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

2. The Old Testament often tells of how a prophet was called to his office. The accounts all come from a comparatively short period of time in Israel's history, the period of the Monarchy. This shows both how far outside the normal range of Israel's religious experience such calls lay and that they were not characteristic of the representatives of Yahwism from the very beginning. Moreover, in the ancient east people did not write things down simply for the sake of writing them down — the written record was always used as a means to a very definite end — so that the very fact that a call was recorded in writing shows that it was regarded at the time it occurred as something unusual.

The prophetic call in fact gave rise to a new literary category, the account of a call. In Israel the connection between a person's experiences in his religious and cultic life and the way in which he expressed himself by means of the spoken or the written word was such a direct and living one that any innovation of importance at once made itself apparent in the realm of form: an old form was modified, or a new one was brought into being. Here I mean the innovation by which the accounts of prophetic calls were given in the first person singular. Of course, men of Israel had said 'I' in the presence of God even before the prophets appeared on the scene — for example in laments and thanksgivings. But this was quite a different use of 'I'. The old cultic forms made first personal singular statements about the relationships between God and man which almost anyone could have taken on his lips — indeed he should have done so. It was broadly a collective and inclusive first person. But the 'I' the prophets speak of is expressly exclusive. The men who speak to us in these accounts were men who had been expressly called upon to abandon the fixed orders of religion which the majority of the people still considered valid — a tremendous step for a man of the ancient east to take — and because of it the prophets, in their new and completely unprecedented situation, were faced with the need to justify themselves both in their own and in other people's eyes. The event of which the prophet tells burdened him with a commission, with knowledge and responsibility which placed him in complete isolation before God. It forced him to justify his exceptional status in the eyes of the majority. This makes clear that the writing down of a call was something secondary to the call itself, and that it served a different end from the latter. The call commissioned the prophet : the act of writing down an account of it was aimed at those sections of the public in whose eyes he had to justify himself. No doubt these accounts are of great importance because of the insight they give us into the experience which made a man a prophet, and they do this far more directly than does any hymn used in the cult. At the same time, however, exegesis has always to remember that these narratives are probably not simply transcripts of what was experienced at the time. They are as well accounts designed to serve certain definite ends and they no doubt to a certain extent stylize the call.  There must have been many features in a call which would be of enormous interest to us, but the prophets do not mention them because in their view they were of no particular interest.^[1]

Did then the writing prophets hold a regular cultic office? As I see it, the accounts of their call answer this question with a decided 'No'. If a prophet had held a definite position in the cult, would he have laid so much stress upon his call? The importance which the prophets attached to their call makes it quite clear that they felt very much cut off from the religious capital on which the majority of the people lived, and dependent instead on their ownresources.

The source material here is well known. First of all there are the accounts in the first person singular in Amos 7—9, Isaiah 6, Jeremiah 1, Ezekiel 1—3, Isaiah 40.3-8, and Zechariah 1.7—6.8, but to these should be added such a story as the call of Elisha (I Kings, 19.19f.) or that of the youth Samuel at a time when the word of Yahweh 'had become rare in the land' (l Sam. 3.1ff.), for, whatever office the historic Samuel actually held, what the narrator wished to relate was the way in which a young man was raised up as a prophet (v. 20). The same is true of the call of Moses in Ex. 3—4, particularly in E's version of it; for the account of the commissioning, the divine promise, 'I will be with your mouth' (Ex. 4.12), and Moses' reluctance are all obviously told so as to make them agree with the ideas about prophetic call current in the narrator's own time. It is amazing to see such a wealth of psychological and theological nuance in ideas which may well belong to the ninth century, and it is equally amazing that the question of legitimation was even then given such importance ('But if they do not believe me,' Ex. 4.1), though, of course, it is only with Jeremiah, of the writing prophets, that the question becomes acute. There is a frank admission, also astounding at this early date, that it was possible for one who was called to office to refuse that call (Ex. 4.10ff.). Finally, we have also to consider I Kings 22.19-22. Micaiah ben Imlah's idea of the way in which the call to be a prophet came about -- that is, as the result of deliberation in the privy council of heaven — can hardly have been unique. It must have conformed to what were fairly widely held views. These ninth-century references in themselves warn us not to underrate early prophecy, or to assume that Amos or Isaiah imported something completely new into Israel when they made their appearance.

