More light can be shed on the nature of the prophetic gifts
by examining some of the key Hebrew terms for “prophet.” Though most of these
titles were adopted by both the false and the true prophets alike, they still
give us an insight into some of the tasks and ministries that the true prophets
performed.
One of the earliest terms was rō’eh (“seer”). With
regard to specific individuals we know of its usage only in connection with
Samuel (1 Sam. 9:9) and Hanai (2 Chron. 16:7). The only place it occurs in the
prophetic books is Isaiah 30:10. The term seems to stress God’s gift of seeing
what is lost (as in the case of Samuel with the donkeys of Saul’s father) or
what is to come in the future.
Closely aligned to this term is the second designation
for a prophet, ḥōzeh (“visionary”). Here the focus is not on the natural
eye that was given a view of the distant future or of what was lost, but on the
mental or inward eye. The term appears as early as Exodus 24:11, where we are
told that the seventy elders “saw” God. Balaam, the prophet from upper
Mesopotamia, claimed to “see” a vision from the Almighty (Num. 24:4); but the
first technical use of ḥōzeh is found in 2 Samuel 24:11 in connection
with Gad, David’s visionary. Interestingly enough, 2 Chronicles 16:7 describes
the prophet Hanani as a rō’eh, but 2 Chronicles 19:2 refers to Hanani’s
son as a ḥōzeh. The priest of Bethel also used the term ḥōzeh to
describe Amos in their bitter encounter in Amos 7:12. (Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Back
Toward the Future: Hints for Interpreting Biblical Prophecy [Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Baker Books, 1989], 72-73)
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