How to Read
the Bible for All It’s Worth, Session X
The Prophets
A teaching by
based upon the book by the same title,
written by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart
INTRO:
A. Review: Purpose of the course
1. Interpreting task: done automatically
…need
to be self-conscious and intentional about it
2. Goal of interpretation: to get to the plain meaning of the text
3. Working definition of scripture:
“The Bible is the Word of God, expressed in
human words in history.”
4. 2 essential tasks of interpretation
a. exegesis: deciphering what it meant there and then
“What
was the intended meaning of the original writers to their original audiences?”
b. hermeneutics: bridging from the there and then to the here
and now
“How
does the original meaning apply to us?”
B. Key
to the course: Different Kinds of genre
1. Some were written as direct teaching for believers of the time
esp.:
letters/epistles
OUR
task: to reconstruct the original situation
à intent of writer
AND then, using common sense
à Distinguish between teachings that are emphatic &
central, vs. teachings that are situational
& peripheral.
2. Some are more narrative: stories
Realize
that they may be illustrating teachings and principles
…but
they do not introduce teachings directly
They
may be setting a precedent that may be repeatable
…but
those precedents carry over to our time only if followed consistently in biblical history and are
taught as such
3. Some:
Gospels
a. Intentionality is
two-fold:
Jesus’
intentionality when encountering people
each writer’s intention when writing about such encounters
b. each writer did
have a particular audience in mind when writing and did have particular goals in mind when
writing.
c. so we read
vertically …each gospel from beginning to ending
AND
we read horizontally, comparing each gospel w/ the others
to look for distinctives
4. Within those
gospels: Parables
a. stories that evoke
a response
like a joke with a punchline
b. THEREFORE:
1)
find the points of reference
2)
Identify the audience
3)
Listen for the “Punch”
5. Last week:
OT Law
constituting documents for the new nation of
covenant of
…part
of which gets renewed in NT
…part
of which gets supplanted in NT
Today: The prophets
I. The books of the Prophets
A. Two groupings: major and minor prophets
defined singly by length
B. Hence:
1. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel
2. the other 12 books
II. The Nature of
Prophecy
These are
among the most difficult books to interpret.
It is
critical to discuss both function and form
Preliminary
to that: need to talk about the nature
of prophecy itself
A. The meaning of prophecy
1. most dictionaries’ 1st
def:
“foretelling or prediction of what is to come”
2. Hence: many Christians think of OT prophets
as foretellers of Jesus and/or foretellers of the end times
and 2nd coming
3. BUT:
only about 7% of OT prophecies address those issues
B. The prophets as spokespersons
1. primary role of
prophets:
to SPEAK FOR GOD to their contemporaries
2. underline the word “SPEAK” –
Hundreds
of prophets spoke for God.
Only
a handful wrote or had their oracles recorded into books
3. The structure of the writing is one of strung
together oracles
…beginnings
and endings are not typically signaled,
…so you don’t know when one ends and the next begins.
C. The Problem of history
Our
historical distance makes it hard to contextualize some of what they say.
III. The Function of
prophecy in
A.
The Prophets were covenant enforcement mediators
Given
that the Law constituted the terms of relationship between God and
Hence,
they are God’s megaphone, reminding the people of their obligations
to obedience, promising blessing for obedience and warning of curses for disobedience.
IN
particular
1. 6 kinds of blessing promised:
a. life
b. health
c. prosperity
d. agricultural
abundance
e. respect
f. safety
2. 10 kinds of curse threatened
o
death
o
disease
o
drought
o
dearth
o
danger
o
destruction
o
defeat
o
deportation
o
destitution
o
disgrace
These
blessings and curses are meted out and received corporately
3. NOTE:
in times of independence and prosperity:
prophecies tend to warn of impending danger
IN
times of exile and poverty, prophecies tend to promise blessing
B.
The prophets’ message was not their own, but Gods
1. Each prophet has a style all his own… …but…
2. The prophet speaks as one representing
another: God
In
fact the Hebrew word prophet (nabi) comes from
Semitic word for “call” (nabu).
They
were called by God to speak for God
3. AND commonly begin with “Thus says the Lord…”
C.
The prophets were God’s direct representatives
1. The
prophets were generally recognized by their societies as voices for God, and as leaders in the community
2. They were not generally radical social
reformers
THEY
were proclaimers of God’s Law and were continually calling the people to obey that Law
3. AND they were the ones who handed down
sentences when the people were disobedient.
D.
The prophets’ message is unoriginal
1. The essential message of the prophet was the
Law
2. Their wording and style might be original,
but their content was not
3. Even the prophecies about the Messiah
originate in Gen 3 and especially in Deuteronomy (God promising to
raise up a leader to
guide them)
IV. The Exegetical Task
A. The need for outside help
Here
the use of resources really helps!
Bible
Dictionary
Commentaries
Bible
Handbook
à all aimed to contextualize
the prophecies
…and
to give a feel for the situation and message
B. The Historical context
1. The larger context
These
books were all written in a relatively brief period of time: 760-460 BC (Abraham was c. 1800 BC)
This
was a time of great upheaval in
a. unprecedented
political, military, economic and social upheaval
b. enormous level of
religious unfaithfulness and disregard for the original Mosaic covenant
c. shifts in
populations and national boundaries
à Covenant Enforcement Mediation was especially needed!
2. the specific context
Each
prophet is facing a particular slice of that time:
It
is critical to determine when and where the prophet was:
in
prior to exile,
during exile, or after exile?
C. The Isolation of individual oracles
BUT: in
all of this: keep in mind that the
prophecies are strings of oracles.
Commentaries help decipher when one oracle end and another
begins… but this analysis is not an exacting science.
A few
of them do state when new oracles begin, but not regularly
D. The forms of prophets
utterance
They
use several literary devices: 5 in
particular
1. The lawsuit – prophecy written up as a
lawsuit against the people with God as the plaintiff and
2. The woe – the “Woe Oracle” – predictions of
doom and gloom, with attendant singing of “woe is me, woe
are we” as in a funeral procession
3. The promise – “salvation oracle”
speaks of the future (“In that day…”)
…of
radical change …and blessing
4. The enactment prophecy
The
prophet acts out the story: Hosea
marrying a harlot
Isaiah
walking around in underwear
…like
happens when people are taken, deported and held in exile
5. The messenger speech
“Thus
says the Lord…”
E. The prophets as poets
Their
style of writing was mostly that of poetry
positive benefit:
more easily memorized
negative: not as
scientific and obvious in meaning
V. Some hermeneutical suggestions
A. MUCH of the writings of the prophets is just like the epistles:
Do the
right thing
Don’t
do the wrong thing
B. Caution:
the prophet as foreteller of the future
The
prophets see the distant future thru the lens of the present
…BE
VERY cautious to over interpret what they say about now
B. Concern:
Prophecy and 2nd meanings
NT
writers and Jesus sometimes too OT prophecies out of context to make a point
They
were inspired by the HS to do so
WE are NOT that inspired.
We do
pray for the HS’s illumination as we read the text
BUT
we are not so inspired as to take biblical words and put new meanings into them
HENCE: Don’t do it!
C. A final benefit: converging orthodoxy with orthopraxy
The
critical value of the prophets: They
force us to be faithful and true
not only in our beliefs but also in our practices.
Go and
do likewise!