The Prophets are nags.
Why can't we just be like other people? Israel says. I'm sure many Jews still say this.
Or is it Yahweh who is the nag? We are urged in the group to be cynical. David wasn't all that wonderful. Look at his failings. He's just like any other king. Why am I so smitten with him?
He was at the power point between the prophets ourside the circle of the new society coming into being and the people "at the gate". This is where all politicians are. Yet, like Abraham before him, he allowed Yaweh to push him and pull him.
At the end of his life he is tired. He no longer sits at the gate. Absalom cynically sits there in his stead with the hope of usurping his father's power.
The kings who come after him are only fitfully nagged. The prophets come to remind them of the wilderness experience, but there are many other advisors who have their ear. Like Ahab, they pick and choose soothsayers who tell them what they want to hear.
They become more like other people. It is inevitable.
Why can't we just be like other people? Israel says. I'm sure many Jews still say this.
Or is it Yahweh who is the nag? We are urged in the group to be cynical. David wasn't all that wonderful. Look at his failings. He's just like any other king. Why am I so smitten with him?
He was at the power point between the prophets ourside the circle of the new society coming into being and the people "at the gate". This is where all politicians are. Yet, like Abraham before him, he allowed Yaweh to push him and pull him.
At the end of his life he is tired. He no longer sits at the gate. Absalom cynically sits there in his stead with the hope of usurping his father's power.
The kings who come after him are only fitfully nagged. The prophets come to remind them of the wilderness experience, but there are many other advisors who have their ear. Like Ahab, they pick and choose soothsayers who tell them what they want to hear.
They become more like other people. It is inevitable.
King follows king, both in Judah and in Israel. Some are competent, like Jereboam II. But all fail to restore the pure worship of the Wilderness experience' It wasn't all that pure, I think, but like all people they look to a golden age in the past.
So where is renewal to come from, if kings, priests, and people are corrupt?
From defeat, disaster, according to Amos, who warns of dire things to come. He isn't listened to, is called a “seer”: one who tells fortunes for money.
It's interesting that Israel's sin, according to both Amos and Hosea is not her failure to carry out the rites and sacrifices due to Yahweh; these they continue to perform with great show; but rather her massive venality, her wealthy luxuriating in excess, and her corresponding failure to even see or aid the less fortunate, in fact taking from them the little they have—David's coveting of his neighbor's wife, Ahab's coveting of his neighbor's orchard,
How familiar this is. I read exposes of the foolishness and criminality of the Iraq war, The folly and greed of the banks. What is to save us?
A prophet and a disaster, a total disaster, according to Amos..
Israel has had partial disasters she has lost land to the Assyrians and others, but Jeroboam II has restored its borders and nothing is learned from these losses.
Have we, today, learned anything from our losses?
The New York Times trots out its prophets on the editorial pages.
Only the effete read the NY Times according to Fox News.
Can Obama be our prophet?
Forget about it, says half the country.
Some of these kings are better than others, but all fail to clear away the “high places.”
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So Hosea. Hosea had trouble with an unfaithful wife, I remember from Sunday school.
The unfaithful wife is Israel, I learn from the lesson.
Hosea agrees the disaster must be total, But he offers hope. .
He is ordered to take back the harlot Gomer. She bears three children and they are given names that reflect Yahweh's mood: Not My People. is the name of the baby.
For the first time the Israelites are told that their enemies the Syrians and the Philistines have their own founding stories and also fall under Yahweh's care.
Israel is no more prepared to hear this than we are to hear that God loves the Taliban.
Hosea's words of hope are like a drink of cool water after Amos's dry and unsparing condemnation. .
Like David and Hosea, and Isaiah he is a poet. I always fall for poets. The 8th Century has produced Homer in Greece.
Gale force winds today. I circle the park on the hill overlooking the beach. The river from this vantage is like an strip of deep blue enamel. Bluer than the sky. The tiny leaves are out now, and the wind has shaken loose most of the blossoms on the fruit trees in the park. Some midgets in full uniform are playing on the newly groomed ballfield. I stop to watch a bunt picked up and thrown to first base and missed. It is recovered and missed at second and third, A home run. We used to play that kind of baseball in the street in front of my house, forever searching for the ball in hedges and rock gardens.
I'm reading Buber again. Unlike his contemporary philosophers, Buber believes in the Yaweh who spoke to Abraham and is speaking in these later prophets. It is a fearful voice, and still able to speak to us today.
It is never to be confused with the seers and witches of the High Places
This morning I didn't want to get out of bed and go to early choir practice. I tested Yahweh. Get up, he seemed to tell me. So I got up, fed my elderly cat who seems to be dying and will only sip a little Lactaid in the morning, and eat two morsels of cat food after. She did this and went to take a nap on the porch table. Then I was cheered and thought about Yahweh most of the day.
Can this belief in what Buber is telling me be part of my credo? I am open to this avenue.
Father Tim has found my blog. I hope he will comment.
So, Isaiah.
Amos and Hosea spoke to the kings of Israel, the northern kingdom; they are mostly venal and will not take down the High Places of baal worship. They are not part of the Davidic covenant. Also they are almost continually at war and have lost territory. The southern kingdom of Judah is more stable, though under Jeroboam II Israel prospers as well as Judah.. Isaiah begins to prophesy under King Azariah..
Yahweh speaks to him in the temple in Jerusalem. It is a terrifying experience and he is left feeling unclean. The whole kingdom is unclean, possibly related to the king's leprosy.
A burning coal cleanses his lips. “For He is like a refining fire.” is an aria in Handel's Messiah.
I used to go yearly to a community sing with soloists of the this oratorio. We would run from the parking lot to be sure we were in time for a score, and climb to the second balcony of the theater, leaping over seats to get to the alto section. We never missed it or tired of either the music or the words.
Isaiah speaks of a remnant, a trunk of David. A trunk can sprout new branches. Here is hope.
The grandson of Azariah, Ahaz, comes to the throne.
