Biblical Prophecy: Perspectives for Christian Theology, Discipleship, and Ministry

By Ellen F. Davis

In this fresh and expansive work, Ellen Davis offers a comprehensive interpretation of the prophetic role and word in the Christian scriptures. Davis carefully outlines five essential features of the prophetic role and then systematically examines seven representations of prophets and prophecies.

Thoroughly theological, Davis's volume provides both instruction and insight for understanding prophecy in Christian tradition and discipleship. This volume concludes with a rich discussion of practical matters, including the relationship between Christian discipleship and prophetic interpretation and the role of biblical prophecy in interfaith contexts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Release date: Oct 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781611645415

Ellen F. Davis

Ellen F. Davis is Amos Ragan Kearns Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke University Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. She is the author of Who Are You, My Daughter? Reading Ruth Through Image and Text; Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Getting Involved with God; and Imagination Shaped.

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Biblical Prophecy

INTERPRETATION

Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church

INTERPRETATION

RESOURCES FOR THE USE OF SCRIPTURE IN THE CHURCH

Patrick D. Miller, Series Editor

Ellen F. Davis, Associate Editor

Richard B. Hays, Associate Editor

James L. Mays, Consulting Editor

OTHER AVAILABLE BOOKS IN THE SERIES

Ronald P. Byars, The Sacraments in Biblical Perspective

Jerome F. D. Creach, Violence in Scripture

Robert W. Jenson, Canon and Creed

Patrick D. Miller, The Ten Commandments

ELLEN F. DAVIS

Biblical Prophecy

Perspectives for Christian Theology, Discipleship, and Ministry

INTERPRETATION Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church

© 2014 Ellen F. Davis

First edition

Published by Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23—10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Westminster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202-1396. Or contact us online at www.wjkbooks.com.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the author’s own translation.

Scripture quotations marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission.

The quotation from Audare/Audire by Wilmer Mills is used with permission.

Book design by Drew Stevens

Cover design by designpointinc.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Davis, Ellen F.

   Biblical prophecy: perspectives for Christian theology, discipleship, and ministry / Ellen F. Davis.—First edition.

     pages cm.—(Interpretation: resources for the use of scripture in the church) Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 978-0-664-23538-3 (alk. paper)

 1. Bible—Prophecies. 2. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Prophecy—Christianity. 4. Eschatology. 5. Theology. I. Title.

BS647.3.D38 2014

220.1'5—dc23

2014009143

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

CONTENTS

Series Foreword

Introduction

1. THE PROPHETIC INTERPRETER

Interpreting Current History: Huldah and Josiah

Elements of the Prophetic Perspective

2. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD: THE COST AND THE REWARD

Abraham and the Origin of Intercessory Prayer

Moses, Servant of God

Even Real Prophets Go Wrong: The Failures of Moses, Miriam, and Jonah

3. HOSTING GOD’S POWER OF LIFE: ELIJAH AND HIS GOSPEL LEGACY

Entering the Prophetic Era

The Life-Giving Word

Hospitality in the Face of Death

Ahab: Failing to Recognize the Power of Life (1 Kings 18, 20)

Inherit the Earth (1 Kings 21)

Elijah and Luke’s Jesus

4. THE PAIN OF SEEING CLEARLY: PROPHETIC VIEWS OF THE CREATED ORDER

Thesis 1: There Exists an Essential Three-Way Relationship among God, Humanity, and Creation

Thesis 2: Human and Nonhuman Creatures Together Are the Poor and Vulnerable; They Suffer Together, and Both Stand in Need of Deliverance

Thesis 3: God Feels Pain and Anger When the Earth and Its Creatures Suffer

Thesis 4: The Suffering of the Earth Itself Is a Primary Index of the Brokenness in the Human Relationship with God

Thesis 5: The Earth and Its Nonhuman Inhabitants Serve as Divinely Appointed Witnesses to and Agents of Judgment

Thesis 6: God Already Intends a Restored or New Creation

5. DESTROYERS OF THE EARTH: PROPHETIC CRITIQUES OF IMPERIAL ECONOMICS

The Great Economy and Little Economies

Commerce as Fornication

Commerce Without Morality: The Deadly Sin of Tyre

Rome, Mistress of Desires

Eschatology and Ecology: The Sea Is No More

6. WITNESSING IN THE MIDST OF DISASTER: THE MINISTRY OF JEREMIAH

Confronting Idolatry

Jeremiah’s Laments: The Felt Reality of Loss

Laying Claim to Hope

Giving Hope a Place

Artful Prophecy, Prophetic Art

7. THE DIFFICULTIES OF REVELATION: PROPHECY AS RISK, CHALLENGE, AND GIFT

The Risk and Cost of Truth (1 Kings 13)

