A. Prophets and Prophetic Books

    This dictionary definition encapsulates the modern notion of prophecy, but it does not accurately convey the nature of biblical prophecy. The immediate association we tend to make with the words prophecy and prophet in the modern world is predicting the future. While we do not have as many people who go by the name of prophet as in the era of Israelite history, we do have plenty of people, some more reputable than others, who traffic in the future: economists, meteorologists, marketing consultants, futures traders, and astrologers, to name a few. Only a small number of prediction peddlers, so-called psychics, baldly attempt to foresee specific events--the Cassandras and Nostradamuses of old, and the Jeane Dixons of today.
    Predicting the future was not the major component of the prophetic task in the Israelite world. The most basic function of biblical prophecy was to analyze political and social policies in light of Yahweh's demands of justice, loyalty, and faith in him. The prophet was most concerned that these moral and religious principles govern the corporate and personal lives of God's people. The closest analogies in our modern world to the biblical prophets of old might be leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, who each had a keen sense of the divine requirements for social justice, freedom, and human dignity.
    Biblical prophets occasionally made predictions about the future course of events, but they never did it to demonstrate how insightful or divinely inspired they were. Their predictions were basically extrapolations from the present state of affairs into the future, based on their knowledge of what God demanded. If the people would not change their errant ways, then the future would hold nothing but trouble for them. If they repented, then the grim scenario would be averted. Only in apocalyptic literature does future prediction take on a life of its own. While this literature has roots in classical prophecy, it eventually evolved into a distinct literary type.
    A prophet was called a navi' in the Hebrew Bible. The linguistic derivation of the term suggests it could be related to the Semitic verb "to call." A prophet is then either "one who calls out" or "one who is called." The first possibility, the active meaning, is analogous to the meaning of its Greek translation equivalent prophetes, "to speak before," from which our English term prophet was derived. The second possibility, the passive meaning, may be related to the initiation call to prophetic service. In this sense, a prophet is one called by God to deliver a message. The following evidence suggests that either understanding, the active or the passive, has cogency.
    A branch of biblical scholarship called form criticism examines the language of the Hebrew Bible in an attempt to discover the original real-life type of situation for a way of speaking. The application of form criticism to prophetic literature has been especially productive. Form critics have studied the phrase, "Thus says YHWH," which is widely used in many prophetic books. It prefaces a vast number of prophetic oracles, or divine statements communicated by the prophet. It is so frequent that it has been used to characterize the essential nature of the prophet's sense of identity, and even of the prophetic office generally speaking. In an important study, Westermann (1967) demonstrated that the background of this phrase is the procedure of sending messages long distance in the ancient world. Typically, when a king wished to communicate with a distant client he would employ a messenger to commit the message to memory. After traveling to his destination, the messenger would recite the message as if he were the king himself speaking in the first person ("I"), prefacing his recitation with the phrase, "Thus says the king."
    That Israel's prophets used the formula "Thus says Yahweh" suggests they considered themselves divine messengers, having received the message directly from their Great King. This reconstruction of the prophet's sense of mission is supported by various prophets' descriptions of their calling to the prophetic task. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel each describe their experience of being in the presence of God where each felt he was commissioned. Each received a message first-hand from Yahweh. Each was then sent to the people of God to deliver that message.
    The prophets typically exhibited a strong sense of vocation in connection with their calling. The prophet is one who has been called (passive) and commissioned in the divine council. Then he was sent to call out (active) the message of the divine King. Often the prophets were reluctant to follow their calling because they knew how difficult the task will be, but they inevitably accepted the challenge in faith.
    We can reconstruct a viable historical context for almost every prophet. We know when he lived, where he lived, and to whom he prophesied. The same cannot be said of the editorial history of the prophetic books. These books were not necessarily finalized during the prophets' lifetime, so it is important to distinguish the human prophets from the prophetic books attached to their names.
    Every one of the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible shows signs of having been compiled and edited over a period of time. Although this oversimplifies the process a bit, we can say that the core of each book goes back to the oracles and pronouncements of the named prophet. These oracles were then written down and organized into books. Some books reworked the original prophetic core more extensively than others. But each book is the result of a composing and editing process that sometimes took centuries to complete. The final shape of prophetic books bears witness to how the words of the Hebrew prophets were heard by later communities, and how original prophetic pronouncements gave direction to later people.
    The prophetic books are not autobiographies. Most were not written by the named prophet. Many times "schools" or prophetic interest groups that traced their outlook to a particular prophetic leader continued on after the death of the prophet and found their inspiration in the prophet. Many times it was they who were responsible for taking the message of the prophet and reapplying it to later circumstances. Frequently this will be reflected in the text itself.
    We do not mean to scare anyone, but to be honest, reading biblical prophecy is difficult--but rewarding! The difficulty stems from many features of these books, including the largely poetic form in which they were written and the need to know the historical settings of prophetic statements, most of which are not clearly identified. The reward comes as appreciation for prophecy's wonderfully imaginative style of expression and the quality of its moral discernment.

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. . . Part 2. Prophets | ToC