The Prophets By David Heschel

The Prophets by Abraham Heschel is a fascinating book which aims to understand the prophet by studying and evaluating the totality of his consciousness, in his relation not only to God, but also to man. According to Heschel the prophets purpose was to convey the very pathos of God, yet throughout each prophetic book the imprint or voice of the author is still felt (p. xxii). For these men prophecy was not just something that they did from time to time, it was a way of life and part of their very being.
Who was the prophet? He was a man imbued with a deep conviction, an inner crisis. To the common man what was viewed as a slight act of injustice was to the prophet a disaster. “To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people, to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence…a catastrophe, a threat to the
For the prophet time was of the essence, there was an urgency in them not felt by the people. Jeremiah felt the hurt and betrayal of God and pushed and wept for repentance, yet any attempt at purification was hopeless. He, more than any other spoke about the wrath of God, and vacillates often between compassion and anger (p. 134, 140). Jeremiah portrays the dramatic tension in the inner life of God, they were His people and their tragedy was His own (p. 137, 142). For Jeremiah this rang true, he spoke a message of doom to the people he loved, forfeiting his own joy and acceptance, yet unable to stay silent. For “the prophet feels both the attraction and the coercion of God, the appeal and the pressure, the charm and the stress” (p. 145). It was as if the power and pathos of God stirred them into compliance. Their purpose was to inspire and change the people and fill them with a passion to understand God. If this purpose was not released, it became like a burning fire in his bones (Jer. 20:9). Even though sometimes they hated their mission, as was the case with Jeremiah, they were incapable of changing