Prophetic Irony (1 Kings 22:1–38)

A Divine Comedy (2 Kings 6:8–23)

Prophecy and the Spirit’s Way of Love (1 Corinthians 12–14)

8. GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT: MATTHEW READS ISAIAH ON PROPHETIC DISCIPLESHIP

Discipling in a Sick Society

The Privileged Life (Matthew 5)

Praying Prophetically: The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13)

9. PROPHECY IN INTERFAITH CONTEXT: READING BIBLICAL TRADITIONS IN CONVERSATION WITH ISLAM

The Prophets and Their Relationship with God

Repentance and Salvation

Bibliography

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources

Index of Subjects

SERIES FOREWORD

This series of volumes supplements Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. The commentary series offers an exposition of the books of the Bible written for those who teach, preach, and study the Bible in the community of faith. This new series is addressed to the same audience and serves a similar purpose, providing additional resources for the interpretation of Scripture, but now dealing with features, themes, and issues significant for the whole rather than with individual books.

The Bible is composed of separate books. Its composition naturally has led its interpreters to address particular books. But there are other ways to approach the interpretation of the Bible that respond to other characteristics and features of the Scriptures. These other entries to the task of interpretation provide contexts, overviews, and perspectives that complement the book-by-book approach and discern dimensions of the Scriptures that the commentary design may not adequately explore.

The Bible as used in the Christian community is not only a collection of books but also itself a book that has a unity and coherence important to its meaning. Some volumes in this new series will deal with this canonical wholeness and seek to provide a wider context for the interpretation of individual books as well as a comprehensive theological perspective that reading single books does not provide.

Other volumes in the series will examine particular texts, like the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Sermon on the Mount, texts that have played such an important role in the faith and life of the Christian community that they constitute orienting foci for the understanding and use of Scripture.

A further concern of the series will be to consider important and often difficult topics, addressed at many different places in the books of the canon, that are of recurrent interest and concern to the church in its dependence on Scripture for faith and life. So the series will include volumes dealing with such topics as eschatology, women, wealth, and violence.

The books of the Bible are constituted from a variety of kinds of literature, such as narrative, laws, hymns and prayers, letters, parables, and miracle stories. To recognize and discern the contribution and importance of all these different kinds of material enriches and enlightens the use of Scripture. Volumes in the series will provide help in the interpretation of Scripture’s literary forms and genres.

The liturgy and practices of the gathered church are anchored in Scripture, as with the sacraments observed and the creeds recited. So another entry to the task of discerning the meaning and significance of biblical texts explored in this series is the relation between the liturgy of the church and the Scriptures.

Finally, there is certain ancient literature, such as the Apocrypha and the noncanonical gospels, that constitutes an important context to the interpretation of Scripture itself. Consequently, this series will provide volumes that offer guidance in understanding such writings and explore their significance for the interpretation of the Protestant canon.

The volumes in this second series of Interpretation deal with these important entries into the interpretation of the Bible. Together with the commentaries, they compose a library of resources for those who interpret Scripture as members of the community of faith. Each of them can be used independently for its own significant addition to the resources for the study of Scripture. But all of them intersect the commentaries in various ways and provide an important context for their use. The authors of these volumes are biblical scholars and theologians who are committed to the service of interpreting the Scriptures in and for the church. The editors and authors hope that the addition of this series to the commentaries will provide a major contribution to the vitality and richness of biblical interpretation in the church.

The Editors

INTRODUCTION

With respect to prophecy, a strange and even disabling gap exists between the theological emphases of the Bible and the theological understanding of the church. Deliberately or not, the Bible in both Testaments is prophetically shaped, first and last. Abraham is the first person named as a prophet—and named thus by God (Gen. 20:7). At the other end of the Christian canon, the book of Revelation is designated as the prophecy, and John of Patmos pronounces a blessing on those who keep what is written in it (1:3). Most of the books that lie between those two extremities make direct or indirect reference to prophetic persons, words, and acts; such reference is especially pronounced in the long corpus of Moses-centered narratives (Exodus through Deuteronomy), the even longer corpus of prophetically oriented accounts of leadership known as Former Prophets (Joshua through Kings), and of course the fifteen books of the Major and Minor Prophets (Isaiah through Malachi). In less concentrated fashion, the New Testament writers frequently allude or make direct reference to the prophetic word, old and new, or the person (or community) who displays prophetic gifts. In sum, the notion of the prophetic is pervasive in the Bible and seems to be indispensable for giving a full account of the experience of God’s people in the past and for entering into their (our) ongoing story in the present.

