[NSB@S6K: This is another book purchased by a collector of old books from estate sales; I’ve never met him but he has lent me to date about 10 books on Israel/Jews which are about half a century old; you can tell from the yellowish pages and the old style book covers and the copyright date—read intro in The Jewish Mystique. This one, as it turns out is a perfect example of how Christians read the Old Testament as mere preparation and foreshadowing of the ‘good news’ about the Savior of the New Testament. Author Curt Kuhl sees Jesus in writings of the Prophets of Israel, of course though thankfully, in his final paragraph he concedes that reading the Prophets without Jesus leads us to the “lofty and exceptional knowledge of God.” We’re featuring only the concluding chapter here, though you get an idea of the discussions that precede it through the Table of Contents. Reformatting and highlights added.]
CURT KUHL
THE PROPHETS
OF ISRAEL
Translated by
Rudolf J. Ehrlich and J. P. Smith
CONTENTS
I. Prophecy in the Ancient Near East
II. The Prophet and His Ministry
III. The Words and Works of the Prophets
IV. Prophets of the Early Monarchy
Samuel, Gad, Nathan, Ahijah, Shemaiah, Jehu, Micaiah
Ben Imlah, Elijah, and Elisha
V. The Eight-Century Prophets
Northern Kingdom: Jonah, Amos, Hosea
VI. The Eight-Century Prophets
Southern Kingdom: Isaiah, Micah
VII. The Seventh-Century Prophets
Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Nahum
VIII. Prophets of the Period of the Downfall
Jeremiah
IX. Prophets of the Period of the Downfall
Ezekiel
X. The Prophets of the Exile
Deutero-Isaiah and the ‘Ebed Yahweh Songs
XI. The Prophets of the Restoration
Haggai, Zechariah, Trito-Isaiah, “Malachi”
XII. The End of Prophetism
Shemaiah, Nodaiah, Jonah, Joel, Deutero-Zechariah,
Trito-Zechariah, Daniel
Conclusion
Chronological Table
Bibliography
Index of Principal Scripture References
CONCLUSION
Basing ourselves on the scriptural sources, we have sought to make the several prophets of Israel and their destinies stand out in relief, to understand them in the perspective of their environment and the events of their times and also to evaluate their religious thoughts and ideas. Such being the nature of our undertaking, we have had to refrain from any detailed discussion of the problems that arise in its course. The observant reader, however, will find indications of these problems everywhere.
Those who seek more information about them are referred to the specialized literature on the subjects. The lack of precise data for the dating of individual prophets, and still more for the dating of the many isolated utterances, has rendered our task all the more difficult. On the other hand the defective nature of what has come down to us has become all the more perceptible. For long periods of time, sources are lacking. There are thus entire ages of which we have no knowledge. The origin of Israelite prophecy remains veiled in obscurity. All the information we possess on many a prophet (especially in the earlier monarchy) consists either in brief utterances or in narratives of a legendary nature which are insufficient to give us a true picture of the prophet and his work. Many utterances were in after years made to refer to contemporary situations and amplified; many anonymous oracles were added to or incorporated in already existent collections. Far too frequently, therefore, we depend on internal evidence or on mere conjecture for our knowledge of the original’s provenance and date.
Constructing a picture of Israelite prophecy is like restoring a severely mutilated mosaic which entails the laborious resetting of every individual fragment of stone in its place. The loss of many of the stones and the lack of any pattern to follow makes the task of correctly resetting the available stones a difficult one, especially when they are, as they are in fact, entirely detached the one from the other. Were this undertaking to be entrusted to another his eventual arrangement might in some respects be entirely different. We must then always bear in mind that the classification of many of the prophesies, especially of the anonymous oracles standing in isolation is, in the last resort, doubtful and contingent.
