“It’s no good going to church unless it feeds a person with comfort!” That is what I have forever been told. Ever heard that? Or something like it? “Churches, sermons and talks about God are supposed to give us all a bit of peace and comfort in hard times,” somebody said to me recently. Is that correct? Is that an absolute?
Imagine the house you are living in is on fire. A passing friend of yours sees the roof about to collapse with the enveloping flames. The friend can see through the front window of your home that the walls and the ceiling are about to cave in. It’s a dreadful sight. But then – a thousand screams – your friend sees, through that same window, that you are sat in front of the TV in your favourite armchair watching “Britain’s Got Talent” with somebody you know having their moment of glory and doing a “Susan Boyle” sort of thing and your child on your lap, laughing and enjoying the show. So; your friend kindly and gently knocks three times to ask you if you would be “kind enough to step outside,” wanting to gently suggest that you might want to pack a suitcase before the two of you leave the house for a nice evening stroll in the local park.
Yes! I am being utterly stupid – of course I am. In this parabolic catastrophe I am picturing, if your friend loves you and respects you, he or she will be screaming at 50 decibels, throwing bricks through your living room window to make sure he or she is being heard, and with panicky and extreme expletives, ordering you with the strictest and sternest of tones to, “get the so-and-so out of your house – without stopping for your favourite slippers or photo of Granny.” “Get out now!” would be the meaning of the frantic shrieks and yelps. Or better still, just the scream of, “Fire!”
Now! I am confident that the clear majority of my readers know exactly where I am going with this one. What sort of “friend” would whip out his phone and send a text message or a DM to ask you if you are aware of what is happening? The incredibly pressured expediency of the moment demands that it might even be practical and advantageous to break the window down, break into your property to whip you out, with physical force even, extra quickly. Yes, friends give us all comfort, confidence and courage – but affirming words and warmth would not at all be appropriate in this imaginary scenario as in, “normal,” life events.
The application and parabolic significance of what I am presenting here is that the Old Testament prophets were the warmest, bravest most comforting friends it is possible for any nation, tribe or group of people or individual to have known. Friends with an intimate knowledge of the nation and its circumstances. Men of God who loved people – especially their people. They each had a love so warmly intense that they would suffer and die if need be for the uplift of the Hebrew nation state. And after the likes of Isaiah and the other prophets had met with God, they all saw as clear as human sight and sense could inform them, that the houses of Israel and of Judah were burning down in the most dreadfully heated and consuming blaze and that they had to clear away a straight road from the blaze – immediately, if not sooner.
And all the vast majority of the Hebrew people could say was, “Leave us alone and don’t be so narrow.”
“Where’s the comfort Isaiah?”
“Why are you so unsettling and being so counter cultural Jeremiah?”
“Why are you so against modern times and our social and multi-racial mix in Israel, Amos?”
“What’s wrong with you Hosea? Why do you keep distressing everybody while you reflect your marital problems onto the nation’s relationship to Yahweh?”
“Why don’t you prophetic fellah’s just keep us all calm and at peace and tell us passive and reflective stuff to keep society in a state of peace and tranquillity? You are always causing riots and trouble, arguments and unrest.”
I promise all people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds, that these Hebrew prophets were the most loving, tranquil wonderful friends of all Jews and God Himself. They were, conceivably, the greatest assets to the Hebrew people and their history that ever walked the planet – not counting, of course, the living Christ Himself.
Isaiah and the entire prophetic fellowship in the Old Testament were men for whom knowing God went far beyond serving people overdoses of hope and comfort with a nice, “Feel Good Factor.” The reality of God’s purposes and the full gospel message has deep and eternal “comfort” within its delivery to be sure, and these men enjoyed a deep and intimate acquaintance with Yahweh Himself. However, warmth, peaceful words and nice “touchy-feely” addresses were irrelevant to these Nabi (Hebrew word for “prophets”). And, just to make the point, if their speech delivered any sort of calm, peace and spiritual tranquillity we are assured as we read their scrolls that it would be – and was – a mere side issue to the force of their call to obedience to the books of Moses. They delivered the truth clothed with the love of God. Whether it brought peace or war, tranquillity or terror, such consequences, for them, were utterly beside the point. These prophetic men had heard God speak. And so, they passed on the message that they had heard from the Almighty, clothed in the emotion and vocal timbre they had heard from eternal Yahweh.
I say again – and this is something that needs to be engrafted into our understanding: The importance of prophecy and the personhood of the prophets lies not only in the message that possessed them, but within themselves. They became the true personification and witness of God Himself, as the representatives of Yahweh and full-blown privileged ambassadors of the Almighty. To the listeners and recipients amongst all the people that they spoke to, listening to their words was literally listening to Yahweh as well as hearing the men speak. Their claims and speeches made them someone who was able to make Yahweh audible, emotional, visible and tangible. The prophets revealed not only Yahweh’s will, but – hold on to your seat belts – they claimed to reveal and express God’s inner life and feelings in and through the message they delivered. The prophets were, within themselves, God’s voice, and by virtue of that touch of the Spirit of God, they saw the world from God’s own perspective.
