Prophetic Figures of the Old Testament

By Nyamayabo Mashavakure

There is nothing particularly new or unique about the subject matter of Prophetic Figures of the Old Testament. In fact, greater authorities have covered it better many times before, and this endeavour is hugely reliant upon and indebted to these great minds for this current work. The hope is that readers can enjoy more of what they have already had, from many different quarters, presented through a different hand. It is also the hope that beginning learners of divinity or biblical studies can find this book greatly enjoyable and inspiring.
In the main, the prophetic figures represented in the wording of the book title certainly refer to persons called or identifiable as prophets in the Bible. But this is also extended to include some objects, occurrences, and places that prophets may have encountered and even made use of in the performance of their prophetic duties. The interplay of these and the prophet is generally taken to signify the comprehensiveness or completeness of prophecy, in this book. The reader is invited to interrogate the relationship of the prophet and this environment in order to enjoy more fully the religious, historical, political, intellectual, and inspirational aspects one goes through in respect of the issues selected and commented on.
The reader is encouraged to think beyond what one reads. Any statement or comment is not meant to be some kind of definitive prescription but is meant to arouse thought and more thought. More important, readers should always be in constant contact with the origin of the materials spoken about in this book that is, the Bible. There is obviously no way in which selective consideration of items picked on a rather random, personal, subjective basis can replace the source from which these are originally taken. Reading of Prophetic Figures of the Old Testament should therefore always depend on knowledge of, or familiarity with, the background information provided in the Bible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496994967

Nyamayabo Mashavakure

Nyamayabo Mashavakure has taught Bible knowledge and divinity at the high school level in Zimbabwe for many years. There, divinity as an A-level subject has always included the rise and practice of Israelite prophecy as depicted in the Old Testament, as a major item of the compulsory first Paper of the Divinity examination. He has always enjoyed reading academic and related literature on biblical studies and religion in general, among other subject areas, throughout his educational and professional careers. He obtained a BA general in Shona and religious studies, a BA special honours in religious studies, a graduate certificate in education, and a postgraduate diploma in curriculum and arts education, all from the University of Zimbabwe. He also holds an MA in theology from the University of Leeds, England.

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2014 Nyamayabo Mashavakure. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/19/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9494-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9495-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9496-7 (e)

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

All scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Contents

Acknowledgements

The Prophetic

Part One The Non-Canonical Prophets

Chapter 1 The Patriarchs

Chapter 2 Moses and His Times

Chapter 3 Joshua and the Judges

Chapter 4 The Onset of the Monarchy

Chapter 5 The Divided Kingdom

Part Two The Canonical Period

Chapter 6 Amos

Chapter 7 Daniel

Chapter 8 Ezekiel

Chapter 9 Habakkuk

Chapter 10 Haggai

Chapter 11 Hosea

Chapter 12 ISAIAH

Chapter 13 Jeremiah

Chapter 14 Joel

Chapter 15 Jonah

Chapter 16 Malachi

Chapter 17 Micah

Chapter 18 Nahum

Chapter 19 Obadiah

Chapter 20 Zechariah

Chapter 21 Zephaniah

Bibliography

About the Author

TO:   Chihora,

MukundiIshemunyoro Mashavakure, and clansmen;

For the pleasure of reading

And

the beauty of being widely read.

Acknowledgements

My sincere gratitude to Mr ChiedzaChipunza of Ellis Robins School, Mabelreign, Harare, Zimbabwe, for assisting with the image for my book cover design idea.

The Prophetic

• Introduction

The aim of this part of the book is to work out and suggest, for purposes of the discussions that follow, what constitutes prophetic material in the Old Testament to both its writers and its readers through time. This includes the nature, character, or person of one who is said to be a prophet. What makes up the activity, behaviour, or utterance that denotes the prophetic? What stirs up and spurs on the prophetic in an individual, group, or situation? What sort of developments of the idea and ideal of the prophetic follow the exercise and practice of prophecy, in the Old Testament in particular, and in the growth of Judeo-Christian religious thought generally?

In subsequent chapters, we will explore ideas in relation to Israel and the manner of her association with neighbouring communities or nations, as well as the possibility of sharing thought patterns in the political, religious, and other spheres emanating from encounters with other people.