We are not in a position to furnish a history of the evolution of Israelite prophecy, but we can show how the prophets differ one from the other. We are faced by a manifold diversity, against the background of which only certain phases stand out in relief:
- the bands of ecstatics in the days of Samuel
- and the prophetic guilds of Elisha’s time;
- the prophets of the earlier monarchy,
- such as Samuel
- and Nathan
- and, especially, Elijah
- and Elisha;
- the flowering of prophetic proclamation in the eight century,
- in the persons of Amos,
- Hosea,
- Isaiah
- and Micah;
- the announcement of judgment in the short writings of the seventh century,
- i.e. Zephaniah,
- Habakkuk
- and Nahum;
- the proclamation of the period of the downfall and finally–even though it were not expressly confirmed by Zechariah (I. 5-6)–the manifest post-exilic decline of prophecy, its hardening into legalistic formalism and its ultimate merging into the apocalyptic.
- represented chiefly by Jeremiah
- but also by Ezekiel, whose activity overlaps into the Exile where the centre of gravity passes from the doom-oracle to the consolation and hope found in the confident message of Deutero-Isaiah;
When we consider the field as a whole we are struck by the varied and often contradictory characters of those who are to be regarded as “the prophets of Israel.”
To cite only a few examples of this;
- we meet with instances of mass-prophetism and of individual activity;
- cultic prophets and free;
- proclamation of weal and of woe;
- fanatic nationalism and burning zeal for Yahweh;
- dire threats of the downfall,
- sustaining words of comfort;
- despair and the hope of salvation;
- blind adherence to the cult and true devotion;
- casuistry and care for men’s souls;
- political narrowness and breadth of spiritual vision;
- restricted patriotism and global universalism;
- a national God and a Lord over all the earth;
- popular religion and personal faith.
The Epistle to the Hebrews very justly says that “in many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets (Heb. I.I). Any attempt to synthesise all these modes of prophetic pronouncement into a single system is doomed from the outset to fail since the character of the proclamation is too diversified.
Nevertheless one thing is common to all the prophets:
- through them God uttered His word.
- In spite of all their differences in detail they were steeped in and supported by the consciousness that by word and symbolic deed they were fulfilling the commission of their God.
- What is involved is no human word but the word of God given to them by Him.
Nevertheless the divine word always bears a human impress and is conditioned by time, and has to do with the immediate present or proximate future. This temporal relationship subsists even when the eschatological, the end of the age, is involved which is envisaged–as it is in, for instance, Haggai and Zechariah–as imminent and sometimes even as already in process of coming.
Here we find vivid pictures of the future, full of intense hopes though these at times are only set on very mundane and material ideals. The declarations about the King and Governor who is expected to come, the Anointed One (Messiah) are of special significance for the Christian. Even these are historically conditioned and arise out of a definite historical situation, though we are no longer able to distinguish background and context.
From of old the Christian Church, as the use of “proof-texts” in the New Testament shows, has realized that the relationship between the two Testaments is one of “prophecy” and “fulfillment” and so has interpreted all the Old Testament prophecies on the expected King as “Messianic prophecies” and has applied them to Jesus. And in fact statements like those about the suffering Servant of the Lord (Is. LIII) are among the deepest and most spiritual things that can ever be said about Jesus’ suffering and the meaning of His death on the Cross.
Yet the greatness of the prophets of Israel and their significance for religion and spiritual life does not lie in these prophecies but in the lofty and exceptional knowledge of God that the best of them possessed. Their call and their other mysterious spiritual experiences bring them to the knowledge of God as a living powerful Person, the One whose almighty will rules in righteousness and love over the lives and destinies of nations and men. His holiness and majesty bring home to man what a vast distance separates him from God. It is true that the prophets were unable to save their people from downfall and could not prevent its religion from degenerating into cultic religiosity and legalism. Yet they preserved the faith of their people during and after the Exile. Form of worship, moral action and social sensibility–the particular expression of these is not fundamental. What is authoritative and decisive is a new vision and knowledge of God leading the nation and men one by one into a new spiritual attitude to Him which must then be expressed in their life and their faith.