Prophets and prophecy in the Old Testament

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1 New Apostolic Church International Prophets and prophecy in the Old Testament Certain themes of Old Testament prophecy have become firm components of the New Testament s future hope, among them the day of the Lord, the new Jerusalem, the kingdom of peace, the dawn of a new Messianic age and world, and the universal rule of God. Thus it would be worthwhile to take a closer look at the prophetical tradition of the Old Testament, as well as its origins. The origins of the prophets The history of the people of Israel is inseparably linked with the activity of prophets. In his seminal work on Judaism, the religious philosopher Hermann Cohen even went so far as to describe prophecy as the spiritual centre of Jewish creativity 1. In accordance with the will of God, prophets chose kings, gave them support and counsel, predicted victory or defeat, promised them liberty or captivity, or even death and destruction. They denounced social injustices, warned the people against idol worship, and were voices of admonition concerning the proper service to God and man (Cohen). They praised the greatness and omnipotence of the one God, who had chosen Israel as His people. A tiny remark in the biblical account of Saul s search for his father s donkeys and his ensuing encounter with Samuel provides us with a reference to the origins of these prophets. Saul had been sent out by his father with a servant in order to go look for the lost animals. The search was initially fruitless, so Saul suggested that they stop and go back home, as his father would otherwise be concerned about them. The servant, however, did not want to give up yet, and made another suggestion: Look now, there is in this city a man of God, and he is an honourable man; all that he says surely comes to pass. So let us go there; perhaps he can show us the way that we should go (1 Samuel 9: 6). This man of God was none other than Samuel, who was to anoint Saul king. It is at this point that a verse is inserted into the account of the story in order ¹ H. Cohen, Religion der Vernunft. Aus den Quellen des Judentums [The religion of reason. From the sources of Judaism]. First edition Berlin 1928 Doctrine & Knowledge Page 1 of 5

2 to explain the meaning of the designation seer, which is used in the Bible text (cf. 1 Samuel 9: 18 19): (Formerly in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he spoke thus: Come, let us go to the seer ; for he who is now called a prophet was formerly called a seer (1 Samuel 9: 9). The seer or man of God was evidently a charismatically gifted person who could look into the concealed matters of the past and future, and proclaim a divine message as an authorised messenger of God. Through his calling, the prophet was empowered and commissioned to receive, interpret, and share that which was revealed to him through divine inspiration. In Israel, prophets emerged in the pre-state period, somewhere around the middle of the eighth century BC. As is evident from this account of the story of Saul, seers would also provide counsel in daily matters in exchange for a fee, and perform priestly services in sacrificial worship. In addition to a number of outstanding individual personages mentioned in Scripture, there were also prophetic schools and associations whose members lived together in certain locations in conditions similar to those prevalent in later religious orders. Apparently such groups could incorporate hundreds of men (cf. 1 Kings 22: 6; 2 Kings 4: 43). Elijah and, to a certain degree, Elisha were among the major individual prophets who had assembled a group of disciples around them. The unique standing of the man of God Elijah, who also emerged as a miracle worker and whose name means my God is Yahweh, is emphasised by his encounter with God on Mount Horeb and his ascension into heaven. Together with Moses, he stood as a representative of the old covenant on the Mount of Transfiguration in order to bear witness that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Elisha, his disciple and successor, proved to be a prophet on a par with him by way of numerous miracles (death in the pot, 2 Kings 4: 40; the floating axe head, 2 Kings 6: 5 7; the revival of a dead man who touched Elisha s bones, 2 Kings 13: 20 21). The ages of the prophets were at the same time ages of political, social, and religious crises. For Old Testament scholar Gerhard von Rad the prophets were practically always in the crosshairs of upheavals in salvation history: Common to all the prophets was this awareness that their activity was unfolding at precisely those moments that marked decisive turning points for the people of God. It is in this context that their passionate dismantling of old, particularly false, feelings of security in the eyes of God but also their message of the advent of completely new, frightening, and salvific deeds of God is to be understood (Gerhard von Rad, Theologie des Alten Testaments [Theology of the Old Testament], Volume 2, Gütersloh 1960, p. 311). That the fathers of faith from the early days of Israel such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses are also counted among the prophets in the Bible arises from a later tra- Doctrine & Knowledge Page 2 of 5

