BibleProject - The Spirit and Prophecy in the Hebrew Bible

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

Spirit of God E4 —  So far in this series, we've looked at how the Spirit is connected to life and wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. The third most consistent idea associated with the Spirit is God's word, or speech, happening through a human; the Bible calls this prophecy. While most ancient prophecy involved deities taking over a person’s mind, we see a different experience among many of Israel’s prophets. In this episode, Jon and Tim explore this spectrum and focus on prophets like Ezekiel and Micah who experienced a true partnership with the Spirit as they spoke for God. CHAPTERS Recap and the Breath and Word of God in Creation (0:00-10:33) Ancient Prophets as Madmen and Maniacs (10:33-24:47) The True Prophet Template in Ezekiel (24:47-38:29) More of the Gold Standard in Micah (38:29-4:16) OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT View this episode’s official transcript. REFERENCED RESOURCES Tim refers to Hebrew Bible  Jack Levison, though not referencing any specific work. Check out Tim's extensive collection of recommended books here. SHOW MUSIC “Mist of Blessing ft. Marc Vanparla” by Lofi Sunday “Cool Breeze” by Lofi Sunday, Tbabz “Cherish ft. PAINT WITH SOUND” by Lofi Sunday SHOW CREDITS Production of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey and Aaron Olsen edited today’s episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty writes the show notes. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is Bible Project podcast, and we're talking about the Spirit of God. The biblical authors have a word that can be translated, wind, or breath, or mind, and spirit. It's the Hebrew word ruach. In Greek, it's penuma. It's the personal and visible, divine presence of the Creator God. It sustains all of life, and it gives us wisdom so we can fulfill our callings as humans. God's Ruach animates people to represent God to rule on God. to rule on God's behalf, I wouldn't be surprised then that one of the ways they're going to rule

would be to talk and represent God in speech. As we talk about prophecy, we need to appreciate how the ancients understood and experienced prophets in Israel and around Israel's neighbors. The prophets were commonly experienced as maniacs. People out of their minds. They channeled the voice of the gods while losing their sense of self. This conception of prophecy is like a If a God is going to speak through a human, the human agency has to be canceled or overpowered by the divine agency speaking through them. In the Hebrew Bible, we have stories of people acting this way. But alongside this portrait is a mode of prophecy that the biblical authors want to highlight. It doesn't require you to lose yourself.

It's a way to speak on behalf of God as a true human and divine partner. The key example of this is the prophet Ezekiel. He very much had this experience of something beyond himself influencing him. But all the depictions of him speaking, sometimes of him sitting down and writing, show him in full possession of his faculties. It's a heightening of Ezekiel's mind so that he has clarity. He can see things that no one else can see. Today, Tim Mackie and I look at the biblical portrait of prophecy.

Humans in partnership with the spirit as they speak for God. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hi Tim. Hello, John Collins. Hello. It's good to be here with you. It is.

We are exhaling Ruach as we speak these greetings to each other. This is true. And it's what we are talking about. That's pretty meta. God's a rock in your nostrils. Yeah. God and my nose. It's one grass way to think about it.

It's an odd way to think about God. But the biblical authors want to mess with our categories and word things in ways that force you to think about the nature of God and of human life and all through this language about breath or wind. Yeah, you latched onto breath as kind of a centering aspect of it. Yeah, yeah. That is the most intimate part of Ruach that you breathe it in.

Yeah, when I see it blowing the trees, you know, above me as I walk around my neighborhood, I mean, yeah, it's not intimate, but it feels like, whoa, that's something powerful. It's moving that tree. I couldn't do that to that tree. More powerful than me. But then it's also intimate coming in and out of my body and all my neighbors, keeping us alive. And then at some point, we begin to talk about it as ours. It's my ruach.

Yes, but that my is always like in scare quote marks because it's been loaned to me or it is made available to me to keep me alive, but it's not mine. I didn't generate it, and I have no control over how long it's available to me. So it's kind of mine and quote marks. Ruach provides the biblical authors with a pretty rich palette of ideas, non-visible, but more real than anything else, actually, because everything else is temporary. and material and breaking down, right? But man, whatever energy that originated and this sustaining all of creation,

that's got to be the most real thing there is because it never changes. It's like the constant underneath all of the flux and change. So it's invisible, it's ultimate reality, and what I wanted to do is walk us through the three most consistently connected ideas with Ruach throughout the Hebrew Bible specifically

and so the first one is life which is right there on pages 1 and 2. God's breath brings about living creatures. The second was wisdom. So we looked at the Joseph story, creation of the tabernacle, Joshua, Daniel.

