Thursday, June 26, 2025

Karl van der Toorn on the Background to Isaiah 8

  

In view of the importance in local religion of the ancestor cult, the practice of necromancy should come as no surprise. In spite of the Deuteronomistic censure of the phenomenon, many people found it entirely legitimate to ask a prophet to consult ghosts: “should not a people consult their gods, the dead on behalf of the living?” (Isa 8:19 NRSV). With the synonymous parallelism between the gods (ĕlōhîm) and the dead (mētîm), the question is another indication of the divine status of the ancestors. In addition, the circumstance that the question is addressed to prophets—the disciples of Isaiah, according to Isa 8:16—proves that the professional activities of prophecies did, at least on occasion, include necromancy. The Deuteronomistic portrait of the prophets as preachers of true religion is misleading. Historically, both male and female prophets were active in the entire spectrum of inspired divination—as distinguished from the more technical form of divination practiced by priests. In local religion, those with a gift for divination used many ways to get in touch with the divine: from spirit possession and visionary experience to necromancy and the interpretation of dreams. To those who came for an oracle of God or a word from the ancestors, it did not matter. As long as they got an answer that would allow them to go on with their lives, they were unlikely to question the divinatory method. (Karel van der Toorn, Israelite Religion: From Tribal Beginnings to Scribal Legacy [The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025], 151-52)

 

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