Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

HANANIAH

(Heb. ḥănanyāhû, ḥănanyâ)

1. One of the four children of Zerubbabel, son of Pedaiah (1 Chr. 3:19, 21), a descendant of Solomon.

2. A postexilic individual associated with the tribe of Benjamin (1 Chr. 8:24).

3. One of the children of Heman; director of the 16th division of David’s musicians (1 Chr. 25:4, 23).

4. One of King Uzziah’s commanders (2 Chr. 26:11).

5. An Israelite of the family of Bebai who had to send away his foreign wife (Ezra 10:28).

6. A son of Shelemiah who helped repair the walls of Jerusalem during the time of Nehemiah (Neh. 3:30).

7. One entrusted by Nehemiah with the governance of the citadel/palace because “he was a faithful man and feared God more than many” (Neh. 7:2).

8. An Israelite leader who, on behalf of his family, set his seal to the renewed covenant under Nehemiah (Neh. 10:23).

9. A priest and head of the house of Jeremiah during the time of the high priest Joiakim who returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel and participated in the rededication of the walls (Neh. 12:12).

10. The son of Azzur who prophesied that Judah would be liberated from Babylonian oppression and that the temple vessels, which had been taken by the Babylonian army in 598, would be returned to Jerusalem within two years of his oracle (Jer. 28). This account describes a prophetic conflict in which two opposing messages claim to enjoy divine authority. During the interim between the first deportation (598) and the destruction of Jerusalem in 588/587, Jeremiah declared that Judah should not join an anti-Babylonian coalition of other Syro-Palestinian states (cf. Jer. 27) but instead accept Babylonian hegemony as a theo-political given. In contrast, Hananiah insisted that Babylonian rule would be short-lived, thus inciting rebellion against Judah’s suzerain.

Although Hananiah opposes Jeremiah, the Hebrew text never refers to him as a “false prophet.” He is addressed as one whose official role is assumed and whose character is not impugned. In fact, Hananiah exemplifies most, if not all, of the conventional features of Hebrew prophets: he uses the customary speech forms and symbolic actions; he speaks within legitimate religious traditions of the community and thus does not represent foreign deities or unacceptable symbol systems; and he enjoys the respect of the community, perhaps even more so than Jeremiah. One may infer from the text, therefore, that Hananiah’s falsehood lies not in his person but rather in his message, which not only stands in contradistinction to prophetic oracles of the past (Jer. 28:8), but contradicts the words of Jeremiah. The ideology of Hananiah is not only untimely and out-of-touch with the historical sensibilities, but runs directly counter to the entire tradition associated with Jeremiah, that exile and suffering must be accepted and embraced as the dangerous yet necessary work of God before hopeful constructions can be articulated. Hananiah thus does not discern that many well-established preexilic social and symbolic structures (including the royal-temple ideology) are no longer part of God’s program for an alternative community of the Exile. As a result, he is both “false” in content and a “dangerous” voice from the past that jeopardizes the powerful new vision of reality articulated by Jeremiah.

Bibliography. H. Mottu, “Jeremiah vs. Hananiah: Ideology and Truth in Old Testament Prophecy,” in The Bible and Liberation, ed. N. K. Gottwald (Maryknoll, 1983), 235-51; T. W. Overholt, “Jeremiah 27–29: The Question of False Prophecy,” JAAR 35 (1967): 241-49; The Threat of Falsehood: A Study in the Theology of the Book of Jeremiah. SBT, ser. 2, 16 (Naperville, 1970).

11. The father of one of the high ranking officials of King Jehoiakim who was “alarmed” (Jer. 36:16) by the contents of the scroll read by Baruch.

12. The father of Chelemiah and grandfather of Irijah, the sentinel who arrested Jeremiah and accused him of deserting to the Babylonians (Jer. 37:13).

13. One of Daniel’s faithful companions whose name was changed to Shadrach (Dan. 1:6-7).

Louis Stulman

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

HANANIAH

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)