A Divine Council?
This post was previously published on February 13, 2018, on a different platform. It was based on a lectionary text for Advent. Here’s a link to the sermon where some of these ideas originated.
As is our custom at TRP, we broke out the lectionary during Advent this past year. I know we are stretching back a couple of months here, but I wanted to revisit one of those texts because it has come up a few times in recent conversations (and because it’s super interesting). You may remember it, it’s the Old Testament text that seems to presuppose Yahweh’s leadership over a “divine council.” You know, that ole classic Christmas story.
No. Seriously. It is.
For all of the fans of Handel’s Messiah, I’m sure you’ll know it well. It’s the famous refrain from Isaiah 40, “Comfort ye … Comfort ye my people.”
As I argued in the sermon, we need to attend to a bit of background if we are to understand the significance of this passage.
Yahweh is imploring someone to offer comfort to a dispossessed people, that is, to those who have experienced the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, and quite possibly, their homes, by the Babylonian empire. To make matters worse, many of these people—the elite and the skilled workers who would benefit the kingdom—have also been “exiled” to Babylon. As a result, they now find themselves outside of their homeland, in very unfamiliar territory.
Critical scholars place our text 150 years or so after the ministry of the 8th century prophet, Isaiah ben Amoz, the main figure at work in the first 39 chapters (give or take) of the book. In Isaiah 1–39, Isaiah ben Amoz is warning the people of what is about to happen if the people continue on their rebellious path. In chapter 40, the context shifts dramatically, which alerts scholars to the likely presence of a new literary context.
Disaster has happened.
Everything the prophet warned the people about in chapters 1–39 has come to pass.
Exile.
Destruction.
Suffering.
And now—years after the devastation, after the people have claimed that there is no one to comfort them (see Lamentations)—Yahweh breaks the silence. Yahweh begins speaking to the people again, telling them that their punishment is over, encouraging them to believe (once again) that he is not done with them.
“Comfort ye … Comfort ye my people.”
When these words are set within their proper context, they are poignant. They are powerful. They are hopeful.
But they are also super weird.
Let’s update the language a bit, so you can catch it: “Comfort y’all. Y’all comfort my people.”
They are imperatives.
And they are in the plural, meaning Yahweh is commanding people (plural) to provide comfort to the exilic community.
It begs the question … who in the world is Yahweh talking to? Who are the (multiple) recipients of this command? Who is called to comfort the people?
And this is where we need to get some ancient Near Eastern images in our minds, primarily, the image of a “divine council.”
Think of a board meeting in a fancy office with a big oak table. It’s like that, but the meeting is chaired by Yahweh, who sits at the head of the table. Seated around the table to Yahweh’s right and left are his divine “aides and representatives,” who are involved with what is going on in the world, but who are firmly under Yahweh’s rule. Together, they meet and discuss Yahweh’s plans.
It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But surprisingly, there are examples of this image throughout the Old Testament.
The book of Job provides a classic example.
Many of us are familiar with the narrative introduction to the story of Job and his suffering. The narrator invites us behind the scenes to some important background information at the very outset—everything that happens to Job is framed by a heavenly wager between Yahweh and “the satan.” The characters of the story, Job and his wife and his friends, are unaware of what goes on in the heavenly courts. But the reader knows, and it completely shapes the narrative.
Here’s the short of it.
Yahweh is busy touting Job’s righteousness to the “heavenly beings” (lit. the sons of God). This group includes a character called “the satan.” It should be noted that in this text, “the satan” is a noun, not a proper name. It is roughly translated, “the adversary.”
The adversary is convinced that Job’s exemplary stature is due to the relative ease of his life. If Yahweh would allow him to be tested, Job would certainly show his true colors.
Yahweh agrees to this request (with certain limits put in place), and then all hell breaks loose for Job.
