Prophets of the Old Testament often experienced confusion as they tried to understand circumstances in the light of God's word. What can we learn from them?
It should not surprise us that the prophets of the Old Testament were often perplexed. In the conduct of their ministry it was necessary for them to spend much time both with their God and also with the people to whom they had been sent. What they heard in God's presence was often very different from what they heard in the conversation of their everyday world.
In this study we shall meet some of these perplexed prophets and, as God's prophets today, learn how to prevent ourselves repeating their mistakes.
Moses
When the 12 leaders returned from their exploration of the Promised Land, it was seen that only two were in favour of going on to possess it. The Israelites grumbled and were about to stone Moses and Aaron. Then the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting. The Lord said to Moses:
How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me...? I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them, but I will make you [Moses] into a nation greater and stronger than they. (Num 14:11-12)
What an offer! But was it a privilege? Moses must for a while have been greatly perplexed. On the one hand God's tremendous promise - on the other the people's rejection. But he quickly came to an understanding of the situation, and began to reason with the Lord. That would not be right, he said. "Then the Egyptians will hear about it!...if you put these people to death all at one time the nations...will say 'The Lord was not able to bring these people into the land he promised...so he slaughtered them in the desert'" (Num 14:1-2, 10-16).
What prophets hear in God's presence is often quite different from what they hear in the conversations of everyday life – which can cause confusion.
Moses was concerned about God's name and reputation. Are we today more concerned with getting into the upper echelons of prophetic ministry, or are we determined that all we do shall enhance God's reputation among us?
Elijah
After Elijah's announcement that there would be a serious drought in Israel, he went to stay in the house of a widow in Zarephath. God provided them with a jar of flour and a jug of oil every day. But their peace was about to be disturbed by the sudden death of the son of the house. The prophet's perplexity is evident from his words, "O Lord my God, have you brought tragedy also upon this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?" (1 Ki 17:20).
One testing experience through which prophets and other believers may have to pass occurs when people or resources which we have come to rely upon are suddenly removed.
One testing experience which we may encounter occurs when people or resources we rely upon are suddenly removed.
Job
Here is a man who had to face tremendous perplexity. His book begins by recording a series of catastrophes directly involving him. His donkeys were seized, his sheep and their shepherds were struck by lightning, raiding parties carried off his camels, and to cap it all his children were killed in a hurricane. Even so he did not charge God with wrongdoing.
Then the Evil One was given permission to test Job on a personal level, and as a result his body was covered with painful sores. But still Job did not sin by what he said. Certainly, he cursed the day he was born and groaned under his calamity, but he still did not speak out against God, even when his wife suggested that suicide was the best way out (Job 1:13-22, 2:7-10).
His three friends held forth on Job's situation but were to prove "miserable comforters" (Job 16:2). Their current theological theories did nothing for the sufferer. Their concept of God had collapsed because it was too small. In the end Job was content not with a perfect explanation of the suffering of the righteous but with the greatness of his God.
Job had to suffer tremendous perplexity – in the end he was contented not with a perfect explanation for his suffering, but with the greatness of his God.
It is still true that godly men and women have to face the perplexing question of why God allows them to suffer as he does. Meanwhile Job's book is a resounding protest against current teaching that a God-fearing life inevitably brings success and prosperity.
Hosea
When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, "Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife...because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord" (Hos 1:2). Did God actually tell Hosea to take to himself as his wife a woman who was already an adulteress? It seems more likely that Gomer was chaste at the time of her marriage and that only later did she leave Hosea for someone else. This would fit the symbolic use God makes of the prophet's domestic situation, for he refers to the days of Israel's youth as a time when Israel was pure in her relation to Yahweh (Hos 2:15).
But however we understand the time of Gomer's immorality it must have perplexed poor Hosea and may have exposed him to the judgmental reactions of other prophets. His only consolation was the assurance that Yahweh himself also suffered intensely when Israel proved unfaithful to him.
It was Hosea's privilege to let his unchanging love for Gomer be a picture for all time of the 'love that will not let us go'. Let all prophets know that they have the understanding and compassion of God himself where his servants have to experience the continuing sadness of life in a broken home or unstable family environment.