We didn't even look at the spirit in the book of Proverbs, but we could have Lady Wisdom as a Ruach. She pours out on people to fill them with wisdom. So it's a very vivid image of God's wisdom becoming like a liquid that gets poured into people like they drink it. Anyway, we didn't even look at that. We could have, but there wasn't time.

So I want to take us now to the third most consistent idea that's associated with Ruach. So we had life, we had wisdom. And now we move to God's word. Speech is deeply connected to God's Ruach in the storyline of the Bible. both God's own speech, but then primarily what I want to look at is God's speech happening through human speech. The biblical word for that in English is prophecy. Prophecy. Prophecy. A human speaking the word of God.

All right. Let's get into that. And we'll do an episode here on this for Hebrew Bible. Then later in these conversations, we'll come back to it specifically for the New Testament because there's a few more layers to it there. So, prophecy in the spirit of God and the Word of God in the Hebrew Bible. So let's just start with the basics, as always, page one, paragraph one. In the beginning, God created the skies and the land. Now, the land was wild and waste, and darkness was over the face of the deep, abyss waters, and the ruach of God was there hovering over the surface of the waters,

and God said, dot, dot, dot. Well, what he says is let there be light. And there was light, and that kicks off the activity of day one. Day one, when God separates light from dark. And then the next days to follow, making up the six days of creation. Right, and God says a lot of things. God speaks, yeah, more than seven times, you know, over the seven days.

Seven days, but more than seven times. Ten words. Ten times where the narrator says, and God said. Yeah. Yeah. So the word said here is just the Hebrew verb Viomer, connect to the verb Amar, which is to speak or to say. Then there's another Hebrew word for word or speak,

Devar. Yeah, we talked about that in the Ten Commandment series. Exactly, yeah. So maybe they're so close to Devar and Amar. They're like our English word speak and say. Okay. And it's very interesting and Jewish. and Christian readers have noted this little connection for millennia,

right here in these opening sentences of Genesis, that right after the ruach of Elohim, God, is hovering over the surface of the waters, God spoke. Yeah. There's the intimate connection between speaking and breath. Because you could translate this, the breath of God hovered over the surface of the waters, and God said, ooh, that's right. That's interesting.

Yeah. So what's fascinating is there was an ancient Israelite poet that saw the connection. The author of what we call Psalm 33 begins with a meditation on the nature of creation. And one key line from it is verse 6. By the word, the devar of Yahweh, the skies were made. And by the ruach of his mouth, all of their inhabitants were all their host. Is that usually translated breath? Yes, I think it probably is.

NIV, breath of his mouth ESV, breath of his mouth King James, breath of his mouth New American Standard, breath of his mouth NRSV, breath of his mouth I think because of the mouth Yeah, it would be very awkward to say the spirit of his mouth

Or the wind of his mouth Yeah, exactly, right. Right? Yep, that's right, yeah. But it's the Ruach. But it's the Ruach. So this poet saw a deep connection between the Ruach blowing

in the chaos and then God's breath penetrating the darkness and beginning to bring order as two sides of the same coin. Hmm. I think we just end right here and I can just kind of reflect on this for the rest of the day. And actually notice this about Psalm 33 verse 6. The word is associated with the making of the skies. The ruach is associated with the making of... Oh, the hosts of the heavens. Creatures. All of their host. Creatures. Creatures are things that move. That means they have.

of ruach, energy. Whereas word is often about purpose or order. Okay. And so notice that word is associated with the making of the sky roof. Yeah. The blue roof. Right. The rakia.

That's day two of creation. Separating waters above from waters below. Waters above are called the skies. You bring order with your word. Yep. But you create life with your breath. Isn't that cool? That's cool.