3 dition, and constitutes a reference to their direct relationship with God and the function of mediator between God and His people exercised by Abraham and Moses. The development of prophets and prophecy The biblical prophets starting with Amos are distinguished from the seers of the early period. These prophets also proclaimed their message verbally, but because their words and proverbs were subsequently compiled in writing, they are described as biblical prophets. These are thus prophets after whom biblical books are named. Unlike their predecessors, they do not primarily direct their words to individual rulers and kings, but increasingly to the people of Israel and like Jeremiah near the end of the seventh century BC with his universal commission to the nations : Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations (Jeremiah 1: 5). The core message of the prophets who were active before the Babylonian exile was the prophecy of a coming disaster and judgement that was to befall Israel. Already Amos, the oldest of the biblical prophets, came into conflict with the king and temple priests because he denounced injustice, the suppression of the poor, corruption, and the unbridled excesses of the rich, and because he foretold the demise of both the king and the kingdom at a time of economic bloom. The livestock breeder expressly distanced himself from the professional prophets in the service of the king who merely affirmed everything the king said and emphasised his own independence as a man appointed by God, a messenger sent by God, who was not in the service of any man: Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah: I was no prophet, nor was I a son of a prophet, but I was a sheep breeder and a tender of sycamore fruit. Then the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said to me, Go, prophesy to My people (Amos 7: 14 15). True and false prophets Here a distinction is made between institutional prophets who, through their office, were bound to the temple and the palace and who, in other words, performed a service in a dependent relationship to the person who had commissioned them, namely the respective king and the free prophets who were not bound to an organisation, who knew their only relationship of dependency was to God and who thus, as a rule, stood in opposition to the institutional prophets. Often their outsider status made itself felt in existential terms, for example in the case of Elijah, who was the only one to speak out against the people for turning away from their belief in the one God, or Jeremiah, whose failed marriage and childlessness symbolically emphasised God s judgement over His people. The announcements of calamity, messages of judgement, and cries of woe Doctrine & Knowledge Page 3 of 5

4 uttered by the prophets called by God always also had the character of an appeal to repentance, which related the threat of judgement with the admonition to repent and the promise of future salvation. While the institutional prophets sought to legitimise the politics of power and religion of the rulers of the time, those prophets not in service to the incumbent rulers proclaimed God s verdict on their false power politics and religious politics, which is why they often experienced contempt, persecution, imprisonment, banishment, and death and thereby, through their very existence, epitomised the doom that awaited the people and the kingdom as a whole. Quite often, those prophets who acted in the commission of God suffered from the distress of having to proclaim and execute things they themselves did not want. The prophetic tradition In the ancient Orient, and thus also in Israel, oral tradition was the usual form of imparting traditions. It was only during the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BC and in the post-exilic period that written records became the usual form of transmission. Thus it is to be assumed that the words of the prophets were themselves orally transmitted at first, and only later enshrined in writing and summarised into books. In the process, oral and written traditions ran parallel to one another for a certain amount of time, and influenced one another accordingly. From the language style and literary features such as verse form and rhythmic structure, one can clearly recognise that independent individual words and situationally related speeches that were originally incoherent in form and content were collected, supplemented, summarised, and structured into units of text in the process of recording, so that they would be suitable for reading in divine service (cf. Luke 4: 17; Acts 13: 15). The prophetical books thus contain some extremely complex and skilfully edited text collections. Prophetical literature can be divided into three text genres, namely narratives, visions, and words. The narratives are portrayals of vivid figurative stories of symbolic character, which accompany the prophetic message and announce the dawn of a coming event. One example is Jeremiah s sermon about the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, which was emphasised by the fact that Jeremiah on God s instruction placed a yoke around his own neck and presented it to the messengers of the neighbouring states who were to come under the rule of the Babylonian king (cf. Jeremiah 27: 1 7). Here too, Jeremiah s message stood in contrast to that proclaimed by the priesthood and the professional prophets in his own country: Also I spoke to the priests and to all this people, saying, Thus says the Lord: Do not listen to the words of your prophets who prophesy to you, saying, Behold, the vessels of the Lord s house will now shortly be brought back from Babylon ; for they prophesy a lie to you (Jeremiah 27: 16). The text genre known as the visions predominantly deals with visual depictions of future occurrences or eschatological events. Together, the latter visions comprise the Doctrine & Knowledge Page 4 of 5

5 genre of prophetic apocalypticism, which is the revelation concerning the end of the world and of the last things. This also includes Messianic expectations and promises. For Daniel and others, the afflictions of the present time were harbingers of the end of history, which was expected in the near future. The statements made by many Old Testament prophets culminate in references to the coming Redeemer. Only a few exceed this timeframe. Isaiah promises a new heaven and a new earth (cf. Isaiah 65: 17). Daniel foretells events which will transpire in the period after the return of Christ and which also find a place in the book of Revelation (cf. Daniel 12: 1). The characteristic thing about prophetic messages is their current relevance and their imminence. It is only in exceptional cases such as Daniel s apocalypse that they refer to a farther distant future (cf. Daniel 12: 9). The most comprehensive text genre is comprised of the words, which are often introduced by the formulation: Thus says the Lord These messages usually have to do with announcements for the future, reproaches, cries of woe and words of judgement, exhortations and calls to repentance, messages of salvation and promises, as well as retrospectives of history from which future events are derived. In the period following the Babylonian exile, the activity of the Old Testament prophets gradually began to decline. With the canonisation of the prophetic writings, the prophet eventually transitioned into the scribe. In the New Testament, prophecy is fulfilled and its purpose revealed in Jesus Christ and the new covenant: So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet (Matthew 1: 22). Doctrine & Knowledge Page 5 of 5