Your Sons & Daughters Shall Prophesy - Prophetic Gifts Today In The New Testament Church

Mission: What Was a Prophet?

3. Gad (2 Samuel 24:11; 1 Chronicles 21:9; 29:29; 2 Chronicles 29:25) 4. Hanani (2 Chronicles 16:7, 10; 19:2) 5. Heman (1 Chronicles 25:5) 6. Iddo (2 Chronicles 9:29; 12:15) 7.Jeduthun (2 Chronicles 35:15) 8. Samuel (1 Samuel 9:19; 1 Chronicles 9:22; 26:28; 29:29) 9. Zadok (2 Samuel 15:27) Concerning the two words translated seer, Leon Wood suggests that "these terms refer to the revelational aspect of the prophets' work, when they heard from God and discerned His will." 6 D. P. Williams identifies the seer as "one that sees in a trance, endowed with the faculty of seeing in the Spirit by Divine intuition, and of looking through the darkness of the then present hour with illumination upon and toward the future." 7 The two Hebrew terms translated seer emphasize the subjective element a personal reception of divine revelation by visionary seeing or insight. Walter Kaiser writes: "A roeh is one who is given insight into the past, present, and future [i.e., a 'seer']. A hozeh is one who is given his message in a vision [i.e., a 'visionary' 8 ]." 9 Since a few people were actually called by both terms, nabi and hozeh, it appears that the terms, when referring to a prophet, could be inter changeable. Three examples are Gad, Iddo and particularly Amos. 10 1 Chronicles 29:29 (NIV) uses all three terms in one verse: "As for the events of King David's reign . . . they are written in the records of Samuel the seer (roeh), the records of Nathan the prophet (nabi) and the records of Gad the seer (hozeh)." 1 Samuel 9:9 (KJV) indicates that the ministries of prophet and seer were substantially identical: "Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for he that is now called a Prophet [nabi] was beforetime called a Seer [roeh]." The Scripture makes no clear distinction concerning these designations. It seems logical, therefore, that a prophet could be called by any of the three terms. Further proof that there is no major difference between the roeh-hozeh and the nabi is the fact that "seers" were also spokesmen for God, not just receivers of messages. 11 Nabi describes the prophet objec tively as the spokesman for the message, whereas roeh and hozeh refer to that same person subjectively as a seer or visionary who receives the mes sage in a pictorial mode of revelation. Bible seers like Samuel (and Elijah and Elisha, who were not so desig nated) could "see" who was coming to visit and for what (1 Samuel 9:15-16), know when donkeys had been lost and found (1 Samuel 9:20), detect whispers in the king's bedchamber (2 Kings 6:12), discern the deceit 43 ■