The Prophets

This week’s readings are from several of the Old Testament books of prophecy.  (Actually one reading is from the Book of Daniel, technically not a prophecy book).  As I’ve said with last week’s quick rush through the wisdom books, one week is not enough to even scratch the surface of this section.  I want to give a brief overview of Old Testament prophecy.

Fifteen prophets have their own books: three major books (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) and what is known the Book of Twelve (All twelve books fit on one papyrus scroll.): Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.  These are not exactly household names, but a few of these do show up as given names, so now you know where the names come from!

Prophets, as a group mainly functioned during the time of the kings, plus some years beyond the return from exile (roughly 1000-450 BC).  The prophets we see scripture focus on generally were in opposition to the policies of the kings, as well as pointing out religious, political and economic problems with society in general.

Heading back to the 1 Kings 22 we see several important issues about prophets.  A disagreement over war policy between the king of Israel, Ahab, and his ally the king of Judah, Jehosaphat, is taking place.  One thing to note is the presence of court prophets, who give the kings advice and receive financial support from the kings.  Note the potential for a conflict of interest?  The court prophets tell Ahab to attack.  But Jehosaphat asks for advice from Micaiah, a prophet Ahab has thrown in prison.  Micaiah’s first responds positively: the attack should take place.  But Jehosophat calls Micaiah out because he did not use the official prophetic formula:  Thus says the Lord or its variants.  Micaiah purposefully left this out of his positive advice.  When he does say Therefore hear the word of the Lord, the kings hear very different advice.  You can read for yourself how things turn out for the kings.

This leads us to another important point about the prophets.  As Christians we tend to focus on prophecies about Jesus.  There is nothing wrong with this, but we misunderstand the role of the prophets if we limit our focus.  Prophets did not prophecy only about events hundreds of years in the future.  The prophecies we read were useful for the time in which they were made.  Even the famous passage of Isaiah 7 we hear at Christmas (Isaiah 7:14, Emmanuel) had a specific meaning at the moment Isaiah spoke the word of the Lord.   This prophecy was validated not only seven hundred years later but also at the time it was spoken! 

The best measure of determining if a prophet was from the Lord was simple: did the prophecy come true?  If a prophet's predictions did not happen, they were killed.  Something we need to keep in mind as so-called prophets peddle book after book about the end of the world, constantly updating their books as their predictions do not come true.  I'm not saying they should be killed, but please quit buying their books!

Prophecy has a polyvalent nature.  The word from the Lord had meaning at the time it was spoken, may have meaning for other historical events, such as Jesus’ life, may have meaning for us today, and may have meaning for the future.  To understand what something means for us today, we should understand the original circumstance of the prophecy, so our interpretation is not based on the rumbling of the pizza in our stomach from the previous night.

From a society viewpoint, many of the prophets spoke at the time when the Jews were at their peak of worldly power.  They often spoke about reliance on military might and treatment of the poor (see Amos 4, for example).  That may be relevant for our society today.

So onward we go with just five readings to cover a major section of the Old Testament.  Obviously this is barely an appetizer!

Peace,

Randy