Towards the beginning of the haftara for the second Shabbat of the "three weeks," the prophet Yirmiyahu declares in the Name of God (Yirmiyahu 2:5), "What have your forefathers found wrong in Me that they have distanced themselves from Me, and followed futility and became futile?" The Almighty expresses wonder, as it were, over the fact that Benei Yisrael rejected Him in favor of the powerless "gods" worshipped by the pagans.
How might we explain the two expressions in this verse, "they followed futility" ("ve-yeilkhu acharei ha-hevel") and "they became futile" ("va-yehbalu"). What does the prophet mean when he declares that Benei Yisrael "became futile"?
Metzudat David explains that the term va-yehbalu refers to the state of decline into which the nation had fallen. Once a mighty, thriving empire during the time of David and Shelomo, by the end of the First Commonwealth – when Yirmiyahu lived and prophesied – Am Yisrael had become a small, minor country yielding little, if any, regional power and influence. Just as the gods they worshipped were hevel – powerless and insignificant – so had the Jewish state become hevel – a small, weak, almost insignificant country.
Rav Mendel Hirsch, in his commentary to the haftarot, suggests a different reading, which he introduces by claiming that this verse is "the shortest, most pertinent, most momentous and most touching epitaph on so many generations, Jewish and non-Jewish, of old and modern times." He explains that all resources and media enlisted in the pursuit of a certain goal are deemed a valuable investment only to the extent to which we can consider the goal a valuable one. If a person pursues a worthless or destructive goal, then all the time, effort and resources poured into that pursuit naturally become themselves futile. Even worse, a person who devotes his life to meaningless pursuits has stripped his life of its value and significance, to the point where his very existence can be described as "hevel," futility and worthlessness.
The prophet here bemoans Benei Yisrael's pursuit of hevel – the values, beliefs and mores of the surrounding pagans – which rendered themselves hevel. Having devoted themselves to Godlessness, to the abandonment of their faith and traditions, and to the pursuit of paganism, they reduced their entire existence to one of hevel.
Rav Mendel Hirsch adds that this notion applies as well to the pursuit of wealth as an objective unto itself. Material goods used for the benefit of mankind and in the service of God become hallowed, whereas material goods amassed for their own sake are nothing more than hevel and transform the individual's existence into one of hevel. As Rav Mendel writes:
All external possessions and wealth and working to obtain them have worth and full justification if they are striven for, and used, as means for a pure human life devoted to duty. But striven for as an end in themselves they are futile, and giving oneself up in the endeavor to obtain them robs life of all true permanent worth.
Courtesy of Yeshivat Har Etzion - www.etzion.org.il