Considered against that background, the relative lack of theological reflection on the notion of prophecy as an aspect of religious experience within the so-called (though now misnamed) mainstream church is puzzling, at the least. In the North American Protestant stream of Christianity that is most formative for my own Christian life, prophecy gets little attention, apart from certain passages that appear in the lectionary, especially during Advent and Lent. While some contemporary figure or movement might be described as prophetic, within the church and also in our wider culture, the notion is imprecise. Anything edgy is likely to be termed prophetic, in a positive sense, as long as it makes no particular reference to religious motivation or theological content. However, anyone who uses prophetic language with avowed religious motivation, anyone who could be seen as claiming any degree of prophetic inspiration, anyone who reads biblical prophecy in ways that create direct pressure in contemporary situations—such a person is suspect to many or most, including the majority of Christians. (Although Martin Luther King Jr. might seem to be an exception now, he was not during his lifetime.) In sum, we like to keep the frame of reference for prophecy within the safe confines of the Bible, by reading prophecy solely as illuminating what has already happened—the birth, life, and death of Jesus Christ—and not allowing it to meddle much in the current lives of Christians. However, the writers of both Testaments would surely say that in thus limiting our use of one of the fundamental and pervasive elements of biblical thought, we are hampering and even seriously disabling ourselves as responsible interpreters of Scripture.

The present volume is a study of the prophetic in the Bible, as it is manifested in persons, words, and actions; more widely, it is a study of a certain prophetic perspective, a coherent though not homogeneous way of viewing this world and our own lives in the presence of God. The method of study is exegetical; each essay highlights a theme that receives sustained attention within the prophetic traditions and treats it through the close reading of texts—often multiple texts in conversation with one another. At the same time, this is a study undertaken with the life of the church in mind. I try to open up those texts, both Old Testament and New, in ways that may directly inform Christian thought and offer guidance for prayer, discipleship, and ministry.

The volume is designed as a set of closely related essays. Apart from the first essay, which sets forth the prophetic perspective and is foundational for each of the others, they may be read alone or in any combination. They treat matters both perennial and timely in the life of the church: intercessory prayer as an aspect of friendship with God (chap. 2); economics, both those that are divinely endorsed or sustained and those that are condemned as idolatrous (chaps. 3 and 5); the integrity of the created order and human assaults upon it (chap. 4); ministry that points to realistic hope out of the midst of disaster (chap. 6); the difficulties inevitably associated with prophetic revelation as the biblical writers understand it (chap. 7); and discipleship in a prophetically informed church tradition (chap. 8).

The brief final chapter reflects how my reading of some prophetic traditions of the Bible has been shaped by my experience of teaching a course with my Muslim colleague, Imam Abdullah Antepli, on listening together to our different scriptures. One of the recurrent themes of this study is how central prophetic traditions in the Bible offer possibilities for positive relations between worshipers of Israel’s God and the religiously other. In this generation, it seems apt and even necessary to conclude a study of biblical prophecy by pointing to Islam, which is of all the world religions the one most fully focused on prophets and the prophetically mediated word as guides for serving God faithfully in this world. I hope that the present volume will provide Christians with some resources for thinking about this and thus perhaps prompt theological conversation between Muslims and Christians about our two prophetically informed faiths.

CHAPTER 1

The Prophetic Interpreter

Prophecy is not for the unbelieving but for those who believe.

—1 Cor. 14:22

Whose voice or action might be termed prophetic? What does the prophetic look or sound like in our culture? Forty or fifty years ago, many North American Christians who might have self-identified as political liberals would have had a ready answer to those questions: the prophetic role in this and every time is speaking truth to power. Such a definition of the role is supported by numerous biblical examples, chief among them Moses’ first recorded words to Pharaoh: Thus says YHWH God of Israel, Release my people! (Exod. 5:1). Moses is the foremost exemplar of the prophetic imagination as it confronts the royal consciousness, to use terms from Walter Brueggemann’s classic study, The Prophetic Imagination (1978). However, in an essay written nearly a quarter-century later, Brueggemann reconsiders that primal case of Moses and Pharaoh. Now he judges that in our social, intellectual, and spiritual climate, "There are deeply problematic things about the model of truth-speaking-to-power" (Inscribing the Text, 10; italics original). Indeed, the basic terms are problematic, for "in a postmodern world, both truth and power are complex and evasive" (11).

