The Nature of Prophesy

Predictive Prophesy?

If I were to ask you what is prophesy, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? If you’re like me, likely it’s something like “knowing the future” or “being able to tell what’s going to happen”. Maybe you even have a more “Christian” answer than that, like “prophesy is how God reveals His future plans to His people” or “prophets tell the people of God what is going to happen to show that God is omniscient” or even “the prophets point forward to the coming of Jesus Christ”.

In fairness, you’d be correct. We need only look through the Gospel to see how Jesus came in fulfillment of all that the prophets had said would happen. Mark begins with

Mark 1:1–3 ESV

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ”

which directly ties the ministry of John the Baptist and the coming Christ to the prophesy of Isaiah.

However, what if this view of prophesy unnecessarily limits how we can understand, learn from, and apply the prophetic writings? What if predicting the future was but one function of the prophets, and one portion of the prophetic writings? That’s what we’re going to explore in our study together today, so let’s get into it together.

Role of a Prophet

Covenant Enforcement Mediator

Before we attempt to determine the role of the prophetic writings in our study and worship, it’s probably important to know what the role of the prophets was to the ancient covenant people of Israel. One role that presents itself in Scripture is defined by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart as “covenant enforcement mediators”. By this, they mean that prophets serve in part to remind the people of Israel of their covenant with YHWH. Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this comes from the former prophets, specifically

2 Samuel 12:1–14 ESV

And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. And I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.’ ” David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.”

Now there are a couple of key points in this story that I want to make clear, first, Nathan did not decide that David as guilty, the Lord did. Nathan did not sentence the firstborn of David and Bathsheba to die, the Lord did. And finally, Nathan did not himself kill the child, the Lord took him home.

Nathan, in this scenario, merely explained to David why he had been found guilty in the eyes of the Lord, and what the sentence would be. This is why Fee and Stuart coined the term “covenant enforcement mediators” to describe their role. In this role, the prophets explain the blessings and the punishments that the people of Israel undergo so that there is not doubt that they come from the Lord as a direct result of Israel’s obedience or disobedience to the covenant.

Reconstructor of Reality

Similar to this role of “covenant enforcement mediator” is the role suggested by Walter Brueggemann and Tod Linafelt, who argue that “what is prophetic is the capacity to reconstrue all of lived reality - including the history of Israel and the power relations of the known world of the ancient Near East - according to the equally palpable reality of the rule of YHWH.”

Ok so what does that mean? That means that prophets function by taking what is true from the lived experience of the Israelite people, from captivity in Egypt to conquering the promised land to the internal struggles for power and split into two kings, to the fall of both kingdoms and the exile all the way to the return of God’s people to the promised land. They then explain these tangible facts about reality in a way that accurately accounts for the equally real but less visible reality of the fact that YHWH is God of Israel and the Creator of the universe.

This view is backed up by how the modern church describes prophesy. We view the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings as “historical texts” and often describe them this way. However, in the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, these books are considered part of the “Nevi’im” or the Prophets. What we often talk about today as historical narrative is in fact the former prophets in the Jewish scriptures.

We think about these writings as historical because they often place themselves firmly in time, such as in 2 Kings 25 which places itself during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar and Zedekiah, the exile of Jehoiachin, and the governorship of Gedaliah.

But what’s actually happening throughout these books is that the prophets are explaining these events to the people of God in light of the covenant that God has made with His people. For example, the exile of Israel to Babylon is described in light of the end of Deuteronomy 28 where the law says

Deuteronomy 28:64–65 ESV

“And the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. And among these nations you shall find no respite, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot, but the Lord will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul.

Application

So, it turns out the prophets are a lot more than people predicting the future because of God revealing it to them. So what? Why does that matter, and how should it change how we read our Bibles?

First of all, modern Christians often reduce the signficance of the prophets as sort of a “prelude to Jesus”, like a big flashing arrow that exists to get us from Mount Sinai to a manger in Bethlehem, and our readings of it are often superficial as a result.

Sure, we love drawing connections between prophesies and the Gospel, but that’s too often where our curiosity stops. We are satisfied that we found our “hyperlink” to Jesus and consider that prophecy decoded.

However, the approaches to prophesy we have discussed today demonstrate that there is so much more here for us to learn. Prophets explained to the people of God how their daily lives, the struggles and trials and blessings and abundance and poverty and famine that they faced all tell us something about how God’s covenant and character impact their lives. As God’s people under the new covenant, surely this is something we are interested in learning!

The book of Hebrews is a great example of how the early church looked to the prophetic writings to understand not only the ministry and salvation of Jesus Christ, but of how the nature of God’s character and covenants should shape our lives.

Take, for example, Hebrews 10:37-38

Hebrews 10:37–38 ESV

For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.”

The Hebrews writer goes on to assure the reader that the church should not be those who shrink back and are destroyed, but that we will can faith and preserve our souls. Here, the writer of Hebrews pulls from the Prophets Isaiah, Haggai and Habakkuk to understand how our current situation relates to the reality of the character of God as we know Him.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I pray that each of you comes away from this discussion with a new appreciation for the prophets, and a new desire to read them well not just as a big arrow pointing to Christ, which they surely are, but as a way to understand the intersection of our seen reality of our daily lives and the unseen reality of the glory and character of God.