The event which led to a man's call to be a prophet is described in a considerable number of different ways, and it is also plain that there was no conventional fashion in which it came about. Moreover, each individual prophet was conditioned by his own particular gifts of mind and spirit, and this led to different reactions to the event. Yet, in spite of this, it is possible to pick out certain common features in those cases in which the prophets themselves tell us anything about their call.

The call of Elisha is admittedly somewhat different from the rest, because here it is one human being Elijah — who presses another — Elisha -- into the service of Yahweh (I Kings 19.19ff.). Elisha is called to 'follow' a man, that is, he was to be Elijah's disciple. The story of the way by which Elijah's charisma was transferred to Elisha is also unique (Il Kings 2.15), for, strangely enough, the prophets from Amos onwards do not think of themselves as bearers of the spirit, but as preachers of the word of Yahweh. For reasons at which we can only guess, the concept of the spirit, which was obviously still constitutive in making Elisha a prophet, lapses almost completely, and, as we might think, rather abruptly, into the background. For the ninth-century prophets, however, the presence of 'the spirit of Yahweh' was absolutely constitutive. Elisha had to request Elijah for possession of it (Il Kings 2.9); and only after it rested upon him is he reckoned a prophet. It is emphasized, however, that his possession of the spirit was attested by his associates, and this legitimated him in their eyes (v. 15). Delusion can only come about when the 'spirit' leads the prophets astray. This raises the question whether the spirit 'went' from one prophet to the other (I Kings 22.21f., 24). Again, the spirit could suddenly take a prophet from where he was and carry him off elsewhere (I Kings 18.22; Il Kings 2.16). The almost instantaneous disappearance of this well-defined concept is not only striking: it is also important theologically, for when this objective reality, the spirit, whose presence had to be attested by a prophet's associates, ceased to operate, then the prophet of the word had to rely much more on  himself and on the fact that he had received a call.^[2]

As far as we can see, the prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries received their call through God's direct and quite personal address to them, and this created a totally new situation for the  man concerned. The work on which he was sent was not just limited to a fixed period. The office to which he was commissioned, though perhaps not in every instance regarded as lifelong, at all events removed such a man from all his previous mode of life for at least a considerable time. Being a prophet was a condition which made deep inroads into a man's outward as well as his inner life — we shall later have to remember the consequences involved in the fact that from the very beginning not only the prophets' lips but also their whole lives were conscripted for special service. The complete absence of any transitional stage between the two conditions is a special characteristic of the situation. Being a prophet is never represented as a tremendous intensification or transcendence of all previous religious experience. Neither previous faith nor any other personal endowment had the slightest part to play in preparing a man who was called to stand before Yahweh for his vocation. He might by nature be a lover of peace, yet it might be laid upon him to threaten and reprove, even if, as with Jeremiah, it broke his heart to do so. Or, if nature made him prone to severity, he might be forced, like Ezekiel, to walk the way of comforting men and saving them. So deep is the gulf which separates the prophets from their past that none of their previous social relationships are carried over into the new way of life. 'I was a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees; but Yahweh took me from following the flock and said to me, "Go, prophesy against my people Israel" ' (Amos 7.14f.). This was more than a new profession: it was a totally new way of life, even at the sociological level, to the extent that a call meant relinquishing normal social life and all the social and economic securities which this offered, and changing over instead to a condition where a man had nothing to depend upon, or, as we may put it, to a condition of dependence upon Yahweh and upon that security alone. 'I do not sit blithely in the company of the merrymakers. Because thy hand is upon me, I sit alone; for thou hast filled me with indignation' (Jer. 15.17).

Flesh and blood can only be forced into such a service. At all events, the prophets themselves felt that they had been compelled by a stronger will than theirs. Admittedly, the early prophets only rarely mention these matters affecting their call. The first to break the silence is Jeremiah.

Thou didst deceive me, and I let myself be deceived;

Thou wast too strong for me, and didst prevail over me (Jer. 20.7)

What is here said in open rebellion, the avowal that he was compelled, with no possibility of refusal, was also expressed by Amos.

The lion has roared — who is not afraid

The Lord Yahweh has spoken — who does not prophesy? (Amos 3:8)

This verse has been rightly called a 'word of discussion'. That is to say, it is the answer to a query whether Amos could bring proof of his right to speak in the name of Yahweh. The prophet refuses to allow his prophecy to be called in question in this way. What he says is in no sense the product of reflection or personal resolve. It is something which bears witness to itself, and so is not unlike some unconscious reflex action which even the person concerned cannot himself explain.