The Prophets

            This week we began reading Isaiah, the first of the so-called “Latter Prophets.” In the Hebrew Bible, Joshua through Kings (minus Ruth) are called the Former Prophets; they are followed immediately by Isaiah through Malachi. (Lamentations and Daniel are in the last section of the Hebrew Bible.) In English, we more typically call these books the writing prophets, as opposed to, say, Elijah and Elisha, who didn’t write anything.

            Here are a couple of notes to get us going: First, the ‘writing prophets’ keep on writing in Hebrew poetry. Now, we’ve lived with Hebrew poetry since Job, but it’s important to remind ourselves: Hebrew doesn’t do poetry like English does. There is no meter or rhyme in Hebrew poetry. Hebrew poetry is characterized by parallelism, saying a line, repeating it a little differently, sometimes going over it again. The idea is that the repetition reinforces and strengthens the idea.  To my way of thinking, the poet/prophets of the 8^th century BC are some of the best—Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Hosea.

            Second, we should be clear on what a prophet is. I think that too often we think of the prophets as some sort of fortune-tellers, but I don’t think that’s very helpful.  Certainly there is forward-looking material there, but I think it’s a mistake to think that the material only looks forward or that the prophets’ main job is to look to a distant future. I think it is much more helpful to think of prophets as preachers. They are looking at the world and trying to interpret it for their hearers from God’s point of view. I take it as axiomatic that what the prophet said had to make sense to his original audience.

            That leads to a third point about Isaiah in particular. It is typical of scholars to divide Isaiah into two or three books (chs. 1-39, 40-55, and 56-66) and to argue that two or three different people wrote it. We note first of all that no one but Isaiah is ever mentioned in Isaiah itself or elsewhere in the Bible as the author of the book. The book and the whole Bible assume one author—the 8^th century BC prophet Isaiah! But aren’t there noticeable thematic and stylistic differences in those three parts of the book? Absolutely there are. But, if Isaiah was a preacher who ministered for over 50 years you would expect 1) that the things he had to address shifted over the years and 2) that his style changed. (I’ve only been a preacher for 16 years and I already note that there are themes that appear in my sermons for a few years and then fade out.)

            Isaiah will take us through December on our Today’s Light schedule, and the rest of the prophets will take us through Easter. Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to work through some of these issues as they come up in the daily readings!