Bible 101, part 5: THE PROPHETIC VOICE

Amos 1:1, 2:4-7 : Isaiah 54:7-10, 56:1-8

July 5, 2009

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Rev. Janet Robertson Duggins

The great Jewish Biblical scholar Abraham Heschel referred to the prophets of the Bible as “some of the most disturbing people who ever lived.” You can decide if you think that’s true; lots of folks have had similar opinions, and artists generally portray the prophets as kind of wild-looking guys with something serious on their minds.

When we think of the prophetic literature of the Bible, we think first of the books that bear the names of various prophets. In Jewish tradition, these books are called the “latter prophets.”

Among these books, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are sometimes called the “major prophets”;

These other twelve books are referred to as the “minor prophets’: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Please note that calling them “minor” prophets has nothing to do with having lesser importance; it just means they are shorter books!

Each of these books has as its core the thoughts, speeches, sayings and actions of a particular individual who was recognized and remembered as a prophet. The books as we have them were likely not actually penned by the prophets themselves but compiled by later students and followers for posterity. In each case, the prophet’s message along with other aspects of his life and times are put together into a written work that gives the Jewish people a particular theological perspective on some part of their history. So when we talk about the Bible, and say “the prophets” (as when Jesus talked about the commandments to love God and neighbor and said “on these commandments hang all the law and prophets”) we mean both the individuals whose life and words are behind them and the books which preserve their message.

We also find stories and sayings and speeches and actions of prophets in other books of the Bible, particularly in Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. In fact, the Jewish tradition refers to these books as the “former prophets.” You might remember stories about Deborah, Elijah, Samuel, Nathan and other prophets from those books.

And in the New Testament, John the Baptist is often considered a prophet.

Before going any further, I’d like us to try and get some common misconceptions about the prophets out of the way:

First off, predictions of the future are not what Biblical prophecy is about – when the prophets do talk about the future their message tends to be of the sort that warns of predictable consequences if people persist in shortsighted and unjust priorities – not the kind of thing that says when the end of the world is to be expected and describes the signs to look for so we’ll know it’s coming.

Second, the prophets are not all doom-and-gloom. It’s true that they are often talking about God’s anger over sin and the need for people to repent and so forth, but HOPE is also part of the prophetic vision. I’ll come back that in a bit.

The most basic way to understand the prophet’s mission is this: a prophet communicates a message from God.

The quintessential words that cue us in, tell us that we are reading or hearing prophetic speech in the Bible are “Thus says the Lord….” or sometimes, “the word of the Lord came to….”

But the message a prophet communicates is NOT abstract, timeless truths. The prophetic vision is always concrete, real-world stuff. You could say that prophecy is interpretation of human existence from a divine perspective. The message of each of the prophets is particular to his own time and place. It helps a lot to consider the circumstances that surrounded a prophet when we are trying to understand what we’re reading. The prophets were always concerned with the social, political and religious realities of their world, not only with the faith and actions of individuals.

A rough overview of the bigger historical picture helps to put the prophets in context: Israel was united under one monarchy for a while with Saul, then David, and Solomon as kings. In about 920 BCE, the kingdom divided into two, with separate rulers, until in 722 BCE when the northern kingdom, Israel, fell to the Assyrian Empire, the major world power in the region at that time. The Assyrians moved their people in, moved many of the conquered people out, and over time most of the Israelites dispersed to various places or became assimilated into other cultures. The southern kingdom, Judah, continued in existence for a while, partly through paying tribute to the Assyrians and making alliances with other nations like Egypt (the prophets often disapproved of those actions), but when the Babylonians became the dominant power a hundred or so years later, they took over Judah. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and for a period of about 70 years a large number of the people from Judah – especially leaders and people with skills and education – were held in captivity in Babylon. In about 539 when the Persians took over from the Babylonians, many of those people were allowed to return and Jerusalem and the temple were rebuilt.

There were prophets active throughout these years, and during the time of the divided kingdom some were in Israel and some in Judah; as you might imagine, their messages were different in the different circumstances.

You might remember for example, how the earlier prophets like Samuel and Nathan helped to establish the monarchy in Israel… and then served as the “voice of conscience” to the kings, who sometimes let their power go to their heads.

Prophets like Amos in the period before Israel and Judah fell to the Assyrians and Babylonians warned of impending disaster that they felt was coming as much because of internal corruption and widespread social injustice as because of the threats of enemy nations around them.