But they're put in parallelism. Yeah. God's word and ruach are intimately connected. So in the biblical imagination, humans are appointed on the land as images, representatives of the creator of God, specifically to rule on God's behalf, and to represent God's purpose or will,

will involve them speaking words to each other, ideally words that represent what God desires. So I'm just trying to paint a category for prophecy. Because I say the word prophecy and a whole bunch of things come to our mind that may or may not be associated with what the biblical authors care about. So I'm just trying to build from the ground up from the Genesis 1 story, which is God's Ruach is behind anything that moves. And then God's Ruach animates these specific creatures to represent God,

specifically to rule on God's behalf. So I wouldn't be surprised then, where I would expect that one of the ways they're going to rule would be to talk and represent God in speech. Yeah, okay. So real quick, kind of vocabulary intro, people who speak the word of God in the Hebrew Bible are called by a variety of titles.

One is the Hebrew word navi, connected to the Hebrew word navva, which probably in its Semitic root It means something like to announce or proclaim. Okay. Proclaimers? Mm-hmm. Proclaimers.

But it specifically became assigned to people who announced a word from a deity to people. But then there are all kinds of other titles given to a Navi throughout the Hebrew Bible. One of them is the one who sees or a seer or a man of Elohim, Ish Elohim, Elohim's man, a messenger of Yahweh, which can refer. for the angels. It is for spiritual beings. You can also refer to human messengers of Yahweh. In fact, it often does. And one interesting one in Isaiah and Habakkuk is the watchman, which is what you call somebody who stands on the city walls by the front gate. Scanning for who's coming.

The watchman. The watchman. But these are all ways of talking about somebody who sees more than your average person. they are closely connected to the divine and then are marked out to speak or announce on behalf of God because when I say the word prophecy sure you tell me what pings in your mind yeah I guess growing up I actually grew up in a tradition that

didn't think prophecy happened and so probably wasn't until oh it was my first year of marriage Tristan and I were in Greece and we were working on a sailboat and we were having a really hard time and one of the people on the boat came up to me and it was the very first time

so I said, I have a word for you from God. Meaning a word of prophecy. Prophecy, that is a word from God for you. Yeah. And they came from a tradition where that was just normal. We just did that. That was my first encounter with that. Yeah. So my hunch is that person was not like

quivering or shaking with her eyes rolled back in their head. Right, no. Yeah. Nope. they were full possession of their faculties. Yeah. But they really had a sense that God wanted to say something to you and that they were... God gave them a picture. They wanted to give that to me.

Yeah. They didn't want to interpret it for me. They just wanted to give it to me. Yeah. So what you experienced on the sailboat is a unique contribution that the Hebrew Bible and the Messianic Christianity gave to the world, which is somebody representing God's speech who's in full possession of their family. faculties with a sound mind telling you what they think God is saying. Right.

That is not at all how many cultures imagine prophecy working. Oh, right. Okay. And definitely not in the ancient world. Oh. So what came to mind for many, if not most ancient people, when they thought of the prophets, was a raging person out of their mind as if possessed were taken over by some mind other than their own.

Okay. Those were the prophets. Yes. Yeah. And not only that, but there are many depictions of that kind of prophecy in the Bible itself. So let's look at some. Okay. Because there actually is a diverse portrait of people speaking the prophetic word of God under the influence of Ruach. And I think part of the challenge throughout the history of readers of the Bible is like how to sort out all these very different portraits of the prophetic word.

the word of God being spoken through people. Yeah. So let's look at some wild ones. Okay. Okay. So I'm just going to go to one well-known story. Okay. I'm kind of set the pattern here.

Israel's first king is the guy named Shaul or Saul, the one who has asked for. In chapter 19, what we're told is Saul's going down a road and what he's doing and why is super interesting. We don't have time to talk about it. But we're told the ruach of God rushed upon him. And this word rush is really interesting. because it's used elsewhere to describe like a mob rushing down a hill or a fire breaking out quickly. Okay. Rushing upon a bush.

Okay. So like to break out. It's like a breaking out. And this is the word used about a dozen times throughout the Hebrew Bible. When somebody has a powerful sudden encounter with God's ruach, this is the verb used. Okay. And so he went along the road prophesying. he stripped off his clothes

and he ended up going to Samuel, the prophet, prophesying in front of Samuel and just laid down naked on the road all day and all night. So much so that people begin to say, whoa, is Shaul like, is he joining the merry band of the prophets? Who go around like playing music

and speaking words from God? The whole picture here is of sudden, craziness. And kind of like lack of control, losing control. Is Saul King at this point? He is.

