We have finished the Minor Prophets and we are gearing up for the reformers Ezra and Nehemiah before we tackle the Major Prophet Ezekiel. But before we switch modes entirely, I want to take advantage of the pause to talk about the institution of the prophet. We have been doing deep dives into the biblical books, but I want to zoom out and share more generally what constitutes a prophet and what is the prophetic tradition in the Bible.
In the Hebrew scriptures, a prophet was a special human recipient of divine revelation, commissioned by God to communicate his mind to the people of Israel. From Abraham to Malachi, God’s spokespeople fit the broad category of prophet.
Abraham was the patriarch prophet whom God chose to reveal himself (Gen. 20:7). Moses was a prophet leader, authorized to speak in the name of Yahweh to both the Egyptians and the Israelites (Deut. 18:18). In the days of the judges, Samuel held every position: priest, judge, and prophet (1 Sam. 3:20). Mysteriously, the Bible even references a school of the prophets filled with an infectious degree of God’s spirit and gifted in musical worship (1 Sam 10:5). Elijah and Elisha were brave prophet challengers, unrelenting in their confrontations with pagan seers, faulty priests, and wicked kings. By the eight century BCE, a new type of prophetism arose: the writing prophet. The writing prophet was a unique new brand of an ancient office, messengers of God who eventually preserved their oracles in literary products.
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