in Eighth-Century Prophecy1
Excerpted with permission from Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament TheoZoo (New York: Harper 8c Row, 1965), vol. 2: pp. 176-80, 183-87.
El7611 Careful consideration of the distinctive features in the prophecies of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah might well lead us to the conclusion that all comparisons are dangerous, because once we have discovered the radical differences between them it is difficult to avoid the temptation of going on and smoothing these out. What, in actual fact, do Hosea and Isa- iah have in common? Hosea came from the farming world of the North- ern Kingdom, he was opposed to everything that in his day was implied by the word “king”; of all the prophets he was the most deeply involved in pa- triarchal concepts deriving from the cult, and he paid particular attention to problems in the sacral sphere and to cultic irregularities. Isaiah was a townsman, brought up in a polis tradition, and a sharp-sighted observer of world politics; he explained all the changes in the political kaleidoscope as part of Jahweh’s rational scheme, he placed his confidence in the di- vinely guaranteed protection of the city, and he looked for a king who would bring peace and righteousness. Much the same can be said of Amos and Micah. Amos was apparently quite unmoved by Hosea’s main topic, the threat of Jahwism from the Canaanite worship of Baal; and he is also different from Isaiah, for he does not inveigh against mistaken policies, against armaments and alliances. Finally, there is absolutely no bridge be- tween Micah and the hopes cherished concerning Zion by Isaiah, his fellow-countryman and contemporary; Micah in fact expected Zion to be blotted out of the pages of history. Even the kind of prophetic office sur- prisingly discovered in the state documents of Mari, which makes it clear that the prophet could threaten even the king in God’s name, does not give us any standpoint from which to summarise and categorise the pro- phetic role. If their close connexion with the king and their interest in po- litical and military affairs is a particular characteristic of the “prophets” of Mari, then Israel has comparable figures not only in Isaiah, but in a whole series of prophets beginning with Ahijah of Shiloh, including Micaiah ben lmlah and 111771 Elijah, and going down to Jeremiah.:! On the other
1. Eichrodt, Theology, pp. 345-53; Vriezen, Outline, pp. 62-6.
2. S. Herrmann, Die Urspnhge der prophetischen Heilseruatiung im Alten Tertament, Leipzig lhsertation 1957, pp. 65ff., 73ff.
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hand, it is impossible to bring Amos into this category. Nevertheless, in spite of all these great differences, there is a great deal of common matter which links the eighth-century prophets to one another; for their reli- gious ideas led them to an absolutely common conviction, one so novel and revolutionary when compared with all their inherited beliefs, that it makes the differences, considerable as these are, seem almost trivial and peripheral. We shall now make another attempt to find out which ele- ment in the prophets’ teaching struck their contemporaries as being a de- parture from the religious standards of the time.
To begin with a very simple statement: these men were set apart from their contemporaries and they were very lonely. Their call gave them a unique knowledge of Jahweh and of his designs for Israel. We have al- ready seen how, apparently to a much greater degree than any of their contemporaries, they are deeply rooted in the religious traditions of their nation; indeed, their whole preaching might almost be described as a unique dialogue with the tradition by means of which the latter was made to speak to their own day. Yet the very way in which they understood it and brought it to life again is the measure of their difference from all the contemporary religious heritage of their nation. When Amos said that Jahweh presided over the migration of the Philistines and the Syrians (Amos 9:7), he was departing pretty radically from the belief of his tim’e.
This novel and to some extent revolutionary way of taking the old tradi- tions was not, however, the result of careful study or of slowly maturing conviction; rather, these prophets were all agreed that it was Jahweh who enlightened them and led them on from one insight to another. The rea- son for their isolation was therefore this-as they listened to and obeyed a word and commission of Jahweh which came to them alone and which could not be transferred to anyone else, these men became individuals, persons. 3 They could say “I” in a way never before heard in Israel. At the same time, it has become apparent that the “I” of which these men were allowed to become conscious was very different from our present-day concept of personality. For first of all, this process of becoming a person was marked by many strange experiences of compulsion, and one at least of its characteristics -we have only to think of the “be still” IT17811 in Isa- iah’s demand for faith-was passively to contemplate and make room for the divine action.4 Yet, at the same time, this opened up freedom upon freedom for the prophet. He could even break out into an “exultation of the spirit” about this, as Micah once did when, as his chatisma welled up