Yeah. Which is why people are scandalized. And a big portrait of Saul's story is he does begin to lose his mind in the story as David becomes king in his place. So this behavior of some prophets of God in the Hebrew Bible

or nation Israel became known and described with a variety of words. One of them is a phrase you'll come across a handful of times in the prophets, which is the word it gets translated either as maniac or madman. Okay. So, Elisha, the prophet, Elisha, the protege of Elijah. God tells Elisha, just like he told Samuel, to go anoint a new king over Israel,

because the current one's really bad. And it's a guy named Yehu or Jehu. This is in Second King's Chapter 9. And so Elisha comes to visit. Jayhun's like, hey, you're going to become king. Stuff's about to go down. Just want to get you ready. And so Elisha leaves the tent that they're like talking and having this conversation. And Jayhu comes out. And his officers are all standing outside the tent. And they ask him like, is everything okay? What they say is, is there Shalom? They say, why did this madman come to you? Referring to Elisha. Yeah. They call him the madman. This is the Hebrew word mesuga. Okay. So it can also refer to somebody who got

so mad, like literally angry, that they lose self-control of their body. Wait, what's the word in Hebrew? Meshuga. Meshah. Yeah. It's related to anger. Yes, like an outbreak of rage. Wow.

So it becomes like a pejorative term. It's like, that crazy guy. Yeah. He lost his mind. Yeah. That's this word, Meshuga. Meshagah. So this was a popular term attached to prophets.

So that's a thing in the Hebrew Bible. And we could look at more passages where prophets gained this reputation as madmen. Loss of self-control. Okay. So this was typical of not just prophets of Yahweh, prophets of all the gods and Canaan. Yeah. Think of the well-known story of Elisha's predecessor, Elijah, his showdown with the prophets of Ba'al. on Mount Carmel, this is First Kings 18.

Israel, under King Ahab's leaderships, following now two gods, Yahweh and the god Ba'al, who's like a patron god of the people of Tyrant's Sidon up in the north, north of Israel. And so Elijah, who's a prophet Yahweh, says, no more of this, we're gonna have a showdown on Mount Carmel, Mount Garden, and the God who answers

the prayers of their followers with fire from the sky, that lights up the sacrificial altar. That's who we'll follow. That's how we'll know who the real God is. So he lets the prophets of Ba'al do their thing first. And so there's this kind of well-known description in First King's 18, where the prophets are doing their thing all day, calling out to Ba'al. And they start leaping, dancing, leaping around the altar.

And then they start self-mutilating, like cutting themselves with blades and crying out in loud voices for hours on end. And then this word to prophesy or to act as a prophet is used in association with this kind of crazy activity. This is just the culture of the land. And you can kind of see what it speaks to is a way of viewing the world that if and when a human becomes a vehicle of a God or a spiritual being

to speak to people, it has to, as it were, cancel out or put on pause that human's mind and self-control and body. That was the common idea. It's a way of imagining the world to say, God and humans are so opposite and different that if a God's going to speak through a human, the human consciousness just has to go on pause. And there was something about even the Israelite prophets like Elijah. This was a conception of prophecy and a way that certain Israelite prophets were viewed. They were viewed. Did they see themselves as a different type of mouth of God? So here's where I'm going to go.

The next step is to say, I think the biblical authors want us to see this portrait of prophecy, but they also want to put another portrait in front of us that they think is the real deal or the more authentic. A view of prophecy grounded in the worldview of Genesis Chapter 1 and 2, which they think is different than this. But what I'm trying to highlight is this conception of prophecy is like if a God is going to speak through a human, the human agency has to be canceled or overpowered by the divine agency speaking through them.

And it speaks to a conception that the divine and the human can't go together. Okay. So for Saul, he does kind of lose his mind. Yeah, yeah. And the story just says, Ruach of Elohim, rushed on him. So the story doesn't allude to any sense of like,

yeah, and this is not really legit. No, that story itself doesn't give you that clue. Just wanted to state that. What we haven't looked at is all these other descriptions of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible that are more common, that speak to a prophet being in full possession of their faculties. Okay.