Hosea's suffering was a picture of the suffering God himself went through with Israel – so Hosea always had the consolation that the Lord understood what he was going through.
Jonah
There is one thing of which we can be certain: Jonah did not like the people of Nineveh! After receiving his original commission to preach to them, he ran away. It took a strange encounter with a great fish to persuade him to obey the instructions he had received and "Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh" (Jonah 1:1-3, 3:3). Once there, his prophetic preaching was so effective that God's offer of mercy brought the whole nation to its knees in repentance. "When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened." (Jonah 3:10).
One would have thought that the prophet would have been thrilled with such a positive response to his message. "But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry" (Jonah 4:1). This was the reason he refused to go to Nineveh and ran away to Tarshish: he believed that if he preached they would repent and that God would then forgive them, and he did not want that to happen.
We may be certain that Jonah laid on heavily the message of judgment, but probably did not encourage the Ninevites in repentance. Today's prophets need to ask the Holy Spirit to help them put forward a presentation of their message in which judgment and mercy are balanced against one another. Jonah made the terrible mistake of begrudging them the mercy that they so much needed. This was the attitude of the scribes and Pharisees in the time of our Lord when they grumbled at Jesus for entertaining publicans and sinners to a meal. "If I have the gift of prophecy...but have not love, I am nothing" (1 Cor 13:2).
Habakkuk
The branch of theology called 'theodicy' was at the heart of Habakkuk's perplexity. The term is made up of two Greek words theos (God) and dike (justice) and it refers to the vindication of God's character despite the existence in the world of physical and moral evil. It all began when Yahweh told Habakkuk: "For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if you were told. I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people" (Hab 1:5-6).
At the heart of Habakkuk's confusion was the question of how a righteous, holy God could allow evil in the world.
God created perplexity in the prophet's mind when he went on to say that he would use the Babylonians to punish his own people Israel. 'How could God do such a thing?' was the anguished cry of the prophet. "Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?" (Hab 1:13). The problem of 'theodicy' does not exist among those who have gods whose morals are little better than those of sinful men and women. But those who believe in a holy and righteous God are shocked and upset by some of the actions and decisions of the only living and true God.
What can a prophet do - whether living in ancient Israel or in our modern world? Like Habakkuk, it is right to take the problem to God and to wait until he answers (Hab 2:3). Meanwhile the righteous shall live by faith (Hab 2:4). Ultimately all perplexities will be resolved.
Jeremiah
No-one transcends Jeremiah in the depth of feeling in which he expresses his perplexity:
O Lord, you deceived me and I was deceived, you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long...the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, 'I will not mention him or speak any more in his name', his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. (Jer 20:7, 9)
Here is a prophet who has every reason to resign his prophetic mission. After all, he had been beaten and put in the stocks (Jer 20:2). We see here plainly the personal cost of continuing to speak God's word, but Jeremiah could not restrain himself. The Lord's message was burning in his heart and he could not remain silent. How much the church of today needs prophets who will get into the counsel of God and then will speak out fearlessly what he wants them to say, whatever the cost!
Jeremiah spoke God's message fearlessly and suffered greatly for it. How much today's church needs prophets who are willing to do this, whatever the cost!
Ezekiel
The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit, with the strong hand of the Lord upon me. I came to the exiles who lived at Tel Aviv near the Kebar river. And there, where they were living, I sat among them for seven days – overwhelmed. (Ezek 3:14-15)
It would appear that the seven-day period during which Ezekiel remained silent was an expression of his sense of bereavement and perplexity. The silence, the location of the event, and the period involved (cf Job 2:13) conveyed his deep empathy with his people in their affliction. Undoubtedly his silence gave emphasis to the words he was later to utter.
Today's prophets need to give time to the true situation of the Lord's people, instead of shooting off superficial words that carry no weight because they do not have the heart-cry of the totally perplexed behind them.
Whatever perplexities prophets have to face, let them learn that they may complain to God, but they must beware of complaining about him.
Whatever perplexities prophets have to face, let them learn that they may complain to God, but they must beware of complaining about him.
First published in Prophecy Today, Vol 7 No 3, May/June 1991.