The mouthpiece of God:
READ: Ex 4:10-17; 7:1-5; Ex 4:15-16 “mouth to mouth”; Ex 7:2 “you are to speak”;
READ: Jer 1:4-10; “the word of the Lord came to me saying,” code for a prophetic message; “the Lord touched my mouth,” v.9;
READ: Deut 18:15-22; “I will put my words in his mouth and he will speak to them whatever I command,” v.18;
And many others where the prophet is literally called "the mouth of Yahweh"! Micah 4:4; Isa 40:5 “For the mouth of Yahweh of hosts has spoken.”
The point is the message is not original to the prophet but comes from God;
God uses the prophet as His appointed human instrument.
NOTE does not mean we become some kind of sock puppet, or a marionette, the person retains free will, e.g., Jonah refused to speak to Nineveh; Moses told to speak to the rock but instead hit the rock twice with his staff (in anger/frustration).
Literary devices: Illeism
This definition and usage of the word prophet explains a couple of important literary devices.
God frequently mixes first-person pronouns (“I,” “me,” “my”) with third-person references to Himself, e.g., “Yahweh,” “the Lord,” “Elohim/God,” or related titles/phrases;
Hosea 1:7: “But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by Yahweh their God.”
Isaiah 22:19 "I will remove you from your office; you will be thrown down from your position."
NET, Heb “he will throw you down.” The shift from the first to third person is peculiar and abrupt, but certainly not unprecedented in Hebrew poetry.
Such changes of grammatical person are not at all foreign to Hebrew syntax, especially where formulaic phrases are involved.
Blend/Mix or Shift of Pronouns:
Similar to illeism, a blending or mixing of pronouns, i.e., an abrupt transition/change from one person to another.
Zechariah 2:10-13. Some translations, such as the NET, add quote marks to show that it is Yahweh speaking, but then drop them to indicate that the speaker has changed to either the prophet or the angel of Yahweh, who is typically the speaker throughout this passage.
Amos 4:11 reads (roughly, ESV/NASB style):
“I overthrew some of you, as when God [Elohim] overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord [YHWH].
An allusion to Genesis 19:24 the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah:
“Then YHWH rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from YHWH out of heaven.”
Cp. same phenomenon in Hosea 1:7, Isaiah 22:19, Zechariah 10:12, etc.
First person speech
Lastly, it is common to see God’s agent speak as Yahweh Himself in the first person, read Deut 29:1-8;
The opening verses clearly show Moses addressing Israel, but then an abrupt switch from Moses to Yahweh Himself.
The change is so complete that some trini commentaries go so far as to say that “the speaker’s personality is merged in that of the Deity.”
READ Isa 3:1-15, some translations like the NET add the words “the Lord says” for clarification. "The prophet speaks in vv. 1-3 (note the third person reference to the Lord in v. 1), but here the Lord himself announces that he will intervene in judgment. It is unclear where the Lord’s words end and the prophet’s pick up again. The prophet is apparently speaking again by v. 8, where the Lord is referred to in the third person."
This is all perfectly consistent with the biblical definition of prophecy by a prophet.
God places His words in the mouth of His prophet, and the prophet speaks as His commissioned representative, personal agent.
So that prophetic speech may move between the words of Yahweh and the words of His spokesman without the formal distinctions expected by the modern reader.
The context must therefore determine who is speaking at any particular point; a sudden change of person or pronoun does not, by itself, identify God and His messenger as the same person.
For more see https://thehumanjesus.org/2021/06/07/yahweh-texts-applied-to-people/
No comments:
Post a Comment