Communication with God

Parshat Beha'alotcha

I decided not to take the easy way out this week, which would have been to do a comparison between the two similar stories involving the Israelites complaining about not having meat and God providing quail and then killing a bunch of them for their insubordination.  Instead, I want to talk about a more general concept, inspired by a brief section in the middle of the quail narrative.  The topic is prophecy, and specifically, how the biblical concept differs from the kind we might imagine today. At the end we'll examine some very negative descriptions of prophecy.


Direct Communication

The Tanach often has God speaking to people.  From the beginning of Bereishit (Genesis) where God tells Adam not to eat from the trees, to the records of the prophets in the Monarchial period.  At the end of this week's parsha we see God specifically say that he speaks directly to Moshe (Moses, Num 12:6-8).

6 And He said: 'Hear now My words: if there be a prophet among you (neviachem), I the LORD do make Myself known unto him in a vision, I do speak with him in a dream. 7 My servant Moses is not so; he is trusted in all My house; 8 with him do I speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the LORD doth he behold; wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against My servant, against Moses?'

The Torah makes it clear that most (all other?) prophets do not receive direct communication.  Instead they get some other form.  Specifically the second most common form.

Dream Prophecy

In many cases divine prophecy is given through dreams.  This includes God's covenant with Avraham (Abraham) which happened after God made Avraham fall asleep (Gen 15:12).  The famous dream with Yosef's ladder.  God "visits" Pharaoh and Balaam in dreams.

Using dreams as a mechanism of prophecy seems a bit fishy from a logical perspective.  We all have had crazy dreams.  And while in many cultures dreams were used as omens or signs, or in more modern times as windows into the depraved desires of the human psyche, we don't think dream actually serve those purposes anymore.  What exactly dreams are is beyond what I wish to discuss, and it still is an active area of scientific research as far as I know.  The question I'd like to pose is whether you'd be able to recognize a "divine message" dream from any other one.  Presumably, there was some way to know, but for whatever reason, God decided to stop communicating to people in this manner.  Or does he still do it?  How could you tell?

Prophet of the Court

The next type of prophet mentioned in Tanach is more of a court advisor than a divine communicator.  The best example of this is David's prophet Natan (Nathan).  Nathan transmits messages from God to David, telling him to take better care of the ark and reprimanding him for murdering Uriah so he could sleep with his widow.  He also schemes with Batsheva (Bathsheba) to put Shlomo (Solomon) on the throne.  Nathan represents a trusted advisor to the king.  Whether he actually is communicating with God is not clear.  The text claims that he does, but it would be impossible to distinguish his actions from a high ranking court advisor working on his own thoughts.


Other prophets also played this role.  Sometimes, when their advice went counter to the king's desires they were dismissed.  Such was the fate of Eliyahu (Elijah) who was sent into exile and Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) who was thrown into prison.

Crazy or Ecstatic Prophets

The last type of prophecy is the one that appears to be displayed in one of those sections of the Torah that doesn't make any highlight lists, but when you read it, you wonder what in the world is going on.  The segment in question is Numbers 11:24-30

24 And Moses went out, and told the people the words of the LORD; and he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people, and set them round about the Tent. 25 And the LORD came down in the cloud, and spoke unto him, and took of the spirit that was upon him, and put it upon the seventy elders; and it came to pass, that, when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, but they did so no more (see below) 26 But there remained two men in the camp, the name of the one was Eldad, and the name of the other Medad; and the spirit rested upon them; and they were of them that were recorded, but had not gone out unto the Tent; and they prophesied in the camp. 27 And there ran a young man, and told Moses, and said: 'Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.' 28 And Joshua the son of Nun, the minister of Moses from his youth up, answered and said: 'My lord Moses, shut them in.' 29 And Moses said unto him: 'Art thou jealous for my sake? would that all the LORD'S people were prophets, that the LORD would put His spirit upon them!' 30 And Moses withdrew into the camp, he and the elders of Israel.

One note before we continue, the "did so no more" is an ambiguous phrase in Hebrew.  The words are "v'lo yasafu" (וְלֹא יָסָפוּ).  It is possible to interpret this as they "did not stop."  Regardless of this we have a description of prophecy that is an example of "mass prophecy" as in a group of people are doing something called prophecy.  The second thing to notice is that it's immediately recognizable by outside people that they are "prophesying."  The third thing to notice is that Yehoshua (Joshua) thinks that this type of prophesying is something that only Moshe (Moses) should do.  He's presumably seen Moshe doing something similar before, and thinks that Eldad and Medad are encroaching on Moshe's territory.  The last thing to notice is that the prophecy begins when the "spirit of God" rests on the people. We'll see this occur in some more examples we'll look at.

