Challenging Prophetic Metaphor

Theology and Ideology in the Prophets

Julia M. O'Brien

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781611643985
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Estudios bíblicos

The prophets of the Old Testament use a wide variety of metaphors to describe God and to portray people in relation to God. Some of these metaphors are familiar and soothing; others are unfamiliar and confusing. Still others portray God in ways that are difficult and uncomfortable--God as abusive husband, for instance, or as neglectful father. Julia O'Brien searches the prophetic books for these metaphors, looking for ways in which the different images intersect and build off each other. When confronted with disturbing metaphors, she deals with them unflinchingly, providing a sharp critique and evaluation of the interpretations of these metaphors for God. Giving particular attention to the possible uses of these metaphors in the church today--for good or ill--O'Brien listens to the fullness of the prophetic messages and points us toward new ways to read these theological metaphors for a just faith today.

Chapter 1

Prophetic Theology

A Brief History of Interpretation

As a way of explaining the origins of the current stalemate in theological approaches to the Prophets, I offer an overview of the history of this enterprise: how have the Prophetic Books been read for theological meaning in the Christian church? Of course, such a survey cannot be exhaustive or objective; my goal is to explain how I trace broad contours and themes.

The overview takes a chronological shape, suggesting that dominant modes of interpretation characterize particular periods of history. Admittedly, chronology is not the only, or even necessarily the best, way to tell the story of Christian theological interpretation of the Prophets. Approaches could be mapped thematically, geographically, or along the lines of race, class, and gender. Moreover, no single “age” is monolithic: diversity is nothing new within the Christian church. The advantage of a chronological scheme, however, is that it calls attention to an important aspect of the history of interpretation: the way in which Christians interpret the Prophetic Books, and the Bible as a whole, is always in conversation with the larger philosophical and social debates of an era. The history of biblical interpretation is, to some degree, also a history of reigning worldviews.

One question facing those who write the history of biblical interpretation is whether to focus on the interpretations of those in some position of authority—church officials, academics, those who wrote books; or to attempt to uncover something of popular piety—the ways that average Christians understood the traditions of their faith. Despite a wish to be more egalitarian, I focus here on academics and church leaders for several reasons. One is their greater accessibility: the perspectives of those who left written documents are easier to reclaim than those of ones who did not. More important, perhaps, is that the official writings of bishops and academics have left an impact on the church, even if in polarizing ways. The current stalemate that I see in theological approaches to the Prophets has much to do with the legacy (for good and for ill) of these men in power.

This selective survey will attend to the “spirit of interpretation” in each age and suggest how that “spirit” aligns with the “spirit of the age.” It also will trace threads of continuity between the periods and their legacy for the present situation.

Theological Interpretation of the Prophetic Books before the Enlightenment

The earliest available examples of interpreting the Prophets might broadly be termed “predictive” readings, the understanding that the prophetic word was an inspired utterance that revealed historical events in advance. This tendency appears long before the birth of Christianity. For example, the prophecy of Jer. 25:11–12 that the exile will last seventy years is applied by the writer of Dan. 9:2 to his own time period, understood by most scholars to be that of the Hellenistic persecutions that led to the Maccabean revolt in 167 BCE. In the hands of the writer of Daniel, Jeremiah’s prophecy confirms that his community’s own calamity will last seventy weeks (Dan. 9:24), as opposed to Jeremiah’s seventy years. Several biblical commentaries among the Dead Sea Scrolls treat the Prophetic Books in the same way. Commentaries on Habakkuk and Nahum employ the style of the pesher, which in almost interlinear style directly applies prophetic writings to the current situation of the turn-of-theera Qumran community.

The New Testament

The New Testament turns this predictive approach to a distinctively Christian end, attempting to show that Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection were all as God “spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old” (Luke 1:70). According to 1 Pet. 1:10–11, “the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours … testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory.”

New Testament writers, however, employ the prophecy-fulfillment reading strategy in different ways. The Gospel of Matthew applies the scheme rather woodenly. Within the first two chapters of the Gospel, the writer quotes five times from the Prophets, in each case showing how a particular feature of Jesus’ birth was anticipated. While the writer of Luke uses “fulfillment” language as well, such as when Jesus reads from the book of Isaiah in his hometown synagogue in Luke 4, this writer portrays Jesus more as fulfilling the hopes and aspirations of the prophets rather than as living into a script written long before his earthly incarnation. The Magnificat of Luke 2, for example, sees in the dawning of the new age the “spirit” of what earlier biblical voices had longed for.