And that the spirit is actually brought in to talk about a heightening or an elevating of their consciousness, not a canceling of their consciousness. Okay. And so when Elijah was called the madman, that was just because they're lumping them in with a crew. Yeah. It's a popular conception. It's a popular conception.

And it still is in our day. Okay. So this concept of prophecy was also widely held in the Greek and Roman world. That you lose your mind. That you lose your mind. If you want to know that a human is genuinely giving a word of God to you, like on that sailboat experience that you had, the fact that the person talking to you didn't start like...

Didn't strip naked. Strip naked and like, you know, be taken over, eyes rolling back in the head. Yeah. That would be a sign of like, oh, I need to take this seriously. Right. Because like the gods took over that person's body to talk to me. That's how I know it's genuine. Right.

So we need to imagine that context. I know it's genuine if the human speaking to me is like gone. If they're changed into another person. Okay. So this is great. So we're going to the ancient world. We're getting into that culture. Yeah.

Understanding from ancient eyes. That's just what was normal to think about prophets. Yeah. And then from that perspective, that framework, let's see what the Bible is doing. Yeah. Okay. So that's established. Let's look at some other depictions of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. And actually, these are the depictions that are way more frequent. Okay. So we're just going to sample, but this represents a much more common conception. So we're turning a corner right now.

Okay. So let's start with Ezekiel. The word Ruach appears more times in the book of Ezekiel. than in any of the other prophets. He is often called the prophet of the spirit. It's just a lot of spirit going on. He's a priest. He's trained to become a priest.

And the book begins with his 30th birthday, which would be in the day that he would have been installed to start serving as a priest in Jerusalem. But he is sitting by an irrigation canal in Babylon in exile. So he got taken there by the first wave of exile. It's a bummer for him. And what he sees is a ruach animating a storm cloud coming towards him. That's the first thing he sees.

Yeah, okay. A storm cloud driven by a ruach. And then it passes it over him, as it were, he's enveloped into it as it approaches him, and he starts seeing all the famous visions of Ezekiel, which is essentially a mobile conception of God's chariot throne. and a humanoid divine figure sitting on the throne above the cherubim. It's sort of like he's seeing the living version

of what the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies was a metal symbol. He's seeing like a, do you call it a living version? Yes. In fact, it's called the living creature. The chariot itself. Yeah, it's got these four angelic figures that are all like multi-animal form

and they're carrying a platform, and they have wheels, but that's flying, and then there's a throne on top, and then a glowing, fiery human on the throne speaks to him. The creatures are full of ruach, animating them and moving them.

The whole cloud fire itself is driven by ruach. So it's just ruach from the get-go. And then out of the cloud from the humanoid figure sitting on the throne, he calls this in chapter one, the appearance of the likeness.

He's using the word from Genesis 1. Let us make humans in our image and our likeness. Okay. So he's seeing the likeness of the glory of Yahweh. And he, that is that glory of Yahweh human figure on the throne, said to me, Son of Adam, stand on your feet so that I can speak to you. As he spoke to me, the Ruach entered me and stood me up. on my feet. Okay. This feels

kind of wild. It does. So he's having a dream, a vision. And so interesting, he's hearing a word. He's hearing someone speak to him. And as he hears the word, the ruach goes into him. And what the voice said to him was, you stand on your feet.

And then the ruach enters him, and the ruach stands me on my feet. So you're like, well, which is it? Okay. Is it him standing up or is it ruach? And you're like, Well, we're kind of back to where we started, which is like, is it my ruach or is it God's Ruach when I speak or do anything.

We're playing with that. So he said to me, Son of Adam, I am sending you to the sons of Israel. There are rebellious people, dot, dot, dot. And you will say to them, this is what Yahweh Elohim says. So it's kind of setting up the basic paradigm. This guy is going to become a vehicle for the word of God.

the word of God. But we're already playing with divine and human agency, with you stand on your feet, you speak to them, but the Ruach entered me, and it stood me on my feet. So he's feeling compelled by something outside himself, but then the voice speaking to him is saying, you say, you speak, you stand up. There's an interplay of divine and human agency.

