Rabbi Michael Freund, a former Deputy Communications Director under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is the Founder and Chairman of Shavei Israel (www.shavei.org), which assists lost tribes and hidden Jewish communities to return to the Jewish people.
The Haftorah of Parshat Bo, taken from Jeremiah 46:13-28, concludes with a burst of reassurance that has sustained the Jewish people for millennia. After an extended prophecy describing Egypt’s impending collapse, Jeremiah suddenly pivots away from the fate of the mighty and toward the destiny of the seemingly powerless. The final two verses are addressed not to kings or generals, but to a people bruised by history and haunted by exile: “But you, do not fear, My servant Jacob… for I am with you" (verse 27).
It is a startling shift in tone. Egypt, once the world’s greatest superpower, is dismissed almost casually, its downfall treated as inevitable. Israel, by contrast, is spoken to with Divine intimacy and care. The prophet does not minimize Jewish suffering. On the contrary, he acknowledges dispersion, punishment and uncertainty. But he insists on something far more radical: that Jewish history is governed by a promise which no exile can annul.
“Though I will make an end of all the nations among which I have scattered you," G-d declares, “of you I will not make an end" (verse 28). Few verses in Tanach articulate Jewish destiny with such stark clarity. Nations rise, dominate and disappear. Israel alone is guaranteed continuity. Not necessarily power nor immunity from pain - but survival. And in a world obsessed with strength, that may be the greatest power of all.
The Torah reading of Parshat Bo describes the final stage of Egypt’s unravelling. Pharaoh still sits on his throne, still postures and threatens, but the end is already near. The plague of darkness seals Egypt’s fate; the death of the firstborn shatters its future. The Haftorah’s final verses lift the reader above that immediate drama and ask a deeper question: what, ultimately, endures?
Jeremiah’s answer is unequivocal. Empires do not endure, nor military might or economic dominance. Only covenant does.
But this promise comes with a caveat. “I will discipline you with justice," G-d warns Israel, “I will not leave you unpunished" (verse 28). Jewish survival is not accidental, nor is it unconditional. It rests on a sacred relationship that demands accountability. Israel is not spared judgment; it is spared extinction. That distinction has shaped Jewish consciousness from antiquity to the present.
There is something profoundly realistic about these verses. They do not offer escapism or false comfort. Jeremiah does not tell Israel that exile will be easy, that enemies will vanish overnight, or that suffering is an illusion. He tells them something far more demanding: that even when history seems to deny G-d’s presence, G-d is still there. “For I am with you," He says - not above history, not outside it, but within it.
This idea cuts against the grain of conventional historical thinking. Most peoples understand their fate in terms of territory, numbers or force. Lose those, and national extinction soon follows. The Jewish people, scattered across continents and centuries, defy that logic entirely. The last two verses of the Haftorah offer the theological explanation for this anomaly. Jewish existence is not sustained by circumstance, but by promise.
And that promise is personal. G-d does not address Israel as a collective abstraction but as “My servant Jacob." The name itself evokes vulnerability, struggle and transformation. Jacob is the one who fled, wrestled, feared and persevered. To call Israel “Jacob" in exile is to say: your fear is understood, but it is not decisive nor determinative.
“Do not fear," Jeremiah repeats in each of the Haftorah’s final two verses. Not because fear is irrational, but because it is not sovereign. Fear describes the moment, but it need not define the future.
Read against the backdrop of Jewish history, these verses feel not only like prophecy and but also testimony. How many times have Jews been told that this exile would be their end, that this dispersion would finally erase them? How many regimes have proclaimed Jewish eternity a myth - only to vanish themselves? Jeremiah’s words have outlived them all.
The Haftorah speaks loudly and clearly to a present in which Jewish insecurity once again feels acute and to a future clouded by uncertainty. The reassurance is not that danger will disappear, but that meaning will not. The Jewish story does not end in Egypt, Babylon or anywhere else.
As Parshat Bo recounts the birth of Israel as a free people, the Haftorah’s closing verses remind us why that freedom mattered in the first place. Liberation was not merely an escape from slavery; it was the beginning of a covenant that no exile could sever. Empires would come and go. Israel would stumble, suffer and endure. And through it all, a quiet Divine voice has continued to whisper across the generations: “Do not fear, My servant Jacob for I am with you."