Richard Hays’s extensive exploration of the “echoes” of the Old Testament in the writings of Paul stresses that Paul’s use of the Old Testament (in the form of the Septuagint) reflects not simple proof-texting but rather an artful reinterpretation of earlier Scripture in light of the Christ event.¹ While Paul occasionally employs the pesher style (see Hays’s explanation of the use of Deut. 30:14 in Rom. 10:8–9),² his general approach to the Old Testament is more holistic:

[Romans] is most fruitfully understood when it is read as an intertextual conversation between Paul and the voice of [OT] Scripture…. Paul, groping to give voice to his gospel, finds in Scripture the language to say what must be said, and labors to win the blessing of Moses and the prophets…. [For Paul,] the gospel must be understood as the fulfillment of the ancient promise that God’s righteousness would be revealed in an act of deliverance for the Jews first and also for the Gentiles.³

According to Paul, Jesus embodies the purposes—indeed the very being—of the God of the Old Testament.

John Sawyer and Brevard Childs have masterfully shown that the book of Isaiah took pride of place in the New Testament’s appeal to Scripture: the New Testament quotes, paraphrases, or alludes to Isaiah over four hundred times.⁴ And yet, despite this focus on Isaiah, for New Testament writers “prophets” and “prophecy” were not limited to the books included in the Prophets section of the canon. Quotations from Psalms and Genesis are also treated as “prophecy”; David and Abraham are credited with “prophetic” utterances; and references to “the prophets” do not delineate a particular list of books.

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. (Rom. 15:4; my italcs)

Almost exclusively, New Testament authors locate the primary meaning of the Scripture as a whole in how it testifies to and illuminates Jesus.

Patristic and Medieval Periods (100–1300 CE)

Christological interpretation of the Prophetic Books in particular and of Scripture in general flourished in the patristic period. As Sawyer suggests, while New Testament writers appealed to the Old to defend their claims about Jesus, for the church fathers the Old Testament became revelation in its own right.⁵ The Prophets (and Psalms) spoke directly to the church, independently of their appropriation by New Testament writers.

The church fathers approached all Scripture convinced that it bears multiple levels of meaning. Following the philosophy of Plato, they insisted that all narratives reveal not only surface-level, earthly truths (called the literal or historical sense) but also, and far more important, higher spiritual mysteries. When read in the spiritual sense, the Old Testament speaks not only about the past but also about the individual soul and the church’s governance, doctrine, and eschatology.

While early Christian interpreters followed the New Testament writers in devoting much attention to the book of Isaiah, their use of allegory allowed them to discover far more treasures in Isaiah than had their predecessors. Patristic writers drew proof texts from both the literal and the spiritual senses of the book, such that in the first three centuries Isaiah was read as bearing witness to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, baptism, the Eucharist, and the ordination of bishops and deacons. In the words of Jerome in the fourth century, Isaiah is the Fifth Gospel, an independent source for Christian practice:

Isaiah contains all the mysteries of Christ: … born of a virgin, worker of famous deeds and signs, who died and was buried and rose again from hell, the Savior of all nations.⁶

Along with Isaiah, other prophets attested to God’s intention for the emerging shape of the Christian church. Justin (Dial. 117.28, 41) quotes Mal. 1:11 as proof that Gentiles are the people of God, and the Didache (a second-century writing) finds in the same passage justification for the Eucharist (14.3).⁷

Even when the church fathers did consider the literal, “historical” sense of Scripture, they found testimony to the Christ event. Childs highlights, for example, that while Jerome claimed to prioritize the historical/literal sense of Scripture, for Jerome the “literal” sense of the Old Testament is predictive of the New:

Although he insists on first focusing on the historical background of the Old Testament when dealing with a prophetic text, he assumes, as if by reflex, that the full context is only recognized when the New Testament is included. Hebrew prophecy always flows in some fashion, directly or indirectly, into New Testament fulfillment.⁸

Clearly, “historical” or “literal” did not refer specifically to the ancient context of a biblical passage but rather to its more simple meaning as defined by patristic assumptions.

Not all patristic interpreters lauded the superiority of the allegorical method. For example, while the school of Antioch did not reject allegory completely, it did attempt to place controls on the application of allegory to the biblical text. Theodore of Mopsuestia set the Prophets within their own time and place and resisted reading them as predictive of Jesus. Theodore insisted that Old Testament prophets testified only to what they knew and did not foresee the coming and divinity of Christ; their chief role was as messengers of monotheism. Julian of Aeclanum’s commentaries on Hosea, Joel, and Amos similarly argued for the priority of the literal sense of the Prophetic Books.

