Whether there is any difference in the usage of these three words, and, if any, what that difference is, has been much debated (see Witsius, Miscell. Sacra, i, 1, §19; Carpzovius, Tntrod. ad Libros Canon. V. T. iii. 1, § 2; Winer, Real-Wbrterbuch, art. " Propheten"). Ha-
PROPHET
C33
PROPHET
veroick (Einleitung, Th. i: Abth. i. § 56) considers nabi to express the title oftlio.se who officially belonged to the prophetic order, while roeh and chozeh denote those who received a prophetical revelation. Dr. Lee (/«- of Holy Scripture, p. 543) agrees with Haver- nick in his explanation of nabi, but he identities ?-cie/i in meaning rather with nafti than with chozeh. He fur- ther throw- .nit a suggestion that chozeh i- the special
designati f the prophet attached to the royal house- hold. In - Sara. xxiv. 11. (Jail is described as "the prophet (nabi) Gad, David's seer (chozeh ."ami else- where he is called •• David's seer (chozehy (1 Chron. xxi,9), "the king's seer (chozehy (2 Chron. xxix. 25). "The ease 0f Gad," Dr. Lee thinks, "affords the clew to the difficulty, as it clearly indicates that attached to the royal establishment there was usually an individual styled • the king's seer,' who might at the -ame time be a nabi." The suggestion is ingenious (see, in addition to places quoted above, 1 Chron. xxv. .r>; xxix. 29; 2 Chron. xxix, 30; xxxv, 15), but it was only David (possibly also Manasseh, 2 Chron. xxxiii, 18) who. so far as we read, had this seer attached to his person; ami in any ease there is nothing in the word chozeh to denote the relation of the prophet to the king, but only in the connection in which it stands with the word king.
On the whole, it would seem that the same persons are
d by the three words nabi, roeh, and chozeh the last two tiiles being derived from the prophets' power of seeing the visions presented to them by God; the first from their function of revealing and proclaim- ing Cod's truth to men. When Gregory Xaz. (Or. 28) calls Ezekiel 6 tSiv ueyaktov t-o-rijc kcu IKnynrrfg livorrjpiwv, he gives a sufficiently exact translation of the two titles chozeh or roeh, and nabi.
Son, lines I he prophets are called "X~"'J l tsophiim \, i.e. those who espy, explore for the people, a "watch- man" Jer.vi,17; Ezek. iii, 17; xxxiii, 7). Such also is the usage of *TOVa (shomer'), i. e. "a watchman" i [sa. xxi. 1 1 : lxii. 6 i ; and roiim, i. e. shepherds | Zech. xi, 5; viii. 16), in ret. fence to the spiritual care and religious nurture of the people. < >ther names, as ••man of God," '•servant of Jehovah," and now and then ••angel," or •• messenger of Jehovah," etc., do not belong to the proph- ets as such, but only in so far as they are of the num- ber of servants and instn snts of God. The phrase
'Milan of the Spirit" ("_"". IIos. ix, 7) explains the agency by w hich the communication came. In the ap- pointment of the seventy elders the Lord says to Moses, '•I will take of the Spirit which is upon thee, and will put it mi them" (Numb. xi. 17). So \yth regard to Eldad and Medad. "the Spirit rested upon them. . . . and they prophesied in the camp." The resting of the Spirit upon t hem was equi\ alent to the gift of prophecy
(see I' Pet. i. 21 K
The word nabi is uniformly translated in the Sept. by Trpo<pi]-i]c, and in the A. V. by " prophet." In classical Greek, -no,;,/,, ;/<■ signifies one trim speaks for another, specially on< who speaks for a god, and so interprets his will to man (Liddelland Scott, 8. v.). 1 1 cue.' its essential meaning is "an interpreter." Thus Apollo isa Trpopi'inic- as being the interpreter id' Zeus ( .Ksehylus, Eiim. 19). Poets are the Prophets of the Muses, as being their in- terpreters (Plato, Phadr. 262 d). The irpotf>fJTai at- tached to heathen temples are so named from their in- terpreting the oracles delivered by the inspired and un- conscious udvTuc (Plato, Tim. 72 b; Herod, vii. 111. note ed.I3ahi |). We have Plato's authority for deriv- ing uavTlQ from paivopai (I. C.). The use of the word in ii- modern sense is post-classical, and is derived from the Sept.
Prom the mediaeval use of the word Trpofnreia, proph- ecy passed into the English language in i he sens,. ,,f . and this sense n lias retained as iis popular
meaning (see Richardson, s. v.). The larger sense of interpretation has not, however, been lost Thus we find
in Bacon, ••An exercise commonly called prophesying,
which was this: that the ministers within a precinct did meet upon a week-day in some principal town, where there was some ancient grave minister that was president, and an auditory admitted of gentlemen or Other persons of leisure. Then every minister succes- sively, beginning with the youngest, did handle one and the same part of Scripture, spending severally some quarter of an hour or better, and in the w hole some two hour-. And so the exercise being begun and concluded with prayer, and the president giving a text for the next meeting, tie' assembly wa- dissolved" (Pacifica- tion of the Church >. This meaning of the word is made further familiar to us by the title of Jeremy Taylor's treatise <h< I.ibi rty of Prophesying. Nor was there any