Prophets as Preachers: An Introduction to the Hebrew Prophets, The

The Prophets as Preachers: An Introduction to the Hebrew Prophets. By Gary V. Smith. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994, 372 pp., $27.99.

This introduction aims to serve as a primary text for upper-level college/seminary courses on the writing prophets or as a supplemental text for preaching classes. Gary V. Smith, professor of Old Testament at Bethel Theological Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, has also authored an excellent commentary on the book of Amos and the article "Prophet; Prophecy" in ISBE 3 (1986). The unique slant in this introduction is steady use of communication theory and the sociology of knowledge to evaluate the Biblical prophets. Smith analyzes God's use of the prophets as change agents in terms of the persuasiveness of their prophetic communication, the theology of their messages and their sociological involvement with their audience. While the author upholds a theistic worldview, his book may have secular appeal because of its focus on this interplay between prophet and hearers in terms of human motivations and responses.

The first two chapters give theories about the nature of communication and social change, the next sixteen chapters apply the theories to each of the sixteen writing prophets, and a final chapter summarizes principles characterizing prophetic endeavors. Chapter 1 explains factors that inhibit or promote transformation in hearers offered persuasive reasons to change. Chapter 2 considers whether the prophet held a socially peripheral or central position. It also introduces terms that will recur through the book, such as objectification, legitimation, externalization and internalization. While the vocabulary may be new, the ideas are straightforward and uncontroversial.

The format of the ensuing chapters is particularly conducive to achieving a comprehensive picture of each prophetic book. After a short introduction suggesting the book's key issues, each chapter has several pages on "Social Setting" that give the historical context, structure of the social order and social location and role of the prophet. The main section of the chapter, entitled "Social Interaction," presents an outline of the book and then follows the book's own sequence in a review of its content.

This review shows how the prophet worked to affect his hearers/readers in each part of his message. The sociological emphasis gives a sense of the tensions that drove the prophet to speak and affected the form of his message. Smith adds historical clarifications and cross references to other prophets. He handles matters of detail and scholarly disagreement in up-to-date footnotes that adduce sources for competing views but generally favor conservative positions. Each chapter closes with about a page of theological and social implications of the prophet for contemporary preachers, and then several questions for discussion. Willem VanGemeren's Interpreting the Prophetic Word (1990) is longer and more schematic, generalizing and heavily footnoted, but The Prophets as Preachers often has more analysis of a prophetic book's content.

Smith's book offers a glossary, a categorized bibliography and indexes on subjects and names. The considerable number of minor errors of versification and typography suggests that the final editing process was hasty.

Harold R. Holmyard III

Dallas, TX

Copyright Evangelical Theological Society Dec 1997
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