CHAPTER VIII

PROPHECY AS A BRANCH OF LITERATURE

WE pass to the important portion of Holy Scripture which is covered by the general title of Prophecy. At the outset a difficulty arises from a common misunderstanding as to the meaning of the word. In modern English to prophesy is to predict: and a large number of Bible readers come to Scriptural prophecy with the idea that they are reading the literature of prediction. There is no such notion in the word as properly understood. The pro- of prophecy is not the pro- that means 'beforehand' (as in programme), but the pro- that means 'instead of' (as in pronoun): a 'prophet' is one who speaks in place of another—an interpreter. The biblical sense of the term is well seen in a passage of Exodus (vii. 1). Moses has been shrinking from the task imposed on him by God on the ground of being a man of slow and difficult speech; the reply is made:

See, I have made thee [Moses] a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.

As Aaron is thus a speaker in place of Moses, putting into formal speech the thoughts of his leader, so the prophets are interpreters for God. If ever they are found to predict, the prediction is an accident, not the essence of the prophecy.

To obtain a fuller conception of the term we must go,

not only to etymology, but to history. We have already seen how the prophetic function came into prominence at a particular crisis in the history of Israel. Originally, Israel was a theocracy, knowing no government but the will of God, as interpreted by Moses or Joshua. In time it came to be governed by secular monarchs: at once the prophetic order established itself to represent the older idea of the theocracy. Occasionally, as with

Isaiah and Hezekiah, it would happen that the prophet and the king were on the same side: the prophets were then religious statesmen-statesmen of a people with whom State and Church were one. More often the prophets were in opposition to the secular government; they were not the counsellors who guided, but the agitators who roused to resistance. The whole activity of such prophets constitutes 'prophecy'; hence the books of the prophets are found, at times to record the general history of the period, at times to deal with the prophet's secret intercourse with God, or public encounters with kings. Or they treasure up the proverb-like sayingstechnically, 'sentences' by which leading ideas of these theocratic statesmen were brought home to the common people. Large parts of these prophetic books are rightly described as discourses. But even here we must avoid the misleading analogy of modern sermons. Nothing can be more incongruous than to imagine an Isaiah or a Jeremiah standing with a neatly written. manuscript before a devout and attentive audience. The discourses of the prophetic books represent the substance of spoken utterance; very often, it would appear, the spirit of a whole series of encounters between a prophet and his people or king has been worked up afresh into

the form of written literature, to make a single one of the discourses as they have come down to us.

Yet another consideration must be borne in mind before our conception of prophetic literature is complete. What has been said so far covers the whole function of earlier prophets, such as Elijah and Elisha. But in later history the prophets have become men of letters; their works not only represent public utterances, but include written compositions designed for a reading public. The prophets of Israel are poets, in the full sense of the term. They interpret the Divine message in the form of songs and lyric outpourings. They make contributions to creative literature: just as a Milton will convey his conception of the plan of salvation in the form of imaginative stories — of a Paradise Lost and a Paradise Regained-so the prophets of the Bible will use visions and imaginative dramas, as a vehicle in which they bring home to man's highest faculties the providential mysteries with which they feel themselves inspired.

It will thus be evident that prophecy is not a literary form, like epic or drama, but a branch of sacred literature, in which the most varied forms mingle, from the proverbial sentence, or straightforward discourse, to the spiritual song or drama. What binds all kinds of pro · phetic literature together into a unity is the fact that the prophets are not speaking their own thoughts, but are interpreting for God. The message is Divine; the form in which the message is conveyed is free to range over the whole field of literary expression.

It remains to speak of certain literary forms which are almost peculiar to prophecy, and at the same time unfa

miliar to modern readers. One of these, the emblem prophecy, although used by several of the sacred writers, is yet so specially characteristic of Ezekiel, that it will be reserved until The Book of Ezekiel can be treated as a whole. Two others will be more conveniently discussed in the present chapter.

The doom songs, as a branch of prophecy, correspond in some sort to the satires and philippics of other literatures. The political life of Israel includes, of course, foreign policy-the relations of the chosen nation with neighbouring peoples, especially with the powerful empires of Egypt and Babylon, from one of which Israel had emerged as an independent nation, and into the other of which it was to be absorbed as a captive people. The messages of prophecy extend to these foreign nations as well as to Israel, but with a difference. It could seldom happen that á prophet would have – like Jonah an opportunity of speaking directly to some distant nation, in the way in which these sacred statesmen regularly addressed their own people. It is to readers and hearers in Israel that the doom prophecies are addressed; and they take the form of denunciations of external races or cities as enemies of Israel and Jehovah, combined with realistic pictures of coming destruction.

As an example, we may take the Doom of Nineveh, which occupies the whole Book of Nahum. The prophecy opens in the form of discourse, and is here. cast in the pendulum style that alternates between ideas of judgment and of mercy. We hear of Jehovah as great in power, one who will by no means clear the guilty; who hath his way in the whirlwind and in the

storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet: none can stand before his indignation. Immediately we read of the same Jehovah as good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, who knoweth them that put their trust in him. Again, Jehovah is presented indignantly dispensing judgment to his adversaries, so that affliction shall not rise up the second time. The alternation extends to successive sentences.

Though I have afflicted thee [Israel], I will afflict thee no more. And now will I break his yoke from off thee, and will burst thy bonds in sunder. — And the LORD hath given commandment concerning thee [Nineveh] that no more of thy name be sown.

Suddenly there are seen upon the mountains the feet of one that brings good tidings: with this link the prophecy passes from discourse into realistic vision, and the overthrow of Nineveh is being presented.

He that dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face:
Keep the munition; watch the way.

The excitement of defence is vividly pictured: red shields of the valiant, chariots flashing with steel, the terror of shaken spears, chariots jostling against one another in the broad ways, with zigzag flamings of bright axles. But in vain. As their leader proudly remembers his worthies these are seen to stumble. There is hastening to man the walls, and meanwhile the river has proved a gate to the enemy; the strong city seeming to dissolve as the inhabitants are thus snatched into captivity, the handmaids mourning like doves and tabering upon their breasts.