Deuteronomy 18:22

The falseness of such a prophet is exposed by the non-fulfilment of his predictions. Jeremiah states the converse: if any prophet prophesy peace (which in the seventh century the false prophets usually did) and his word come to pass, then shall the prophet be known that the Lord hath truly sent him(Jeremiah 28:9).

It is true that -this test is explicitly rejected for the prophets of other gods (Deuteronomy 13:1-5); nor is the higher Hebrew prophecy nearly so much predictiveas interpretative" (Wheeler Robinson in loco). Yet we must remember that though the main burden of the prophets consisted of truths of morality and religion (the unity and righteousness of God and the ethical character of His demands) they were also concerned with the vindication of these in the actual experience of the people. To them truth was never merely abstract, they looked for its fulfilment by God in history. Prof. A. B. Davidson once said to the present writer: -The prophets were terribly one-idea'd men. Yet their one idea was the greatest of all, that God was going to do something." So Amos 3:4-8. The two most spiritual of the prophets staked their credit as the bearers of God's word on certain historical issues. Isaiah was sure of the inviolableness of Jerusalem and the survival of a remnant of the people (on this see Rev. of Theol. & Phil. iii. 7 by the present writer in answer to Guthe's Jesaiain Religionsgeschichtlicke Volksbücher); and Jeremiah was content to wait on events for the decision whether he or Hananiah had the word of the LORD (Jeremiah 28 esp. 11 b, see Duhm's fine remarks on this chapter in the Kurzer Hand-Commentar). Again after reporting the word of the LORD, that his uncle should come to him asking him to buy his field, he adds when the uncle came and did so, then knew I that this was the word of the LORD(Deuteronomy 32:6 ff.). Of course, behind all this was the faith that God had a future for Israel in the land, though the Babylonians had overrun it and Jerusalem must fall to them. If then Jeremiah himself so much depended for the proof of his message upon the issue of events, we cannot be surprised that D proposes to the popular mind the same test of a prophet's word. Though beyond our immediate subject we may note that the word of the Lord by the true prophet was not always fulfilled. This is explained in Jeremiah 18 and Jonah 4 as due to a change in the moral situation. Such, however, is not a full explanation. Sometimes, as in the case of the non-fulfilment of Jeremiah's own early predictions about the Scythians, and his slow arrival (only after the battle of Carchemish) at the conviction that Babylon was to be the executioner of God's judgements on Israel, the change in the prophet's word was due to altered politicalcircumstances.