In the years leading
up to the Babylonian captivity, God spoke many times through his prophets to
the people of Judah and their religious leaders. However, the message he sent them
was not to their taste. The leadership, especially the false prophets and
priests, were disinclined to accept any correction of their way of life, but were
understandably reluctant to be seen to defy God in any obvious way.
Then they discovered a
rather ingenious solution. Instead of prefacing their own declarations with “Thus
says the Lord” or some other claim to God’s final authority over the message
they brought to the people, they began instead to speak of something they
called the “
burden of the Lord”. This “burden”, they claimed, came to
them
in dreams, sufficiently foggy and amorphous that it was necessary for them to explain it
in their own words rather than God’s.
This approach enabled
them to claim sufficient heavenly authority to maintain their prestige and
position without obliging them to say anything difficult or truthful that might
offend their audience. It was the perfect compromise.