Through no real fault of our own, our reading of the introduction to the book of Job probably imports a cartoon character in the role of “the satan,” complete with red tights and a pitchfork (and, if the picture I found on the interwebs is a guide, a beer). In so doing, the oddity of his interchange with Yahweh is lessened. Church folks generally believe in (capital S) Satan, so they are ok with his appearance in the presence of Yahweh. It’s odd, but it’s not completely unexpected.
What we don’t so often consider, however, is this figure’s possible role within the “divine council” that meets with Yahweh to discuss world events, or in this case, the righteousness of one of the world’s inhabitants. Our anachronistic (and inappropriate) conflation of “the satan” with the Devil moves us away from an identification of this literary figure as a member of a larger group of quasi-divine beings that function under the rulership of Yahweh. And so, we may miss the point, or at least, we may miss the culturally-rooted image of the divine council at work in the text.
There are other OT passages that paint a similar picture.
Like Psalm 82.
It begins,
“God presides in the great assembly;
he renders judgment among the ‘gods‘:‘How long will you [the aforementioned gods] defend the unjust
and show partiality to the wicked?
Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.'”
Not only do we get an odd, boardroom-like setting announced with some specificity in v. 1—Yahweh is here presiding in the “great assembly” (lit. in the assembly of God/gods [elohim])—but we are also afforded a literary context in which Yahweh is judging these “gods,” who, again, seem to comprise the members of the assembly. According to the psalm, they have not been doing their job, which occasions Yahweh’s rebuke.
There’s a lot to consider here, but all we really need to be aware of at the moment is the text’s use of the image of a divine council.
One more text to prove the point, and it’s a weird one, so brace yourselves.
In 1 Kings 22, the prophet Micaiah is recruited (albeit reluctantly) to advise Jehoshaphat on whether or not Judah should go to war with Ramoth-Gilead. The Israelite king, Ahab, wants Jehoshaphat and Judah to join an alliance with him, but he does not want Micaiah to be involved in the process. Because of Micaiah’s past prophecies, Ahab is fearful that the prophet will deliver “bad news.” (In other words, he is scared that Micaiah will deliver a word that goes against what he wants.) And true to form, Micaiah’s prophecy stands in contrast with that of the other “prophets,” who have counseled Ahab to go to war.
What is really interesting is the vision Micaiah receives. (This is where things get super weird.)
The text recounts, “I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the multitudes of heaven standing around him on his right and on his left. And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?’ One suggested this, and another that. Finally a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will entice him.’”
This ambitious spirit then proposes to function as a “deceiving spirit” in order to trick Ahab. Surprisingly, Yahweh responds (I’m paraphrasing), “Go for it.”
Let’s put the difficult theology aside for a moment (because, really, what in the world is going on here?!). I’m citing it because this passage seems to provide yet another image of a “divine council” where Yahweh is speaking with his aides and representatives. Yahweh is clearly in control, but a question is raised as to who will go and do the work of tricking Ahab. An “aide” responds.
This is not how we envision things working, which makes sense, because we live in a totally different cultural setting. However, we must avoid importing our cultural assumptions—the things we believe about God and the world and humanity (and divine councils!)—back onto our reading of the ancient text.
John Walton reminds us,
The Old Testament does communicate to us and it was written for us, and for all humankind. But it was not written to us. It was written to Israel. It is God’s revelation of himself to Israel and secondarily through Israel to everyone else…. Since it was written to Israel, it is in a language that most of us do not understand, and therefore it requires translation. But the language is not the only aspect that needs to be translated. Language assumes a culture, operates in a culture, serves a culture, and is designed to communicate in the framework of a culture. Consequently, when we read a text written in another language and addressed to another culture, we must translate the culture as well as the language if we hope to understand the text fully.
Applied here, the culture of the ancient Near East presents Yahweh’s leadership functioning within a “divine council.” The texts mentioned above do not challenge the truthfulness of this notion. In fact, they seem to take it for granted.
So back to our lectionary passage in Isaiah 40.