• Prophecy

The fundamental concept and exercise of prophecy derives from, originates in, and is centred on the first thirty-nine books of the Bible, also known as the Old Testament. Jewish tradition referred to it as the scriptures, divided into three main sections. There was the torah (the law), or Pentateuch, which was made up of the first five books of the Bible. Second was the section known as the prophets, which was itself also divided into two parts. The first part included the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. It was called the former prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and twelve remaining smaller prophetic books, also termed the minor prophets, constituted the latter prophets. The book of Daniel, included in this exploration of Old Testament prophecy, was not ranked with any part of the books of prophecy. It belongs to the third section of Jewish scripture known as the Hagiographa, or holy writings. Other books in the holy writings include Psalms, Job, Ruth, Esther, 1 and 2 Chronicles, and all the other books not included in the law and the prophets given above.

• Prophet

Three Hebrew words are understood to denote and are rendered prophet in the Old Testament. In many instances, the word prophet refers to the Hebrew nabi, from a root meaning to bubble forth, flow, or to issue out; that is, to speak or proclaim. The prophet gives out what he has received from God. Prophesying means being a spokesman of God. The prophet issues forth God’s words and messages to the people. In 1 Samuel 9:9, the word seer, or ro’eh, comes into usage with reference to Samuel. Hozeh is another word meaning seer, used in 2 Samuel 24:11 by King David in connection with Gad. According to David, in 2 Samuel 15:27, even Zadok the priest was a seer.

The prophets communicate to humanity a message from God that was contained in a vision. They see what God presents and displays. They interpret and may pass the contents on to other people, if required.

First Samuel 9:9 gives the impression that the seer was a developmental position en route to becoming a full-fledged prophet. A seer was paid consultation fees for his services by enquiring clients. Saul and his companions make sure that they have something to offer Samuel when they visit him to ask about their lost asses in this passage. Amos rejects the suggestion of Amaziah that he quits being a menace to the state of Israel, returns home to Judah, and makes a living out of such consultation fees, because to Amaziah, Amos was a seer (see Amos 7).

The phrase man of God is another designation of a prophet. Examples include Samuel, who is given the title in 1 Sam 9:6–10, as Shemmiah is in 1 Kings 12:22–24. In 1 Kings 13 and 1 Kings 20:28, the term is used to refer to some anonymous prophets. The first is from Judah, who brought a message of God’s displeasure with King Jeroboam (I)’s rule in the northern kingdom. The second advises King Ahab that Israelite armies will be victorious over those of Syria, perhaps one of a few instances where Ahab gets a favourable message from YHWH.

Balaam, of Numbers 22–4, is called a kosem in Joshua 13:22, meaning that he was a diviner, in the sense of a false prophet. There are persons and behaviours that may appear prophetic to readers, onlookers and audiences, while what they are really involved in is not approved of as correct prophecy. Yet despite the limitations of him being such a diviner, God used him against his hirers to forecast good about the children of Israel. Another important thing to note in connection with the Balaam story is the fact that the prophetic is also endowed with the power to bless and to curse, with and through the spoken word, as shown by the proceedings of Numbers 22–24.

Therefore, a very central aspect that runs through all facets of the prophetic is communication, mostly spoken, but sometimes acted out. This is interactive communication between the human and the divine, which enables the attainment, determination, and realization of situations that are not ordinarily accessible to the human, one of which is access to what may be most difficult or even impossible for men to fathom by their own devices, including the possibility of knowing God’s will or mind in given scenarios. This communication with the divine can be direct, as is the case with many individuals cited in the initial part of the Old Testament. Reference here can be made to Adam, Noah, and Abraham, as given in the Genesis narratives. Later, the communication becomes more indirect, including encounters mediated by angelic figures like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and Jacob’s nightlong wrestling contest with an angel.

The communication also has a human-to-human dimension where the prophet speaks to the social environment, as directed and facilitated by the interaction with the divine. There is a transmission or interchange of information and ideas involving prophet to non-prophet, and even among prophets as is given in 1 Kings 22.

