Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Jesai (Verhalten im Krieg): Rad -> Ritual des hl. Krieges; Prophet (Elia - Vater) als "Rüstung" Gottes

Kurzinhalt:

Textausschnitt: 43/13 During the wars with Israel and Syria of 734, ...
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45/13 The analysis of the passages by Gerhard von Rad has shown that Isaiah resumed the traditions of the war ritual, long dormant in his time, and transformed them strangely. He cast himself in the role of the nabi, of the time of Judges and the early Kingdom, who sanctioned the Holy War. These wars of the Confederacy, we recall, were defensiv. Since they were conducted for the Chosen People, on principle, by Yahweh himself, trust in Yahweh and his help was a condition of membership in the fighting forces. Moreover, victory was achieved by the numinous terror cast by Yahweh into the ranks of the enemy. Now as long as this confidence was coupled with the people's fierce lust to fight, everything went as well as the fortunes of war would permit. (448; Fs)
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45/13 The analysis of the passages by Gerhard von Rad has shown that Isaiah resumed the traditions of the war ritual, long dormant in his time, and transformed them strangely. He cast himself in the role of the nabi, of the time of Judges and the early Kingdom, who sanctioned the Holy War. These wars of the Confederacy, we recall, were defensiv. Since they were conducted for the Chosen People, on principle, by Yahweh himself, trust in Yahweh and his help was a condition of membership in the fighting forces. Moreover, victory was achieved by the numinous terror cast by Yahweh into the ranks of the enemy. Now as long as this confidence was coupled with the people's fierce lust to fight, everything went as well as the fortunes of war would permit. (448; Fs)
46/13 When, however, as we anticipated, confidence assumed the form of a prophetic demand to remain passive, to sit still and let Yahweh do the fighting, and to rely on the numinous panic to discomfit the enemy, difficulties had to arise from the conflict between the demand and the exigencies of mundane existence. That conflict became real in the case of Isaiah. The prophet demanded the "House of David," i.e., the King and his court, not to trust in the army or the Egyptian auxiliaries, but to "consult Yahweh," i.e., Isaiah. And what he offered as advice was trust in the roach of Yahweh that lived in him. (448f; Fs) (notabene)

47/13 The Isaiah prophecies require for their full understanding the consideration of earlier and later texts concerning warfare. The advice to replace the army by the ruach of God living in the prophet, incredible as it may sound at first hearing, will make sense of a sort, if we remember the old appellation: "My father, my father! the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" (II Kings 2:12). The meaning of the cry emitted by Elisha when Elijah was taken to heaven in a fiery chariot remains unclear on the basis of this text alone - one can only say that at least as early as the ninth century (the formula may be much older) "my father," i.e., the prophet, was considered the true armor of Israel. The implications unfold, however, when the cry recurs on occasion of the death of Elisha in II Kings 13: 14-19: The prophet was lying in his last illness, and King Jehoash (804-768 B.C.) came to see him. It was a time of war with the Syrians of Damascus. The King in his sorrow addressed the prophet with the words "My father, my father!" and so forth; and Elisha responded to what he must have understood as an appeal to his function as "the chariots and horsemen of Israel," by guiding the King's hand in acts of sympathetic magic that were to ensure the victory over Syria. The scene serves as an introduction to the actual victories reported in 13:25. (449; Fs)