3. See [Ivan Kad 1965:1] pp. 76f. Eichrodt, Theology, p. 343.
4. Eichrodt, Theology, p. 357.
Eighth-Century Propheq
gloriously within him, he became conscious of his difference from other people:
But as for me, I am filled with power, [with the spirit of Jahweh], with justice and might,
to declare to Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin. (Mic 3:8)
There is a very direct reflexion of the prophets’ attainment of per- sonal identity and of their religious uniqueness in their style, the way in which they speak of God and of the things of God. During centuries of reverent speech Israel had created a language of the cult, and had devised a conventional phraseology for speaking about God; yet there were times when he might also be spoken of in the way these prophets loved to do- in monstrous similes, with an apparent complete absence of any feeling for dignity or propriety.5 These were ad hoc inspirations, the provocative inventions of a single person, whose radical quality and extreme boldness was only justified by the uniqueness of a particular situation and the frame of mind of the people who listened to them.
Even if we knew still less than we in fact do of the way in which the concepts of Jahwism were still a living force at the shrines and among the broad mass of the people at the time when these prophets were active, one thing could yet be said for certain -the new feature in their preach- ing, and the one which shocked their hearers, was the message that Jah- weh was summoning Israel before his judgment seat, and that he had in fact already pronounced sentence upon her: “The end has come upon my people Israel” (Amos 82). The question has recently been asked whether the prophets did not base even these pronouncements of judgment on older tradition. Were there ceremonies El791 in the cult at which Jahweh appeared as his people’s accuser.$i So far nothing definite has material- ised; and an answer to this question would not in any way be a complete answer to the other question: why did the prophets proclaim this mes- sage? Moreover, the devastating force and finality of the prophetic pro- nouncement of judgment can never have had a cultic antecedent, for it envisaged the end of all cult itself.
5. Jahweh, the barber (Isa 7:20), the ulcer in Israel’s body (Hos 5: 12), the unsuccessful lover (Isa 5:lff.); see also I[von Rad 1965:] p. 375.
6. So E. Wiirthwein, “Der Ursprung der prophetischen Gerichtsrede,” in 2. Th. K., 49 (1952), pp. lff.; in a different way F. Hesse, “Wurzelt die prophetische Gerichtsrede im is- raeitischen Kult?” in Z. A. W., 64 (1953)) pp. 45ff.
140 Gerhard von Rad
For the proper understanding of what we have called this completely new note in the prophetic preaching, we have not least to remember the changing political situation, Assyria’s increasingly obvious and steady ad- vance towards Palestine. When in an almost stereotyped fashion Amos sug- gests that Jahweh’s judgment will take the form of exile, this quite clearly reflects how much the Assyrians occupied his thoughts. The prophets are, however, obviously motivated not merely by one factor but by several. Let us simply say that these men spoke of the divine wrath as a fact, and desig- nated as its proper object their contemporaries’ whole way of life, their so- cial and economic attitudes, their political behaviour and, in particular, their cultic practice. At all events, the favourite way of putting it, that this is simply the emergence of new religious ideas, and as such only a new un- derstanding of the relationship between God and Man, does not square with the fact that in this matter the prophets most decidedly took as their starting-point the old traditions of Jahwism. It was these that formed the foundation of their attack, and time and again the prophets took them as the basis of arguments with their audiences. Thus, as far as the old Jah- wistic tradition was concerned, the prophets and their hearers were on common ground: but they differed in their interpretation of these tradi- tions, which the prophets believed were far from ensuring Israel’s salva- tion. The classic expression of this aspect of prophecy are Amos’s words- her very election made the threat to Israel all the greater (Amos 3:lf.)!