Who is Yahweh addressing? Who are the messengers commissioned to go comfort the people? Well, it is not the singular prophet (or a prophetic community)—the prophetic figure shows up later in the text.
It’s the divine council.
Brueggemann writes, “It is widely accepted by scholars that the plural of address is spoken to members of the ‘divine council,’ the government of Yahweh in heaven that is peopled by angels and messengers.” Paul Hanson appeals to the relative normalcy of this in the wider context of the book of Isaiah and the ANE, “What we find in Isaiah 40 is a view of the divine realm that was widespread in the ancient Near East in biblical times…. [I]t portrays the deliberations of an assembly of the gods that was believed to order and govern the universe.”
In light of this, scholars (like Brueggemann and Hanson) identify the different “voices” in the text of Isaiah 40 as members of the divine council. In so doing, they provide a compelling (and highly contextual) reading of our passage.
[Yahweh]: “Comfort, comfort my people,”
says your God.
“Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.”
A voice of one calling [i.e., an aide at the table]:
“In the wilderness prepare
the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
A voice says [i.e., another aide], “Cry out.”
And I said [i.e., the prophet], “What shall I cry?
All people are like grass,
and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.”
[The voice above speaking in response to the prophet]:
“Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever.
You who bring good news to Zion,
go up high on a mountain,
You who bring good news to Jerusalem
lift up your voice with a shout,
lift it up, do not be afraid;
say to the towns of Judah,
‘Here is your God!’
See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power,
and he rules with a mighty arm.
See, his reward is with him,
and his recompense accompanies him.
He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young.”
Left to our own, I doubt we would intuit any sort of interchange beyond what is specified in the text. I know the voices identified above are somewhat speculative, but I think our reticence to demarcate these divisions is primarily due to our cultural and chronological distance from the text (and its ancient Near Eastern context). We wouldn’t be quick to think of a divine council either for the same reasons. But the scholarly proposal of diverse voices in the text helps to make sense of the prophet’s reluctance to preach comfort to a hopeless, exiled people. “What shall I cry,” he says. “These people are not faithful. They can’t see any hope or comfort!” To this rebuttal, the aides affirm the enduring quality of God’s word.
“Comfort ye … comfort ye, my people.”
It will happen.
I don’t bring any of this up (1) to try to convince you that there really is a divine council (that’s not the point; in fact, I think this is just a cultural image that made sense to an ancient people and is thus used here to get the point across—it’s not attempting to paint a picture of the real heavenly council) or (2) to make you disappointed by the “difficulty” of reading the Bible (as you read this and say, “I would never have gotten there!”).
I want to remind us that our sacred text, as Walton says, communicates to us and was written for us, but it was not written to us, which means there are some (ancient) images that require a bit of digging on our part if we are to unearth them. We shouldn’t be afraid of that. Instead, we should get a good study Bible, read with some folks who think differently than we do, pray for the Spirit to guide us, and then get our hands dirty. There are riches available that make the work worth the effort. (And if you need some added encouragement, remember, the Spirit speaks to us through the text. That doesn’t require a seminary degree. But the Spirit’s involvement doesn’t give us license to be lazy bums either. Instead, let’s ask the hard questions, read the footnotes, and by all means, listen to those who have gone before us—especially those who have gone before us and written some helpful books.)
We all long for application. We all hope that the text still has meaning for us today. But as I’ve said before, I’m convinced that some of the best “application” comes after much thought and prayer and work … not after reading your paragraph for the day.
So the divine council.
Yeah, it’s weird. It is decidedly not how we think things work. But the image is in there. So let’s wrestle with it.
In this passage, we confront a prophet who sees the situation for what it is: it is a bleak and seemingly hopeless period in the history of God’s people.
But in the silence, we hear from Yahweh, who breaks in and gives the instruction, “Comfort ye … comfort ye, my people.”
And like the prophet, sometimes a counter-cultural, and hopeful, message like that takes some convincing (maybe even from some unlikely sources) for us to believe.
