JOSIAH
(1 KINGS 13:2)
In
the confrontation between the man of God from Judah and Jeroboam, king of the
newly founded northern kingdom of Israel, the altar associated with the golden
calf shrine in Bethel is cursed. But the prophetic oracle of judgment goes
beyond a general pronouncement of doom. The man of God specifically indicates
that a Davidic king named Josiah (who actually came along three
centuries later) would be the one to carry out the destruction—an odd and
random detail, unnecessary in the context, and uncharacteristic of prophetic
pronouncements.
This
example is complicated by the recognized fact that the books of Kings were
written during the exile—sixty years after the reign of Josiah. That
meant that by the time of its writing, the work of Josiah was well known,
specifically his destruction of the altar at Behel (1 Kings 23:15). Certainly,
I acknowledge that God would have known Josiah and the role he would play even
three centuries before he arrived—divine foreknowledge is not in question. The
question rather concerns the nature and focus of prophecy, and on that count
this is an outlier.
If
we return to the example above concerning Dr. Fauci’s Georgetown address, it
would be very easy for someone writing in 2020 or later to report that Fauci
had foretold the coming of the coronavirus. But of course he had not been that
specific. He referred to a pandemic and to a surprise outbreak. In hindsight,
however, it would make sense if the detail of the name of the virus were
specified since that represented the fulfillment of his ominous words. Though
technically inaccurate, that would not be deceptive. We would not flinch at
this connecting of the dots. We have the transcript of his speech to compare
with later reports that are more specific. In the Old Testament, that would not
have been the case. I would be inclined to consider as possible that, in a
similar manner, once the specific detail of Josiah was know, the account of the
initial confrontation would be recorded with that information—connecting the
dots. After all, the power and focus of the prophecy derived not from the
identity of the future king but from the inevitability of the destruction of
the altar. I acknowledge how controversial this may seem, but my point is to
raise the question of oddly detailed information in an account that was written
after those details were known. (John H. Walton, The Lost World of the
Prophets: Old Testament Prophecy and Apocalyptic Literature in Ancient Context [Downers
Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2024], 39-40)