This is therefore the first occasion in Israel when “law” in the proper sense of the term was preached.’ This is most apparent in the prophets’ castiga- tions of their fellow-countrymen for their anti-social behaviour, their com- mercial sharp-practice. Here they do not in any sense regard themselves as the revolutionary mouthpiece of one social group. Time and again we can see them [180] applying provisions of the old divine law to the situation.8 Isaiah uses much the same procedure when he measures the behaviour of the people of Jerusalem against the Zion tradition, and looks on arma- ments or security sought for in alliances as a rejection of the divine help. It is also used by Hosea when he takes the saving gift of the land, which Is- rael still completely failed to understand, as his starting-point, and uses it to show up the enormity of her faithlessness and ingratitude. Jahweh was known to be the judge of sinners in early Israel also; and early Israel was equally aware that a man’s sin is more than the sum total of his several acts (Genesis 3). Yet, the prophets’ zeal in laying bare man’s innate tendency to oppose God, their endeavour to comprehend Israel’s conduct in its
7. See I[von Rad 196231 pp. 195ff.; see [Ivan Rad 1965:] pp. 395ff.
8. See [van Rad 1965:l pp. 135f. H.-J. Kraus, “Die prophetische Botschaft gegen das so- ziale Unrechts Isrdels,” in l+. 7X., 15 (1955), pp. 295ff.
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entirety, and to bring out what, all historical contingency apart, might be taken as typical of that conduct- this was something new, especially since its purpose was to give reasons for Jahweh’s judgment. Thus, for example, Hosea included and discussed the whole story of the relationship between God and his people in his poem on Israel’s failure to understand that the blessings of the soil of Canaan were gifts from Jahweh. This was a great in- tellectual achievement. The prophets’ chief concern was not, of course, to summarise human conduct under the most general concepts possible by the method of abstraction, though this does sometimes happemg they reached their goal in a different way. For while they seem to be describing only a particular failure of a particular group of men in a particular situa- tion, they have really depicted, by their use of a few characteristic traits, something that was typical of Israel’s general attitude to God.”
1[1831) We may therefore describe the characteristic feature of the pro- phetic view of history as follows: not only does it recognise most clearly Jah- weh’s designs and intentions in history, it also sees the various historical forces involved in quite a different light from other people. The great pow- ers which occupied the centre of the political stage did El841 not blind the prophets to God; these empires shrivel up almost into nothingness be- fore Jahweh’s all-pervasive power. It is the “I” spoken by Jahweh that per- vades the historical field to its utmost limits. It is moving to see how Isaiah and his subjective certainty about his own view of history came into colli- sion -a proof of its complete undogmatic flexibility and openness. As As- syria advanced, the interpretation he had put upon her as an instrument of punishment in the hands of Jahweh proved to be inadequate, or at least partial. The way in which she exterminated nations and the danger that she would treat Jerusalem and Judah in the same way gave rise to a ques- tion: did she not intend also to overrun Zion? Nevertheless, Isaiah was still able to interpret Jahweh’s design; he explained the difficulty by saying that the Assyrians were exceeding the task assigned to them. The scope of their commission was merely to chastise, not to annihilate (Isa 10:5-7). This change in Isaiah’s views is a further remarkable confirmation of the proph- ets’ claim to be able to see history in its relation to God clearly and with perfect understanding. In Isaiah’s view history can be analysed into the
9. Here one might think, for example, of Isaiah’s characteristic reproach of pride (l%!X DYK Isa 2: 11, 17) or of Hosea’s equally characteristic term “spirit of harlotry” (I711 05313f Hos 4: 12,5x4), or also of Amos’s word about the “pride of Jacob” (11X1 Amos 6:8). The comprehen- sive term “return” and the statement that Israel does not return, also belong here. H. W. Wolff,
“Das Thema ‘Umkehr’ in der alttestamentlichen Prophetie,” in Z. 7‘h. K., (1951)) pp. 129K.
10. The courtly monologues which the prophets put into the mouth of foreign kings also hclong to this tendency to make types, Isa 10:8ff., 14:13ff., 37:24, Ezek 28:2, 29:3, 9, 27:3.