If that is the problem with the model, then it is not confined to the postmodern world; the biblical writers were themselves well aware of the complexities attending truth and power. A number of biblical prophets had complex relations to the royals of their time. Some, such as Jeremiah, one of the disenfranchised priests from the rural village of Anathoth, may have spoken as rank outsiders, but others—Elisha, Isaiah, Huldah—evidently were consulted by kings and those at the center of government. The complexity of truth itself is one of the major themes of the Bible. Pilate’s question to Jesus—What is truth? (John 18:38)—might epitomize that theme, but in his mouth the query could be heard as merely cynical or despairing. However, prophets, sages, psalmists, and evangelists all struggle at length and in faith with the mystery of truth, which is both revealed and hidden, given as a reliable guide and still to be searched out, known through God’s word or in Jesus Christ and yet to be discerned.

Even if speaking truth to power was never a simpler matter to conceive nor an easier thing to do than it is now, Brueggemann is nonetheless right to observe the complexity of power relations in our society and in the church. Lay or ordained, many of us who serve the church are responsible to and for institutions, their personnel, programs, and budgets, and thus to some degree we are arbiters of power. Certainly all those who get a salary (including pastors and religious educators), all who pay tax on anything and submit forms and reports to governmental, denominational, or educational bodies—we all participate in large social systems that further complicate and likely compromise our own relationship to power. Those whose primary responsibility is pastoral may exercise enormous power, and it is a sign of health that this is increasingly acknowledged in the contemporary church; it is no longer assumed that power is a fixed quantity that should remain wholly on the pastor’s side of the relationship. Rather, pastors are charged to empower others, instilling in them the readiness to accept and affirm what power there is, or could be, had we courage to embrace a different notion of power, a different perspective of ourselves in the world (Brueggemann, Inscribing the Text, 11).

Moreover, we stand in complex relationship to the truth as it is relevant to our public roles as pastors, teachers, preachers. Probably no one who bothers to read a book such as this presumes to have a monopoly on the truth, but many of us might lack confidence that we can speak knowledgeably, responsibly, and helpfully on some of the immense problems and questions that the church must address: global warming, migrant farmworkers and food production, sexual identity and relations. Virtually none of us is off the grid of the global economy, and that inevitably compromises our perception and proclamation of the truth. Thus Brueggemann concludes his analysis of the problematic model of speaking truth to power: We cannot automatically cast ourselves as Moses or Nathan or Elijah or Daniel, no matter how endlessly we are tempted. Besides, if we are casting to type, it may be that we fit the part of the royally and sinfully acquisitive, rather than the truth-teller (Inscribing the Text, 11).

In this study, I begin with a different scriptural model of the prophetic role, one that was suggested to me a few years ago when I was asked to speak at a conference titled The Prophetic Interpreter. That phrase was new to me at the time, but I have come to see it as useful for designating a kind of work that crosses borders (as did the conference itself) between the theological academy, the church, and the wider culture. The notion of the prophetic interpreter may help us think about the significance of a variety of leadership roles and modes of service performed in and for the church, including teaching, preaching, writing, and artistic work, as well as public speaking and multiple forms of community service and political work that is done in the service of the church and the wider community. People whom the Bible designates as prophets or as possessing the gift of prophecy engaged in all these forms of work. In word and deed, they interpreted the faith for their time, and equally, they interpreted the times for the faithful. Moreover, the Bible itself represents some of those engaged in prophetic work as learned and innovative interpreters of Israel’s scriptural (or protoscriptural) traditions. So I propose that we lift up the prophetic interpreter as an important model for service in and to the church. To illustrate that model, I turn to the first (in canonical order) clear exemplar of the prophetic interpreter within the Bible itself, Huldah of Jerusalem.

