Yahweh.
Yahweh will be his confidence.
8 He will be like a tree that is planted by water.
It will send its roots down to a stream.
It will not be afraid in the heat of summer.
Its leaves will turn green.
It will not be anxious during droughts.
It will not stop producing fruit.O Yahweh, the Miqweh Yisrael, all who abandon you will be put to shame.
Those who turn away from you will be written in dust,
because they abandon Yahweh,
the fountain of life-giving water. – Jeremiah 17: 5-8, 13
Does it sound familiar? It’s a lot like Psalm 1. No wonder – the Holy Spirit inspired both passages. And the words bear repeating. The one whose hope, whose confident expectation, is in the Lord will prosper.
This passage has become dear to me as I’ve studied Daniel’s life. As a teenager, Daniel was ripped from the only home he’d ever known and taken to Babylon. He was expected to conform to Babylon’s ways, but he stood firm like a tree planted by water.
He must have been surrounded by godly influences in Jerusalem, right?
Wrong.
We have to make some educated guesses about when some of Jeremiah was written. The most likely date of Jeremiah 5 is early in Jehoiakim’s reign. The southern kingdom had been blessed under Josiah. He’d gotten rid of public idolatry and worshipped God with his whole heart. But his son, King Jehoiakim was awful. He brought back all manner of idolatry. This is the world Daniel grew up in.
Jeremiah records that God told him to do this:
Walk around the streets of Jerusalem.
Look around, and think about these things.
Search the city squares.
See if you can find anyone
who does what is right and seeks the truth.
Then I will forgive Jerusalem. – Jeremiah 5:1
Spoiler: he didn’t find anyone ( any ish – adult male) who sought truth. Who taught Daniel to follow God? Yet he became a mighty man of God in an idolatrous nation. Better than that, in Daniel 10, the messenger from heaven called him hamad – treasured, esteemed, beloved.
How did Daniel become like a tree planted by water, producing fruit in times of drought? By putting his hope in the Miqweh Yisrael who was a stream of living water to him.
