Prophets or Predictors?

When I first read the Bible, I came across the word "prophet" and I figured that such a person had a privileged view of the future. After all, prophets could predict what would happen years ahead. They seemed to be superior people chosen to foresee.

Later on, I discovered that the word "prophet" has a different meaning and the prophets had a different vocation. The Hebrew word describing Amos and Isaiah and Jeremiah and others was "nabi" which means "to bubble over." The original description of these passionate people suggested that they were so very excited, so focused on their task that they bubbled over. These were people who were obsessed by their effort to understand God.

But when "nabi" was translated into Greek, the word used was "prophete." That word carried over to the English language and means "one who predicts" or "one who prophesies." Today we‘ve substituted the idea of prediction for that original "bubbling over."

One of the Old Testament prophets (described as a “nabi”) was Job. The author described him as telling his friends that he was so intent on confronting God that he vowed "I will seek Him though He slay me." Similarly, Shakespeare shows Hamlet voicing great determination as he pursues his father's ghost: "I will cross it though it blast me." And Herman Melville's Captain Ahab was depicted as a zealot in search of the Great White Whale. These were men whose waking hours were spent searching, wrestling, reaching for what they valued.

Each of these was a committed, enthusiastic "bubbler,” not a uniquely chosen person. The passion that lit their lives was generated by a hunger to grapple with their highest aspiration.

It became clear to me that my pursuit of God's presence is my own choice. I can't wait for some call or commission before I act. Jesus is reported to have said, "Seek first the kingdom of God...and all these things will be added to you." Whatever our goals may be – happiness, wealth, recognition -- let them come about as a result of our own “bubbling over” in pursuit of God in our lives.

Water in Winter

I swim daily at the Y.  It is fun in hot 
weather, but a bit challenging in wintertime.  Still
it is a daily treat, a kind of momentary retreat from the storm.

Water in Winter

Water in winter is fun if you're bold,
You put aside the wind and cold
The rain and snow - forget about it
Get in the pool and then you can shout it:
  WATER IN WINTER IS FUN

The women in charge get in the rhythm
They ask you to reach and kick right with 'em
To get in the spirit pretending to be
Out on a bracing cross country ski.
 WATER IN WINTER IS FUN

Outside the weather is foggy and dreary
But in the pool the spirit is cheery
Things will warm up with jogs and crunches
And high-stepping knees that come on in bunches
.  WATER IN WINTER IS FUN

We keep things steamy with gossip and jokes
While touching our ankles and stretching our strokes
We know that outside the cold is stinging
But here on the inside you'll hear us all singing
 WATER IN WINTER IS FUN

Get out your bikini, your bells and your belt
And hop in the pool; it's time that you felt
A surge of energy making its  way
And keeping you warm even on a cold day
 WATER IN WINTER  IS FUN



Larry & Ellie Gruman
Eugene, Oregon
See my blog at larrygruman.blogspot.com

Bubbling Over

In the Old Testament, several writers are identified as prophets. However, that word has a history, and this is it:

The original Hebrew word was NABI, a bubbler. And that name was applied to men who were so obsessed with their vision of God that they "bubbled over." They wrote poetry, dramatized situations, made frantic cries, wailed and tore their clothes. They were what one has called "intoxicated with God."

Theirs is some of the most ludicrous and the most beautiful phrases in the Bible.

Then, when the old Hebrew scrolls were translated into Greek, the Greek word describing them was "prophete." That may have been an apt description of the Nabiim at that time, but when it came into English translation the word PROPHET had a different meaning. It was more akin to "predictor" than "bubbler." So our English language has portrayed these God-obsessed poets as predictors. The rich tradition of these eager searchers for God has been re-cast into men somehow foreseeing the future.

What has been lost? The original Nabiim were wrestlers, searchers, explorers trying to engage God and putting that struggle into poetic outcries. Their reach into God's nature was a dramatic confrontation. But when their role is portrayed as armchair theologians, the powerful urgency of their mission is lost.

