Q&A: I was asked a question by a friend — I don’t know if this is your field, but since he’s sick of apologetic answers, I’m asking you
I was asked a question by a friend — I don’t know if this is your field, but since he’s sick of apologetic answers, I’m asking you
Question
False prophecies from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)
The prophets of the Hebrew Bible had every reason not to fail in the predictions they issued. Almost all prophecies are characterized by one of the following features: either they are written in vague language with no predicted date — and that is the overwhelming majority of prophecies; or they fulfilled themselves through persuasion, like the prophecy of the return to Zion and the building of the Second Temple; or they were written after the fact, like Isaiah’s prophecy about Cyrus proclaiming the return to Zion; or they were simply trivial and self-evident, like general prophecies about a future famine or war, written against the background of past human experience.
Added to this was “survivorship bias,” which led to prophets’ words being rejected if it later became certain that they had erred. The Hebrew Bible preserves a few mentions of some of them, though of course we have no idea what was written in their books, had those books been documented. All that remains of them is the superficial label “false prophets.” In a period of many centuries in which seers and prophets made a living by writing and proclaiming prophecies, it is only natural that one would find a number of prophets who did this successfully, and that their writings would be collected and edited by the Men of the Great Assembly.
It is therefore surprising to discover that there are dozens of prophecies written in the prophetic books that were completely disproven. Prophecies that failed to foresee the future managed to survive in writing for a variety of reasons, most of them social. What enabled their survival was the enormous power of their believers’ interpretive flexibility. For example, according to one Christian count, no fewer than 351 prophecies were fulfilled in the appearance of Jesus. That is an enormous number that demonstrates, especially to rabbinic Jews, the interpretive freedom granted to anyone who wants to find meaning in the prophetic books.
1. The immunity of the Davidic dynasty
The earliest and most well-established prophecy that crashed against the rocks of reality is the prediction of the eternal endurance of the Davidic monarchy. It began already with the story that the prophet Samuel anointed David as king, and received unambiguous formulation in the prophecy of Nathan the prophet to David about his son Solomon: “And I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” He explicitly stated that this was an unconditional covenant: “My steadfast love shall not depart from him,” without interruption. If his sons sin, they will be punished in one way or another, but “your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:13–16). Rule was promised continuously to the house of David forever.
This view received wall-to-wall support, from Ahijah the Shilonite (1 Kings 11:36), through Isaiah son of Amoz, who prophesied eternal peace for the house of David (Isaiah 9:6), Jehoiada the priest, who carried out a coup in the name of this prophecy (2 Chronicles 23:3), the poet Ethan the Ezrahite, who promised that David’s throne would be as stable as the heavens and the sun (Psalm 89), and of course many quotations from David himself: “For He has made with me an everlasting covenant” (2 Samuel 22:51, 23:5; Psalms 18:51, 110:4).
Especially striking is the agreement of the prophet Jeremiah, who despite foreseeing the destruction of Jerusalem, determined that “David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel” (Jeremiah 33:17), and that even if King Zedekiah were to go into exile in Babylon, “there he shall remain until I attend to him” (Jeremiah 32:5), and he would die in peace and with royal honors (Jeremiah 34:4–5). Despite the destruction, in his days there was still a belief that there would be no “break” in the Davidic line, whose kings — alive — would sit temporarily in Babylon, and perhaps that is why he fixed the Babylonian exile at 70 years, “the days of one king” (Isaiah 23:15).
The prediction was disproven at the end of the sixth century BCE, despite failed attempts to fulfill it, such as the rise of Zerubbabel of the house of David to Jerusalem (Haggai 2:23; Zechariah 4:9). At exactly that same period, the imperial dynasty in Japan arose — one that really did continue unbroken until today, 2,600 years later. But since then, the house of David never returned to reign. Other royal dynasties arose, such as the Hasmoneans, the house of Herod, the Franks in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, and others. In addition, Jewish royal dynasties rose in Adiabene, Khazaria, Himyar, and Beta Israel (though Beta Israel traced themselves to David). The failed prophecy received a new interpretation in order to survive: belief in the coming of a future “messiah” king from the house of David, even though the dynasty has meanwhile been interrupted.
2. The immunity of Jerusalem
Nathan the prophet was also the first to prophesy that Jerusalem would not be destroyed. In his prophecy about Solomon’s building of the Temple, he declared: “And I will appoint a place for My people Israel and will plant them, and they shall dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more, and violent men shall afflict them no more” (2 Samuel 7:10). The prophet Joel reinforced this after him and declared: “Judah shall dwell forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation” (Joel 4:20 [3:20 in many English editions]). Isaiah likened Jerusalem to a tent whose stakes are eternal and whose cords cannot be broken (Isaiah 33:20), and also promised that the city would not fall into the hands of the Assyrians, “for the sake of David My servant” (ibid. 37:35). Likewise, the book of Psalms is full of festive promises of its immunity: “God is in her midst; she shall not be moved” (Psalms 46:6), “He will establish it forever” (48:9), “like the earth He founded it forever” (78:69), “Mount Zion shall not be moved; it abides forever” (125:1), “There the Lord commanded the blessing, life forevermore” (133:3).
