#79 The Messiah Hidden in Plain Sight: Why Israel Missed Jesus + Dr Eric Tully

Prophets as Strange Sign-Acts in a Crisis Culture

Prophets are weird. Ezekiel lying on his side for 390 days, eating food cooked over done.

What's all that?

It's like these crisis moments when the prophets come. They're addressing systemic sins in the priesthood. Everyone hated them for it.

Okay. I mean, maybe this is obvious, but like the big question here is, is like, the prophets are talking about Jesus. They're literally describing him, how he's going to show up, what he's going to do.

How did Israel fail to recognize Jesus when he did show up?

Politics can skew our understanding of scripture.

If we were there, we've obviously, we probably would have missed it too. Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding God easier.

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What Prophets Are and Why They Feel So Strange

Really excited about today's topic of prophets, prophecy, and why did they recognize Jesus when he showed up initially? Why was there so much confusion? We're going to put it in context, and just the overall language of prophets and how it doesn't make sense when we read it.

How should we read it today? Mostly because Jesus fulfilled prophecy. He healed. He taught. He suffered. And this is exactly how it was stated in the Old Testament. So when he showed up and started doing it, why didn't people recognize him?

How could the entire nation miss their own Messiah? We're going to talk about it, but in context. So welcome to Biblically Speaking. We're going to ask these questions where you wish you could in church.

So many times I wish I could raise my hands in church, but we have Dr. Eric Tully, the professor of Old Testament and director of the PhD program for theological studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Prior to Trinity, though, you were teaching at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Nashitoa House Theological Seminary. Your research is on prophetic literature, Hebrew linguistics, textual criticism.

You wrote a book about it. And basically what that all means is you know how the prophets spoke and how we can understand it today in our own language. So we're going to be looking at some of the verses, some of the wonky things that prophets were doing, how we should take that literally or symbolically, and then based on their understanding of how they spoke and understood what they really thought when Jesus showed up.

So welcome to the show, Dr. Tully.

Thanks so much for having me here today. Great to be with you. And this is an exciting topic. It's actually one of the reasons that I originally felt a call to go into full-time study of the Old Testament.

I loved the prophets and I knew they were important, but I didn't feel like I was, I didn't feel like I had the tools in church growing up to understand the prophets well. And so, yeah, one of the reasons I think went into full-time study of the Old Testament was to understand the prophets and then help other people do that.

So I'm really glad to be with.

You today to have this conversation. I'm grateful for the opportunity. I mean, it sounds like we kind of have the same, I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong. I thought they were like oracles. I truly thought prophets were like oracles that saw the future.

It just never made sense to me. You know, I watch movies like 300 and I'm like, oh, so that's a prophet, but it's not at all like that. And I mean, the deeper we get into this, I feel like I've fallen in love with prophets like Elijah and Elisha and just the way they work is so different.

And, you know, what does that look like today? So there's so much misunderstanding of like what role they played and why they worked that way and how they got that way. But what I, yeah, I mean, let's just jump into it.

So prophets are weird. I mean, I think we can say that they have a very strange language and they say some things that are just so insane to us, just like in modern language. And I feel like this is a great conversation between what was weird back then and what is weird now.

Like, were they saying things that back then people were like, that checks out, you know, that makes sense. But like, for example, I have a couple examples here, Ezekiel lying on his side for 390 days, eating food cooked over done.

What's all that? Like, why is Isaiah walking around barefoot and naked for three years? Like, was this just something to do? Was that noble? What, what do you think when you read that? Was there like a change when you first read it versus after.

Your studies? Hmm. Yeah. Well, I think we have to remember that. I agree that the prophets do seem pretty weird. And I think the reason that they do is because they are living first of all, in a very different time and culture than we are.

Totally. You have to remember that they're, you know, cities back then were very small today. We, we might even call them towns, right? Even a big city for us would, would, would be very tiny, highly agricultural, high-tech for them is, you know, bronze.

