The Bible's Many Voices

5. Prophetic Voices

5 Prophetic Voices We saw in the previous chapter that the written Torah was not generally acknowledged, certainly not as a legal document, until after the exile. The “scroll of Torah” that was discovered in 622 bce came as a complete surprise to the people who were living in Jerusalem at the time. What, then, played the role in earlier Judean society that the Torah began to play in the sixth century and later? That is, how did people know (as Mic. 6:8 puts it) “what God requires of you”? At least one answer is self-evident from the way I’ve asked the question: Micah (and other prophets like him) told them. In this chapter, we’ll examine what prophecy meant to the ancient Israelites by listening to some of the Bible’s most famous prophets—and to some of the most obscure prophets as well. When you listen carefully, you will find that prophets in the Bible are not exactly what you might expect a “prophet”to be. English speakers—particularly those of us who have seen headlines about “the prophecies of Nostradamus” on our way through the grocery store checkout line—tend to think of a “prophet”as someone who predicts the future. To understand the prophetic voices in the Bible, however, it is important to realize that, though the biblical prophets often spoke about the future, they were not fortune-tellers, and their “forecasts” were not always precise. For example, in the year 734 the king of Aram (Syria) and the king of (northern) Israel moved to attack Prophetic Voices 175 Jerusalem in a struggle called the Syro-Ephraimite War. (Remember that “Ephraim” is another name for the Northern Kingdom.) The prophet Isaiah, who lived in Jerusalem at the time, assured King Ahaz that the attackers would not succeed, and predicted,“In another sixtyfive years, Ephraim shall be shattered as a people” (Isa. 7:8). Sixty-five years after 734 takes us down to 669, but in fact, as we saw in chapter 1, the Northern Kingdom was conquered in 722 and its people, “Ephraim,” exiled to the hinterlands of the Assyrian Empire, where they vanished from history. What Did the Prophets Do? Isaiah’s “prediction”was certainly not wrong, but neither was it precise. In fact, it was off by half a century. If Isaiah had made his living as a fortune-teller, he would have been in bad shape. But, as I said, this is not the function that the prophets had in Israelite society. Rather, they were messengers of God. One way to remember this is to think of the etymology of our English word “prophet,” which comes from Greek words meaning something like “one who speaks out.”Within Hebrew, there is a clue in the name of the prophet Malachi, whose book is the last one in the “Prophets”section of both Jewish and Christian Bibles. It is very unlikely that this was the name he was given by his parents; malachi is a Hebrew word meaning “My messenger.”The function of the prophet in Israelite society was to convey God’s word. Thus, the purpose of what Isaiah told King Ahaz was not to pinpoint the precise date of the Northern Kingdom’s demise, but to make sure that the king held firm and defended the city. Jonah’s “Failed” Prophecy The story of Jonah makes the point very clear. In the book that bears his name, Jonah is sent to Nineveh with a warning: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”(Jonah 3:4). Here is what happened: JONAH 3:5 The people of Nineveh believed in God and put on burlap , from the greatest of them to the least. 6 When the matter 176 Prophetic Voices reached the king of Nineveh, he got off his throne, took off his cloak, wrapped himself in burlap, and sat in the ashes. 7 The following proclamation was made throughout Nineveh, in the name of the king and his nobles: “Let neither man nor beast, cattle nor sheep, taste a morsel—let the animals not graze—and let them drink no water. 8 Let them cover themselves with burlap, man and beast, let them call out forcefully to God, and let each of them turn back from his evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? If he turns back, perhaps God too...