📙 [EN] 2. Pre-reading2: Gerhard von Rad "The Message of the Prophets"

3. The call to be a prophet in which, as we have said, an individual was personally addressed by God, was as a rule associated with another factor which made the future ambassador of God acquainted with the will and purpose of Yahweh in an extremely vivid way. This was a vision. Of course, in the fairly large number of visions which occur in the Old Testament there is no instance where a vision is not immediately followed by an audition and where it does not culminate in God's addressing the prophet. Nonetheless, the fact that Yahweh claimed not only the prophet's lips but also his eyes for the service of his new task is of prime importance. The purpose of the vision was not to impart knowledge of higher worlds. It was intended to open the prophet's eyes to coming events which were not only of a spiritual sort, but were also to be concrete realities in the objective world. Contrary to popular misconception, the prophets were not concerned with the being of God, but with future events which were about to occur in space and time -- indeed, in Israel's own immediate surroundings. Yet even to the theologian this massive concentration upon historical events, as also the complete absence of any sort of 'speculative' inclinations even in those visions where Yahweh is seen in person, must be a source of constant wonder. For example, Amos says that he saw Yahweh holding a plumb-line to a wall. But when Yahweh asked him what he saw, his answer was 'a plumb-line' (Amos 7-7f.) ! Again, in his fifth vision, where he sees Yahweh standing upon the altar, he shows an astonishing lack of interest in what Yahweh looked like (Amos 9.1). The same is also true of Isaiah's great throne vision (Isa. 6). The first prophet to attempt anything like a detailed picture of the 'glory of Yahweh', as it broke upon him from the realm of the transcendent at his call, is Ezekiel. And yet how circumspect he, too, is as he describes what he perceived above the throne and 'what was like as it were a human form' (Ezek, 1.26ff.).

The reception of revelation itself, that is to say, the more immediate circumstances in which this event in the prophet's inner self-consciousness took place, is only occasionally mentioned in the sources, and so much that we should like to know is left unanswered. On one point, however, there is universal agreement, that visions and auditions came to the prophets from outside themselves, and that they came suddenly and completely without premeditation. Only once is there mention of any technical preparation for the reception of a revelation — through a minstrel (Il Kings 3.15). This, however, was exceptional. Inspiration might come to a prophet as he sat at table (I Kings 13.20). On the other hand, he might have to wait as long as ten days for an answer from Yahweh (Jer. 42.7). There is no doubt that, at the moment when the prophets received a revelation, they believed that they heard themselves addressed in words. Perhaps as a rule they first heard their name called (I Sam. 3.4ff.). The sources also allow us to make the further inference that, very frequently at least, such reception of revelation was something which caused the prophet a severe bodily shock. Be this as it may, the earlier prophets have very little to say about this aspect of their office. But when it is told of a prophet that the hand of Yahweh came upon him or fell upon him (I Kings 18.46; Ezek. 8.1), or when a prophet himself even says that the hand of Yahweh seized him (Isa. 8.11), there is every reason for believing that behind these brief notices lie experiences which not only shook his soul but caused bodily disturbances as well. Ezekiel relates how he sat on the ground awe-struck and unable to speak a word for seven days after his call (Ezek. 3.15). Daniel, too, says that all the blood drained from his face, that he fell to the ground (Dan. 10.8f.), and that after one such experience he lay sick for some days (Dan. 8.27). By the time of apocalyptic such language may have become to some extent stereotyped and conventional, but in earlier days a prophet's bodily sufferings were something very real and painful.

 

As whirlwinds sweeping in from the Negeb it comes from the desert, from a terrible land.
A stern vision is told to me :
'The plunderer plunders, the destroyer destroys.

To the attack, O Elam, lay siege, O Media.'

Therefore my loins are filled with cramp, pangs have seized me, like the pangs of a woman in travail.

I am troubled, so that I cannot hear, dismayed, so that I cannot see, my mind reels, horror has laid hold upon me.

The twilight for which I look, it has turned for me into horror. 'They prepare the table... they eat and drink.

Up, ye princes, oil the shield! '

For thus the Lord said to me:

'Go, set the watchman,

Let him announce what he sees.

And behold, here come chariots, men and teams of horses.

And he answered and said: Fallen, fallen is Babylon, all the images of her gods have been shattered to the ground.

O my threshed one,

O my son of the threshing floor,

What I have heard from Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, that I announce to you.
(Isa.21.1-10)

This passage, which comes from the second half of the sixth century and is therefore not from Isaiah himself, lets us see as no other does something of the prophet's very deeply agitated and tormented state as he received a 'stern vision'. He is greatly disturbed. Pictures thrust themselves upon his inner eye. Their outlines are scarcely fixed before they break up again. With them mingle cries complaining of the unbearable anguish and bodily pains which have overtaken him as he sees the vision (cf. Hab. 3.16). In the end all is resolved in the 'cry of deliverance' telling of the fall of the impious world-power. The prophet is now exhausted, and the last thing he summons up is a feeling of sympathy with his own threshed people, the 'son of the threshing-floor'.

