How Prophecy Works: A Study of the Semantic Field of נביא and a Close Reading of Jeremiah 1:4–19, 23:9–40 and 27:1–28:17

Abstract

This is a doctoral thesis written under the supervision of Hans Barstad of the University of Edinburgh. The book is in three parts. An introduction gives a history of scholarly investigation into biblical prophecy and describes Kelly’s methodology (pp. 19–66). Kelly reviews older conceptions (e.g., that a biblical prophet opposed institutional religion from a position in the wilderness) and more recent proposals (e.g., that the biblical prophets did not consider themselves prophets at all; they were poets and thinkers who despised institutional prophets). Part 1 is a semantic investigation of נביא (“prophet”) and its denominative verb נבא (“prophesy”), exhaustively mapping their semantic connections to other words in their immediate contexts in Jeremiah (pp. 69–107). For example, table 3 lists every occurrence of נביא as the object of a finite verb (pp. 81–82). Part 2 gives a close reading of the MT of Jer 1:4–19, 23:9–40, and 27:1–28:17 (pp. 111–264). In addition to a full bibliography, indexes of authors, texts, and subjects are included (pp. 265–332). Kelly concludes that all prophets were “cult” prophets (pp. 51, 147, 175–76, 260–63), implying that it is artificial to distinguish Jeremiah from the “false” prophets on the basis of their position vis-à-vis the temple. He further claims that prophecy is “divination,” an effort to discover and communicate God’s will, and that a prophet is a diviner whom Yhwh has genuinely sent (pp. 217–19, 257–59).The fruit of the semantic analysis in part 1 is quite meager in comparison to the labor involved for both Kelly and his reader. Not surprisingly, נביא often serves as subject to verbs of communication and is frequently found in a word pair with כהן, “priest.” But Kelly draws questionable conclusions from his data. He states, “as מלך relates to שר, so כהן relates to נביא . . . . It is a semantic piece of evidence which suggest that the נביא and כהן are both related to the same domain of activity, particularly the cult” (p. 105; see also pp. 167–76). But the most one can legitimately deduce is the banal observation that as מלך and שר (“king” and “official”) are both civil authorities, so the נביא and כהן are religious authorities. Moreover, the king is in a hierarchical relationship over the officials (thus, Jer 24:8, “the king of Judah and his officials”), but this is not true of a priest and a prophet. A priest may have authority over the temple precinct, but the word pair of נביא and כהן does not imply that a prophet qua prophet is a subordinate functionary of the cult. Jeremiah functioned as a prophet in diverse locations, including his prison cell (Jer 33:1) and the Egyptian diaspora (Jer 44:1). Even when he was forbidden from entering the temple complex, he did not cease to be a prophet (Jer 36).Part 2 (pp. 109–264) is, as noted, a close reading of selected texts. Nevertheless, I often do not find it persuasive. For example, Kelly argues that Jer 1:7b, 9 are not dependent on Deut 18:18 and do not present Jeremiah as a prophet like Moses, although he acknowledges there are verbal parallels between these passages. He thinks, instead, that Jer 1:7b, 9 are to be interpreted in light of similar language used elsewhere in Jeremiah (pp. 132–34). This is a strange argument. If text B has been influenced by text A, it is not surprising that text B would contain several echoes of text A. Furthermore, Jeremiah’s complaint, that he does not know how to speak, is a conspicuous allusion to Moses (Jer 1:6; Exod 4:10), suggesting that Jeremiah is indeed like Moses.To give another example: interpreting Jer 1:14, Kelly argues that Jeremiah’s vision of disaster coming “from the north” (מצפון) refers not to the Babylonian invasion but to a divine decree coming from Zaphon (צפון; Ps 48:3), the abode of Yhwh (pp. 141–42). But in the very next verse (Jer 1:15), Yhwh declares he is summoning the clans and kingdoms “in the north” (צפונה) to make war on Jerusalem. In Jeremiah, צפון occurs 25 times, and it is often obviously or explicitly Mesopotamia (e.g., 3:18; 6:22; 10:22; 25:9; 46:6, 24) and nowhere explicitly Zaphon.Kelly observes that Jeremiah’s criticism of prophets who claim to have had a revelatory dream is not an attack on the legitimacy of revelatory dreams (see pp. 197–200). This claim is, narrowly defined, valid, but it is worth noting that every occurrence of “dream” in Jeremiah is pejorative (23:25, 27, 28, 32; 27:9; 29:8), implying a distinction between Jeremiah and his officially sanctioned opponents.As a final example, on pp. 222–24, Kelly argues that in 27:18 Jeremiah sincerely appeals to his fellow prophets to pray that the sacred vessels in the temple not be carried off to Babylon. This is not convincing. The protasis of the verse, “And if they are prophets,” is in context obviously contrary-to-fact. Jeremiah’s counterparts are, in traditional terms, false prophets, and his appeal is ironic.No evidence requires that Jeremiah, although himself a priest, was in his prophetic role a temple functionary (one thinks also of Amos 7:10–17 and of John the Baptist, also a priest, who was the paradigmatic man in the wilderness). Also, Kelly’s choice of the term divination to describe the prophetic function is unfortunate. The term implies seeking divine guidance for a specific situation (“Shall we go into battle?”). It typically involved omen-taking by entrails, flights of birds, lots, and yes, dreams. This is radically different from the theological and eschatologically oriented treatises we find in Jeremiah and the other prophets. Even so, Kelly’s book is exhaustively researched and provides a window into scholarship on biblical prophecy.