The communication can be initiated by the divine for purposes that are centred in the divine itself. In such an instance, the destination may be the individual to utilise as assigned; that is, it may be to or through the individual for the sake of onward transmission to a third party as the terminal destination, which can be other individuals, or the larger society or nation and its rulers, or other persons of some political and religious relevance. When communication or interaction originates in and from the divine, this is referred to as divine revelation. The divine is making accessible and available information about itself or other issues that man would ordinarily not attain, or expect to gain reach of, at some point in time and space by himself. It might or might not comprise the element of surprise. God is revealing Himself, or He is uncovering and making visible and audible things that man would ordinarily not expect to know or see by the functional and perceptual capacities that the person is aware of or endowed with.

God is also thought to generally make available to creation knowledge about His expectations concerning the relationship between them and Himself in what is widely known as natural revelation. This is an indirect disclosure or instinctive enlightenment which may not necessarily involve some conscious awareness or understanding that some interaction with the divine is taking place or has occurred. This includes the possibility of the divine manifesting itself in creation, thus revealing itself by divulging its own nature and perspective on issues, or exhibiting one or more of its essential attributes, in the created. This general knowledge about divinity is thought to reside in, or operate from, individuals’ consciences from where it can be exercised, exploited, or otherwise made use of if, when, and as needed.

God can also communicate with humanity as a result of an invitation by man for this to happen. God makes divine revelation available in response to issues or petitions made by men, individually or as a group. In this, one person can represent himself or stand for a whole group. When someone transmits communication information between God and man, or between persons, it is referred to as mediation. Thus, the prophetic can and often does include a lot of mediatory activity or functions.

By just going through the Bible, one realizes the first person to be referred to as a prophet is the patriarch Abraham in Genesis 20. The designation is associated with certain potencies, even in this story, one of which is that by prayer, Abraham could cause misfortune to befall Abimelech’s household. The prophetic, therefore, entails special powers that are capable of being exercised, for good or for bad. If and when the situation relates to a given individual, the option existed for the person to utilize, or not to use, the special powers. Prayer is a vehicle by which the efficacy of such power could be exploited or realized. Abraham might choose to make use of the powers vested in him as prophet, and the consequences would be dire for King Abimelech’s family.

Abraham can facilitate good for Abimelech if the king returns Sarah to Abraham. He can appeal to God on behalf of Abimelech, and all would be well. Thus, as prophet, Abraham, and anybody like him, was also equipped to intercede to God for the benefit of man. Therefore, intercession is one of the elements, duties, obligations, or informally laid-out series of actions and activities that exhibit the qualities and peculiarities of the prophetic.

• Characteristics, Functions, and Responsibilities of the Prophet

In the days of Israel’s nationhood, starting with the story of the emancipation from Egypt, prophets become individuals, especially singled out and tasked to state the will of God in different historical, political, and social settings. The message is directed towards the wider context in which the individual prophetic character is operating. The messages are now security and safety nets, set up and administered by the divine, to ensure the smooth functioning of the historical, social, and religious order as desired by God. Personal positions and opinions appear to be largely obscured by the function of proclaiming or declaring the will of God so much so that they might seem to cease to ever exist. Once the prophetic ministry begins, the person is deemed by other people, and may consider themselves to be permanently launched into non-stop prophesying up to death. Prophecy becomes the new and only personality trait of the individual involved.

It is, however, also possible that writers and speakers refer to someone as a prophet only as an identification symbol or label, and not as a suggestion of the fact that he was in the mode and mood to prophesy. A person can be referred to as a bus driver even when he or she is not driving a bus. What the person says and does away from driving duties needs not be related and linked somehow to the known work or profession. The person can, for the sake of being differentiated from the rest of the people, be attached to and addressed by the label of their occupation, which is associated with a small group which stands out from the greater number of the community’s members.

Thus, there are instances when prophets may have been acting out of personal opinion or logic yet generally seem to have been understood as having been prophesying. Sometimes one could be forgiven for suspecting that some prophets couldnot themselves draw a linebetween the reality of acting and speaking on personal capacities and their acting as a response to the influence or direction of the prophetic. It is a very potent weapon they wield. Prophecy is an instrument of overwhelming power and authority. The persons called prophets are well aware of it and might try to make use of it from time to time to steer events one way or the other, perhaps towards personally preferred orientations or dispositions.