And it's so interesting, this porous boundary between divine and human agency just continues right throughout the book of Ezekiel. Both when he talks about his own experiences. So sometimes he'll talk about the ruach of Yahweh falling on me. That's how we'll describe it sometimes.

And then he'll start speaking, thus says Yahweh. Other times he'll talk about the hand of Yahweh grabbing me. So he very much had this experience of something beyond himself influencing him but all the depictions

of him speaking sometimes of him sitting down and writing show him in full possession of his faculties in the stories connected to him in the story he's not dancing around

cutting himself he does these synax right these bizarre kind of street theater sinex you know making little models of the city and cooking bread over you know cow dung

but people don't think about him is insane or crazy because the person speaking to them when he's doing these weird behaviors he's in his right mind he's in his mind

so Ezekiel's breaking the mold here he's like he's kind of the wild man but he's actually kind of what you would expect from wild man but then you're like

oh wait you're reasonable the poetry he writes is brilliant I mean it's all this is all communicated and very highly crafted narrative and poetry that somebody made

yeah you know not gibber it's like super intelligent So what we're seeing here is a display of the spirit of God and prophecy, but with a human whose mind doesn't go away, it's rather that their mind gets supercharged of hyper clarity and hyper passion and intensity. And so isn't it interesting that in passages we'll look at more in future episodes,

when Ezekiel imagines the restoration of God's people, Israel, on the other side of exile. And this is God speaking through Ezekiel. What God says to Ezekiel is I'm going to give my people a new heart, a new center of desire and purpose and will, and I'm going to put a new ruach in you, a new heart and a new ruach. A new ruach.

In my people. Yeah. And I'll remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. So the idea is that your heart, that is your mind and your desires have become hard and impenetrable like a rock. And you need to take that out and give you a soft, impressionable heart. And then look this, I'm going to put my ruach in you. Which would, okay, but now in this context, it's like, for an ancient Hebrew thinker,

be like, your rock is already in me. It's all around. Yes, yeah, exactly. Like, what do you mean you're going to put it in me? That's right. So, yeah, what he's not saying is, I'm going to make you breathe. Right. Like alive. Yeah.

So we're talking about, so there's life 1.0. Yeah, okay. Like just basic living, right, my thing. But apparently there is available. That's right, which is animated by God's Ruach. But then there's also like a life 2.0, an even more intense, a more ideal form of life that speaks to an even closer bond of intimacy between a human, creature in God.

Okay. And that's this new ruach. God calls it a new ruach. I'm going to put a new roach in you. And Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 27, this line is so important, I'll put my ruach in you and make it so that you walk in my statutes and so that you're careful to observe my... The ruach will make you walk. Yes, so it's highlighting divine agency there.

But then you will live in the land that I gave your forefathers. You will be my people, I'll be your God. And it goes on to say, and you'll farm your land, and there'll be so much fruit. And the land will be like a new garden of Eden. That's what he says. So there's a porous boundary between divine and human mind and agency here. In Ezekiel's own experience. But then when Ezekiel imagines, like, what will have to happen for the whole of the people of God

to really live as one with God's mind and purpose? will, I guess we just need a whole new ruach. A new ruach. A new ruach. I mean, it's still God's ruach. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So in what way is it new?

But let me ask it this way. Yeah, yeah. When we talked about Joseph, you used the language of 1.0, 2.0. Yeah. Rewaq 1.0. Yes. Yeah. So Joseph is breathing.

He's got God's ruach. But then there's something about him, the way that he lives in line with this ruach of God, that makes him different. And then also God even just supercharges that with his ruach. And so you called that like 1.0 and 2.0. So did Joseph have the new ruach that Ezekiel is talking about? I think, yeah, as we look back, we're like, whoa, all along, these depictions of somebody who's already living and breathing.

But then there's these additional statements that the ruach of Yahweh filled them with this ruach of wisdom. and then they built a little Eden outpost, like the tabernacle, like Betzelel. So 1.0, 2.0 is my cultural translation of that. And maybe that doesn't do justice to it. But 2.0 isn't a totally different thing than 1.0. But it is a much better, enhanced version that works better. And maybe that doesn't, maybe that's unhelpful.