Later on, the prophets who were active during and after the time of the Babylonian exile assured the people that, no matter what it looked like, God had not forgotten or forsaken them. They promised restoration, forgiveness, and hope for the future.

As rooted as they are in the prophets’ own context, their messages nevertheless seem relevant and timely to us when we read them… because corruption in public and religious life, injustice, careless personal ethics, and indifference to God are as familiar to us as they were to the prophets.

These messages seem timely because the longing for hope, which the prophets’ people felt, is familiar to us, too. Who does not resonate with the vision of beating swords into plows, or justice rolling down like water?

By and large, the prophets aren’t the kind of folks you want to invite over for the backyard barbeque. While everybody else might be talking about the stock market, or the Tigers, or summer vacation plans, or last Sunday’s sermon… the prophet wants to know how it affects the poor. He suggests that our enthusiasms for things other than God may be idolatrous, asks if we understand that God doesn’t like our priorities, and wonders whether our religion is just for show. Not the kind of guest the other guests are gonna want you to invite back.

Prophets aren’t big on being tactful, or subtle, or patient. They have no ability to just tolerate minor ethical lapses as unimportant in the long run. They don’t turn a blind eye to wrongdoing on the grounds that it’s none of their business. They don’t excuse or rationalize. The end never justifies the means, as far as they are concerned. They never say “That’s just the way it is, can’t do anything about it.” They don’t accept that “life’s unfair, you’d better get used to it.” They are not afraid of offending powerful and influential people, or challenging accepted norms. They’ve never heard that you should avoid talking politics or religion, and the idea many folks have about not mixing religion and politics would be absolutely baffling to them.

The foundation of the prophetic worldview is that the world and everything in it belong to God, who is the sovereign ruler of it all and the one to whom history ultimately belongs. Given that, it’s only natural that they should see every wrong thing – lying, greed and adultery … practicing religion without real devotion … worshipping false gods… social policies that oppress the poor … relying on wealth and power instead of on God… making political alliances with foreign powers of questionable integrity – as within the purview of God and of those charged with speaking God’s word in the world.

It would be wrong, though, to equate the prophets with political pundits or social critics of our day, whose job it is to criticize and skewer pretty much everything, from the point of view of their own cynicism or detachment. The prophet is rooted in this sense of God’s ultimate authority. And his perspective isn’t one of detachment or aloof superiority; When it’s a word of judgment that’s spoken, it’s not an objective and impartial judgment but one that comes out of the hurt, disappointment, anger and ultimately love God holds for the people God calls God’s own.

I said that hope was part of the prophetic vision as well. You can see this quite clearly in the later prophets: the ones who were active in the period of the exile and the period of the return to Jerusalem and rebuilding the temple talk a lot about a new future, God’s forgiveness, and the need recommit to God’s ways. But it’s there even in the earlier prophets, the ones who see that there is no possibility of avoiding disaster and suffering; even then they believed that God’s faithfulness would outlast the people’s waywardness, and that the possibility of coming back to God’s ways was always there. If not, why even bother with the message? The very existence of the prophet’s role says that there is hope.

So what do the prophets have for us? Why read and study them?

They disturb our complacency… and that can be a good thing.

They redirect our attention to God.

They enlarge our vision of the world by engaging us in God’s vision.

They make us sensitive to injustice, and keep us focused on God’s vision for justice, especially for the poor and vulnerable.

They challenge us to try and look at our world, our lives, our nation, our faith community from God’s perspective, and ask ourselves hard questions about whether our priorities mesh with God’s vision for us.

They remind us that the structures and practices of religion – the right order of worship, proper observances of rituals and special days, correct creeds and so forth – are meaningless without love of God and love of neighbor.

They continually remind us that the spirit, and not just the letter, of the law matters.

They challenge us to be truthful, bold and prophetic - not evasive, timid, or accommodating - with respect to evil, injustice and indifference, no matter where we find them.

They offer us a word of hope. The prophets’ hope is in GOD – God’s love and compassion, God’s faithfulness, God’s mercy. We need that kind of hope as an antidote to cynicism and despair; and we need it to lead us away from arrogance and misplaced confidence in our own temporary and superficial solutions. That hope in God may be the most important prophetic gift of all.

Abraham Heschel wrote that “The prophet is not only a prophet. He is also poet, preacher, patriot, statesman, social critic, moralist.”

I would add that the prophet is also the bearer of the hopeful vision that sustains faith through hard and uncertain times… times like the prophets’ times, even times like ours.