Abraham as Prophet
This supposition can be refined with another observation. Otto
Kaiser has stressed the image of Abraham as a prophet in Genesis 15.51 This is
clearly recognizable in the so-called word event formula (. . . היה דבר יהוה אל.
. .) in 15:1, 4a, which stems from the prophetic books, and in the stylization
of Genesis 15 as a “vision” (מחזה).
Note also the revelation of YHWH’s judgment plan to Abraham in 15:13–16: the
flow of salvation history is announced to Abraham in advance as YHWH’s prophet
(see Amos 3:7).
The prophetic portrayal of Abraham has long been used to conclude
that the time of the writing prophets is the terminus a quo for Genesis
15(:1–6). Yet, what are the theological reasons why Genesis 15 presents Abraham
as a prophet? In my opinion, they lie in the literary horizon of Genesis 15,
which reaches into the prophetic corpus. It will be shown that Genesis 15 was
created literarily from this horizon (especially Isaiah 7). Genesis 15 makes
Abraham the first prophet of YHWH to whom, as later with the writing prophets,
the entire plan of history has been revealed. The institution of prophecy is as
old as Israel itself, and Israel has over and over been directed to its
prophets if it wants to experience something about God’s plans with his people.
(Konrad Schmid, Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel's Dual Origins in the
Hebrew Bible [trans. James D. Nogalski; Siphrut: Literature and Theology of
the Hebrew Scriptures 3; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2010], 165-66)