The rejection of Samuel’s proposal to have his sons as judges over Israel may fall into this category. Samuel cannot accept that the generality of the people doubt his wisdom and judgment in trying to install his own sons as judges. He thinks that refusing to adopt his ideas is as good as despising the office of prophet, which his person and discretion represented, and was consequently equal to rejecting God, who had bestowed that prophecy upon him. In fact, Samuel is as good as trying to establish a hereditary political leadership system beginning with himself, on to his sons, which his children could have perpetuated by appointing their own children to be their own successors, and so forth. What the people do is to adopt more or less the same idea of a hereditary national leadership system but just ensure that the political authority in question is not anchored on Samuel’s corrupt sons. The persuasion of David, by Bathsheba, instigated and backed by Nathan to make Solomon king instead of his brother, Adonijah, who was already in the process of staging a coup, is another such story where the office and function of prophet may have been utilised to support Nathan’s personal sympathies for Bathsheba, which originated in the killing of her husband by the machinations of King David (2 Samuel 11–12).

The patriarchal figures in the Genesis stories are generally perceived as prophetic in their own right, although it is Abraham who is specifically called prophet in Genesis 20:7. Some of these characters, and events associated with them, as we shall see in later chapters, display elements of the personal self that we have just indicated in connection with Nathan and Samuel.

In the days following the liberation from Egypt, prophets become ardent defenders of the God who had facilitated the release of the Hebrew community from bondage. Armed with the law of Moses and the facts of history, they zealously fight against any attempt to have gods other than YHWH recognized and worshipped in Israel. Prophets champion monotheism centred on YHWH, the author of liberation from Egyptian bondage. That emancipation is the ultimate example of the principle, practice, and exercise of justice so evidently dominant in the basic law of Moses, the Ten Commandments, and traceable back to the primary nature and character of YHWH, who is intrinsically holy and righteous.

Thus, prophets also champion justice in Israel, which is a quality exhibited by God in freeing their own forefathers from Egyptian oppression. The condemnation of David over Uriah’s wife, the story of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21), as well as the ethical teachings of people like Amos, Hosea, and others, testify to this. References or appeals to the liberation idea are quite numerous in prophetic literature. For example, I called my son out of Egypt in Hosea 12:1 recalls the exhibition and exercise of divine mercy and justice as an act of adoption by the divine, which then made Israel God’s son. Monotheism and Yahwism get along very well together and fare and flourish just as well in conditions where justice is especially held in high esteem. The basic law of Moses, the list of ten commandments, is focused on these two aspects, namely monotheism, enunciated in the first three or four commandments, anchoring, manifested in; and requiring justice as a second integral aspect of the practice of monotheism in the rest of the commandments.

Moses is a pivotal character on issues to do with the upholding and defence of Yahwism, monotheism, and god-centred justice. The Exodus stories bear ample witness to this, and more especially represented, crystallized, and epitomised in the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20, and paraphrased and elucidated elsewhere in the first five books of the Bible (e.g., Exodus 21–24, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy). All other persons who grace the prophetic space after Moses toe this line.

Moses appoints Joshua to be his own political successor. Joshua himself doesn’t. As we have seen already, Samuel tries but is forced to make an appointment which he had not originally intended to. It becomes another function of the prophetic office to appoint political leaders, or kings, or at least to show their approval of those put forward to occupy such high political offices. Samuel proceeds to dethrone Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin, his initial choice for king over Israel and to replace him with David from the house of Judah. Nathan facilitates the succession of Solomon as king before David’s death to ensure that the position would not slip to other sons of the king, as was already in the process of occurring. Elisha, on the instructions of Elijah, promotes coups in Israel, the northern kingdom, and in Syria.

Several prophets stay in close contact with the ruling political figures of their time. They offer advice to these rulers, at the request of the rulers in question, or at their own behest, whether or not such advice is well received or acted upon. Because of this association with the centres of political power, some of them have been referred to as court prophets, pointing to the fact that they are often to be found in close proximity to the centres and personalities of power and influence of their time, such as administrative headquarters or capital cities, kings’ palaces, or royal courtyards.

Gad the seer was David’s personal advisor since the