Isaiah and all the other prophets stood face to face with the sins of the people and confronted the pitiless insensitivity of the population. They looked into the whites of the eyes of their respective unresponsive meaninglessness generations of the Jewish nation. They were constantly and courageously calling people to a personal sensitivity and commitment towards God and a warm neighbourliness to those who lived all around them. They called all the people to a meaningful covenantal life in serving Yahweh.
The sublime comfort they imbibed from their revelation of the Almighty is clearly owned and possessed by them all. And yet that same sublimity of comfort is ignored by them for the sake of the “lost” around them. There is no expressed joy in their profound assurance of the intimacy they have with God. Knowing such intimacy with God – intimacy that millions would give a lot to share in – does not put so much as a smile on their faces. The pain they have concerning those who do not know God, or who are ignorant of God’s Torah, means that the prophet does not perceive God purely as a source of comfort and reassurance. They do not hold out comforting words of calm, peace and tranquillity, endorsing what is wrongly believed and already falsely held firm by their audience. They are, however, intrinsically serving up an incessant gnawing demand to the people of Israel and Judah, a distressing petition for submission to the claims of the Almighty. While the general population finds it can easily rest, sleep, dream and hope for good, the prophet feels the blast from heaven and cries over the rotting culture of adulterous idolatry and immoral dealings with each other. The hearts of the prophets are broken as they implore, beseech and beg. This is how God was speaking to the people.
The prophet’s words, sermons, prayers and writings are all subversive, counter cultural and destabilizing to the contemporary status quo of their society. They were therefore perceived as rebellious seditionists every time they were heard. This is why Jeremiah had to hide himself and send his personal aide Baruch to preach by proxy. The role of the Hebrew prophets was to be an utter affront to the spiritual complacency of the masses, rather than to be a confirmation of their false ungodly values and what they claimed they already believed. The prophets were not simply biblical figures, but high-profile irritants in the midst of their own generation. The overriding importance of the prophets was not the content of their message only, per se, but the kind of spiritual experience that they exemplified and called the people to enter into.
Theologically, German Protestants in the days of Luther, argued that the true heir of the prophetic tradition was not Judaism, but Christianity. The spirit of the prophetic tradition was kept alive in the teachings of Jesus, not those of the rabbis. They were amazed at what the prophets said. They were also amazed at what Jesus said. The ruling elite wanted the prophet’s death. The ruling elite of a later date cried out, “Crucify Him!”
I am writing about some of the most disturbing people who have ever lived. Men who used inspiration that, it can and must be said, brought the Bible into being. These are the men whose character and philosophy are our refuge in the stresses of life, and whose voices and visions constantly sustain our faith.
The prophets were speaking to people who were dying in every which conceivable way it is possible for people to die without being in any way aware of it. Yes! Their hearts were beating, their lungs were breathing – but everything about life, relationships, love, society and community was having its last kicks and gasps before it was all to end – literally. While they breathed God’s air it is always possible for people to make decisions that may prolong a meaningful existence. But the Jewish nations of Israel and Judah refused to make use of their ability to choose to live. It was seeing their countrymen wither and die while the prophets offered them their lives and futures by God’s own words, which caused the cardiac arrest and the mental breakdown that it seems some of the prophets endured.
While reading and listening to the words of the prophets, one cannot long maintain the security of an impartial spectator type of reader that maintains the posture of an unopinionated observer. Abraham Heschel stated that, “Reflection on the prophets will surely give way to communion with the prophets.” I have, thankfully, enough insight and intuitive knowledge to know exactly what he meant.
For such understanding it is not enough to have the prophets in one’s mind; one must think as if one was inside their minds. The prophets must stir our emotions and push us where we have not been before, or we are not reading them properly. Their very existence sucks us in as we read them. They are dead, but as if they are alive, they grab our ears and fill our hearts.
Prophecy is not simply the application of timeless standards to particular human situations. It is rather an interpretation of their particular moment in history, and their understanding of the universal human situation. Prophecy, then, may be described as an exegesis of existence from the defined perspective of God’s all-knowing point of view. It is an understanding of life’s consequences, rather than an understanding of human accumulated knowledge.
To interpret prophecy from any other perspective such as sociology or psychology is like interpreting poetry from the perspective of the economic interests off the poet’s period. It is plainly irrelevant and a complete vanity.
What do the Prophets mean, in God? All other questions are absurd unless this one question is meaningfully and openly engaged with. Period.