Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

PROPHET, PROPHECY

A religious intermediary (Heb. nāḇîʾ; Gk. prophḗtēs) whose function is to carry messages back and forth between human beings and a deity. Persons performing this social function have been found in a wide range of times, places, and societies, though they may not locally be known by the title prophet.

The OT refers to a number of figures as prophets. Fifteen of these are associated with written collections that bear their names — the books from Isaiah through Malachi, excluding Daniel. References to others appear in the prophetic and Deuteronomistic history books. These include Nathan (2 Sam. 7, 12; 1 Kgs. 1), Gad (1 Sam. 22:5; 2 Sam. 24:11), Ahijah (1 Kgs. 11:29; 14:2, 18), Elijah (1 Kgs. 17–2 Kgs. 2), Elisha (2 Kgs. 2–9), Micaiah (1 Kgs. 22), Jonah (2 Kgs. 14:25), Huldah (22:14), and Hananiah (Jer. 28). These books also refer generically to prophets whom they do not name (1 Sam. 28:6; 1 Kgs. 13; 2 Kgs. 17:13, 23; 21:10; 23:2; 24:2; Amos 2:11-12; Mic. 3:5-6, 11; Jer. 14:13-16; 23:9-22), and sometimes these operate in groups (1 Sam. 10:5, 10-12; in 1 Kgs. 22 there are 400). The story of Elijah’s contest with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 of ʿAnat indicates that prophets of other deities than Yahweh could be found in Israel (1 Kgs. 18).

OT prophecy is not a homogeneous phenomenon. The bands of anonymous ecstatic prophets referred to in Samuel and Kings contrast with the likes of Amos and Jeremiah, who carried out their function as individuals. Elijah and Elisha, who are referred to as “man of God” more often than “prophet,” have affinities with both the ecstatics (cf. 1 Kgs. 18:46; 2 Kgs. 3:13-20) and the others and add some peculiarities of their own.

The historical and cultural context of OT prophecy is the period of the Israelite and Judean monarchies, continuing through the Exile into the early postexilic period. This context affects the functioning and message of the biblical prophets.

Social Role

There have been various attempts to argue that the OT prophets had their base of operations in the cult, but there is insufficient evidence to support such a generalization. Samuel and the anonymous prophets were associated with places of worship (1 Sam. 3:20; 10:5). Jeremiah (Jer. 1:1) and Ezekiel (Ezek. 1:3) came from priestly families, but this does not seem to have determined the location of their activity as prophets. Amos appears to have had no prior connection with the cult (Amos 7:14-15). Rather, where the texts allow us to identify the location of a prophet’s activity it is most often in interaction with kings or other leaders of the nation. Sometimes they were summoned to provide counsel in times of crisis, as when the kings of Israel and Judah consulted the 400 prophets and Micaiah about the advisability of going to war (1 Kgs. 22), Hezekiah summoned Isaiah at the time of an impending Assyrian invasion (Isa. 37 = 2 Kgs. 19), or Zedekiah asked Jeremiah to inquire of Yahweh about Judah’s military fortunes (Jer. 37).

Prophets often appear unsummoned to offer words of encouragement or criticism (e.g., 2 Sam. 7:1-17; 12:1-14; Amos 7:10-17; Jer. 26). They were sometimes involved in partisan political struggles. Elijah opposed Ahab and Ahaziah (1 Kgs. 17–19, 21; 2 Kgs. 1), and his successor, Elisha, was instrumental in the coup that brought the Omri dynasty to an end and established Jehu as king of Israel (2 Kgs. 9). Amaziah, the priest at Bethel’s royal sanctuary, accused Amos of conspiracy against Jeroboam (Amos 7:10-11), and Jeremiah was a vocal member of one the parties struggling to control Judah’s foreign policy in the years prior to the Exile (Jer. 27–29).

In general, then, prophets were religious intermediaries who functioned at the national level. Elijah and Elisha interacted with lesser individuals as well as with kings, but they are significantly different from other prophets in important respects.