Interpreting Current History: Huldah and Josiah

Huldah was a professional prophet, known within the royal circle in Jerusalem during the reign of Josiah of Judah (640–609 BCE). As the story is told (2 Kgs. 22:8–20), the Torah scroll is found during Josiah’s major renovation of the temple precinct, and it is brought to the king. When he hears the contents of the sacred book—possibly some version of what now forms the core of Deuteronomy (chaps. 12–26), with the appended curses for violators—Josiah becomes alarmed and charges the high priest and his advisers to secure a divine oracle from a prophet. They go immediately to Huldah at her home in the Mishneh, a fashionable district not far from the palace (her husband, Shallum, served the court as keeper of the wardrobe). The prophet would presumably have the strongest personal reasons for retaining Josiah’s favor, yet Huldah sends back to the palace this harsh and markedly impersonal word:

Thus says YHWH God of Israel, Say to the man who sent you to me: ‘Thus says YHWH: I am about to bring evil to this place and upon its inhabitants—all the words of the book which the king of Judah read. Because they abandoned me and burned incense to other gods in order to outrage me with all the work of their hands, my wrath is kindled against this place and will not be quenched.’ And to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of YHWH, thus you shall speak: ‘… Because your heart softened and you humbled yourself before YHWH when you heard what I spoke about this place and about its inhabitants…, I too have heard’—an utterance of YHWH. ‘And so I shall gather you to your ancestors, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not look upon all the evil which I am bringing upon this place.’ (2 Kgs. 22:15–20)

The historical validity of the scroll story is much debated. There are reasons that Josiah’s admirers, such as the Deuteronomistic Historian, might have invented such a story: to give the aura of ancient authority to Josiah’s newly initiated program of religious reform, to avert criticism that the king did not earlier institute reform, since he had been on the throne for a dozen or more years (see 2 Kgs. 22:1 and 2 Chr. 34:3) before he purged Jerusalem and Judah of shrines and images made for Baal and Asherah and all the host of heaven (2 Kgs. 23:4). However, it is likely that the story tells us less about the exact circumstances of Josiah’s reform than it does about Huldah’s role as a prophet. Several things are important for considering the role of prophetic interpreter:

1. Huldah’s story is the first clear account of someone who encounters God’s word in written form and recognizes how it speaks to current and emerging circumstances. As the recipient and interpreter of Torah (divine Teaching), she stands in the line of authoritative figures that begins with Moses. Indeed, she is the culminating figure in that line, according to the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy through Kings); she stands knowingly on the cusp of the precipitous slide into the great destruction and the exile to Babylon (2 Kgs. 24–25).

2. Huldah of Jerusalem stands in liminal relation to power: she is connected though not subordinated to the very nerve center of the kingdom. Apparently Huldah did not serve with Shallum within the royal palace; it is probable that the position of Judean court prophet, like that of priest, was not open to a woman. But even if she did not give oracles for a salary—perhaps because she did not—Huldah was respected and indeed relied upon by the most powerful people in the kingdom; the man in the palace heeded her words. So from her position at the edge of the circle of power, she was able to interpret God’s word in such a way as to stimulate major change through official channels; in this sense, Huldah is one of the few successful prophets of whom the Bible speaks.

3. Huldah’s story comes from the circle of theologians, literary scholars, and editors (the so-called Deuteronomists) who likely also collected and shaped the first edition of the Latter Prophets, and especially the book of Jeremiah (Blenkinsopp, History, 191–93). Setting Huldah alongside Jeremiah, her contemporary, we may see both of them as liminal figures in a second sense: they stand at the threshold between the age of the great prophets and the age of scribal interpretation. While Jeremiah is represented as a prophet who dictated the divine word into scroll form (Jer. 36), Huldah is the prophet who receives the written word as from God (Thus says YHWH God of Israel) and recognizes how it applies to her own moment in history. She has the fortitude to interpret it in a way no one would want to hear, and the clarity to make the divine word intelligible and compelling.

4. Josiah exemplifies the person who hears what God is saying through the written word, seeks responsible interpretation, and as a result changes radically and decisively (2 Kgs. 23:1–25). Although Josiah is the most powerful person in the land of Judah, that is not necessarily crucial for what the story has to say to us about hearing God’s word through Scripture. Rather, he models the (tragically) rare ability to hear God’s word spoken against one’s own apparent interests. To hear God’s word as spoken against ourselves—this, Dietrich Bonhoeffer maintained, is what it means to read the Bible seriously, to prefer its thoughts to our own, and thus to find ourselves again (No Rusty Swords, 185–86). Bonhoeffer was speaking—prophetically, one might say—at the Berlin Youth Conference in April 1932. At that time, his was a nearly isolated Christian voice speaking publicly and persistently against the rise of National Socialism. Bonhoeffer’s permanent legacy as a theologian has been to show that in the modern world, as in Josiah’s and Huldah’s Jerusalem, fostering the discomfiting yet life-giving practice of reading the Bible against ourselves is a major public responsibility of the Christian teacher and theologian. In desperate times, as his was and ours may yet prove to be, many may be called to serve thus as prophetic interpreters.

