To Be
Prophets
May 14, 2020
Numbers 11:24-30
What a true prophet does
is something people often misunderstand.[1]
Being a prophet has come to mean correctly predicting the future. If someone
has predicted some future event that then takes place we say that person was
prophetic. Of course most of us most of the time would like to know what the
future will bring. People go to supposed seers to learn what their future
holds. Science fiction writers tell stories of time travelers in which someone
is magically transported into the future and tells us all about it. What they
see is usually bad, but we so want to know the future that we read the stories
anyway. We think that’s what prophets do. They predict the future. That’s what
makes them prophets.
The problem here is that
predicting the future isn’t what being a prophet was mostly about originally.
The Hebrew Bible has many prophets in it. It’s where the concept prophet arose.
The prophets of the Hebrew Bible functioned in relationship to the Hebrew kingdoms.
They appeared at the beginning of the first millennium BCE with the creation of
the kingdom of Saul and David. They disappeared
after the return from Babylon in the sixth century BCE once it became
clear that there wasn’t going to be another Hebrew kingdom.[2]
That the Hebrew prophets operated in relationship to a king tells us a good
deal about what they actually did. They did speak some about what was going to
happen in the future, but mostly what they did was speak a word they had
received from God to the kings and others in positions of privilege or power. A
prophet is precisely one who speaks God’s truth to power.
In ancient Israel prophet
seems to have been a kind of profession. There are references to whole
companies of prophets gathered around the royal courts. There were basically
two types of prophet, one who told the kings what the kings wanted to hear and
ones who spoke a true word from God that condemned the kings and the elite of
the kingdoms for false worship practices and/or economic exploitation of the
poor and vulnerable. It’s prophets of the second type whose sayings made the
cut into the Hebrew Bible, which is Christianity’s Old Testament.
The sayings of those
prophets, called oracles, fall generally into two types, judgment oracles and
restoration oracles. In the judgment oracles prophets like Isaiah, Amos, and
Micah excoriate those in power in Israel and Judah for oppressing the poor and
the vulnerable. They call for justice for the poor, the alien, the widow, and
the orphan. In these judgment oracles the prophets do speak some of what will
happen in the future if the rulers don’t shape up (although sometimes they say
it’s already too late for that). They say the Hebrew kingdoms will be conquered
by foreign empires as God’s way of punishing the nations for their evil ways.
The future they predict is one of conquest, suffering, and exile, about which
they turned out to be right. That’s probably why they got included in the
Hebrew Bible. When they spoke of God’s judgment in the future they saw what
really was going to happen.
The restoration oracles
also contain some prediction of future events. The prophets who speak damnation
against the powers also say that God will not utterly forsake them, or at least
most of the prophets say that. They speak of restored kingdoms and sometimes of
a new peace so powerful that nature itself will be transformed. So yes, as part
of their speaking divine truth to power the prophets do sometimes speak of the
future. It is however important to understand how that future talk relates to
the prophet’s primary purpose. They demand first that the rulers do justice,
then they speak a dire future if they don’t. They also say God won’t completely
abandon them, and they speak of a restored, just, peaceful future as a sign of
that divine truth. Telling the future is never their primary mission. Speaking
of God’s love and demanding that the rulers act justly is. Their future
predictions are there only to reinforce their speaking divine truth to power.
There were no more Hebrew
prophets, at least not in the Bible, after the early fifth century BCE, but
that doesn’t mean that prophecy ceased. There have always been women and men
who have spoken God’s truth to power. Few of us think of ourselves as prophets
in that sense, but let’s pay some attention to that odd passage from Numbers
that I cited above. The story is set in the wilderness of Sinai after the
people have left Egypt but before they make it to Canaan. Moses selects seventy
elders. He takes them to “the tent” outside the people’s camp. There Yahweh
places some of Moses’ spirit on them, whereupon “they prophesied.” Two men, one
named Eldad and the other named Medad, weren’t among the seventy elders that
Moses chose. They weren’t with Moses and the seventy at the tent. They were
back in the camp; yet spirit rested on them too, and they too prophesied. The
text doesn’t tell us what either these two or the seventy elders said. It just
says they prophesied. A young man from the camp runs to Moses and tell him that
Eldad and Medad were prophesying back in the camp. Another man tells Moses to
stop them. Moses doesn’t. He says: “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all
the Lord’s people were prophets,
and that the Lord would put his
spirit on them.” Numbers 11:29.
“Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets.” Given what
we’ve learned about what a prophet is, what does that mean? What would all God’s
people do if they were prophets? They’d do some things most of us mostly don’t
do. They’d—we’d—listen for a word from God. We’d study the great Hebrew
prophets to learn what they did. They weren’t perfect. Elijah was a mass murderer
by our standards for example. See 1 Kings 18:20-40. They did however speak
divine truth to power. They bellowed that God wants justice not sacrificial
worship. See Amos 5:21-24 for a good example of a great Hebrew prophet doing
precisely that. If we were the prophets Moses wanted us to be we’d bellow
against the injustices in our world the way Amos bellowed against the
injustices in his. We’d denounce our unequal and unjust distribution of wealth
racism, sexism, homophobia, militarism, and all other kinds of violence. We’d
demand that our country do justice for the ones Jesus called the least of
these. See Matthew 25:31-46. Doing all that wouldn’t make us popular. The
Hebrew prophets were anything but popular with the ones to whom they spoke God’s
judgment. The powers of the world never like having God’s truth proclaimed to
them. Doing it would however make us better Christians, better disciples of
Jesus Christ. So let’s get on with it, shall we?
[1]
For a more complete discussion of what the biblical prophets actually are see
Sorenson, Thomas Calnan, Liberating the Bible, A Pastor’s Guided Tour for
Seeking Christians, Revised Edition, Volume Two, The Old Testament, Coffee
Press, Briarwood, NY, 2019, pp. 255-260.
[2]
Moses of course predates any Hebrew kingdom. He may be the greatest of the
Hebrew prophets, but he’s an exception to the rule that Hebrew prophets relate
to Hebrew kings, although of course he did speak God’s truth to an Egyptian
king, to pharaoh.
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