It was understood that the prophets’ activity and message were grounded in some type of communication from Yahweh. There are several accounts of initial contacts that inaugurated a prophet’s career (Amos 7:15; Isa. 6; Jer. 1:4-10; Ezek. 1–3) and other references to visions or dreams that were the source of a prophet’s claim to speak for God (e.g., 1 Kgs. 19:9-18; 22:17-23; Amos 7:1-9; 8:1-3; 9:1; Jer. 1:11-19; 13:1-11; 14:14; 23:16).

It is further assumed that when prophets spoke they were transmitting the deity’s message to their audience. However, they were not simply one-way channels of information from Yahweh to the people. Like all communication, prophetic speech involved a dynamic interaction between speaker and audience. Feedback was integral to the process, and in their position between deity and audience prophets received and carried messages in both directions. People were free to accept or reject a prophet’s words (Amos 2:10-12; 7:10-17; Jer. 5:12-13; 11:18-20; 20:7-8), and prophets could belabor God with their own concerns (Amos 7:1-6; Jer. 11:18–12:6; 17:14-18).

Sometimes prophets with conflicting messages from Yahweh appeared on the scene (e.g., 1 Kgs. 22; Jer. 14:11-16; 28:1-17), and believing members of the populace would have had to decide among them. The story of Jeremiah’s confrontation with Hananiah illustrates the difficulties inherent in making such judgments. In this story Jeremiah appears to invoke the criterion of fulfillment as the appropriate way to resolve the conflicting claims to speak for Yahweh (Jer. 28:5-9; cf. Deut. 18:21-22), but in the end he does not wait the amount of time required to prove Hananiah’s claim false. Other passages suggest additional criteria for judging true from false prophecy (personal immorality, Jer. 23:14; 29:23; lack of a valid commission, 14:13-14), but none were really useful for people faced with the immediate necessity of adjudicating between competing prophetic claims.

The narrative of Saul’s consulting the medium at Endor mentions prophets in the same breath with standard methods of divination, dreams, and Urim (1 Sam. 28:6). The function of prophets, to facilitate communication between Yahweh and his people, is broadly speaking the same as that of diviners, who occupied another (though often condemned; cf. Deut. 18:9-14) established religious role within Israelite society. A distinction is often drawn between these two roles on the grounds that diviners wait to be consulted and rely on mechanical means such as lots to arrive at their message, while prophets come forward at Yahweh’s direction and have their message directly from the deity. This is not quite accurate, since there are examples of prophets being consulted (1 Sam. 28:6; 1 Kgs. 22:5-8, 13-14; Jer. 42:1-6) and of diviners coming forward unasked (1 Sam. 10:17-24; 14:36-37). Prophetic utterances can be referred to as divination (Mic. 3:11; Jer. 14:14) and the words of diviners as prophecy (Jer. 29:8-9). Within the Israelite conceptual world, the results of divination, like the words of prophets, were considered to be “wholly from Yahweh” (Prov. 16:33).

Conceptual World

The perceived existence of prophets in any society is predicated upon belief in the reality of a deity or deities who are able to influence events in this world and are at least potentially susceptible to influence from humans. In this respect biblical Israel was not unique. What gives much of biblical prophecy its distinctive flavor is the prevalence of the Deuteronomistic idea of a prophet like Moses who would speak Yahweh’s word and to whom obedience was required (Deut. 18:15-22). As a result, the OT presents prophets as the privileged intermediaries between Yahweh and his people. The message of the prophets tends to mirror Deuteronomistic theology in assuming that a special relationship existed between Israel and Yahweh, one defined by a covenant which required obedience to certain commandments. The result of such obedience would be prosperity and peace, but disobedience would result in punishment at the hands of foreign invaders, over whose activities it was assumed Yahweh had power. 2 Kgs. 17 is a classic statement of this theology within the Deuteronomistic history itself, and these ideas appear in Jer. 11:1-13 in much the same language. This basic interpretation of national history may be found in many standard poetic oracles throughout the prophetic books (e.g., Amos 2:4-5, 6-16; Jer. 2:4-37).

