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

A Profile of the Ancient Hebrew Prophet

of a covetous servant (2 Kings 5:26) and accurately forecast the end of a long drought (1 Kings 18:41). 12 The complexity of explaining the term nabi is illustrated by the fact that some eighty pages are devoted to the Hebrew term nabi and the Greek term prophetes in the prestigious Theological Dictionary ofthe New Tes tament. That book states: "The picture of the prophecy of Israel presented in the Old Testament is by no means uniform.It embraces such different phenomena that it seems well-nigh impossible to bring it under a single common denominator." 1 3 Robert D.Culver adds succinctly that "the der ivation of nabi is a matter of controversy." 14 Usually scholars attempt to ascertain the root meaning of a word on ety mological grounds, but with nabi there is no common agreement.In fact, there are four views, provoking much scholarly debate. 15 The noun is from: 1.An Arabic root, naba'a, meaning "to proclaim or announce"; hence the meaning of prophet is literally a "spokesman" or "speaker." 2.A Hebrew root, naba', a softened form of the Hebrew verb mean ing "to flow, boil up, bubble forth"; hence, "to pour forth words." Once popular, this definition is no longer given strong scholarly support. 16 3.An Akkadian root, nabu, "to call"; hence, the idea is "one called by God" or "one who felt called of God." 4.An unknown Semitic root, which does not itself occur in the Old Testament, thereby necessitating that the term will be determined by usage alone. The meaning of the original root is therefore lost to us, but at least the essential idea of "authorized spokesman" is clearly established by gen eral usage.The more traditional description would resemble this running summary from Gesenius' Lexicon: "A prophet, who as actuated by a divine afflatus, or spirit, either rebuked the conduct of kings and nations, or predicted future events....He spoke not his own words, but those which he had divinely received....He was the divine messenger of God, and the declarer of his will...." 1 7

Usage of Prophet in the Old Testament

Since the etymology of the word prophet is buried in antiquity, we must rely on the contextual usage in the Bible.Most scholars would agree with this statement: "There is really no way of talking about what the term ■ 44