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.