Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks

by Walter Brueggemann

The prophets expose the ideology-enthralled regime of Jerusalem as failing in covenantal, neighborly practice. In venturesome poetry, they trace out the inescapable consequences of such a neighborly default. The prophets are voices of unrelenting realism in the face of deceiving ideology. We may note two matters about their way of speaking truth to power. First, there is a consistency of form in their utterance that is called by interpreters a “speech of judgment,” utterance that imagines a formal court filing against Israel. That genre of speech includes both an indictment and a sentence. The indictment is an opportunity to review all of the covenantal failures of the power structure. It will not surprise that the indictment basically concerns two matters, the abuse of neighbors, especially vulnerable neighbors, and the dishonoring of God. And of course those two go together as violation of the two commandments, love God and love neighbor. The urban elite, they assert, have not loved God. That refusal is evident in arrogance, pride, and self-indulgence, as they imagine they are the center of the universe and are not accountable to anyone for anything. The dominant culture has, in its chosenness, failed to love neighbor and so has failed to regard the weak, poor, and vulnerable as legitimate members of the community. The elite have manipulated the markets, paid low wages, foreclosed on homes, and managed the economy in their own interest to the detriment of others. The oth...