What exact form this prophecy is, we don't know.  When I think of public displays of prophecy, what comes to my mind are stuff like "speaking in tongues" or the guy on the corner with the "repent sinners" sign.  The Torah doesn't tell us what kind of prophecy these people were doing.  What the content of their prophecies were.  However, there is a similar type of prophecy that appears in the book of Shmuel, specifically with Shaul (Saul).  There are three instances of weird prophecy regarding Shaul.  The first one is in 1 Sam. 10:10-13

10 And when they came thither to the hill, behold, a band of prophets met him; and the spirit of God came mightily upon him, and he prophesied among them. 11 And it came to pass, when all that knew him beforetime saw that, behold, he prophesied with the prophets, then the people said one to another: 'What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?' 12 And one of the same place answered and said: 'And who is their father?' Therefore it became a proverb: 'Is Saul also among the prophets?' 13 And when he had made an end of prophesying, he came to the high place.

This is sort of a generic mass prophecy similar to the one in the Torah passage above.  No information is given, about what's going on. Who are these mysterious "band of prophets?"  Were roaming bands of prophets a common occurrence? Again it is catalyzed by the "spirit of God."  The second example with Shaul and prophecy is far more negative (1 Sam 18:10-11).

10 And it came to pass on the morrow, that an evil spirit from God came mightily upon Saul, and he raved in the midst of the house; and David played with his hand, as he did day by day; and Saul had his spear in his hand. 11 And Saul cast the spear; for he said: 'I will smite David even to the wall.' And David stepped aside out of his presence twice.

The Hebrew word used for "raved" is none other than vayitnabu (וַיִּתְנַבֵּא) the same word used in the previous passage and the Eldad and Medad stories above.  Presumably the JPS translation didn't like the idea of this being referred to as prophecy also, even though it's catalyzed by the same "spirit of God," so they used a different English word "raved."  Here we see the result of "prophecy" it incites Shaul to anger.

The last example is even more curious (1 Sam 19:23-24):

23 And he [Shaul] went thither to Naioth in Ramah; and the spirit of God came upon him also, and he went on, and prophesied, until he came to Naioth in Ramah. 24 And he also stripped off his clothes, and he also prophesied before Samuel, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say: 'Is Saul also among the prophets?'

This example is the second etiological explanation of the adage, "Is Saul also among the prophets," an adage that has lost whatever its meaning was.  This explanation was apparently penned by an author far more hostile to Shaul than the earlier one, since here Shaul's "prophecy" involves him taking off his clothes and laying down naked for 24 hours.

When you look at these three stories, with a modern eye, what you might say is that Shaul is having psychotic episodes, or perhaps epileptic seizures.  These types of occurrences would look to others as being from "God" just like many people see talking in tongues as a manifestation of the divine spirit today. 

What is Prophecy?

When we piece everything together we can get a picture of what prophecy might have looked like to the ancient Israelites.  Possibly we could even speculate how it evolved over time and then vanished altogether.  In the earliest stories, like these with Shaul we see prophecy has a very public performance aspect.  You see a prophet doing his thing, you know what it is.  The effects can be anything from benign, like with the band of prophets, to ridiculous, like stripping off your clothes.  Were these people mentally troubled or perhaps epileptic?  We won't ever know.  What we do know is that they were apparently respected by the public, who thought that the episodes involved communication with the divine.

The next group of prophets to arise is the "court prophets" exemplified by Natan.  These are the prophets who don't really have public performances.  They seem to get their messages in private from God and then transmit them to the kings that they serve.  This is probably the image of what you think of when you hear "prophecy."  Although there's really no solid indication that their messages are actually divine.

When the kingdom of Judah died out, so did the prophets that served them.  So, contrary to the Gemara's opinion that prophecy died out with Malachai because that's when God stopped talking to people.  It probably died out because there wasn't any need for prophets anymore.  Of course the idea of prophecy itself, in this public form, didn't die out at all.  It's just that Judaism decided not to recognize any of these later "prophets."

This brings us back to the two types of prophecy that Moshe appears to experience.  The first type is the same as the court prophets, and it's the one we usually think of.  Moshe communes with God and then relates the information to the people.  However, in this story, we see that there was also a type of public prophecy that the Israelites associated with Moshe.  Perhaps this story comes from an earlier strata of the Torah that was written around the same time as the stories of Shaul were.

One of the things that interests me about the Tanach as an atheist, is that it gives us an insight to the thoughts of people who lived a long time ago.  We are very quick to dismiss individuals today who claim that God is speaking to them.  We send them to sanitariums.  If they were to, for example, say that God told them to kill their kids, we would remove the kids from their custody.  We know enough about the human brain to know that it can often backfire in odd ways, causing hallucinations and the like.  To the Israelites, someone who hallucinated images was probably thought to be a true prophets.  They had no way to distinguish between a mental illness and a divine prophet.  One has to wonder how many of the prophets of the Tanach were subject to mental delusions. Or alternatively, how many of them were faking it as a way to power.  Finally, a question that should trouble any theist is why God doesn't communicate in a clear manner that couldn't possibly appear to be mental illness.