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divine design and the co-efficient of arbitrary human power.” To come to this explanation- and we should make no mistake about this-Isaiah wrestled with the whole force of his intellect as well as of his faith. Written evidence of this expressly rational grappling with history is furnished by the generally accepted interpretation of the didactic poem in Isa 28:23-g, in which Isaiah makes the multifarious and carefully considered actions of the farmer’s sowing and reaping into a transparent parable of the divine action in history. ‘Wonderful is his counsel and great his wisdom.“‘*
So far, however, we have dealt almost too much with history in a gen- eral sense, with the result that misunderstanding could arise: it might b’e supposed that the prophets shared our concept of objective history. This is contradicted by the very fact that, as the prophets use the term, wherever history is spoken of, it is related in some sense to Israel. Even Isaiah’s fa- mous universalism still keeps to the idea that Jahweh directs history with reference to Israel. Yet, closer consideration of the prophecies of salvation shows that Jahweh’s coming action in history upon Israel has still another peculiar characteristic. What comes in question here are not designs which Jahweh formed so to speak in perfect freedom, but only the fulfilment of promises he had already made to Israel in the old traditions. Whether we think of Hosea’s III 1851 prophecy that Israel will once more be led into the wilderness and once more be brought through the valley of Achor into her own land (Hos 2:16ff. [14ff.]), or of the prophecy that Jahweh will once more gather nations together against Zion, though he is again to protect it, or of the prophecies about the anointed one who is yet to come in Amos, Isaiah, and Micah, we everywhere see to what an extent even the prophets’
predictions of the future are bound to tradition; and this in the sense that on the prophets’ lips the coming and, as we may safely call them, eschato- logical events of salvation are to correspond to the earlier events as antitype and type. Thus, even in what they say about the future, the prophets func- tion largely as interpreters of older traditions of Jahwism.
At the same time they introduce a fundamentally new element, which is that only the acts which lie in the future are to be important for Israel’s salvation. The old traditions said that Jahweh led Israel into her land, founded Zion, and established the throne of David, and this was sufficient.
No prophet could any longer believe this; for between him and those founding acts hung a fiery curtain of dire judgments upon Israel, judg- ments which, in the prophets’ opinion, had already begun; and this mes- sage of judgment had no basis in the old Jahwistic tradition. They believed, therefore, that salvation could only come if Jahweh arose to per-
11. See I[von Rad 1965:lJ p. 163.
12. See [van Rad 1965:JJ p. 163, n. 21.
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form new acts upon Israel, an event which they looked on as certain-and they entreated those who were still able to hear not to put their trust in il- lusory safeguards (Mic 3:11), but to “look to” what was to come, and to take refuge in Jahweh’s saving act, which was near at hand.13 The prophets were therefore the first men in Israel to proclaim over and over again and on an ever widening basis that salvation comes in the shadow ofjudgment.
It is only this prediction of a near divine action, with its close relation to old election traditions and its bold new interpretation of them, which can properly be defined as eschatological.14 Everywhere there were pious hopes and confident statements about the continuance of the divine faith- fulness. What the prophets foretold was something completely different theologically. They take as their basis the “No” pronounced K1860 by Jah- weh on the Israel of their day, her relationship to Jahweh which had for long been hopelessly shattered. They were sure, however, that beyond the judgment, by means of fresh acts, Jahweh would establish salvation; and their paramount business was to declare these acts beforehand, and not simply to speak about hope and confidence.
Summing up, it may be said that in regard to both their “preaching of law” and their proclamation of salvation, the eighth-century prophets put Israel’s life on completely new bases. The former can only be seen in its true light when it is considered in relation to the latter. We have already emphasised the fact that the prophets did not derive their conviction that Jahweh purposed judgment from any special revelation, independent of his saving acts, but from the old saving traditions themselves; thus, they in- terpreted the message in a way different not only from their contemporar- ies but also from all earlier generations. For them the traditions became law. Yet, they were not precursors of legalism; they did not reproach their fellows with not living their lives in obedience to law; their reproach was rather this, that as Jahweh’s own people they had continually transgressed the commandments and not put their confidence in the offer of divine protection. How little the prophets’ work was aimed at a life lived under the yoke of the law is made particularly clear in those places, which are, of course, few in number, where they go beyond negative accusations to posi- tive demands. “Seek good, and not evil; hate evil, love good!” “Seek Jah- weh, that you may live.1” (Amos 5:14f., 6). This is not the language of a man who wants to regulate life by law. In Amos’s view, what Jahweh desires
13. See lvon Rad 1965:l pp. 16Off.
14. See [van Rad 1965:] pp. 118f. and 239. The term “prophetic,” too, urgently requires a suitable restriction. There is no profit in expanding it, as for example Vriezen does, so as to see what is prophetic as something implanted into Jahwism by Moses (Outline, pp. 137, 257f.).
In my opinion, what is specific to the prophet only appears with the determination of his char- acteristic attitude towards tradition (see [van Rad 1965:] p. 299).