Interpreting Prophetic Literature

Historical and Exegetical Tools for Reading the Prophets

James D. Nogalski

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781611646221
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Exegeting a textburrowing deep into its history, language, and literary structureis an indispensable skill for any serious student of the Bible. Given their theological richness and poetic power, the prophetic texts of the Hebrew Bible would seem to be prime candidates for exegetical examination, but they often pose difficulty. In this book, James Nogalski offers solid, practical guidance on how to read and exegete a prophetic text in its literary, historical, and conceptual contexts. Assuming no prior knowledge of Hebrew, Nogalski devises an exegetical method that focuses on the distinctive elements of prophetic literature, rather than on the narrative material one finds in practically all introductions to exegesis. He provides clear examples for understanding poetic texts, prophetic genres, changing voices, and other important aspects of these texts. This book offers essential tools to help readers navigate the particular challenges and opportunities of interpreting the prophets.

1

Getting Started

The majority of this book will focus upon reading the literature of the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve), not to create experts in the individual books, but to introduce students to the process of understanding and interpreting prophetic literature. In introductions to the Old Testament as a whole or to the prophetic writings in particular, the art of learning to read this literature is seldom given the attention most beginning students need. Further, textbooks dealing with the exegetical process often suffer from two deficits faced by beginning students approaching prophetic literature. First, most introductions to the exegetical process assume that the student has some measure of competence in Hebrew. In both seminaries and colleges, however, most students have their first exposure to prophetic literature before they have completed a Hebrew course. Second, without exception, introductions to exegetical methodology illustrate the various methods from narrative literature (i.e., the Torah and the Former Prophets [Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings]). Seldom are prophetic speeches, forms, or collections given any attention at all. As a result of these two shortcomings, beginning students struggle to understand the poetry and the rhetorical logic of smaller and larger units within the prophetic writings.

Interpreting Prophetic Literature seeks to fill this gap for beginning students. It will focus upon the art of reading prophetic literature without assuming students are working from the Hebrew text. It will focus upon illustrating the markers and the methods most important for understanding prophetic literature. It will get students started in the process of reading these texts. Examples provided will be illustrative, not comprehensive.

What this book will not do is to replace the use of a traditional textbook that introduces each prophet and each prophetic book. This book does not attempt to serve as an introduction to the prophetic writings. It will not deal extensively with the historical backgrounds of the individual prophetic books. Rather, this book will attempt to supplement such introductions by focusing upon the art of reading prophetic literature.

Before turning to the interpretive process in chapters 2–4, this chapter will do two things. First, it will offer a few comments about the broader ancient Near Eastern background of prophets and prophecy, as well as the role of prophets in the narrative literature of the Hebrew Bible. Second, this chapter will provide an overview of the interpretive process itself, including some suggestions for students on how to use multiple English translations as a means of compensating for the lack of access to Hebrew.

PROPHECY, PROPHETS, AND PROPHETIC BOOKS

In order to understand and to appreciate Old Testament prophetic literature as it has been transmitted to us, one must realize that prophecy has a long history in the ancient Near East. Prophets can be documented in the region more than half a millennium prior to the earliest known reference to the nation of Israel. Prophets also appear in Old Testament narratives that recount episodes from the story of Israel and Judah long before the time of the prophetic figures for whom the collections within the Latter Prophets are named. Yet these narrative traditions regarding prophets do not adequately prepare modern readers to understand and to engage the Latter Prophets. The four scrolls that comprise the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve) are composite collections containing speeches, commentary, narratives, and various poetic forms. The arrangement of the material within these scrolls demonstrates that sources from different time periods have been transmitted, periodically structured, and updated with newer material that reflects changing realities. These three issues (transmission, shaping, and updating) will be discussed very briefly to provide some context from which to begin learning to read the prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible.

Prophecy in the Ancient Near East

Prophecy in the ancient Near East (ANE) has a long history. Already in the eighteenth century BCE prophets played a significant role in the political and religious life of the Mesopotamian community at Mari. The Mari tablets include quite a number of letters and reports concerning prophetic figures. These accounts referred to prophets using a variety of terms, terms whose meaning suggests that the prophets in Mari divided themselves into functional groups according to the type of revelation they practiced. This diversity of practices suggests that in Mari the role of prophets and prophecy had already developed a complex social network and function.

Terms used to refer to these prophetic figures include āpilu (meaning roughly, “one who answers,” assinnu (male cult prostitute, or perhaps a eunuch), the muḫḫû (the ecstatic), the nabû (“the diviner), and the barû (the one who sees [i.e., interprets omens]). The first three of these appear in the Mari texts while the last one appears in Old Babylonian texts. Most of these figures, it is presumed, had some connection to the cult, but most of them we know because they, or their speeches, are referenced in the royal correspondence associated with king Zimri Lim of Mari (1779–1757 BCE). In addition to the variety of names used to refer to those offering advice on behalf of the gods at Mari, one also finds a wide variety of types of divination, including augury, dream interpretation, and oracles. Many of these prophetic figures were required to include pieces of their hair and hems from the garments with their statements. While it is not entirely clear how these items functioned, they imply a serious ritual designed to prove that the prophet should be considered reliable. In fact, it is not uncommon that the āpilu include reference to confirmation of the message by some other form of divination (e.g., extispicy, the use of animal entrails to predict the future). This range of terms and implied functions in Mari thus appears to have been even broader than the relationships implied among the biblical prophets.