In the case of Elijah and Elisha we find evidence of other ideas that reflect a cultural background not evident in the Deuteronomistic history as a whole. Insofar as they are champions of Yahweh and critics of kings, Elijah and Elisha fit within the conceptual world of the Deuteronomists. In addition, however, the stories about these two “men of God” include accounts of the miraculous multiplication of food, calling down fire from heaven, floating ax-heads, curing lepers, raising the dead, and murderous attacks on other humans. Such accounts, unique in the prophetic literature, seem to assume the conceptual world of shamanism, a set of beliefs fairly common among tribal peoples. Like OT prophets, shamans are thought to be intermediaries between humans and deities. They have ecstatic experiences, and besides conveying messages from the deities have a variety of functions, including curing and divination. Such beliefs are at odds with the Deuteronomistic theology, so these narratives provide a hint of complexity of the cultural and religious situation in monarchic Israel.

Historicity

Though Abraham (Gen. 20:7), Miriam (Exod. 15:20), Eldad and Medad (Num. 11:26-30), and Deborah (Judg. 4:4) are referred to as prophets, the primary historical context of OT prophecy is the periods of the Monarchy, Exile, and Restoration (11th-6th centuries b.c.e.). The narratives speak of both Samuel (1 Sam. 3:20) and bands of anonymous prophets in the time of Saul, of Nathan and Gad in the court of David, of Elijah opposing Ahab (1 Kgs. 17), and of Elisha’s role in the coup that brought Jehu to the throne of Israel (2 Kgs. 9). All but six of the prophetic books (Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Malachi) begin with superscriptions that locate the prophet’s activity during the reign of specific kings, from Amos and Hosea in the mid-8th century to Haggai and Zechariah in the late 6th century. Prophetic texts refer to events and situations in the life of the nation, including foreign invasions (e.g., Amos 6:14; Isa. 36–39; Jer. 39), internal political struggles (e.g., 2 Kgs. 9; Amos 7:10-17; Jer. 37–38), social injustice (e.g., Amos 2:6-7; 5:6-7, 10-15), and religious malpractice (e.g., 5:21-24; Jer. 2; Mal. 1:6–2:9) or indifference (e.g., Jer. 5:12; Haggai).

Despite these specific references, it is not safe to assume that the accounts of the prophets’ activities are always historically accurate. This is because both the collected oracles (prophetic speeches) and the stories about them are dominated by ideas like those outlined above. Elijah provides one obvious example. The stories depict him in part as an ardent champion of Yahweh, and model his character on the figure of Moses. In 1 Kgs. 19, , e.g., he flees for his life to the desert, encounters Yahweh in a theophany on Horeb (Sinai), and complains about his mission, which Yahweh in turn reaffirms (cf. Exod. 2–6). This suggests that the Deuteronomistic compilers of these narratives have presented us with a picture of the prophet that is not merely biographical. The stories also represent Elijah as a healer and wonder-worker, suggesting another element in his cultural background, but given the fantastic nature of some of the occurrences it is unlikely that these accounts are historically accurate. The same model of the “prophet like Moses” is evident in the account of Jeremiah’s call (Jer. 1:4-10) and elsewhere in the book of Jeremiah.

One can, therefore, ask whether prophetic books and narratives about prophets provide any access to Israelite and Judean history and society in the days of the prophets themselves or only to the period during and after the Exile. At the very least we can be confident that “prophet” was a well-established social role in preexilic monarchic society, and evidence points to the level of national government as the primary sphere of prophetic activity. In addition, the existence of collections of materials bearing the names of individual prophets (or in the case of Elijah and Elisha, a sizable collection of stories about them) makes it reasonable to assume that these persons really existed, though it may not be possible to be confident about identifying their exact words and will certainly be impossible to write their biographies.

Literary Considerations

It is evident that not all of the words in prophetic books can be attributed to the prophets themselves. For example, Amos 7 begins with three reports of visions narrated in the 1st person; Amos would appear to be the speaker (v. 8). However, with v. 10 there begins a 3rd person account in which an anonymous narrator tells about a confrontation between Amos and Amaziah. Though the narrative quotes both these men, neither appears to be its author.