Even “historical” interpreters such as Theodore, however, did not break with the view that the Prophets predicted the future. While Theodore argued that the Prophets did not predict the details of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection, he did claim that the Prophets predicted events yet to come: for example, prophets in the eighth century predicted events to take place in the postexilic and Maccabean periods.⁹ Jerome, justifiably recognized for his insistence on “historical” matters, such as the importance of reading the Old Testament in Hebrew rather than in Greek and of understanding Hebrew language and tradition, nonetheless read for the spiritual sense as well. Jerome, Augustine, and others, despite all their interest in the historical sense, read Scripture in ways that did not pose significant challenge to the church’s understanding of the Old Testament as witness to Christ.

In many ways, the interpretation of the Prophets in the Middle Ages continued and built on patristic exegesis. Medieval interpreters continued to find vast christological treasures in the Prophets and continued to search out the multiple senses of Scripture. Proof-texting continued as well: for example, in the twelfth century Robert of Rheims read the promise of Isa. 60:9 that “I will bring my sons from afar” as a prophecy that the Franks would defeat the Saracens in the First Crusade.¹⁰

Medieval interpreters, however, demonstrated an attention to the language, grammar, and text of the Old Testament beyond that of patristic interests. Following the lead of Jerome, they recognized the importance of the Hebrew language and consulted Jewish scholars for instruction. Increasingly, commentators appealed to the historical sense of Scripture, as seen in the work of the Victorines, scholars attached to the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris.

In the twelfth century, Hugh of St. Victor insisted that interpretation must begin with geography and history and only then move to allegory. He ridiculed those who did not ground their allegorical interpretation in a solid understanding of the text’s literal sense:

The mystical sense is only gathered from what the letter says, in the first place. I wonder how people have the face to boast themselves teachers of allegory, when they do not know the primary meaning of the letter.¹¹

Hugh did not limit Scripture’s meaning to the literal, but in interpreting the Prophets he often located its primary meaning in the past. For example, while his contemporaries quickly allegorized the prediction in Isa. 4:1 that “in that day, seven women shall take hold of one man,” Hugh argued that the literal meaning of the passage relates to the time period of the prophet. Consistently, he sought interpretations that would integrate true historical inquiry and the life of faith:

It is one thing not to discern what the writer intended, another to err against piety. If both are avoided, the fruit of reading is perfect.¹²

Hugh’s disciple, Andrew of St. Victor, advocated even more adamantly for the literal sense of Scripture. In his extensive commentary on the Prophets, he expounded on the distinctiveness of individual prophets, highlighting Daniel’s wisdom and Isaiah’s royal bearing, as well the details of Isaiah’s death. In Andrew’s hands, Isaiah became less of the Fifth Gospel and more of a prophetic word to an ancient audience. One of the first interpreters who refused to read “the rod of Jesse” in Isa. 11:1 christologically, he also reported Jewish objections to understanding Isa. 7:14 as a prediction of Jesus without any comment of his own.¹³ In his treatment of the “man of sorrows” (Suffering Servant) in Isa. 53, Andrew did not even mention christological interpretation.

Hugh and Andrew were striking in their challenge to the dominant interpretative tradition of the Middle Ages:

No western commentator before [Hugh] had set out to give a purely literal interpretation of the Old Testament, though many had attempted a purely spiritual one.¹⁴

The priority placed on the “literal sense” by the Victorines was continued by Thomas Aquinas, often considered the greatest of the medieval theologians. Aquinas’s extensive study of the philosophical works of Aristotle, along with his training in other classics, allowed him to consider Scripture as both human and divine:

Thomas could speak emphatically of God or the Holy Spirit as author of the Bible; he could with equal enthusiasm probe the literary intentions of authors such as Isaiah and Jeremiah.¹⁵

Particularly in matters of theology, Aquinas stressed the primacy of the literal sense of Scripture....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Bible Translations Used
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Prophetic Theology: A Brief History of Interpretation
• Chapter 2: The Challenge of Feminist Criticism of the Prophets
• Chapter 3: Another Way of Doing Theology
• Chapter 4: God as (Abusing) Husband
• Chapter 5: God as (Authoritarian) Father
• Chapter 6: God as (Angry) Warrior
• Chapter 7: Jerusalem as (Defenseless) Daughter
• Chapter 8: Edom as (Selfish) Brother
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Scripture Index
• Index of Subjects and Names