But I get what you're getting at. The Ruach Elohim is responsible for life. You do not exist without the ruach. Right. And so you have God's ruach. But then you can have God's ruach and you can have God's ruach. That's right. And it's the same ruach, but it's more than just cool.

I'm alive. I'm being sustained. You're actually living ingrain with the wisdom of God. You can become... In this case, with the Word of God. And the Word of God. doing what God says. Yeah.

So that my words and plans and behavior then match God's words and plans. Yeah. Yeah. So this is why you can go to elsewhere in Ezekiel, and he critiques other prophets that are on the scene with him, that even went into exile. Prophets who were surrounding the king saying, like, you're fine, you're going to be fine here in Jerusalem.

Nebuchadnezzar is going to chill out and go away. And he says of those prophets, Ezekiel 13, those are prophets who follow their own ruach. And they haven't seen anything. So he's contrasting their experience with his experience of seeing God. And then... Being filled with God's Ruach.

Being filled with God's Ruach. And he's like, these guys, they haven't seen God. And they follow their own ruach. Which gets back to this because it's... So weird. We could get Ezekiel to agree like, but wait, Ezekiel, the Ruach they have is God's Ruach. And he'd be like, yes, but what I'm experiencing

is something different. It's 2.0, I don't know. He wouldn't say that. Yeah. What would he say? That he's got the new ruach. The new ruach. The new ruach is what he encountered. What's the word in Hebrew for new? Oh, Khadash, new. It means new. New. Yeah. I mean, there's new and like, hey, this didn't exist before. It's new. And there's new and like, it's newly arrived, or it's like, it's present now in a new way. You could say, so is new in degree, or is it new in kind. Hmm. Is it new and kind like it's a whole different ruach?

New category of ruach. Or is it new in degree in that the interweaving of divine and human ruach is intensified to a new level. Is it new in level or new in kind? And my hunch is that what we're talking about is new and level. Yeah. It's a human who's more in tune, more full of God's ruach. Yeah.

So I can't exist without God's ruach. but I can't exist in a way which I'm not using well I'm abusing the ruah he gave me to do something that isn't part of God's desire Yeah and I go my own way with it And then as equal to be like That's your own rualk

Exactly yes So this is the portrait of prophecy And filling with the spirit That you find throughout the biblical prophets The prophets who actually like wrote The books that we have Okay So that's why I'm calling

this, the biblical default portrait of prophecy. You can find multiple portrait of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, but which version is the one the biblical authors want us to see as like the real deal? And we're seeing it in

Ezekiel's version here. Where it still has kind of a wild ness to it. That's unpredictable. But it's not a complete loss of self-control. It's a heightening of Ezekiel's mind. so that he has clarity.

He can see things that no one else can see. And what he sees is the presence of God. And then he has the language to describe in a way that can make sense to someone else where he's seeing. That's right. So just real quick, just one kind of final portrait here. We find a very similar description

of God's presence and spirit and prophecy in a prophet who precede, Ezekiel by like 150 years, a guy named Micah, Micah of Morseth. And he grew up in the hills way outside of Jerusalem. Okay. But he's really bothered by the injustice he sees happening of people's ancestral, tribal lands getting bought up. What time in Israel's history? He's living in the 8th century.

So same time period as Isaiah. Okay. There's the kingdoms of Israel have split into two, north and south. He lives in the south. Okay. And the empire of us, Syria, is the big threat on the horizon. Babylon hasn't risen yet. And what he's especially angry about is the prophets in Jerusalem and up in the north,

who are telling the kings, who are worshipping all these other gods, and seizing land illegally from Israelite farmers. And they have these prophets around them, who he says that are fed by the kings. And so they constantly are saying, shalom, shalom, everything's going to be great, O king. Yeah. Shalom to you, O king. And he's like, no, man. No, he says there's a night coming that there'll be no more seers and there's a darkness coming for no more prophets.