Reading through this correspondence, one is frequently reminded of a significant difference between these prophetic reports and Old Testament prophetic literature. Often, such documents were recovered as part of some kind of official archive. Consequently, these accounts served a very different function from prophetic literature in that they were either addressed to some particular government official or, in later texts, found at the palace of Assyrian kings. They may contain information intended for the officials conducting the divination.

Consider the examples of sixty-three recorded “Mesopotamian Omens” listed in COS 1:423–26. These oracles illustrate a variety of divinatory techniques including observation of animal entrails (extispicy), unusual births, human behavior, random events (cledonomancy), dreams (oneiromancy), and reactions of oil and water when a stone is dropped into a basin (lecanomancy). They record various signs to observe. As such, they serve as a resource for practitioners of these divinatory arts.

See also the list of dream meanings that recount various dream images, followed by an assessment (either “good” or “bad”) and an explanation. The top of the columns begins: “If a man sees himself in a dream …” What follows contains various examples of dreams and their significance:

“Eating the flesh of a donkey. Good. It means his promotion.

Eating the flesh of a crocodile. Good. [It means] living off the property of an official.”

“Eating a filleted catfish. Bad. His seizure by a crocodile.

Seeing his face in a mirror. Bad. It means another wife.”1

Both the collection of oracles and the dream book indicate the formulations were intended as resources for those who were offering these services, not for those who requested them.

Prophets in the Old Testament

By contrast, oracles recounted in biblical prophecy are largely directed against the community itself. Often, even when oracles are directed against an individual, such as a king or another prophet, those oracles are recounted in ways that make it clear that the story is told for the benefit of the reader. For example, consider Amos 7:10–17. This text contains a brief episode of confrontation between Amos, the prophet, and Amaziah, the (presumably chief) priest at Bethel. It is the voice of the narrator, however, who structures the conversation that provides the biographical information necessary to make sense of this confrontation.

The didactic function of the prophetic corpus should not be overlooked. In point of fact, all four scrolls of the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings) and of the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve) demonstrate that, whatever the sources utilized in compiling these collections, the collections have been shaped with an eye toward their transmission for and reflection by later generations. They do not present themselves as the property of priests or kings, but as words addressed to the people of YHWH.

Prophets serving deities other than YHWH appear in the Old Testament, though usually in polemical contexts where these prophets are being condemned or eliminated. Their presence, however, suggests that biblical writers were aware of prophets working for other deities inside and outside their country. One of the most prominent stories inside the Bible concerns the prophet Balaam in the time of Moses (Num. 22–24). Balaam was a foreign prophet, also known from an inscription outside the Bible (Deir `Alla), although the Deir `Alla text comes from several centuries later than the time in which the exodus story is set.2 These extrabiblical texts portray Balaam as a very powerful prophetic seer. By contrast, the Balaam stories in Numbers 22–24 recount several ways in which YHWH circumscribes Balaam’s power so as to prove the impotence of foreign prophets against YHWH. Such appropriation of other traditions illustrates one way in which prophetic narratives function within larger stories.

Similarly, prophetic narratives illustrate the power of YHWH over the power of foreign deities in Old Testament narratives. Prophets of Baal are defeated by Elijah in the reign of Ahab (1 Kgs. 18); later, Jehu defeats the prophets of Asherah (2 Kgs. 10:18–31) in the middle of the ninth century BCE. These stories indicate that these prophets of foreign gods were involved in sacrifice, and they even presuppose the presence of a Baal temple. Later, texts indicate that the worship of Baal was still advocated by prophets serving Baal in the late seventh century (Jer. 2:8; cf. Zeph. 1:4–5).

Prophets of YHWH play a major role in Israel and Judah in the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings). To put this role in perspective, one need only contemplate the implications of the way one speaks about the Old Testament canon. In Christian tradition, the second major section of the canon has often been called the historical books. By contrast, in the Hebrew Bible (the Tanak), the second section of the canon is called the Prophets (Nebiim). Remarkably, though, the first four scrolls of the Nebiim in the Hebrew Bible (Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings) constitute the same books that form the foundation of “the historical books” of the Christian canon.

What a difference names can make! Each of these names focuses upon a significant aspect of these narrative texts. One can understand how these books came to be called historical books in the Christian canon: they tell the story of Israel and Judah from the Hebrews’ entry into the land until Jerusalem’s destruction. It is not a history in the modern sense, but a theologically shaped recounting of that story. However, calling these writings the historical books also underplays the role that prophets play in the story itself. In fact, beginning in Deuteronomy 18, the role of Moses as prophet prepares the ground for the ongoing role of prophetic leadership when entering the land, beginning in Joshua.

In Deuteronomy 18 Moses is presented as the prophet par excellence. A significant criterion concerning the role of the prophet is the juxtaposition of commands prohibiting divination, as practiced by the nations, in 18:9–14 with the promise from YHWH in 18:15–22 (see especially 18:15, 18) that YHWH will provide Israel with prophets like Moses when they enter the land. The primary role of prophets in Deuteronomy 18:18 is to speak faithfully the words that YHWH has communicated to them. One certainly sees this role of prophet play out in many of the episodes in the Former Prophets, but that i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• 1. Getting Started
• 2. Analyzing Literary Parameters and Rhetorical Flow
• 3. Selecting Key Words
• 4. Literary Forms and Rhetorical Aims
• 5. Analyzing a Unit’s Relationship to the Context
• 6. Common Themes in Prophetic Texts
• 7. Developing a Hermeneutical Approach
• Notes
• Index of Scripture