I once knew a public school teacher who was fond of using the expression: “You better get on board or you’ll be left behind at the station!” Most of his students knew it meant he was angry, but they confessed to me privately they had no idea what the expression meant. They had no concept of being dependent on rail travel to get anywhere. There was virtually no rail travel anywhere in the state at that time. They had no idea what a tragedy it would be to miss one’s train.
Too many church folks are just as bewildered about the prophetic messages in the Bible. It’s loaded with phrasing that floats right over their heads. They understand the translated words, but even most church staff have only a very rudimentary education in Biblical Studies.
1. In the biblical record, along with the supporting material found in Second Temple literature, the ministry of prophecy was almost entirely a matter of preaching what was already known. The primary task of the prophet was to encourage people to obey the Lord’s established Word.
We can read about a great many prophets whose messages are not in Scripture, or whose work is only summarized. We read about Samuel’s School of the Prophets, yet have little record from their work. The vast weight of the record is not that they predicted specifics about future events, but they prodded the people to do what God has already said they must do.
Often the recorded prophecies we do have are more about warnings of things likely to happen if the people continued to resist God’s Word. Seldom were the prophetic warnings locked in stone. They were generally conditional. Nineveh repented and the warnings of Jonah didn’t happen. Jeremiah and Ezekiel warned of the impending destruction of Jerusalem, but their messages included ways that individuals could survive.
2. Prophetesses (female prophets) were exceedingly rare. There was no “School of Prophetesses” for them. They didn’t act like male prophets. They were typically passive, waiting on someone to seek them out. Only rarely did they initiate contact with anyone with a burden from the Lord. In some ways, their ministry bore little resemblance to male prophets.
3. In Hebrew thinking, a “Word” from God did not come as a package of words. We’ve been hammering on this for years. The entire Ancient Near East would have laughed to scorn the silly notion of “propositional truth”. It was always on the prophet to come up with an expression that was adequate to the ineffable truth God placed on their hearts to share.
Thus, when God “spoke”, it was never in mere words. Jesus used parables; the Hebrew language was loaded with expressions that could not be taken literally. It was the same with all Semitic languages — Aramaic, Akkadian, Arabic, etc. People communicating in those languages assumed what they heard were symbolic references until it was obvious the message was literal.
The job of translating those languages into English means building a vast catalog of symbolic expressions, not the mere literal meanings of the words. The very letters themselves carry symbolic meanings that inform us how the words were used. These are some of the most highly inflected human languages ever known.
4. On top of the symbolism was the Hebrew sense of humor. We struggle to grasp the level of sarcasm and satire that shows up in the prophets. A substantial portion of things Jesus said as recorded in Gospels was loaded with sharp sarcasm and even mockery. We often miss moments of great drama because we lack the context of the Hebrew culture.
Can you imagine trying to read American memes with no exposure to the movies, TV shows and music we swim in? What would it mean if you took literally these lyrics: “Short people got no reason to live”? How about nursery rhymes? More than one OT prophet refers to what appears to be the stuff childhood education.