So they, they, you know, it's, it's just a very different culture. And, and also when you look at when the prophets were serving in the Old Testament sort of chronologically, you, you find that most of the prophetic activity is at like very intense times of Israelite history, you know, at the time of the divided kingdom period, or at the time of the fall of the Northern kingdom or the time of the fall of Jerusalem and the Southern kingdom, or in the exile or coming back from exile.

It's these, it's these critical moments in Israel's history when God is doing a lot and the people are sort of being held accountable, you know, for their actions. And it's like these crisis moments when the prophets come.

So, you know, I think, I think that also contributes to the intensity that we find in these pages. And then, you know, I think a third thing is not only is the, not only is their culture quite different than ours in general, but, but, you know, even in language, there are different expressions, there are different metaphors, there are different figures of speech.

And so all of, all of that can just seem, seem quite different. But, yeah, you, you mentioned, you know, one of the, one of the crazier actions of, of Isaiah, you know, you know, we were told that Isaiah, you know, walked around naked.

Ezekiel was told to cook his food over human dung. Jeremiah...

Were those like idiots? Were those metaphors or was that like a literal...

No, as I understand it, what we get in the prophetic books is, is a combination of narrative, the actions of the prophet, and also the, the oracles or the speeches of the prophet. And those are, those are combined together into the prophetic book.

And no, I, I, I take it to be historical. And I mean, I, I think it's important to remember that we are hearing the instructions to, to, to do these things. And so we're able to benefit as readers from kind of imagining these things in our minds, but yeah, but, but, but we, we see similar things going on in Elijah and Elisha.

We, we see similar sort of the competitions between Jeremiah and the false prophet. So I think that these were real things that they did. And we call them prophetic sign acts. And that's where they use some sort of an object lesson, or they acted things out in order to really effectively engage their listeners.

Public Prophetic Sign Acts and Symbolic Language

Okay. So when they, you know,.

Let's picture Ezekiel, you know, cooking his food over done. Um, was this like a public act, you know, was this something where people heard of it or they saw it and they understood the metaphor or do you feel like prophets did this and then had to be like, so I did this because of this and they had to explain it, or was it understood in culture?

Like how much was being translated in a way that people saw what they were doing and understood why they were doing it?

Um, well, indications are that it was public, uh, sometimes, sometimes at the national level, sometimes, uh, maybe the prophet was acting this out in front of a, a local, um, gathering. For example, um, let's see, I've got my Bible software open here and I'll pull up Ezekiel chapter 12.

This is an interesting example. Uh, coordinates. Oh, okay. I got it. Yeah. I have, okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's, um, yeah. So Ezekiel chapter 12, um, the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel and says, you know, prepare for yourself and exiles baggage and go into exile by day in their sight, you shall go like an exile from one place to another.

Perhaps they will understand. So, so he keeps using this expression in their sight, right? This is something that Ezekiel is supposed to act out in front of the, in front of his listeners. And he's supposed to pack his bags, make kind of make a big show of this packing his bags, actually digging through the wall to make his escape.

And then, and then saying, okay, see you guys and kind of leaving town and then coming back. And it says, um, in verse seven, I did as I was commanded. I brought my baggage or my, you know, my luggage or whatever out of my house by day during the day, um, like I was going into exile.

And in the morning, um, God says that, that the, the house of Israel said to him, what are you doing? And then God tells him what he's supposed to respond to that. So this is just one example, but I think it's an indication that the people didn't always understand what the prophet was doing.

Right. And in this case, Ezekiel acts this out and everyone's watching him. Um, and then they're like, what, why are you packing? Why are you pretending to pack your bags and go into exile? And Ezekiel says, you know, I'm glad you asked.

It's because right now, um, you know, Jerusalem is still standing, you know, Ezekiel and his people are in, his listeners are in exile, but Jerusalem meanwhile was still standing, but he was predicting that in the future, the people of would also go into exile.