Herman Melville gave us a picture of a Nabi in Captain Ahab who was obsessed with the pursuit of the great white whale. Shakespeare showed us a Nabi in Hamlet declaring " I will cross it though it blast me." Job declares "I will seek Him though He slay me." These men show the eager thirst for confrontation that prompted the Hebrew Nabi, the prophets of the Old Testament.

Life and Death

The two core elements in human existence are mysteries to the rational world, not open to scientific examination. Those elements are, and always will be, mysteries. Those elements are LIFE and DEATH.

Questions about the meaning of human existence, the origins and the purpose and the guidelines and the value and the responsibilities of human existence are beyond the reach of our rational inquiry. We can examine life and death endlessly, but our reasoning does not lead us to facts.

Our effort to understand the human condition has led us to explore our being. We call this effort RELIGION. And the cornerstones of every religion are the issues of LIFE and DEATH.

The Judeo-Christian tradition has neatly divided the inquiry into two searches. The Old Testament deals with the issues of LIFE. The New Testament focuses on issues of DEATH. The writers bravely dealt with these issues, wresting meaning out of their perceptions of reality.

Old Testament writers, asking how it all began, fashioned stories about the original human beings and their successors. That led to stories about discovering the values of life, its directives and its limits. The steps in this odyssey all originate in God, the ultimate mystery. God can be imagined and His actions described, but there is notational proof of His existence.

New Testament writers were Jews who felt that the end of life had not been adequately considered in the 39 scrolls of the Old Testament. They found in the life and death of Jesus a message about death that completed the human story. The New Testament is preoccupied with death. Death is depicted as a new beginning of life, a graduation into union with God, the Creator of life.

What began in the human consciousness as a search for purpose, meaning and value in our being is sophisticated into religion. It is on one hand an escape from futility; on the other hand a shaping of our humanity into a satisfying mold. We adopt that mold by making a commitment to it.

Every human being craves some pattern of life that gives meaning to his existence. Christians are people who commit themselves openly to their understanding of the Judeo-Christian story.

How God Comes into Existence

In Johan Boyer's book THE GREAT HUNGER, he tells of a young civil engineer moving with his wife and two-year old child to a small town in Northern Norway. Their next-door neighbor was an elderly couple who kept a huge Russian wolfhound chained in their backyard.

One day the dog broke the chain, jumped the fence and killed the young engineer's child. The young couple were devastated at their loss. The whole community turned against the oldsters, shunning them, refusing to sell them anything, boycotting the sale of seeds in a spring season when a second sowing became necessary. The old folks were shriveling up, with little food and no prospects of a harvest.

One night the engineer rose out of his bed and went outside. His wife, alarmed, got up and searched for her husband. She saw him outside, sowing seed in the old folks' garden. When he returned to his kitchen, the wife was in tears and asked him why he did such a thing. He replied, "I did it in order that God might exist."

That's how God makes transition from idea to existence.

Update on Psalm 23

The most quoted hymn in the Bible is Psalm 23. Yet it contains a translator's mistake often overlooked. The psalm pictures God as a shepherd and human beings as sheep. The sheep "lie down in green pastures"; they graze "beside the still waters". The shepherd arranges everything for the sheep.

But suddenly there is an intrusion: a "table is prepared in the presence of my enemies". Biblical interpreters have labored over that text, proposing a number of scenes that these words depict. But there is no adequate explanation of a table laid out in a meadow..........flat land chosen above a hilly area.

The picture changes when " table" is properly translated. The original meaning is "table land" or "flat meadow". The shepherd prepares the meadow, clearing out the enemies of the sheep, the jackals and snakes and poisonous weeds all for the protection of the sheep.

So God is pictured as providing a safe living place for us, His sheep. The psalm might better read "Thou preparest a safe meadow for us". Then the entire hymn paints a harmonious picture of the Good Shepherd loving and caring for His sheep.

One final word: at the end of the psalm we read that that "goodness shall follow us.....". But the original word is much stronger. That word is better translated "pursue.". The last word, then, is that "goodness shall pursue me all the days of my life." That completes the picture of the Good Shepherd who actively cares for us all our life long.