In the scriptural portion that was read this past week in Jewish congregations the patriarch Jacob, on his deathbed, speaks to his sons about the future destiny of the tribes that they will found and that will bear their names. “I will tell you what will befall you in days to come.” (Genesis 49:1)
The desire to be informed about future happenings and circumstances that may affect our well-being is common and understandable. The turn of the calendar year is a time when we read in print and hear on radio and TV prognostications regarding the future. No one can know the future with certainty, and, with all due respect for the experts and opinion leaders who are invited to share their predictions, some of what they foresee happening will turn out to be mistaken or quite different from what they envision.
Kings in ancient times had their soothsayers, and monarchs in Israel and Judea their court prophets. Their role was to inform the royal court about what would happen in the future and, particularly, whether it was an auspicious time to wage war or embark on a particular policy. Doubtless, sometimes the prophets’ or soothsayers’ words were influenced by what they thought the king wanted to hear.
Over the course of time the role of the prophet and the nature of prophecy evolved in Israel and Judea into something that went far beyond predicting the future. This development, though prefigured by the role of Nathan at the court of David and by Elijah during the reign of the Israelite King Ahab, came to fruition during the eighth through fifth centuries BCE in the careers and recorded words of the classical prophets of the Hebrew Bible.
The classical prophets were often reluctant spokespersons for the message that they believed God had imparted to them and commanded them to deliver to the people. “A lion has roared, who can but fear? My Lord God has spoken, who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:8) Jeremiah was persecuted and imprisoned by the royal authorities, but when he attempted to desist from prophesying, he felt God’s word “was like a raging fire in my heart, shut up in my bones.” (Jeremiah 20:9)
The prophets stressed ethics, morality and social justice as the path to obtaining God’s favor. Ritual and worship had their place but were devoid of meaning and of merit when they coexisted with injustice and oppression and with indifference to the plight of our fellows, The people of Israel had a special relationship with God going back to the Exodus from Egypt and the covenant at Sinai, but this did not exempt them from accountability for their misdeeds and indeed conferred on them a greater degree of responsibility. When the prophets referred to the future, it was less a prediction and more of an admonition, a portrayal of the consequences of faithfulness to the moral imperatives of the covenant on the one hand and of disobedience and disregard of them on the other. The well-being and very survival of the people and their commonwealth depended on their pursuit of justice and on their striving to model the qualities of mercy and compassion. Most importantly, along with the stern warnings, the prophets delivered a message of hope – that a chastened and repentant Israel would be restored to God’s favor and that humankind would eventually achieve an era of peace, harmony, security and well-being for all. In our troubled world of today their vision is far from being fulfilled, and yet it gives us hope and a goal toward which we, as God’s partners, must work.
Later this month we will be marking the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. My teacher, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who participated in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, looked on Dr. King as one who spoke and acted in the spirit of the ancient prophets. Like the prophets of old, Dr. King was eloquent and courageous. Like many of them he endured scorn, hostility and imprisonment. His oratory invoked the words, the lives and the example of the prophets. He spoke of having been, like Moses, to the mountaintop and having seen the Promised Land, and, in his speech at the 1963 March on Washington, he quoted the stirring words of Isaiah 40:4-5, “Let every valley be raised, every hill and mount made low. Let the rugged ground become level, and the ridges become a plain. The Presence of the Lord shall appear, and all flesh, as one, shall behold, for the Lord has spoken.”
Rabbi Barry Marks is rabbi emeritus of Temple Israel in Springfield.
This article appears in January 1-7, 2026.
