From Isaiah to Zechariah: Biblical Prophets

What was the role of prophets in ancient Israel?

Prophets are not so much predictors of the future as they are God’s spokespersons or messengers. Although the phenomenon of prophecy was known in the ancient Near East—it was one of the ways that gods made their will known to people—the classical prophetic books, called the Latter Prophets, are a literary genre distinctive to the Hebrew Bible. Unlike ancient Near Eastern prophetic oracles and the stories about earlier prophets in the books of Samuel and Kings, classical prophetic books include many poetic or highly rhetorical prophecies, addressed to the public at large (not only the leaders). They tend to present a broad view of history and of God’s plan for the future. These prophecies generally censure the people for the sins of idolatry and social injustice and warn them that Israel will be destroyed if they fail to change their behavior. But there are also prophecies of comfort that envision an eventual return to the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. Prophets also tell of their visions, which are often symbolic, and recount experiences that bear upon their messages.

Are the prophetic books the actual words of the prophets?

Many of these prophecies are presented as having been first delivered orally and then written down and collected so that later audiences could be guided by their messages. There is, however, a view that at least some prophecies, or even entire prophetic books, were written works from the start but composed much later than the time their putative authors are purported to have lived. The books also include information about the lives and activities of the prophets within their social and political contexts; inserted superscriptions (the introductory verse or verses of a book or section) provide historical context for the prophecies. Prophets other than those included in the Latter Prophets were active in ancient Israel, but their words have not been preserved. To judge from the superscriptions of the prophetic books, most of the classical prophets lived between the eighth century BCE and the destruction of Judah in 586 BCE. A few are postexilic, dating from the sixth century to the fourth century BCE. Most or all of the books of the pre-exilic prophets show signs of exilic or postexilic additions. Among the distinctive and original emphases found among the classical prophets are the ideas that to God religious acts are meaningless in the absence of social morality, that immorality no less than idolatry will doom the nation, that disaster can be averted by repentance, and that history will culminate in an age of universal peace and the general recognition of the God of Israel as the only God.

In Jewish editions of the Bible, the classical prophetic books are in the Latter Prophets, the second half of the Prophets section. The three longest books are arranged by their length, from longest to shortest, which is also their chronological order: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. For twelve additional prophets, spanning several centuries, we have only a small number of prophecies. Although the twelve books originated independently, because they are short (together they are shorter than Ezekiel), they were eventually written on a single scroll, arranged more or less chronologically, and called, collectively, the Twelve, or the Twelve Minor prophets, minor referring to their brevity, not to their importance. One of them, the book of Jonah, is anomalous because it is largely narrative and contains relatively few words by the prophet himself.

What is the relationship of apocalyptic literature to prophetic literature?

Apocalyptic literature developed in postexilic times. Because it was influenced by prophetic literature, we have included it here with the classical prophets. But it is not simply a continuation of prophetic literature; indeed, it may be considered a distinctive genre. The term apocalypse is Greek for “revelation.” In apocalypses, an ancient worthy man typically has a vision or visions of the world beyond and the end-time, revealed and/or explained by an angel or heavenly messenger. The visions tend to be more graphic and fantastic than classical prophetic visions. They are highly symbolic, revealing a “code” for unlocking calculations of when the end-time will come, which is usually close to the time when the book was composed. Apocalypses see history as a succession of several empires that rise and fall, culminating in the kingdom of heaven. The end-time is often marked by a cataclysmic (now called “apocalyptic” after this genre) event during which God, or the forces of good, will triumph over evil. Previous historical events are often reinterpreted as leading up to the end-time. The best, and perhaps only indisputable, example of this genre in the Hebrew Bible is found in chapters 7–12 of Daniel. This type of literature continued to grow during Hellenistic times and beyond, both among Jews and among Christians.