So you get the same, same type of situation with, um, you know, Jeremiah and his rotten belt. He's told, he's told to, you know, take a linen belt and hide it in the ground where it's muddy. And then go back later and it's all rotten.

And, you know, and then people are like, why, why is your belt rotten? And he's like, because this is what you're like, you know, you're, you're supposed to be an ornament for God. You're supposed to be something that makes God look good.

And, and instead you're like a rotten belt,.

You're corrupted by your sin. Yeah. Begging for the questions. It's like, please ask so I can.

Explain it. I think so. Yeah. It's, um, you know, the prophets had a hard job. It was, it was, they were often speaking very unpopular, um, unpopular things and, and, and not, they weren't punching down, right.

They were often punching up to those who were in power to, to the priesthood who was running the religious structures and to, uh, government officials and to the wealthy who were used to making things happen and people who were getting their own way.

And, and, and they were saying like, here, here's, here's a confrontation. You're doing what's wrong. You're, you're abusing the poor, you're engaged in sexual sin, you're murdering people. And, and people didn't want to hear that.

And, um, often the prophets were announcing, announcing judgment, which ran afoul of the political circumstances of the day. And, and so for, for a variety of reasons, it was, it was a tough job. In fact, Jeremiah tells us kind of over and over again in the book, you know, you know, man, I wish I didn't have this job.

Right. He complains to God. He's like, why, I don't want to be a prophet. I'm tired of, I'm tired of telling people things that they don't want to hear. Um, but then he uses that famous expression when he says, but it's like a fire within me.

And I can't, I can't stop. I can't stop from speaking. Like, this is what I have to do to obey. So no, you know, Jeremiah didn't even want to do it. And, and, but he had to.

Why the Prophets Were Hated, Mocked, and Persecuted

Yeah. Wow. That's such an insane way to spread the word of God. I feel like you don't see that quite often anymore of people doing things that are obviously, I want to say ridiculous in a way to catch attention.

So they have a chance to explain it in a way that like shows God. And, you know, we're kind of, we say that convenient times, we say it in safe spaces, but that's not.

What they were doing back then. You know, um, well, it's a, you know, it's an, we have to remember that it's an oral culture and so, um, you know, oral speeches and, and everything that goes along with that were extremely important to them.

We've lost a bit of that. You know, we've, we've kind of, we've kind of gone in our society, gone through a phase where we were highly text based, you know, maybe a hundred years ago. And now we're getting back to visual with video and YouTube and Snapchat and things like that.

And so societies have different modes of communicating. And I think in an oral culture, um, you know, they used a number of different strategies. Yeah. They, they, they used a lot of different strategies with like metaphors and surprise endings and, and these kinds of sign acts to get people's attention.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like there are some things today that people can talk about and it's like out of context. Like I, the first thing that comes to head, which is dumb is like six, seven, like, that's just like the new thing of like, it could be either, or same thing.

I don't know, maybe I'm not even like understanding it correctly, but you know, you a hundred years from now, they read six, seven, they're going to be, what is going on? Are they counting? You know, is there instances in the text where we're reading that?

We're like, what are they talking about? But they, at the time would have been like, yeah, we know exactly what that means. Are there examples in the text? Like, for example, I will make your forehead as hard as Flint.

Was that like hardheaded stiff neck? Like, is that just like some slang that they were referencing? You know, like put me as if I was there, you know, translate it. Can you do a 2000 year translation?

Some texts that maybe prophets were using that totally go over our heads.

Yeah, I did. I have searched that before that expression. And I think that's the only case in the Bible where we have that expression, your forehead as hard as Flint. I think it means stubbornness. I guess that's the way we use the expression hardheaded as well.

Some of the metaphors in the old Testament transfer over to the ways that we use them. But yeah, so some of it, some of, you know, metaphors are highly contextual. They come out of, they come out of culture.