True, Micah and Jeremiah criticized this widespread belief (Micah 3:11; Jeremiah 7:4), but even after it was clearly disproven in the destruction of the First Temple, prophets in the Second Temple period repeated the same mistake. It began precisely with Jeremiah, who determined that after the future restoration, the place “shall not be uprooted or overthrown anymore forever” (Jeremiah 31:40), and “Jerusalem shall dwell securely” (Jeremiah 33:16). It continued when Second Isaiah proclaimed: “Put on your beautiful garments, Jerusalem, the holy city; for there shall no more come into you the uncircumcised and the unclean” (Isaiah 52:1), “Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders” (60:18), “The sound of weeping shall no more be heard in it, or the cry of distress” (65:19). According to him, God swore that destruction would not come again (62:8), and he even compared this to God’s promise to Noah that there would not be a second flood (54:9–10).
Similarly, Haggai prophesied: “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former… and in this place I will give peace” (Haggai 2:9), and Zechariah even suggested that Jerusalem no longer needed walls because God would guard it with a wall of fire (Zechariah 2:8–9), and “no oppressor shall pass through them again” (ibid. 9:8). In this spirit Obadiah wrote, “On Mount Zion there shall be deliverance” (Obadiah 1:17). It should be emphasized that none of them spoke about a Third Temple, but about the Second Temple, which was built in their days.
There is no doubt that these updated prophecies contributed to the sense of invulnerability among those who stirred up the Great Revolt in Jerusalem in the year 66, which ultimately led to the Temple’s destruction a second time. In fact, even today one can find people who believe that the destruction of the Third Temple is impossible, even though it has not yet been built. A wonder indeed.
3. Prophecies of eternal desolation
Three lands and three cities received forceful curses from the prophets of Israel: the lands of Edom, Moab, and Ammon, and the cities of Babylon, Tyre, and Damascus — they would be violently destroyed and never rebuilt. The problem is that all of them recovered, and today they are thriving.
The desolation of the mountains of Edom:
Hostility toward the kingdom of Edom was common among the prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, and also Malachi promised in unmistakable terms that Edom and its capital Bozrah would become a wilderness and everlasting ruins in which no person would dwell. But in the thousands of years since, the Nabateans and other tribes flourished in the area, leaving Petra as testimony to that. The Edomites even crowned a king over Israel — namely Herod. Today, in the Tafila Governorate in Jordan (biblical Tophel), overlapping the borders of Edom, more than 100,000 people live there. In Bozrah alone more than 10,000 live. Neither ruins nor desolation (Isaiah 34:9–10; Jeremiah 49:13, 18; Ezekiel 35:9; Joel 4:19; Malachi 1:4).
The desolation of the region of Moab and Ammon:
Zephaniah prophesied the end of Moab and Ammon in destruction, that they would become “a place of nettles and salt pits, and a desolation forever” (Zephaniah 2:9). But today millions of people live in Jordan in the districts of Madaba, Ma’an (Maon), Amman, Balqa (the plains of Moab), and Karak (Kir-hareseth). In Rabbah of Ammon alone, for example, more people live than in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv combined. Interestingly, here Jeremiah contradicted him, promising that Moab and Ammon would in the future return to their land (Jeremiah 48:47; 49:6), as well as Elam (ibid. 49:39). Something to look forward to?
The desolation of the city of Babylon:
The prophecies about Babylon predicted that the kings of Media would violently conquer the city, burn it, bring down its walls, and from then on no people or animals would pass through it forever. According to Jeremiah, this would happen exactly at the end of 70 years from Babylon’s rise (Isaiah 13; Jeremiah 25; 51). In reality, it was the king of Persia who conquered it, not the king of Media, and the city’s people welcomed him with open gates. The precise calculation of the 70 years was fixed after the fact, the city was never burned, and its walls remained intact. It was slowly abandoned hundreds of years later, and in fact returned to activity in the city of al-Hillah, built from Babylon’s ruins in the 11th century. Saddam Hussein in the 1980s literally built his palace on the ancient mound and restored it. Today about half a million people live there.
The erasure of the city of Damascus:
According to Isaiah, Damascus would be destroyed and cease to exist as a city (Isaiah 17:1). As is well known, 2,700 years later, Damascus is still active as one of the central cities of the Middle East, with more than two million people.
