Jim Hoffmeier
Chances are less likely. For Jeremiah, that ancient path that God has already established is the Torah, the law that God gave Israel. And not only is this the road to walk on, it’s the good way. It leads to good. Roads even in this country, are named by their destination. I live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There’s a road near me. It’s called the old Philadelphia Pike, because if you take that broad it’ll lead you to Philadelphia. The other direction is the Lancaster Pike. It’s a road that leads to Lancaster. And this is how roads were named in the ancient world, or especially in the Bible.
The good way is the way that leads you not to a place called good, but a place that is good. That’s a place of divine blessing, divine presence, etc. So that’s the ancient road. Furthermore, and we’ll talk about this in the class, along that road, God says, I’ve stationed watchmen, prophets. They’re there to guide you and point you, especially if you start swerving off. You know the verse; all we like sheep have gone astray. We tend to go our own way and the prophets are there to try to get you back on the road, back into a right relationship with God, vis a vis the law that God gave at Mount Sinai.
David Capes
Before the prophets were called prophets, they were called seers. That’s an interesting term. When we think of the term “prophets”, we think of people who speak for God.
Jim Hoffmeier
True. Well, there’s two different words that our English translation render as “seer”. One is roeh, which is the common word to see raah, and this word only applied to two people, one of them being Samuel, is a roeh And read about that in 1 Samuel 9, where it says that the one who today is called a navi, a prophet, in former times was called a roeh. So apparently, roeh is a more archaic term that was replaced by the word navi. So there’s a second word that is rendered seer. It’s a word Cha that’s a verb. chazone is a vision and Cha is actually a verb. So, the Prophet envisions a vision. I don’t know the proper verb to put in English. This seems to have to do more with a mode of reception of God’s Word in which they actually see visions. And Amos, for instance, does this starting in chapter 7, where he sees a vision. And often the question is asked, what do you see? I see X, whatever the prophet is talking about. And then there’s a fourth term for Prophet, and it’s called man of God. And man of God is a very standard form that even people like David and later Hebrew literature, like Chronicles, uses man of God. He wasn’t called man of God in the books of Samuel, and later on, he’s looked back on because he gave us some prophetic Psalms. So, he is dubbed man of God. It’s interesting that that term comes into the New Testament. Paul talks about it in 1 Timothy. There, it almost seems to be the word for Pastor, but it originated as a term for a prophet.
David Capes
And a lot of times, people will talk about their pastor as a man of God.
Jim Hoffmeier
Yes, they mean godly man. But yes, the word really means a prophet. That’s the original idea.
David Capes
Now, when I think about growing up, our Bibles were divided into Law, History, Writings. I’m trying to remember exactly how it was divided. There were Major Prophets, Minor prophets. That’s a unique way of dividing it up. The Jewish Bible is not set up in that way. Because Samuel is a prophet. And Moses is a prophet. You have a lot of prophecy going on before you get to the prophets.
Jim Hoffmeier
Yes, you’re right. The order in the English Bible, basically follows the Greek order that is in the Septuagint. We don’t know why the septuagintists didn’t simply follow the canonical pattern of the Hebrew manuscript tradition, of which there are basically three parts. In Luke 24:44 after the resurrection, Jesus conducted a seminar for his disciples from the law, the prophets, and the Psalms. I would have loved to have been there. He told them about how all this was connected to him. And it’s interesting that he refers to the Psalms as the third category of Scripture, because in the Hebrew ordering, Psalms is the first book in what we sometimes call the writings, or the sacred writings. The Hagia Graphia, the sacred writings. And so that’s the lead book, and it’s the last of the canonical units of Scripture that was canonized, accepted into the canon. Because that includes the latest books, even
in the second century, intertestamental literature.
The literature is referred to as the law, the prophets, and the others that followed. So even then, in the Hebrew, they didn’t have a specific name for this third unit of Scripture. The prophets, of course, occupy the most space in the whole canon, because it begins with Joshua. Many people think it ought to begin with Isaiah. And to your surprise, your avid reader, Daniel is not in the prophets. Daniel is in the writings. And so there’s a lot of confusion as to why these books were placed in their particular canonical order.
The view that I was taught, and I’ve read, the Greek-thinking Jewish scribes were thinking more in logical fashion. Daniel is a prophet, so let’s put him with the Prophets. He goes after Ezekiel, Chronicles, which would be the last book of the whole Tanakh, or the writings section that goes after Kings. Because it’s all part of the historical research. They seem to focus a little bit more on genre, that is, the type of literature, than on matters of authorship or historical development.
David Capes
Let me ask just this final question about prophecy. A lot of times, people think of prophecy primarily as forecasting the future, as telling what’s going to happen in the future. You have some of that, but that’s not all that prophets do. How would you describe what Prophets do?
Jim Hoffmeier
Well, let me give a simple formula that I use. The prophet stands in a particular point in time. He looks back at that ancient path, at what God has revealed, and he applies what God has revealed to the current situation. If you go back to Deuteronomy 4, it’s already laid out there that if the people continually violate the covenant between God and Israel, made at Mount Sinai, he will remove them from the land. He will “fling” them and the word that’s used there is the same word as a stone that’s in a sling and slung out of the land. The word is also used of a flock that’s scattered. From the beginning, you have it hanging over their heads that this potentially will happen.
This goes all the way back to Deuteronomy 4. The idea is, okay, what’s going on now? Vis a vis the past, this is going to have implications for the future. And of course, there’s always the possibility of repentance. Yes, that judgment is not going to come. You’re not going to be scattered yet because of maybe a godly king like Hezekiah comes along and the execution is postponed or delayed for a while. Or a godly king like Josiah, and God says, okay, they’re going on the right path. And then things collapse again.
I think it’s important to see that the prophets are grounded in the past, speaking to the present, and there are implications for the future. As modern, Western Christians, we are so preoccupied with the future part. If the prophets were here today, what would Amos say to us? What would Jeremiah be saying to the church? And that shifts the focus, because it’s very easy to talk in naive ways about the future and whether this is being fulfilled in our day. I have another simple formula. You look at an Old Testament prophecy and you wonder if that may be unfolding in our time or is yet to happen. I always go by the simple formula, does the New Testament pick up that prophecy and apply it to their time, to Jesus and the apostolic era? Or is it speaking eschatologically? And sometimes that happens, but it’s very easy, and I think simplistically, because I grew up in a tradition where prophecy conferences were held and people were pontificating about it.
David Capes
You look at the newspaper to see what’s happening.
Jim Hoffmeier
For instance, a well-known prophecy buff in 1976 said communists are going to march on Washington and take over. It’s right there in Ezekiel. That sort of stuff I’m refereeing to. And so having grown up in that context, I’ve become very critical of it, because I see how naive it is. It seems to miss the main point of most of the prophets. If you’re interested in the prophecies as it relates to the era of Jesus, the Church Age, the eschatology, the future, let the New Testament be your guide in interpreting that. If the New Testament says yes, that’s about Jesus or that came from Jesus Himself, [e.g., Matthew 24-25] We can trust that. I don’t trust other people trying to Every other dictator that comes up like Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin. Somebody thought they were the Antichrist.
David Capes
Exactly. Well, I’m excited to have you here and to learn from you this weekend, and I know our students are going to benefit greatly. Dr James Hoffmeier, the book The Prophets of Israel: Walking the Ancient Paths. Thanks for being with today on “The Stone Chapel. Podcast.”
Jim Hoffmeier
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