They come out of our experiences. You know, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, you know, that would be like a proverb or a metaphor like, you are my sunshine. Right. Or he has a heart as cold as stone, you know.

So some of these things are based on just the regular experiences that we have in the world. And then some of them are highly dependent on our particular culture. Oh, totally. We don't use, I don't know if we use Flint.

But for them, that would have been something that was very hard. So some of it comes out of their cultural experiences that are different than ours. And then some of it comes out of the Hebrew language, which is different than ours as well.

So, yeah, so the prophets do say things that don't, you know, when we translate that into English, it doesn't really come across. For example, in Jeremiah 34, 17, God says to Jeremiah, or God says through Jeremiah to the people of Judah, you have not obeyed me by freeing your slaves.

So I'm going to give you freedom to experience death and plague and famine. Right. So it's a little bit, a little bit of sarcasm there. But it's also kind of a play on words on the word freedom. Right.

I'm going to give you the freedom to experience terrible things. Right. Because you're not freeing your slaves. Um, that, that comes across in English. Okay. But then there's another example in Jeremiah where God says to Jeremiah, Jeremiah, what do you see?

And Jeremiah sees, says, I see an almond branch. And God says, and in the same way, I am watching over my word. Now, when you read that in English, you're like, okay, that doesn't really make any sense.

But in Hebrew, the word almond branch is the Hebrew word shakad. And the word for watching over that God is going to do is the word shokad. So that's a play on words in Hebrew. Right. And you can only see it or hear it in Hebrew.

Uh, in English, it doesn't really make any sense, but, but God is using the almond branch as a part of this, this analogy or this expression to talk about, you know, watching to wait for his, his word to be fulfilled.

So, so sometimes there's things like that, where if you're reading it in Hebrew, it, it makes better sense of what the prophets are doing. They're trying to render.

That in English somehow. Okay. Yeah. I, I feel like I, maybe some of this would make more sense if I was like culturally there and like could experience some, some of their day to day life, but it seems like there's not a really big jump between what they were saying and how we understand it today.

Like there's not a few things that understanding it in context would kind of change the color of the whole text, um, that they did a pretty good job translating it. But, okay. So kind of moving forward, prophecy, now that I've understood it, you know, I've had conversations about this with Dr. Gary Yates and kind of like what you've already said, like they're not fortune telling, they're not telling the future.

It was really God communicating through symbols, through idioms and performance art, I guess we could say, you know, with them lying on their side and walking around naked. But in first and second Peter one 21, sorry.

Uh, it says men spoke from God as if they were carried along by the Holy spirit. So I guess we could like picture what that looks like, but the Holy spirit wasn't like writing through them like a typewriter.

Like he was working through their culture. He was working through the humor. He's working through their language. So how was like the Holy spirit shaping the way that they were delivering their message?

And how can we kind of interpret that of like man versus Holy spirit? You know, like it's, it's one of those communications that like, how did that work? Running my own podcast? I'm always moving too fast.

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Yeah. Well, um, I think the perhaps the most important passage in the old Testament to talk about the way that this worked is Deuteronomy 18. Um, uh, not the whole passage, but if we start, uh, for example, in Deuteronomy 18 verse nine, God, God says through Moses that when the people of Israel, um, come into the promise land, they are going to experience all kinds of practices that the nations use in order to try and get information from the divine world.

Right. So they, they want, they want special knowledge or they want word from a word from the gods to help them know what to do or what not to do, or, uh, to give them some sort of special insight or special advantage, you know, perhaps in war or in business or know who to marry or whatever.

And, and he, and he, he mentions, uh, in Deuteronomy 18, nine and following, he mentions divination, fortune telling, omens, sorcery, magic. And then he says, everyone who does these things as an abomination and that they are absolutely prohibited from, from doing any of these things.

