proselyte (an alien who is in), prosthesis (taking the place of a missing part), and protestant (one who testifies against, or for another). Phemi means “to say,” “to affirm.” The prophets spoke for another, for the Lord. Doing this, they were not “fore-telling,” but “telling for,” standing for, in place of the Lord. Through them the Lord was telling the Israelites how he viewed their present course of action, describing what the future held if they continued in their present course, and advising them to change course.
This definition of a prophet was still in use in early Christian times. The apostle Paul points out that different members of the church have been given different gifts and identifies “prophecy” among them (1 Cor. 12:10). He also gives a list of the roles God has established for the proper functioning of the church. He lists “prophets” after “apostles” and before “teachers” (1 Cor. 12:28). As Paul describes them, the prophets were the ones who spoke a “Word of the Lord.” We would call them “preachers.” In antiquity, the Word of the Lord was understood to be oral, even after its later compilation in books by editors. With some significant differences demanded by the circumstances, the apocalyptic writers did the same three things the prophets had been doing. It is in this discrete sense that the apocalypticists are to be thought of as descendants of the prophets. They also were analyzing the present and concerned to recommend a course of action.
In the process of analyzing what was taking place from the divine perspective, the prophets revealed a God who is not primarily attached to natural phenomena in their yearly cycles, but a God who has been actively involved in bringing the people out of a troubled past is taking notice of what they are doing in the present and has control over their future. The prophets examined the life of the people in its historical setting. According to them, Yahveh is the Lord who has been guiding the people of Israel as they have advanced toward their present unparalleled and unexpected prosperity. Human affairs are not bound to the natural cyclical return to the beginning. Human activity is significant when it does something new, something different. Human beings do not promote well-being and prosperity by faithfully celebrating feasts that keep them attuned with the turning of the seasons and promote the reception of the bounties of nature. The prophets insisted that shalom, health, well-being, prosperity, peace, was a gift of Yahveh, the Lord of time. They released time from the circle of yearly repetitions and cast it on a time-line that came from the past and reached forward to an open future. This gave the present significance not because of its correspondence with a primordial divine action or a particular natural phenomenon that demanded the performance of a specified ritual, but because it gave human beings the opportunity to collaborate with God in the formulation of the future. In Israel, feasts which had been celebrations of transitions in the course of natural events, under their new cosmology became celebrations that had to do with particular historical events.
The prophets admonished the people to remember how God had blessed them in their past history, and that they had entered into a covenant agreement with Yahveh. This made it necessary to live according to chesed, covenant loyalty. Having entered into a covenant with Yahveh, the people were now Yahveh’s bride. The understanding that their connection to their God was not in nature, but in the way in which they lived in obedience to covenant stipulations set the Israelites in a peculiar trajectory. Rather than depending on the performance of religious rituals for security and prosperity, they were to depend on Yahveh’ guidance for security and prosperity. This required a particular way of living at all times, not just at festival time. God’s demands have primarily to do with life in society. God’s retributive justice is applied in reference to one’s relationships with others and one’s commitment to God. Since God had elected Abraham and his descendants as his people, they were now Yahveh’s bride. Any deviation from their commitment to their husband was denounced by the prophets as harlotry. To their chagrin, the prophets found pervasive evidence of Israel’s deviations from its covenant commitments. Therefore, God aimed to punish Israel severely. If the people continued in their present course of action, God’s judgment would be their historical downfall. On the other hand, if they turned away from their evil ways and became loyal to the God of the covenant, God would reward them with security and prosperity.
The origins of prophecy
The prophets whose writings we possess were not the only ones giving advice to the people. In Israel there were sorcerers, diviners, augurs, soothsayers, necromancers and witches. The Old Testament contains repeated warnings against consulting them or paying attention to their pronouncements. There were also “seers” who were also called “men of the spirit,” and later came to be called “prophets” (1 Sam. 9:10). When Saul encountered a group of them he was also empowered by the spirit, which gave rise to the saying “Is Saul also among the prophets?” (1 Sam. 10:12). In time, the old schools of the prophets produced professional prophets who were attached to the temple and were servants of the king. They spoke what the king wanted to hear. By contrast, the prophets whose oracles are now found in the Bible were for the most part the ones who stood against those in power who were abusing the weak among them: the widow, the orphan, the day laborer, the poor.
In the canon of the Hebrew Bible one section is designated as the Former Prophets and another as the Latter Prophets. What according to this nomenclature is designated as the Former Prophets are books that we consider narratives (1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings). The Latter Prophets section of the Hebrew canon contains the books which have collections of the sayings of prophets, which we call now the prophetic books. The first of the “former prophets” in Israel is Samuel who was also a judge. He marks the transition from the leadership of the judges, who were endowed by the spirit to become military leaders charged to deliver the people from the oppression of neighboring chieftains, and the kings, who gave the people security with a standing army and royal prestige. This was a major shift in the history of Israel, and left scars that brought about the future division of the nation under two competing kingdoms. It was the transition from charismatic to institutional leadership. The endowment of the Spirit on the judges had been for the accomplishment of a specific task. Once the task had been accomplished, judges returned to their normal life. That is, their spiritual endowment had been temporary.
The establishment of a king, with hereditary rights of succession, institutionalized the power of the Spirit; its flow was thought to have been restricted to official channels. There are two contradictory narratives about Samuel’s participation in the establishment of the monarchy, evidence of the controversy that characterized its establishment. The institutionalization of the Spirit was strongly resisted by many. According to one account, the people asked for a king because they did not wish to have one of the sons of Samuel as their judge. Faced by this request, God advised Samuel to comply, and identified Saul as the one to be anointed king (1 Sam. 8-11). In this account, God is behind the introduction of kingship, and Samuel, the prophet, is following God’s directive when he anoints the first king. According to the other narrative, the people asked for a king because they were being threatened by Nahash, the king of the Ammonites. God was displeased by this request, and Samuel felt duty-bound to warn the people of the consequences of their request. Loyalty to a king would become a competitor to their obedience to God (1 Sam. 12). According to this account, the people did not trust God’s ability to provide protection from foreign attacks, and God took their request for a king as an offense against him. Obviously, not everyone in Israel was happy with the crowning of what proved to be despotic kings. These stories also reflect on the role of the prophet. According to one, he is a loyal servant of the king who is a servant of God. According to the other, the prophet stands in opposition to the king who has been enthroned as a reluctant concession on the part of God.
The prophets as advisers or accusers of those in power
The prophets we know for their activities in the narratives of the books of Samuel and Kings were concerned with matters having to do with kingship, dynastic stability, foreign policy and military activity. Elisha, in particular, exemplifies these roles. Nathan was a prophet attached to the royal household who gave David the message that, while Yahveh did not wish him to build the house of God in Jerusalem, Yahveh would establish his “house” (dynasty) forever (2 Sam. 7:14-29). This promise was the foundation of all
