It is true
that ‘this test is explicitly rejected for the prophets of other gods (13:1–5);
nor is the higher Hebrew prophecy nearly so much predictive as interpretative’
(Wheeler Robinson in loco). Yet we
must remember that though the main burden of the prophets consisted of truths
of morality and religion (the unity and righteousness of God and the ethical
character of His demands) they were also concerned with the vindication of
these in the actual experience of the people. To them truth was never merely
abstract, they looked for its fulfilment by God in history. Prof. A. B.
Davidson once said to the present writer: ‘The prophets were terribly
one-idea’d men. Yet their one idea was the greatest of all, that God was going
to do something.’ So Amos 3:4–8. The two most spiritual of the prophets staked
their credit as the bearers of God’s word on certain historical issues. Isaiah
was sure of the inviolableness of Jerusalem and the survival of a remnant of
the people (on this see Rev. of Theol.
& Phil. iii. 7 by the
present writer in answer to Guthe’s Jesaia in Religionsgeschichtlicke
Volksbücher); and Jeremiah was content to wait on events for the decision whether
he or Hananiah had the word of the LORD (Jer. 28 esp. 11b, see Duhm’s fine remarks on this chapter in the Kurzer Hand-Commentar). Again after
reporting the word of the LORD, that
his uncle should come to him asking him to buy his field, he adds when the
uncle came and did so, then knew I that
this was the word of the LORD (32:6 ff.). Of course, behind all this was
the faith that God had a future for Israel in the land, though the Babylonians
had overrun it and Jerusalem must fall to them. If then Jeremiah himself so
much depended for the proof of his message upon the issue of events, we cannot
be surprised that D proposes to the popular mind the same test of a prophet’s
word.—Though beyond our immediate subject we may note that the word of the Lord
by the true prophet was not always fulfilled. This is explained in Jer. 18 and
Jonah 4 as due to a change in the moral situation. Such, however, is not a full
explanation. Sometimes, as in the case of the non-fulfilment of Jeremiah’s own
early predictions about the Scythians, and his slow arrival (only after the battle
of Carchemish) at the conviction that Babylon was to be the executioner of
God’s judgements on Israel, the change in the prophet’s word was due to altered
political circumstances. (George Adam Smith, The Book of
Deuteronomy in the Revised Version with Introduction and Notes [The
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges; Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1918], 234-35)
Further Reading:
