On Poets & Prophets

Honoured to be invited to write some reflections on Micah Singapore's Poets & Prophets project.

"Being able to worship God according to God-given laws was always a priority for God’s people.

The Bible describes to us that the Israelites often experience great fear and pain, especially in the times of multiple exiles, in the tearing down of their palaces, and in the destruction of their temples and places of worship.

Biblical writings bear a healthy range of emotions that match the Israelites’ struggles with faith, life and the world. To this day, they continue to remember and experience these events, and questions on who, where, why, how, and when are never far from their lips.

The Old Testament keeps a record of many of these events and questions. Amidst exciting narratives such as family dramas, friendship goals, political uproars, espionage and war, the Israelites’ complaints and laments over their plight and lack of shalom emerge usually in forms of depressing speech and angry tirades to God. In fact, almost one-third of the Book of Psalms are that of lament and rebuke!

The books of the prophets also devote large chunks of writings to fellow Israelites as prophecies to call out their evil and unrighteous ways, and warn them about the reckoning that is to come. Of course, a prophet’s life is not easy too; no one likes a harbinger of bad news.

Prophets do not actually always enjoy being one, and they lament and weep in frustration too (check out the books of Jeremiah and Hosea, among others)!

These writings are woven into the historical fabric of Israel, God’s people, and bear a healthy range of emotions that match their own struggles with faith, life, and the world around them. Yet in our Bible readings and the songs we sing, we tend to skip them like filler episodes in an anime so that we quickly get to the exciting and fun stuff.

But the immense space in Israel’s collection of writings given to these impassioned speeches by poets and prophets reveals to us some important truths. God is very, very serious about justice and righteousness. And that there remains a serious lack of them in this world.

“Negative” feelings like anger, sadness and hopelessness instead should remind us of the presence of evil in the world, and the reality of its impact upon us. They stir our hearts to yearn for justice and spiritual transformation, and to respond as God’s image bearers to the world. 

Yet since the prophets of old have their cries documented in Israel’s history, God also recognises how difficult being a prophetic voice really is – and God gives us immense space to express these struggles with a full range of emotions, even creatively!

In the Bible, they are often set in the art form of poetry. As a good friend introduced his PhD dissertation on the Book of Psalms: “Good poetry is like a good painting: The more you linger over it, the more it reveals. It is a deep well that never runs dry.”

Poems are creatively structured and brim with imagery and word plays; terse, yet collapses time and space for both poet and reader to engage and respond.

In song compositions, poetry lyrically meets another powerful form of art – music."

Read more here.