is true that a member of the clergy might be prophetic in his or her message from time to time, it should never be the case that the roles are seen to be interchangeable. Certainly within the Hebrew Bible there is no confusion between the prophet and the priest. Why might there be confusion between the roles of clergy and prophet today? And indeed why is it that many find it difficult to embrace the role of prophet today, along the lines of the manner of the Hebrew prophet?
First, we live in a world where the technological and scientific developments have generated a healthy element of cynicism for most people in terms of that which might be prophetic. In part because of the quest to have empirical proof for practically everything, there has developed a kind of division between what can be believed and what must be proven. We witness from the various topics on which the Hebrew prophets spoke that all of life was rooted in God and therefore one could not proceed with arguments that separated one section of life from the other. This was an intensely important issue as the people of ancient Israel sought to remove the practice of worship from the ethical elements of life. In effect they sought to separate the care of the neighbor (understood to be a secular matter) from the worship of YHWH (a sacred matter). This division was to trigger sharp invectives from Israelite prophets. Certainly this unity of the sacred and the secular was not unique to Israel, for it was also present in other Near Eastern societies and it continues to be an essential aspect of the spiritual and biblical inheritance of both Jews and Christians.
Second, in today’s society, there are some who have laid claims to have had private revelations from God. While there are loyal groups of believers who are willing to subscribe to and follow such religious figures and the revelations they claim to have received, it is often through their monetary support that they sustain such persons. Many others view such “private revelations” available to the public for a price with a certain degree of justifiable suspicion. The “private line to God” is not a saleable feature of religious experience in contemporary society. Recent experiences of this sort have only served to intensify the suspicion about the nature and role of prophecy. This however was not the atmosphere under which the Hebrew prophets delivered their message. While there were questions regarding the motives of some prophets and indeed there were questions about the essence of their message, nevertheless the religious experiences of the Hebrew prophets have not only survived, but their message have maintained a remarkable and striking relevance and resonance. The prophets of ancient Israel had the deep rooted conviction that God was actively involved in the affairs of the people, and because of the covenant with Israel, God would communicate his will to the prophets to ensure that the relationship was kept intact not only in a vertical way with God but in a seamless horizontal way with each other.
Brueggemann is certainly on point when he says that there is an element of urgency to disconnect “the academic community away from self-preoccupied triviality that is such a waste, the ecclesial communities away from excessive certitude that is idolatry and the civic community away from brutality rooted in autonomy.”37 An unmistakable and deeply rooted feature of the Hebrew prophets that cannot be negotiated away is the fact that what they have to say will happen within the context of history. The prophets in this regard are not appealing to an apocalyptic vision for the practice of justice. While there are instances when there is a vision of the next life, when there will be no more tears and the old life will pass away, the prophets for the most part are preaching for transformation and justice in this world. What this means for the prophets is that punishment, destruction, exile, scattering will all happen in this world and in the concreteness of societal settings. It might seem to some that what the prophets proclaimed will be fulfilled in the afterlife, and others who are too entrenched in places of comfort and security might in fact dismiss the prophetic call as utopian. But one is reminded that utopia carries the meaning of nowhere, and indeed the call for justice will in fact take place, and it is somewhere, and it is in our time and will be in other times as well. But most assuredly it is not nowhere. The prophets experienced God in a variety of ways, some of which are shocking to us. Despite those who today say that they take the Bible literally and follow it as in a textbook, hardly would they consider walking around naked as Isaiah did or others who exhibited ecstatic behaviors. But there is more to this sacred experience. Some today have intimated as much that God not only identifies with us as a people, as perhaps the “new chosen,” but also with our system of government. But in fact as it is, God is not tethered to one political system; God’s working is not tied to one worldview and indeed the message of the prophets is directed to every source of injustice regardless of the political system. “Like the God who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, such a God subverts rather than legitimates the social order.”38
The prophets are so deeply entrenched in the system that they cannot begin to envision extricating themselves, assuming that there is even an impulse to do so. Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” where he speaks forcefully about what I would deem the “urgency of now,” emphasized the significance of immediacy and urgency. In matters of injustice, justice delayed is justice denied and waiting is the equivalent of never, according to king. In the message of the prophets, there is no waiting. Tomorrow is now. While there are many similarities in the message of the prophets, nevertheless their different foci point to the spontaneous and contextual nature of their message. While we have inherited their message as part of scripture, it was first delivered within a particular time in history to a particular people. Further, a basic presupposition among scholars today is that not all the words that we find in the text can be ascribed to the prophets. This naturally only serves to compound the problem, because the system of redaction and refinement not only creates textual and redactional speculation, but adds an element of incoherency to the already complicated interpretive issue.
It is therefore impossible to place the prophets in well rounded categories. Depending on the emphasis which is placed, the prophets have been called “ethicists,” “revolutionaries,” “reformers,” “traditionalists,” “Yahwists,” “poets,” and “messengers” among others. This wide range of possibilities in itself underlines the difficulty which exists. Clearly to posit the prophets as exclusively or even primarily one of th ese is to run the risk of overlooking significant textual evidence which might indicate differing notions. While the message of the prophets includes all of the elements listed above, I have suggested elsewhere that the prophets were fundamentally “witnesses,” as Abraham Heschel has convincingly argued.39 There is also one other aspect of the role of the prophet that merits mentioning. The Hebrew prophets were not all from the same socio-economic situation, or from the same locations, or of the same status or station in life. In fact they are from North and South, urban and rural, politically connected and without political ties or intimate connection with social and political institutions. The prophets do however have one essential factor in common and that is their core message. Moreover, they do not have structural and institutional ties and are not beholden to anyone, including those on whose behalf they speak. And of course they are not beholden to “special interest groups” who wield their power to influence their message. As witnesses they spoke the words of God without diluting it. They were challenged, they were rebuked, they were ostracized, and they were excommunicated. Being a prophet was not a position with great job security, but there was no escaping the call.
The Hebrew prophets were more than predictors of the future. Rather than simply making pronouncements in which they were somehow not personally invested, the prophets embraced and invested themselves in issues that they spoke about. Heschel suggests that they were some place between human and divine.40 One should not conclude as some are wont to do that the call and role of the prophet was an easy and sought after position. Indeed, there is no instance where a prophet sought such a calling. Moreover, there were many moments of resistance and reluctance to make such devastating announcements to the people. But there is also another factor. The words of the prophet is often so dramatic that at first glance one is sure to conclude that the prophet must be exaggerating, that surely his words cannot possibly be true. The prophetic words invite a vision that is so far reaching and dramatic, spoken to a people who are often deeply rooted in the present and the manner they imagine life will be, that such dramatic words might strike them as wholly untrue and impossible.
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