Journal of Biblical and Pneumatological Research. Paul Elbert
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the pneumatological dimensions of Heidelberg theologian Edmund Schlink’s ecclesiology (Oskar Föller, Charisma und Unterscheidung: Systematische und pastor-ale Aspekte der Einordning und Beurteilung enthusiastisch-charismatischer Frömmigkeit im katholischen und evangelischen Bereich [TVM; Wuppertal: Brockhaus, 1997], 238–75 [268]).
The Cutting Edge of Prophetic Imagery
GALEN L. GOLDSMITH
Tyndale STEP Project, Tyndale House, Cambridge, UK
The live drama of Israelite prophecy was elicited when a prophet saw history and human nature from the standpoint of God, and so was impelled to speak for God. Prophetic speech was set in historical circumstances that can never be repeated, but it does not leave that moment as it found it because prophecy is a moment in history in which God’s perspective intends to alter the course of events.1 Whether ancient prophets spoke first and wrote later, or carefully composed a speech and delivered it, prophetic texts retain the character of a performance that strikes its point in a few words.2 The oracle becomes literature as the critical moment recedes, leaving distilled insights and sharpened judgments aimed at the conscience.
Like parables, oracles elicit nuanced reflection with words that do not require literacy to understand. Prophets used cinematic images to characterize historical settings and human behavior, so that the parallels between fact and fiction create a new design for understanding reality.3 They invented a metaphorical context that continually measures inhumanity by eloquent and unprecedented standards. The main subject is the historical situation the prophet commented upon. The historical facts are made to interact with an auxiliary subject, which is the thematic use of imagery. This new design has continuing relevance for new settings because it succeeds not only in stating a critical reality, but in prompting the hearer to draw conclusions that ultimately bear on generalized behavior.
Prophecy survived history to become art by holding history and metaphor in a tension that illumines both. Its factual structure, originally determined by the situation the prophet commented on, is soon unbound from its original context, but remains bound to how images characterized the facts. The fixing of the metaphoric representation of fact continues to influence subsequent evaluations of similar situations. Oracles that were acts of protest, judgment, or social commentary in a specific historic setting survived as literature because they continue to alter how people think and act.4
It would be naïve to suppose that oral teaching, though simple, is not sophisticated. Classical Hebrew prophecy, intent on changing the hearer’s attitude towards the world, exercised its genius to direct or redirect opinion, causing the hearer to arrive at the surprising (and possibly damning) conclusion, “How true!” A classic example is Nathan’s entrapment of David in the metaphor of the lamb taken from a poor man to be slaughtered by a rich man (2 Sam 12:5–13). David’s horror at the injustice turns against his own actions when Nathan disclosed the metaphorical parallel to Uriah the Hittite and his wife, Bathsheba, whom David had taken and then ensured that her husband would be killed in battle (2 Sam 11). Nathan’s adroitly told fiction caused David to see facts he had ignored. Trapped in self-condemnation, David repented. The mix of fact and fiction provided by Nathan deftly subjected the king’s hitherto unquestioned noblesse oblige to common and lawful standards of humanity. It is still a thriving moral paradigm.
The metaphors to which this discussion now turns are four of the most striking and effective prophetic images discovered by the author during a reading of the entire Hebrew Bible in Hebrew. They are joined here by no other thread than the excellence of each Hebrew mashal, remarkable for lively social critique, beauty, imaginative precision, and exegetical creativity. Each one achieves its point poetically, through sound and rhythm, and all used images as a way of causing people to think unwonted thoughts. Each one has quite distinctive exegetical problems, and so the discussion of each will be entirely different. The passages for which translations have been done and annotated were those in which appreciation of how the image operates could profitably govern the varied tasks of a translator. The aim of each exegesis is merely to understand how that image works; why is it so terrible, so good, so holy?
Hosea 7:3–9
Hos 6:7 to the end of chapter 7 is a series of laments in which adultery and idolatry are related forms of infidelity to God. In the Hosean thought-world of chapters 1–3, adultery is a metaphor for idolatry. The theme is refreshed in these laments by comparing adultery, violence and apostasy to how bread is baked, which is the fulcrum of the prophetic device. The metaphor opens with a complaint that indicts moral idiocy: “They do not say in their hearts that I remember their wickedness.” (7:2).5 Growing lawlessness (3–7) ripens into apostasy (8, 9) until Ephraim can be compared to badly made bread, broken by other nations. But still “they do not return to the LORD their God; for all this, they do not seek him” (10). The language of baking, heating ovens, swelling dough, is innocent enough, but its conjunction with personal, political and religious infidelity is shockingly apt.
The jagged texture of the text of Hosea has been at the center of a long history of comment that has included diachronic, tradition historical and synchronic descriptions.6 The baking metaphor is remarkable for abrupt syntax, broken grammatical structures and ambiguous vocabulary, and these factors naturally produce varied exegetical and translational solutions. One hypothesis is that the text is only a sketch of what the prophet said, written either by the prophet or his followers.7 The spoken word was flexible, adapted to the audience and left in the moment. Only an orator’s notes remain.
Alternatively, tradition history has held that the original utterances of Hosea were always transmitted by a group of adherents who were at liberty to retell them with minor variances. The exact words of the prophet cannot be determined because his message was mediated by how his students remembered, creatively re-used, and finally fixed his message in writing.8 In this view, the baking metaphor of Hosea 7 is a template by which both the court and the international policies of the king were critiqued for their general failure to turn to God.
Redaction criticism can then hold that the second metaphor regarding Ephraim is a re-invention of the ipsissima verba of Hosea in 3–7.9 The text bears this interesting explanation particularly well because 8 and 9 are in superior condition for translation. However, if 3–9 is not a single complex diatribe, the irony of those who consume their judges (7) being consumed by the nations (9) is a remarkably well done addition to the original prophecy.
Since the dates of Hosea are well known, 3–7 possibly refers to a specific assassination in Israel, giving rise to speculation that the baker was a key character in an assassination, so baking was part of a sitz im leben that could be compared to lust and ambition.10 The mashal made the baker’s craft a conceit for how a plan, once it is conceived, grips the imagination while at rest and awakens the heated intention to act.
From a purely literary reading, many examples of assonance in the choice of words creates a texture of associations that can be analyzed on several levels.11 Moreover, this poetic musicality demands dramatic performance to be fully appreciated. My translation below is composed with the aim of making effective Hosea’s comparison of bread baking to vice.
(3) In their wickedness they make the king glad12,