3 - Micaiah ben Imlah: the costs of authenticity and discernment

Summary

‘Azarias’, I said: ‘You told me once I may find out who or what you worshipped when we got to Ecbatana. Might you tell me now?’ …

‘How would courage and truth and mercy and right action strike you?’

‘But those are not gods!’ I protested …

‘Tobias, for heaven's sake, what do you think a god looks like when he works in men?’

And to that I had no answer, so we hurried on without more talk towards Nineveh.

– Tobias and Azarias in salley vickers' Miss Garnet's Angel (vickers 2000:327–8)

Introduction

Thus far I have sought to set out the criteria for discernment of prophetic authenticity as found in Jer. 23:9–22 within the wider context of Jeremiah 1–23. The appropriate next stage is to consider a narrative exemplification of these criteria. For many biblical narratives are constructed around the articulation of central theological issues, and a narrative can explore elements of the issue that may be less visible in other genres. An appropriate narrative should usefully test the thesis so far, and perhaps qualify and/or extend it in various ways.

The question is: Which narrative? At this point almost all biblical scholars, with a rare unanimity, opt for the story of Jeremiah and Hananiah (Jeremiah 28), as a story whose concern is ‘how could one tell a true prophet from a false one?’ (Bright 1965:202).