How should Israel act among the nations? How does YHWH express Himself in history? Micah’s deliberately ambiguous images of שְׁאֵרִית יַעֲקֹב, “the remnant of Jacob,” as both dew and a lion (5:6–8) place the burden of interpretation on readers themselves, who must decide how divine action, human agency, and the remnant’s relationship with the nations are to be understood.
Rebecca endures a difficult pregnancy and inquires of YHWH, who reveals that the younger will surpass the older. Yet commentators hesitate to call her a prophet, perhaps because she withholds this revelation from Isaac and later deceives him when he moves to bless Esau. But far from mere guile, her actions mark her as a Kierkegaardian Knight of Faith—acting decisively in service of the divine, much like Abraham at the binding of Isaac.
Samuel must piece together YHWH’s intention to anoint David. Elisha’s plan to save a widow and her sons unfolds in fits and starts.
The precise origins of the practice of reading from the prophets in the synagogue are unknown, but early evidence can be seen in the story of Jesus visiting the synagogue in his hometown on Shabbat and reading from Isaiah (Luke 4:16–19). Yet the process of making prophetic scripture relevant to a contemporary audience began even earlier, as we see in the second-century B.C.E. book of Baruch.
Both Philo of Alexandria (c. 25 B.C.E. – 50 C.E.) and some later rabbinic interpreters insist that Moses remained celibate so that he might always be pure and ready to hear YHWH, but each arrived at this conclusion through a different approach.
Jeremiah urges Judah to submit to Babylon while Hananiah claims that Babylon will soon fall. Both use the same prophetic tropes to convince their listeners. Maimonides reads this story as a blueprint for distinguishing true prophets from false ones.
The use of the unusual verb מִדַּבֵּר, middabber in Numbers 7:89 suggests that YHWH does not speak to Moses in the literal and simple sense.
Deuteronomy promises the Israelites that God will continue sending prophets “like Moses.” But if the Torah’s legislation cannot be adjusted, what is the role of later prophets? And how can all the changes to Torah law made by the rabbis be justified?
Ahab’s 400 court prophets all assure him that he will defeat Aram, but the prophet Micaiah tells him that these prophets are being enticed by a lying spirit, sent by YHWH himself, for the purpose of destroying Ahab. If Ahab had been willing to face his own position vis-a-vis God honestly, he would have known who was telling the truth.
During the Babylonian siege, while Jeremiah was in King Zedekiah’s prison, he redeems his cousin’s land, upon YHWH’s instruction. The incarcerated prophet thus symbolically enacts the future restoration for the people who will soon be exiled from their land.
According to Deuteronomy, a false prophet who has no message from God, and advocates worshiping other gods, can still successfully perform miracles and predict the future.
What we know about where he lived, the language he spoke, and the gods he worshiped.
In a polemical response to Christian and Jewish allegorical interpretation of the Torah’s laws, Bekhor Shor writes that just as God speaks to Moses “clearly and without riddles” (Num 12:8), so too the Torah is clear and means what it says, and should not be interpreted allegorically.
In the Prophets, Israelite leaders such as Joshua, Saul, David, and Ahab use divination to help them make decisions, just as their ancient Near Eastern counterparts did. The Torah sidesteps the divinatory character of these objects and practices, and instead, emphasizes their ritual and religious character.
The Torah is silent about the nature of Joseph’s dreams: What do they mean? Do they come from God? This ambiguity is part of the literary artistry of the story, which relates Joseph’s “coming of age” as a prophet.
Deuteronomy introduces the possibility of future Moses-like prophets who will continue to instruct the Israelites how to follow YHWH’s commandments. At the same time, it makes the existence of such a prophet virtually impossible.
The biblical portrait of Miriam can leave the modern reader with a lingering bitterness, but a closer reading highlights her prophetic role, and her willingness to challenge the social norms and pursue an alternative, redemptive course.
Ancient Near Eastern cultic rituals located the presence of gods and divine messages in nature.
The nature of prophecy is perhaps one of the most overlooked questions, but it was critically important to the medieval Jewish philosophers Sa’adia Gaon, Judah Halevi, Ibn Ezra, and Maimonides.
The Sinai theophany is virtually absent from the Bible outside of the Torah and the very late book of Nehemiah. This absence reflects an alternative tradition that sees Israel’s laws as deriving from multiple small revelations from prophets throughout history.
When Eldad and Medad prophesy in the camp, Joshua zealously presses for their incarceration. Moses, however, exclaims that all the people should ideally be prophets.
Even those who categorically deny that God has form, is composed of matter, is visible, or is subject to the constraints of time and place, cannot seem to relinquish the notion that God speaks precisely as described in the Bible.
The Urim veTumim have baffled traditional commentators through the ages and only more recently has modern scholarship shed partial light on what they were.
Inaugurating TheTorah.com
