Biblical Prophecy (1)—Israelite and Jewish

Prophecy in the Jewish Bible—the Old Testament, in Christian parlance—takes several forms and shows a unique progress. At all stages, it is attributed to Yahweh, the Lord, the God of Israel. References to techniques such as Gentile soothsayers might use are few and mostly disapproving. Joseph in Genesis is not counted as a prophet, yet even he, when he interprets dreams and foretells what will happen to the dreamers, disclaims any notion that he does it by his own wisdom: “Do not interpretations belong to God?” Other early scriptural figures are called prophets in a general way, as being divinely inspired. However, when the Israelites are established in the Promised Land, full-time prophecy appears as a vocation. The term for a prophet in this sense is nabi, probably meaning “someone who is called.”
Most of Israel’s prophets, but not all, were male. Some were freelances; others combined in groups or guilds. They wore garments of skin and played musical instruments—flutes, lyres, harps, tambourines; they might be described as Yahweh’s minstrels. As such, they had a shamanic quality. They could invoke the Lord’s spirit, and when it blew upon them, they danced or rolled on the ground in ecstasy and saw visions. In that condition, they might utter oracular chants, which were revered as divine messages. The ecstasy could be infectious: Israel’s first king, Saul, is twice seized with it. Yahweh could even take possession of non-Israelites, as in the story of the seer Balaam, who is hired to curse the Israelites and can only bless them. Nabi prophets were respected and could live on gifts and hospitality.
Their supposedly inspired advice was seldom unacceptable to those who consulted them, and insofar as they made predictions, these were apt to be in the encouraging manner of modern fortune-tellers. But in the account of Ahab, who ruled the northern Israelites during the ninth century b.c., a new style is beginning to emerge. There is a distinction between prophecy spoken to oblige patrons and prophecy that tells the truth, however unwelcome. Elijah denounces Ahab’s flagrant injustice and his attempts, under the influence of his foreign queen Jezebel, to replace Yahweh worship with Baal worship. He foretells a long drought as a sign of God’s displeasure, and it happens. Later in the reign, another prophet, Micaiah, also begins to sound a new note. Ahab plans an expedition to recapture the city of Ramoth Gilead from the Syrians. He assembles a body of nabi prophets who assure him, in chorus, that the Lord will deliver the city into his hands. But Micaiah contradicts them. He describes a vision in which the Lord authorized a “lying spirit” to enter into Ahab’s prophets and lure him to destruction. Ahab refuses to listen, takes his army to Ramoth-gilead, and falls in battle.
The activities of these men—especially Elijah, who is one of the outstanding biblical figures—opened the way for a succession of prophets whose revelations were written down and became part of Scripture. The greatest of these was Isaiah, who flourished in the eighth century b.c. There is no parallel outside Israel, either to this kind of prophecy itself or to the literary power of some of its productions. A prophet was “called” when the word of the Lord came to him unbidden. He might see visions and dream dreams. But the point of his experiences was that they made sense, often with a radical message. These prophets were deeply and eloquently critical of the irresponsible luxury of the rich and the reduction of Israel’s religion to official ceremonies, sometimes with pagan contaminations. Showing nostalgia for the simpler way of earlier times, they proclaimed that justice and mercy and charity were more acceptable to the Lord than rituals and sacrifices.
A pervasive theme was that Yahweh loved his people, but they were estranged from him by their own perverseness. It was largely because of the prophets’ foreshadowings of divine judgment that the word prophecy began to acquire its predictive meaning. One idea that developed was that the Chosen People were not an indivisible bloc, secure in God’s favor. Many might fall away (the northern tribes did and were conquered and uprooted by the Assyrians); but the divine blessing could be inherited by a faithful remnant, who would never be deserted or permanently dispossessed of the Promised Land. The prophet Jeremiah foretold, correctly, that his people would be deported to Babylon, but he also foretold that after a penitential exile, the survivors who remained faithful would be allowed to go back to Zion. This happened in 539 b.c., when the Persian king Cyrus conquered the Babylonian Empire and gave the captives permission to return. They and their descendants became the Jews, a name derived from Judahite, applying to the principal Israelite group centered on Jerusalem and its Temple.
Prophecy was much less conspicuous in the restored community. However, it reappeared in a fresh guise as a response to persecution at the hands of the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes. It was now more a matter of speculation by authors who might profess to be inspired and to be continuators of biblical tradition, but had little of the spontaneity of the nabi or of prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah. Jewish hopes of a final deliverance and triumph were expressed in forecasts of a spectacular divine intervention and in predictions of the Messiah, a king of the line of David who would be the Jews’ leader and final deliverer, reigning in Zion.
Roman conquest stimulated such hopes. They had to be abandoned for the foreseeable future when two anti-Roman revolts were crushed, the second and conclusive one in a.d. 135. Jerusalem was largely destroyed with its Temple, and the Jews were scattered through the Roman world and beyond. However, the expectation of the Messiah was never extinguished, though most rabbis discouraged guesswork about him. The prophetic hope of a return to the Promised Land was kept alive through many centuries of dispersal and suffering. Its fulfillment through modern Zionism, against all rational probability and enormous odds, has impressed many as an extraordinary case of successful prophecy, even though some Orthodox Jews opposed the Zionist movement on the ground that Israel’s reconstitution was to be the work of the Messiah alone and must not be anticipated by human agency