Elements of the Prophetic Perspective

As a clear-eyed interpreter of both text and history, Huldah of Jerusalem may be one of the most important biblical models for those who preach, teach, and interpret Scripture for others in various settings, and Josiah is a model for how we might study and hear God’s word for (or against!) ourselves. At a given time any Christian might assume either role: Huldah’s, of offering an interpretation, or Josiah’s, of listening to one; the apostle Paul suggests that every member of the church should be engaged on both sides of the interpretative process (see 1 Cor. 14:26–31). Assuming full responsibility on either side of that process requires that we speak and listen from a perspective that is broadly informed by the prophetic traditions of Scripture, in shorthand the prophetic perspective.

Here I set forth five essential elements of that perspective on reality as broadly represented in the prophetic traditions of the Bible. My intention in identifying these five is to be suggestive rather than exhaustive, to point to elements that are central to these traditions and, considered together, may provide fruitful ground for theological reflection and ministry in the twenty-first century. Distinguishing them thus at the outset of this study is artificial, even if it may be somewhat useful, for these five elements are everywhere interrelated and overlapping. In the texts treated in the following essays, all these elements appear, in different combinations and with varying degrees of emphasis, but there is no attempt to identify each as discrete. Nonetheless, listing them here may alert readers to some of the elements that make the prophetic traditions of the Bible distinctive modes of discourse, with the potential to speak to the church in our own time and varied situations:

The radical concreteness of prophetic expression, which both engages hearers in particular contexts and makes vivid God’s engagement with the world

The prophetic demand for moral, economic, and religious integrity in human communities (Israel or the church) and the recognition that human integrity in these several dimensions is fundamentally related to the God-given integrity of creation

Prophetic participation in the suffering of the vulnerable within the created order and the social order, and prophetic witnessing to the suffering of God

The prophet as the trusted friend of God, entrusted with a ministry of protest, prayer, healing, and reconciliation

Prophetic witness to the theological significance of those who do not worship Israel’s God, which is potentially a witness of reconciliation

The remainder of this chapter is an explication of these five elements.

1. The radical concreteness of prophetic expression, which both engages hearers in particular contexts and makes vivid God’s engagement with the world. The biblical prophets do not traffic in general ideas, universal ideals, or dispassionate ruminations. Their settings are particular with respect to place and time; the political situations they treat are specific; the characters are vividly drawn—including and especially the character of God. So, for example, Isaiah’s language remains radically concrete even when his vision is heavenly: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw my Lord [Adonai] sitting on a throne high and uplifted (Isa. 6:1a). He cites a particular year (733 BCE) and thus evokes the politically vexed circumstances that modern scholars call the Assyrian crisis. It is as though I were to say, In the year of 9/11, I saw God.… Historical circumstance is not all that Isaiah concretizes, as we see from the immediate continuation of his vision report:

… and the hem of his robe fills the temple.

And flaming creatures are standing at attendance on him, each with six wings.

With two it covers its face, and with two it covers its lower parts, and with two it flies.

And each calls to the other, saying, "Holy, holy, holy—YHWH of Hosts!

His Presence is the fullness of the whole earth."

(Isa. 6:1b–3)

This is a vision with surround sound. In its vivid detail, down to the burning coal thrust right under Isaiah’s nose, his report of heaven imaginatively engages every physical sense.

The speech of the biblical prophets is filled with the things of this world; theirs is a language that pays homage to the splendid grittiness of the physical as well as to the splendor and consolation of the spiritual. This is how the Catholic poet Paul Mariani (God and the Imagination, 234) characterizes a tradition of Christian writing that he traces from Dante to Flannery O’Connor and Richard Wilbur. However, it would be accurate to say that all of them take inspiration—even permission—from the Hebrew prophets to write out of a religious understanding that is not abstracted, not dissociated and world-renouncing (Wilbur, quoted by Mariani, ibid.). For the prophets and each of these writers, the radical concreteness of expression is not an aesthetic preference in a casual sense; it is motivated and required by a certain theological understanding. Their aim is to show God’s inescapable involvement in the world, what Isaiah epitomizes with a single phrase: ‘immanû ēl, God [is] with us (7:14; 8:8, 10).

That theological assertion is convincing only within the context of a compelling literary depiction of the world and human existence. And so, like good poets in every tradition, the prophetic poets of the Bible craft sharp images designed to make something visible to the mind’s eye—most often viewed from a particular location in space and time, and yet imagined as part of the whole world, inhabited by the hearer as well as the poet. As poets, they must be committed