And the reason I think that is, is that, um, you do these things when you want to, it's on your terms, you know, you, you, you do the right ritual and you get, you get the word. Right. So, so in other words, like, let's say I have a particular question I want to ask, there, there's a kind of divination called ecstasy, which in the ancient world, and that's where, you know, you, you, you have some priests, uh, who have these special skills and they, they have a, they have a, like a sheep and they do these rituals and they kind of pray over the sheep and they ask the God a question and then they kill the sheep and they cut it open and they look at its lung or they look at its kidney and they, and they see whether there's any kind of, any kind of abnormality or any kind of discoloration.

And then they, based on, you know, it's almost like reading tea leaves, except you're reading the organs of this sheep. And, and based on that, you say, okay, that's the answer to my question. Right. But it's on your terms.

You're the one that's taking the initiative. You're, you're, you're getting knowledge out of the divine word world, whether or not the gods even want to tell it to you. Right. If you, if you do the right ritual, you're going to get it.

And God says, that's not how I operate. Right. I don't, we're not going to play that game. You are completely prohibited from, from that. Not only because it's, it's asking questions of other gods, but because it's on, it's, it's up to you.

It's on your own terms. Instead, instead, he says in verse 15, this is how God's going to do it. He says, I'm going to raise up for you a prophet. And it's to him, you shall listen. And I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak all that I command him.

And so it's not, when we think about prophecy, it's not magic or divination or folk religion. It's not a direct conversation where God is, God is directly speaking to the people. And why is that? Well, that's because God is holy.

And if, you know, as we see in the Pentateuch, if people get too close to God, he kills them for it. Right. You can't, you can't interact, you can't see God or interact directly with God because if you do, you'll die.

You're sinful and he's holy. In fact, it even says that in Deuteronomy 18, he says, you know, the people are afraid and they say, we don't want to hear the voice of the Lord or we'll die. And, and God says in verse 17, they are right in what they are spoken.

I will raise up a prophet. So, so the prophet, you know, sometimes when we, when we hear the word prophet, we think it's like some crazy thing, but it really just means a spokesman. It's just a spokesman for God.

God gives his message to the prophet. And then the prophet re-speaks that word to an audience in a particular situation. And so there's two, there's two voices intersecting here in prophecy. There's the divine author.

It's God's message. It originates with him. It's true. It's coming from outside, outside the world, outside of human knowledge. But there's also a human author who is speaking in human language, in a particular point in history, out of particular experiences and circumstances.

And so theologians, you know, one of the words I like that theologians use is the word super intend that, that, that the Holy Spirit, you know, didn't just, like you say, didn't just use the human author like a typewriter, but he super intended the human author, not violating the human author's experiences or personality, but, but yet the human author is saying everything that God wants him to say and nothing else.

So they're, they're, they're working, they're working together.

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It costs nothing extra to you. And it gives a small kickback to me, which helps the channel stay alive. Thank you so much. Now back to the show. Whoa. Oh my gosh. I love this so much. I've never once thought of, you know, the charlatans and the manifestations like demonic for short, but manipulation, like summoning God on your own time versus like waiting on God.

Never. That's amazing.

Phenomenal. Great. Thank you for blowing my mind. But yeah, it is it is that that is in fact, the prophets are often any anytime they're talking about idolatry, when they're talking about divination, they are concerned about manipulation.

They're concerned about people who are using the gods for their benefit, rather than submitting to gods. Right. And the prophets are saying, when it comes to the God of Israel, the one true God, you submit to him, you obey him, you do what he says, even though it's not popular, even though it's countercultural.

Whereas all the other religious structures are about kind of using religion for your benefit. And so it's very different, right? It's the difference between revelation and folk religion.

Right. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Wow. I feel this is amazing. This is amazing. Okay. This is the amazing part of this podcast where you're like, I got up. I wish I could pause and like take a break and a walk to think about that.

But we got to keep going. So this is you would think, okay, if I were to summon my God and get the message that I want, dissect the sheep, see the lungs, see my fortune, whatever, but then to also receive revelation, like everything with Elijah, the pillar of fire, you know, clearly with God showed up, you know, kind of that, like it was clearly God versus clearly not God.

