Introduction to the Former Prophets Ch. 1
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Chapter I: Introduction to the Former Prophets Ch. 1: The Former Prophets and the Later Prophets The Old Testament does not occur in the actual text in the Bible. Sometimes the series of books we call the Old Testament are referred to in Scripture simply as “the Law.” On other occasions Scripture speaks of “the Law and the Prophets,” and on still other occasions of “the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms” (see Genesis, Ch. 1). In this series of books, we will use the third of these divisions as we study the Scriptures. As we saw earlier, the third approach does the most justice to the structure of the Bible as it was rounded off in the days of Christ and His apostles (Genesis, 1‐2). The first volumes in this series of books dealt with the Law (i.e. what we must know, the Torah, the teaching). Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were discussed one by one. Now we turn to the second section of Scripture—the prophets. This second section of Scripture is made up of a good many books—Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the book of the twelve minor prophets (Hosea—Malachi). And each one of these books is of considerable length. There is a good deal to be said for dealing with Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings separately, before taking up Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Minor Prophets. Moreover, this procedure is in line with a division of “the Prophets” that dates from antiquity, namely, the division into the “Former Prophets” and the “Latter Prophets.” The Former Prophets were made up of the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, while the Latter Prophets included Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and twelve Minor Prophets. Both these groups of books fall under the heading “Prophets.” This is not an arbitrary decision reached by scholars; the Holy Spirit Himself leads the way here. We should follow His example confidently. Unfortunately, there are many people today who view prophets as soothsayers, fortune‐tellers. Prophecy is prediction, and the prophet is a mysterious figure who somehow divines the future and tells what is going to happen. We must not be led astray by this mistaken understanding of prophecy. The people referred to in Scripture as “prophets” did not deal exclusively with the future. The same can be said of the books called “the Prophets.” Some of them did point to future events, but not all of them. However, it can indeed be said of all of them that they made their point of departure in the past, especially in the Torah. They pointed back to what other Bible books revealed about the great deeds of Yahweh (See Josh. 24; Judges 2:7; 6:7‐10; I Sam. 12:7; Hos. 11:1). 1 Ch. 2: Spotlight on Covenant History While there are many similarities between the Former Prophets and the Latter Prophets, there are also differences. Yet similarities outweigh differences. Both these groups of books, as we saw, are rooted in the past, in the covenant that God made with Israel at Horeb and renewed forty years later on the plains of Moab. Actually, the prophets go still farther back: they go all the way back to God’s covenant with Abraham. In this regard they follow the example set by Moses himself. When the Horeb covenant was renewed, Moses was thinking ahead. He said to Israel: “If, despite all my warnings, you do come to break the Horeb covenant as time goes on and are severely punished for it, do not despair but see to it that the first thing you do is to return quietly to Yahweh. Even if you have broken His Horeb covenant, He will still remember the covenant on which it rests—the covenant He made with Jacob. He will go back still farther to the covenant He made with Isaac, and even farther to the covenant He made with Abraham.” According to Moses in Deuteronomy 30, Yahweh would always be so gracious as to take “the way back,” that is, the way that leads from the Horeb covenant back to the covenant with Jacob, with Isaac and with Abraham (see Deuteronomy, Ch. 119). Much deeper than the Horeb covenant was God’s promise and intention to bless all the families of the earth by way of Abraham (Gen. 12:3; Eph. 1:3‐14; 3:10; II Tim. 1:9). The Horeb covenant was provisional in character, but not the covenant with Abraham. When we look at our own situation today, we see that God has not departed from His intentions when He gave Abraham that glorious promise. He has kept His covenant with Abraham and continues to keep it. God keeps His covenant despite Israel—or perhaps through Israel anyway. It was in Israel that the Son of God was born according to the flesh. Through the Spirit which the Son sent and poured out over us, we are cleansed by the gospel (Eph. 5:26) and incorporated into the (Israelite) congregation of God’s people. That community was severely punished when it went into exile, but the children of this decimated Israel, it now turns out, are even more numerous than the children of “her that is married” (Is. 54:1; Rom. 11:17; Gal. 4:27). What the Former Prophets had in common with the Latter Prophets, then, is that they focus attention on the two covenants. Indeed, that’s why they were given a place in the canon; without this spotlight on covenant history, they would not even belong in the Bible. We must accept these books in the form in which they have come down to us, just as Christ and His apostles accepted them in their time. When we read in Mathew 5:18 that “Not an iota, not a dot” will pass from the law, we see that the people of Jesus’ time already possessed the Old Testament in Manuscripts that included tiny dots and symbols to indicate vowel sounds. (The earliest Hebrew script included consonants only.) 2 If Jesus accepted the Former Prophets as they existed in His time, it is not for us to pull them apart and rearrange them. Therefore we should not place them before the Pentateuch. That would be to turn Scripture inside out (see Deuteronomy, Ch. 1). After all, who would be so foolish as to place the slide behind the projector rather than the projector behind the slide? The light of the Pentateuch gives meaning to the books called the Prophets—all the way down to the time of the exile and beyond. The Pentateuch is the basis for understanding the work of Christ and even for understanding our time. As we read the Former Prophets, then, let’s not be guided by aims foreign to what the Spirit of God has awakened in our hearts. We must not look for something that’s simply not there. When the Holy Spirit gave us “the Prophets,” He did not expect us to treat these writings as a complete record of God’s knowledge of Himself and of His works of creation and redemption. We must be on guard against an eagerness to build a system that can stand its own against human reason. We must free ourselves of our proud desire to know everything and so be content with a fragmentary knowledge of God and His works. Since we know only in part, we must be sure not to disdain what God is good enough to bend down and reveal to us. We should not try to poke holes in it or raise questions in a tone of voice no child should use toward his father. Can we ever permit ourselves an attitude of condescension toward our Father? We must be on guard, then, against the dangers of unhealthy fantasizing, and also the danger of making up problems about God where no real problems exist. The best medicine to ward off such dangers is an immersion in the history described for us in the Pentateuch and the Prophets. The Former and Latter Prophets are alike in that both sets of books tell us a great deal about the God of the covenant. In fact, we can speak of a striking similarity in this respect. At bottom, the Prophets are one. All the books that together make up “the Prophets” deal with the history of the relationship between Yahweh and the people He chose as His own so long ago. In other words, they deal with covenant history. The difference between the two sets of prophetic books is that the Former Prophets look back, while the Latter Prophets look ahead. Yet we must be careful not to regard this as too much of a clear cut difference, as we often do when classifying. The difference between the Former Prophets and the Latter Prophets is really a difference in degree rather than in kind. In the Former Prophets, the spotlight usually falls on the past—but not because of a love of the past as such. The purpose is to impress upon the Israelites of the present and the future the importance of obedience. Israel must be shown that her God is the God of the covenant, the God who both blesses His people and punishes them. Because of this emphasis, reading the Former Prophets is excellent preparation for reading and understanding the Latter Prophets. 3 In the books that make up the Latter Prophets, we hear such men as Isaiah and Jeremiah speaking to us. We listen to them as they preach.