Any quest for the authentic words of a given prophet is complicated by the recognition that the process by which the books that bear the names of individual prophets came into being was often lengthy and complicated. From this point of view, one may think of prophetic books as the products of literary activity that begins with the composition and collection of material by and about the prophetic figures, its eventual collection into a “book” (scroll), and subsequent editing and revising of the collection. There is not enough evidence to trace this process exactly, but it is often possible to form plausible hypotheses about it. The branch of biblical scholarship actively concerned with such matters is called redaction criticism.

The book of Jeremiah illustrates the complexity of the redactional process. It contains several kinds of material (poetic oracles addressed to Judah, individual laments, prose sermons reflecting an interpretation of the nation’s history similar to that of the Deuteronomists, 3rd person narratives about the prophet, oracles against foreign nations, a historical narrative largely duplicating 2 Kgs. 24–25). The book has no obvious overall organization. It is sometimes internally contradictory, e.g., counseling submission to Babylon (chs. 27–29) in one place while in another inveighing against that nation in the harshest terms (chs. 50–51). The Greek translation of the book (LXX) is one eighth shorter than the Hebrew text, and incorporates the collection of oracles against foreign nations in the middle of the book rather than near the end. Nevertheless, the book has a broad thematic unity, interpreting developments in Judah’s history as the result of the people’s past and present infractions of their covenant agreement with Yahweh (“falsehood” is one of the operative terms in this analysis). It is no longer possible to discern exactly how the book came to have its present shape, but passages that mention the restoration of the people to their land (e.g., 3:14-18; 23:1-4, 7-8; 24:4-7; 27:22; 29:10-14) signal exilic or postexilic editorial activity. Because this editorial activity reflects a reinterpretation of the Jeremiah tradition in light of the interests of a later time, we must be cautious about assuming that we can construct a biography of the prophet from such material.

In light of these problems, some scholars have taken a more strictly literary approach to the complexity of prophetic books which views them as literary monuments from the distant past and attempts to discover and describe their aesthetic coherence without reference to any specific historical background.

The “End” of Prophecy

After the early postexilic period the OT reports no figures comparable to the prophets of the monarchic period, and the dominant opinion is that Israelite prophecy had come to an end. At the very least, it had been transformed into something else, like the kind of visionary activity leading to apocalyptic. This interpretation is the result of a too narrow understanding that defines prophecy in terms of the classical OT figures. As long as there are people who believe in a deity able and willing to be involved in the affairs of this world and who have a tradition of intermediaries bridging the gap between the divine and the human spheres, it is unlikely that prophecy has come to a complete end. Jewish texts from the last centuries b.c.e. indicate a continued belief in the possibility of prophecy, and the NT attests to prophecy both in Judaism (John 11:49-52) and in the early Christian Church (Acts 11:27; 15:32), where prophets occupied a recognized religious role alongside apostles, teachers, and other functionaries (Acts 13:1; 1 Cor. 12:27-31). When Mark reports that some who encountered Jesus thought he was a prophet (Mark 8:28; cf. 6:4, 15), we can infer that within the culture of 1st-century c.e. Palestinian Judaism there were people both familiar with that religious role and open to its continuation. In the 2nd century Christian prophetic activity continued in the Montanist movement. Prophecy thrived in monarchic Israel, but we can expect to find it at other times and places where persons identify and acknowledge others among their contemporaries performing the prophetic function of intermediation.

Bibliography. J. Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel (Philadelphia, 1983); T. Collins, The Mantle of Elijah: The Redaction Criticism of the Prophetical Books (Sheffield, 1993); E. W. Conrad, Reading Isaiah. OBT 27 (Minneapolis, 1991); T. W. Overholt, Channels of Prophecy: The Social Dynamics of Prophetic Activity (Minneapolis, 1989); D. L. Petersen, The Role of Israel’s Prophets. JSOTSup 17 (Sheffield, 1981); R. R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia, 1980).

Thomas W. Overholt

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

PROPHET, PROPHECY

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)