Background of Old Testament Prophecy

Just this past Sunday I gave a Message on Amos 5. The coolest part was reading up on the role of prophets in the Old Testament. I thought I’d share that with you all. Just for you information, I read How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth, and How To Read The Bible Book By Book, both by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart. Look them up!

1. The Role of a Prophet – Covenant Enforcement Mediators
The main subject of a prophet’s message was the covenant-Law. The covenant-law was given to Israel through God’s first prophet Moses so that as they kept it they would be “reshaped” into the God’s image/likeness, which was lost as a part of the Fall (How To Read The Bible Book by Book, pages 14-17). Thus, as covenant enforcement mediators, the prophets were always recalling Israel back to God’s covenant with Israel which meant that they were reiterating God’s words, and not establishing something new or speaking from themselves. As Stuart and Fee says: “The prophet’s message is unoriginal. The prophets were inspired by God to present the essential content of the covenant’s warnings and promises (blessings and curses)” (How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth, pg 170). And, since the prophets were either pronouncing curses or blessings, this meant that they were either identifying their sin or God’s love (this depended on the date, as most of the prophets before the exile would have been talking up the curses while those after the exile would have been talking about God’s love in the form of a remnant physically returning to the Promised Land). Also, one must note that these blessings and curses were always corporate (in other words for the people of Israel as a whole), and not for individuals. For instance, if you read Amos 5, you’ll see God is angry at them for not mainting justice in the courts and for not taking care of the poor (among other things). Those things correspond to the second point below. Because of their sin, God, through Amos, was announcing a coming exile. This corresponds to the first point below.

-The pattern of curses or blessings, exile and hope, comes straight from Deuteronomy 4:25-31.
-Taking care of the poor and needy come from Ex. 22:21-27 (giving and lending); Dt. 16:18-20 (justice in the courts), 24-17-22 (leaving food behind in the fields for the poor)

2.Common Misconceptions of the Law
Most people think that the Law is nothing more than rules to be kept while a heavenly cop waits to bust Israel. This is not the case. Stuart and Fee point to creation in order to understand what the Law is all about. In Genesis we read that God created man in his image (Gen. 1:27), which has two important implications:

1. Man knew God’s character
2. God’s character was imbedded in us

But as a result of the fall, both of those things were distorted. Man’s view of God was marred, as was God’s likeness in man. So, when God gave the Law to Moses, it was with the intention of revealing his character to them as well as remolding them into his likeness. For instance, Leviticus 19:2 says, “Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” This is who I am, be like me.

Stuart and Fee write: “Thus he gave them the Law as his gift to them, both to reveal what he is like and to protect them from one another while they were being reshaped” (How To Read The Bible Book By Book, pg 17).

3. Understanding Oracles
Reading the OT Prophecies can be a little weird because of their structure and organization. What we need to keep in mind is that the prophetic books are merely written prophets. That is to say that there were many prophets in Israel’s history, just not everyone’s message was written down. A good example of this is Elijah and Elisha. However, Amos, like Isaiah and Jeremiah and others, were recorded. What we have in the Bible is a collection of oracles (or messages) put together. Not necessarily one long message (How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth).

4. Specific Situations
We need to understand that God was speaking to a specific context, a certain happening, while this certain person was King, or while Israel was fighting these people, or oppressed by this group, etc. In other words, in order for us to secondly understand what God’s message to Israel means to us, we need to firstly understand what God’s message to Israel must have meant to Israel. Otherwise, we run the risk of reading Scripture totally out of context. Also, we need to understand that for many of the prophecies, what was future for the original audience is already past for us.