Hebrew Bible

In the Hebrew Bible, “prophecy” refers to the content of messages from G-d to his people. In common English usage, the word tends to be taken as a prediction of future events, but this is only one part of its role in the Hebrew Bible. Any message that G-d delivers to the people through a prophet is referred to as prophecy, whether it relates to the past, present, or future. While there are some prophecies that refer to G-d’s acts yet to come, many others simply relate G-d’s response to the people’s current circumstances or exhortations to remember what G-d has done for them in the past. The office of prophet in ancient Israel, as the deliverer of these messages from G-d, is a charismatic office rather than an institutional one. A person normally does not become a prophet by a human process of selection or designation (although there are exceptions, like Elijah’s call to Elisha); in most of the biblical accounts, each prophet is directly called by G-d to deliver a divine message to the people. While many prophets wrote down their messages (thus constituting some of the books of the Hebrew Bible), there were also other prophets who left no written records of their own but whose acts are recounted in the histories of 1 and 2 Kings.

One of the overriding concerns of the ceremonial and ritual laws in the Torah was the issue of purity. This concern did not primarily relate to spiritual purity or purity of conscience, as the modern reader may assume (though that was assumed as a necessary corollary to ritual purity), but rather to attaining a state of ritual cleanness before entering the worship of G-d. Eating certain kinds of impure foods, or coming into contact with corpses or with bodily discharges (under certain conditions), would render a person ceremonially impure. This impurity could be dealt with by undergoing the ritual purifications prescribed by the priests, after which one would be considered pure and in a fit state to approach the presence of G-d, either in the temple or in one’s own prayers. While the primary conditions of purity had to do with bodily states, the Hebrew Bible and later Jewish tradition also extended the principle to the necessity of being spiritually pure, especially in one’s observance of the law.

In the Hebrew Bible, the terms “redemption,” “salvation,” and “deliverance” all refer to the acts of G-d in rescuing his people. Redemption carries a connotation of having someone pay for another’s indebtedness or bondage (as, for instance, in the purchase and liberation of slaves), while salvation and deliverance evoke the image of being saved from a catastrophic event or danger. In many cases in the Hebrew Bible, redemption and salvation refer to G-d’s intervention in Israel’s national life by rescuing them from dire socio-political situations, as when G-d saves his people from their slavery in Egypt, illustrated in the following verses: “But Moses said to the people, ‘Have no fear! Stand by, and witness the deliverance which the L-rd will work for you today’” and “Bear in mind that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and the L-rd your G-d redeemed you” (Exodus 14.13; Deuteronomy 15.15). The terms also have a spiritual application, relating to G-d’s action in delivering people from the consequences of their sin, and this usage can be seen most frequently in the books of Psalms and Isaiah. While the language of “salvation” with regard to individual sins has been taken as foundational to much Christian theology, in the Hebrew Bible, that application is largely secondary; it is more frequently used as part of the rhetoric of national deliverance from the threats that face them.