He says the sun will set on the prophets and the day will grow dark over them. The seers will be disgraced and those practicing sorcery divination. These are like channeling the power of other spiritual beings. And he says all of them will put their hand over their mouths because there'll be no reply from the true God anymore. As a contrast to them, he said, but me, as for me, I am filled. He says four things that he's filled with, with power, with the ruach of Yahweh, and with justice and with strength.

to declare to Jacob his rebellion and to Israel his sin. What he's talking about is just his own description and short form of the experience he had for why he wrote this elegant collection of poetry

that's full of social critique of the powers. So once again, he's full of the ruach but then of strength. Two words for strength, energy. Yeah.

Energy. It's a passionate dude. Yeah. He grew up in the rural country and he becomes this passionate, loud voice out of this little farming community to start holding the leaders of Jerusalem accountable. That's pretty intense. Now he doesn't say I'm filled with a sound mind and with, you know, clarity of mind.

Oh, right. Like you could take power and you could take strength and you can still be a wild man. That's right. Yeah. But also he is filled with justice. Justice. A very clear sense of right and wrong. Okay.

And he's declaring Israel's rebellion and sin to their leaders. He's critiquing. Oh, so interesting. 150 years later, in Ezekiel and Jeremiah's day, they quote from Micah, 150 years later and say, remember what Micah said? It's happening, folks. So he made a big impact. Okay.

So he wasn't like Elisha when he visited Jehu, you know, and when he left, everybody was like, what's that mad man? Like, don't listen to anything he says. Micah had the opposite effect. People were like, whoa, that guy. They remembered what he said and how he said it. What I'm trying to draw out here is he was clearly somebody who people took seriously. And he had a message that was coherent and powerful, persuasive,

and addressed to economic political realities. Yeah. That's not a kook. No. It's not a sign of somebody insane. Right. And then you read, is words.

It's poetry. It's beautiful. Poetry. So, I think what the biblical authors want us to see is there's prophecy and there's prophecy. And there's different ways that people experience God's spirit. Always power. Always intense. But what seems to be put forward to us is the most positive portraits of prophecy are people

who push the boundaries are unpredictable and intense that reflects their, like putting their finger in the light socket, as it were, of divine power. But at the same time, what they have to say is coherent. It makes sense. And people can understand it.

And that's why Micah 3 verse 8, I'm filled with power and the ruach and justice and even more strength. that I feel like captures this balance. And so Hebrew Bible scholar that I've learned a lot from on this, as a scholar Jack Levison, he talks about the balance between ecstasy and understanding. So ecstasy is a word.

It's a Greek word that will come across it again later in our conversation on New Testament prophecy. Extestasis means to stand outside of. It means to be outside of your mind, out of your mind. That's what happens to Saul. That's how people think of. Elisha. That's not what we see with Ezekiel and Micah, though. What we see is somebody who's very thoughtful. It's like the spirit, very powerful, but they haven't lost their mind. It's supercharged

their mind. And that's the picture of the Hebrew prophets that the biblical authors want to put forward to us. It's sort of like the gold standard. Hmm. Okay. Then real quick, why did the biblical authors, why did the prophets compose the story of Saul losing his mind the way they did saying he was filled with the Rwak of Elohim and just kind of leaving a little bit

cryptic of like what's going on? Because you could read that story and be like oh, okay, so that's what it means to be filled with the Rwokavala. That's right. Yeah. So great. It's like I didn't pay you to say that. But that's what we're going to talk about next. Okay. Because the connection of the spirit

and God raising up a royal, prophetic, priestly leader for his people, that is the Messiah. It's a huge, huge theme also within the Hebrew Bible. And the contrast between Saul and David and their different experiences of the Ruach is a really key part of the Messianic hope, connected to the Spirit. Messiah and Spirit in the Hebrew Bible. And Saul and David's stories are at the heartbeat of showing us two different kinds of rulers inspired by the Ruach with two different outcomes. So that's what we're going to talk about next. Thanks for listening to Bible Project podcast.

Next week, we're going to talk about the Spirit of the Messiah. That is a spirit-empowered prophet priest king. The first example of this type of character in the Bible is Moses. He does signs and wonders. He confronts unjust leaders. He brokers a covenant relationship between God. and a whole people group. And then he uniquely ascends to the very presence of God

and then speaks God's purpose and word and brings it back down to the people. He's the package deal, man. Bible Project is a crowdfunded nonprofit, and we exist to help people experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. Everything that we create is free because of the generous support of thousands of people

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