The desolation of the city of Tyre:
The prophecy of Tyre is a painful story. First Ezekiel prophesied: “Behold, I am bringing against Tyre Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon… they shall plunder your wealth and loot your merchandise… you shall become a bare rock; you shall never be rebuilt” (Ezekiel 26). But already in his lifetime Ezekiel was confronted with the failure of his prophecy. Nebuchadnezzar did indeed lay siege to the city for 13 years, but he did not succeed in destroying it, and did not succeed in plundering its spoil as promised. Ouch. The prophet, without blinking, decided that if so, Egypt would be given to Nebuchadnezzar as compensation (Ezekiel 29:17–20). In any case, Tyre exists to this day and is doing just fine, and even if it was destroyed from time to time in wars, it was rebuilt again, contrary to the prophecy. Perhaps the coming war with Hezbollah will finally fulfill Ezekiel’s words about Tyre. It just needs the conqueror to be called Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. Time will tell.
4. The conquest of Egypt
Ezekiel was not the only one who promised Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah too explicitly prophesied about Nebuchadnezzar that he would conquer Egypt (Jeremiah 43:10–11; 46:26). What can you do — it never happened. The Assyrians before him and the Persians after him conquered Egypt; the Babylonians never did. Isaiah, Joel, and Ezekiel predicted that Egypt would become desolate for 40 years, and that even the Nile would dry up completely! (Isaiah 19:5–7; Ezekiel 29:8–12, 30:12; Joel 4:19). None of this ever happened. But here too hope is not lost: the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam now being completed upstream (in the year 2024) may perhaps dry up the lower Nile for 40 years. Except that, as stated, a fellow named Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon needs to do it. Fingers crossed for our prophets.
Oh, and one more thing: according to Jeremiah, “none shall escape or survive from the remnant of Judah” who dwell in Egypt, because the Babylonians who destroyed Jerusalem would come there too (Jeremiah 44:13–14, 26–27). But oops. The Babylonians did not come, and Egyptian Jewry survived for thousands of years afterward, in Jewish communities that flourished in Elephantine, Alexandria, Fustat (Cairo), and elsewhere.
5. Failed predictions about kings
“Jeroboam shall die by the sword,” declared the prophet Amos (Amos 7:11), but King Jeroboam died years later a natural and peaceful death.
“He shall be buried with the burial of a donkey,” Jeremiah foresaw concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah (Jeremiah 22:18), but the impression one gets is different: “And Jehoiakim slept with his fathers, and Jehoiachin his son reigned in his stead” (2 Kings 24:6), with no indication of any problems with the burial society.
“You shall be gathered to your grave in peace,” the prophetess Huldah predicted concerning the righteous king Josiah (2 Kings 22:20). But alas — Josiah was unexpectedly killed at Megiddo (ibid. 23:29).
And as stated above, Jeremiah prophesied for King Zedekiah a death in peace and with honor, but he languished and died in prison in Babylon (Jeremiah 52:11).
Jeremiah also foresaw concerning Nebuchadnezzar (the one who was supposed to plunder Tyre and turn Egypt into a desert) that his dynasty would continue after him and that his grandson, “his son’s son,” would rule the Middle East (Jeremiah 27:7). In reality, his son was murdered, and the one who seized power was his son-in-law, Neriglissar.
6. The date of the destruction of Samaria
And here is an example of a prophecy ahead of its time. Isaiah in the kingdom of Judah proclaimed in 734 BCE, “Within sixty-five years Ephraim shall be shattered from being a people” (Isaiah 7:8). The literal meaning of “be shattered” is be broken or crushed, and “Ephraim” is the label for the northern kingdom of Israel whose capital was Samaria. In reality, the kingdom of Israel no longer existed 65 years later, in 669 BCE. It had already fallen in 720, only 14 years after Isaiah’s prediction. So when they finally do give a date — it turns out to be wrong. Too bad.
On that same occasion, Isaiah also reassured Ahaz king of Judah concerning the attack of Israel and Aram on his kingdom: “Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands,” he cried (Isaiah 7:4). But the outcome was not what we would expect. About Ahaz it is written: “The Lord his God gave him into the hand of the king of Aram, and they struck him and took a great number of captives from him and brought them to Damascus; and he was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with a great blow” (2 Chronicles 28:5–11). Bummer.
7. Summary
Six prophets foresaw the continuity of the house of David, and nine seers established Jerusalem’s immunity. Five promised eternal desolation for Edom, and four foresaw the total destruction of Egypt. Some predicted eternal desolation for Tyre, Damascus, and Babylon, as well as Moab and Ammon. The prophets of the Hebrew Bible scattered good and bad promises to kings right and left. Altogether we have about 40 prophecies here that were disproven. Forty prophecies demonstrating that we are all human beings, and we all make mistakes sometimes. Yes, including the writers of the Hebrew Bible.