Revelation Versus Manipulation

Why were these prophets so hated, so mocked? You know, they they start doing these amazing things. They're literally delivering their spokespeople for God. And yet Jeremiah 38 says they cast him into the cistern.

There was no water, only mud. And Jeremiah sank into the mud. Or in Hosea, the prophet is a fool. The man of the spirit is mad. Is that just like spiritual attacks? Like, can we really just boil it down to like, that's the enemy just like trying to silence the Lord.

They were speaking God's shouldn't have God's spoken word over power. Like when that creates a mission. I mean,.

What do you have to say to that? Well, the prophets were speaking. You know, I think one of the things that makes them difficult for us to read is the fact that they were embedded in particular historical circumstances.

And so if we don't know our very well, if we don't know kind of the story of Israel's history, and we don't know about King Uzziah and King Jotham and, you know, and all of these, all of these battles and the enemy armies that were putting military pressure on them.

It's like, you know, then when the prophets reference these things, we're like, I don't know what's going on. Right. It would be like, it would be like if a space alien came down and heard us talking about, you know, some of the political issues of our day, like pro-life or immigration, immigration, if they'd be like, you know, I don't know, I don't know what you're talking about.

Right. Or so they see a sign in a window that says, you know, we are resisting ice. They'd be like, I have no idea what that means. Right. I have no idea what you're talking about there. So these are the circumstances in which the prophets were working.

And so they weren't just addressing, they weren't just kind of these abstract philosophers who were addressing, you know, kind of mental puzzles or wisdom sayings or kind of these esoteric religious teachings that, you know, you could kind of leave or, you know, take or leave because they were only for the elite or they were, you know, they were concrete.

You know, God is saying through the prophets, stop building your society on the backs of the poor. Stop trusting in your military when you should be trusting in the Lord. Right. Yes, Israel is a special people, but because Israel has broken the covenant that God made with them at Sinai, they are in rebellion against him.

It doesn't matter if all of the surrounding nations are worshiping Baal. That is absolutely prohibited. Right. So these are concrete, confrontational statements that are bound to make people upset, politically upset, religiously upset.

They're stepping on people's toes. I always think of, I don't know if you've seen the second Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers, you know, but Gandalf goes in to meet King Theoden, you know, who's been taken over by, oh, I don't know, some wizard spell or whatever.

And King Theoden says to Gandalf, you know, why should I welcome you? You have always been a herald of woe. Trouble always follows you around. You know, he didn't want to see Gandalf. He didn't he didn't want Gandalf to come and tell him he was doing something wrong.

And, you know, that's what we get a lot. We get that a lot. People persecuting the prophets because they're speaking truth to power. They're confronting kings who are used to getting their own way. They're addressing systemic sins in the priesthood.

Right. And so, yeah, everyone hated them for it. And but it's similar. It's similar today. You know, you raise certain biblical issues in certain contexts and you're going to get trouble. Right. It's it's not much different than it is today.

Yeah, I guess I feel a little silly frosty about like, why were people so mad when he was being called out? But you would think, like, because it's the word of God, like it would have had a different impact.

But you're right. I mean, anybody would feel convicted if somebody showed up and was like, you have to stop doing what you're doing. It's not right. OK, that that makes it a little bit more sense. Thanks for putting that into context.

At the same time, there are probably like false prophets saying the opposite. You know, just kind of false prophets.

That were saying, you know, it's fine. Keep doing what you're doing. Certainly. Certainly. So that that's what marks a false prophet. They they do. They announce kind of an invented word of the Lord for their own benefit because it's a career or because they they want personal power, personal influence of some of some kind.

They tell people what they want to hear. Yeah. Right. God isn't angry at your sin. It's not that big of a deal. Judgment isn't coming. Or, you know, Jeremiah may have said that that the exile will last 70 years.