The Burden of Prophecy: Poetic Utterance in the Prophets of the Old Testament (review)

Abstract

Burden of Prophecy: Poetic Utterance in Prophets of Old Testament, by Albert Cook. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University, 1996. 163 pp. $29.95. It may seem an odd thing to say of a book that took me a year and a half to read, but Albert Cook's Burden of Prophecy is too short. Aiming to investigate the tonal range of biblical and ... its (p. 1), while extending scope of to include wisdom and psalmic literature (albeit in modified form), Cook sets an ambitious agenda for a mere 160 pages. discussion includes sophisticated introductions to Hebrew parallelism and contemporary speech-act theory, judicious treatments of historical settings, and wonderfully deft close readings. Yet it is all so compact and specific to selected texts that one struggles to detect a connecting thread or comprehensive thesis. When one arrives at concluding sentence to learn that sweeping, unconditional predictions of Daniel constitute fullest expression of prophecy (p. 146), one wonders how one got there. Fuller development and more explicit road signs were required. opening chapter is certainly promising. In foregrounding term (Hebrew massa), Cook seems to have found a suitably multifaceted idea around which to organize his book. As both a technical genre designation and a more general term indicating a weight to be borne, fuses writing prophets' religiously strenuous form of life with their primary literary form, poetic-prophetic oracle (a cry to be 'raised,' an utterance to be 'lifted'). Indeed, concept of burden is perfect instrument for analyzing in a wide assortment of oracles rapidly shifting force vectors along triangular God-prophet-people relationship. This Cook proceeds to do with Amos in his Introduction and with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel in following three chapters respectively. A recurring terminology of bearing, posture, pressure, and intensities reinforces this analytic motif. But with final three chapters on Psalms, Qoheleth, and Zechariah-Daniel, motif virtually disappears, undercutting continuity-in-modulation that Cook promised at outset. Granted, it does appear once (p. 124), but only in quotation of Second Zechariah (9: 1), and without remark on existential posture of prophet himself. effect is that these three chapters treat their subject matter more as a foil to, than as an extension of, classical prophecy. A strength of Cook's approach is that it allows him to make sense of canonical shape of biblical books under study, while fully acknowledging their internally complex history of composition. In Chapter Two on Isaiah, for instance, Cook correlates openness of poetry's metaphors with open-endedness of triangular communication situation, i.e., fact that oracular speech acts allow and create all kinds of possible responses which then entail their own contingencies. Such metaphors become connecting tissue between different historical strata - e.g., between three 'Isaiahs' - of one canonical book. As Cook says, The message is always about this [openness of God, prophet, and people to one another], and its signature is its own openness to possibilities and actualities, to fact and apocalyptic definition (p. 25). internal dynamic helps account for book's formation across a three- or four-century time-span. Intrinsic to this dynamic, of course, is Isaianic long view that stretches from primordial past to ultimate future, embracing a variety of temporal perspectives each of which has its significant place in constancy of divine purpose. …