How such and similar processes in the prophet's self-consciousness are to be more precisely defined psychologically is a question to which the investigations of present-day psychology are still unable to give a satisfactory answer. The idea that the prophets were 'ecstatics', once widely accepted, is now out of favour, for the concept of ecstasy has proved to be too general and imprecise. In particular, the way in which it was used suggested that while the prophet was in this state his self-consciousness disappeared, and that, ceasing to have a will of his own, he became the scene in which processes external to his own personality were played out. This, of course, put the whole thing the wrong way round; for when, in a way hitherto unknown in Israel and in the entire ancient east, the individual with his responsibility and power to make decisions came in prophecy to occupy the centre of the stage -one might almost say when the individual was discovered — it was only to be expected that it would be precisely in the event of the prophet's reception of revelation that this new factor would be apparent. And as far as we can tell with any certainty from the sources, this is absolutely the case. The literary form in which the prophets describe their visions, the first person singular, is itself evidence. Even so, this in no way excludes the possibility of a 'condition of abnormal excitation, during which the normal wakeful consciousness of the man upon whom it comes is put out of action and his relationships to ordinary life diminished to the point at which they no longer exist'. ^[1] In such a condition, that of direct encounter with God and with his purposes in history, might not the normal consciousness have been raised to an intensity never experienced in the ordinary way? If so, the term 'ecstasy' is much too rigid. Attempts have been made to avoid the difficulty by drawing a sharp distinction between the 'ecstasy of concentration' and the 'ecstasy of absorption'. It is quite true that none of the prophets ever in fact had any kind of experience of becoming one with the Godhead. Nevertheless, there are grave objections to a comparison of the prophets' experience with certain forms of medieval mysticism; for even in their most sublime experiences the mystics always remained within the limits of the accepted dogmas of their own day, whereas the prophets, precisely in their inaugural visions, were led out to new vistas of belief. With Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah the material which we could use directly in this connection is both too scanty and too obscure, but if we take the well-attested occurrences in the pre-classical prophets on the one hand and, on the other, the more numerous references in Ezekiel, impartial examination will lead to the conclusion that nearly all the prophets experienced such temporary states of consciousness in which the senses were intensified. The fact that these occur so very much more frequently in Ezekiel than in the others is no reason for regarding him as exceptional in this respect.

If, then, we have to reckon with such abnormal states of consciousness in the prophets, it is mistaken to suppose, as is sometimes done, that these have no particular importance for the theologian. Here, as everywhere else, to detach matters which belong to the central substance of Yahwism from their contingent links with history or with a person, and to regard them as no more than abstract truths, is to distort them. If Yahweh chose such a singular realm as the prophet's spirit, if he chose none of the already existing institutions for his new word to Israel, and if in this psychic realm which had been so singularly kept open he brought such a singular thing to pass, this must stand in relationship to other matters which theology cannot ignore. It actually means nothing less than that in the states where the prophet saw visions and heard himself addressed, he became in a strange way detached from himself and his own personal likes and dislikes, and was drawn into the emotions of the deity himself. It was not only the knowledge of God's designs in history that was communicated to him, but also the feelings in God's heart, wrath, love, sorrow, revulsion, and even doubt as to what to do or how to do it (Hos. 6.4; 11.8; Isa. 6.8). Something of Yahweh's own emotion passed over into the prophet's psyche and filled it to bursting-point. Once it is seen that the primary reference of the condition is a theological one, it becomes very doubtful whether any special psychic preparation on the prophet's part was required, or even whether it was at all possible. The highest degree of being absorbed into the emotions of the Godhead in this way was reached by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but there is evidence that the majority of the prophets experienced it to some degree.

A revelation received in such an unusual way can never have been an end in itself. Least of all was it given to the prophet to let him know that God was near to him. Its purpose was to equip him for his office. On the other hand, when a prophet did receive such a revelation, it was in every case something purely personal. It lifted him right out of the common ruck. He was allowed to know God's designs and to share in God's emotions; but he never thought of holding his status before God up to other people as normative for them. It is significant that no prophet ever instructed or exhorted those to whom he spoke to reach out to a direct experience of God such as he himself had had. Joel was the first to look forward to the day when everyone in Israel would be like those rare beings  who are endowed with the spirit (Joel 3.1ff. [2.28ff.]). In an earlier passage, the only one of its kind, the same wish is put into the mouth of Moses (Num. 11.29, E).