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So we need to understand that the prophetic books are really little anthologies, anthologies
of oracles. They can be connected for literary rather than substantive or chronological reasons.
You can't assume chronological sequence. It is not like reading the historical books of
Joshua through 2 Kings. It is very, very different. An interesting question concerns the degree
to which the prophetic books preserve the actual oracles of the prophets. Certainly
there is no doubt that there has been revision and supplementation of the prophetic books.
Not everything in the Book of Amos is from Amos, himself. Additions have been made to
most of the prophetic books. It was believed that the words of the prophets had “enduring
significance”. Those who received these words believed that they had enduring significance.
And so they were supplemented because of the conviction that they had enduring relevance,
not despite of it, because of it. And some scholars believe that this accounts for the
oracle in Amos 2 that prophesies the fall of Judah. Amos is living in 750, the latter
half of the eighth century, not in the sixth century. He is living in the eighth century.
But he prophesies the fall of Judah, and most people would assume that this is an addition
which is made to the Book of Amos after Judah's fall. These supplementations and additions
and revisions that we will see in some of the prophetic books, and some of them are
quite obvious, were not completely promiscuous. I don't want to give you the idea that they
were, because there are many instances in which a prophet's words are not updated, are
not modified, even though the failure to do this leaves the prophecy woefully out of step
with what actually came to be later. So those kinds of inconsistencies between a prophet's
words and later fact would suggest that there was a strong tendency to preserve the words
of the prophet faithfully. So we will see both tendencies within the literature, a tendency
to leave words intact, and at the same place [ correction: time ], a tendency to supplement
or to add sections to the prophet, the prophetic writing.
A third feature that we will see in many of the prophetic books is what we call "the call."
And this is common to most of the prophets. It is the claim to authority as a result of
having been called by God to deliver his word. We talked before about apostolic prophecy,
this notion of the prophet as someone who is sent by God with a message, not someone
who is consulted by a client to find out what God thinks. The irresistibility of the call
is a feature of these passages, and we find it illustrated in Amos 3:7-8, after citing
a series of proverbs that illustrate inexorable cause and effect. For example, he says, "Does
a trap spring up from the ground/Unless it has caught something?" And then the oracle
continues, "A lion has roared,/Who can but fear?/My Lord God has spoken,/Who can but
prophesy?" There is this irresistible call. We find metaphors used liberally throughout
the prophetic writings. And Amos describes his prophecy by means of two types of metaphors,
word and vision. So many of the prophetic oracles will be introduced by the phrase "the
word of Yahweh came unto prophet X." The word of Yahweh came--sort of an image of God speaking
directly to these prophets in human language, which is then repeated or passed on to the
audience, to the listener. This could be understood in a literal sense.
We could take this as a metaphor. Behind it, however, is the simple idea that it is God
who is communicating to the prophet and the prophet then communicates the message to the
people. But in addition to hearing, Amos and many of the other prophets also see. So the
word of the Lord comes, but in other moments the prophetic oracle will be introduced by
verbs or words connected with seeing and vision. Hence the word "seer" as a designation for
a prophet also.