Speaking of Prophets (23:9-40) 195NOTES
23:18. For who has stood in the council of Yahweh? then let him see and let him
hear his word! who has hearkened to my word and heard? The "who?" (mf) ques-
tions are rhetorical; however, they are not meant to evoke the answer "No one"
(pace Duhm; Peake), as in 15:5. Job, it is true, claims notto have been present
to hear the goings-on in the heavenly council (Job 15:8), but prophets are ex-
pected to have been there, as we learn from v 22. Jeremiah stood in council
( 18:20), and so did Isaiah when he heard another pair of "who?" questions
coming from the heavenly throne, to which he gave a ready response (Isa 6:8).
The questions posed here may be truly open-ended, i.e., they could be asking
who, if anyone, has stood in Yahweh's council; but in view of what follows,
they are more likely directed at prophets who have not been in council. Be-
cause uncredentialed prophets are targeted in the prior oracle (vv 16-17),
some commentators (S. R. Driver; Weiser) and some modern Versions (Mof-
fatt; AmT; RSV; NEB; NIV; REB; cf. BHS) add a qualifying "of/among them"
to the first question (RSV: "For who among them has stood in the council of
the LORD ... ?"). But there is no textual warrant for this interpretive supple-
ment, and it should be dropped (as it has been in the NRSV). Verse 18 begins
a new divine speech, having no original connection to the oracle of vv 16-17.
stood in the council of Yahweh. Hebrew 'amad bes6d yhwh. To "stand" before
Yahweh is to be in his service (see Note for 15:19); to "stand in council" is to
stand ready as a royal messenger in the heavenly precincts, into which one has
been transported by means of a vision ( 1 Kgs 22: 19-23; Isa 6: 1-8; cf. R. Brown
1958: 420). The prophet Isaiah reported his call in these words: "I saw (>er>eh)the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up .... And I heard the voice of
the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' Then I said,
'Here I am, send me'" (Isa 6:1, 8). Prophets, then, are members of the divine
council only to the extent that they enter God's presence in the capacity of the
royal messenger and receive messages from him to be delivered to the people.
In this intercessory role they also bring requests from the people to God, which
he either grants or refuses to grant. The term sod means "council" or "coun-
sel," where in both cases the idea of confidentiality or secrecy is assumed
(Amos 3:7). All of God's great works begin in secret (Jer 33:3; Ps 139:13-16).
Compare comments of the great NT scholar, Johannes Weiss (1959: 14), on
the obscure beginnings of the nascent Church.
The idea of a divine council or assembly is very old, attested in Sumerian
and Babylonian religion, and later in Syro-Phoenician religion, as is known
from the Ugaritic texts of Ras Shamra (T. Jacobsen 1943: 167-72; H. W. Robin-
son 1944; Polley 1980; Mullen 1980; "Divine Assembly" in ABD 2: 214-17). It
has also turned up in the Aramaic texts from Deir <Alla (I 8; Hoftijzer and van
der Kooij 1976: 173, 179, 192-93; CS II 142), where reference is made to Shad-
day gods' having gathered in assembly. According to Jacobsen, the origins of
the divine council are to be found in a "primitive democracy" among preliter-
ate Sumerians, who projected terrestrial life into the heavenly realm, where it