There are times, reading the prophets in the Bible, that I feel like I am reading an op-ed piece on current events. The 83rd Psalm is uncanny when read in the light of today’s news. But maybe you didn’t realize that many of the Psalms are prophetic, especially when you understand what prophecy is. It is not a mere foretelling of future events. If that were all it was, I can’t see God bothering to tell us at all.
But if it has to do with the why
of future events, then there is every reason for us to know. Because if we can change the why
, we may avoid the tragedy. Also, this might also explain another peculiarity of biblical prophecy: it has a way of recurring. Every prophet speaks out of history, and to his own generation. But it is eerie how the events described are also directed to the last days of human history.
There can be several reasons why this is so. For one thing, human nature doesn’t change and we keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. Unable to learn our lessons we are doomed to repeat them. The other side of this coin is that, while human nature doesn’t change, neither does the divine nature. If we make the same mistakes our fathers have made, God will respond as he always has. I think this lies behind something God tell us in Isaiah 24.