Answer
I may consider opening a publishing branch on the site, but for now I don’t provide publishing services. So in the future, please shorten the question and don’t post whole articles and essays here. I won’t address this entire article here for two main reasons: a. this is not the place for it. b. I don’t deal with the Hebrew Bible, and some of the reasons appear in your article. Still, I’ll present a few general comments.
A. The attitude toward prophecies depends on your starting point. If you’re in favor, you’ll find explanations for why the prophecies were not disproven, and if you’re against, you’ll find explanations for why they were. If you try to come as a tabula rasa (which is quite hard to do from any side), that too is basically taking a side. Just as a supposedly objective scientific examination of whether miracles occurred will conclude that they did not, because with scientific tools you usually won’t detect miracles, and the accepted scientific assumptions rule out their existence.
B. In principle, every such prophecy should be classified under one of three categories: 1. Clearly fulfilled. 2. Clearly disproven. 3. Open to interpretations. Since in my estimation every such prophecy is open to many interpretations, I think almost all of them fall into category 3. Which means that your view of them is a function of your starting point.
C. In light of all this, I really don’t see these prophecies as proof of anything. Whoever wants to bring evidence from the prophecies for any claim bears the burden of proof. He has to show that at least some of them are of type 1.
D. When you want to examine the matter of prophecy, you also have to decide what to do if you get a mixed finding, such as: a. there are prophecies of type 1. b. there are prophecies of type 2. In case a, that would seemingly be enough to prove their prophetic source, at least if the fulfillment is clear and not accidental (depending on how many such cases there are and how clear-cut they are). In case b, a question arises about the source of those prophecies, but that means at most that the prophecies found to be false were indeed disproven and are not of divine origin. But if there are others that were fulfilled, the claim still stands. So there is an asymmetry here between proof and disproof, very much like Popper on science (except that here proof has an advantage over disproof, the opposite of his position).
E. You did not systematically check all the prophecies, so it is doubtful how much significance your examples have. There are quite a few claims about prophecies that were fulfilled rather clearly, and you can find some online (I also seem to recall posts here on the site by Copenhagen).
F. Therefore the discussion depends on what you came to do with these claims: prove to skeptics that they are right (you succeeded); prove to believers that they are wrong (you failed); or examine the question as such from an objective point of view (as stated, very problematic to do with questions like these).
G. There are prophecies that depend on human choices. Such prophecies can absolutely say things about the future and still turn out false. What depends on a person’s choice cannot be known and fixed in advance, not even by the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. Such prophecies should be interpreted in one of two ways: 1. They describe what will happen if we do or do not repent, etc. 2. They describe what will happen in light of the current situation, but it is still possible that we will choose differently and it will not happen. I’ve discussed this too in several places here on the site (for example in the discussion of the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad regarding God’s words in the Covenant Between the Pieces about Egypt, and much else).
H. Contrary to what you wrote, prophecies transmitted to people (that is, prophecies that fulfilled themselves) are not empty even by your own standards. For example, the prophecy about returning to the Land did in fact itself influence our return. And still, to predict that in advance is certainly something that calls for explanation. The prophet could have tried to influence us and failed.
I. Now there is room to examine the examples you brought. I won’t go through all of them, and will make do with a random demonstration of where your argument is weak. I have comments on almost every line you wrote, so I chose a few that immediately came to mind after reading:
- The promise that the scepter shall not depart from Judah is interpreted by Nachmanides as a command, not a promise. We are supposed to appoint a king from Judah, but not necessarily that it is guaranteed this will always happen in practice. We have choice, and we can do otherwise and appoint a king from another tribe or family.
- Regarding that same promise, it can be interpreted as referring to the right to rule being given to the tribe of Judah, not to actual kingship in practice. And that remains true even when in practice we have no king. The Torah itself says that we will be exiled from our land, and it is not reasonable to interpret that same Torah as also saying that we will always have a king from Judah.
- Even in exile, the Exilarch and the head of the Sanhedrin were indeed from the tribe of Judah. So even when we had no king there was still a fulfillment of this command/promise.
- Eternal promises are very rare, and you treat every promise as eternal. That is extremely tendentious and of course doesn’t hold water. Moreover, when speaking about destruction or even a promise “forever,” the intention is for a very long time (up to our horizon). It does not mean the situation will not change another two hundred or five hundred years later. That is how people speak, in human language.
- I’m not expert in dates, but I know there are fierce disputes about them. In general, you present findings of historical-biblical-archaeological research as though they were established facts. I am very skeptical of findings in those fields. But as stated, I’m not an expert (among other things, because of that skepticism I don’t deal with those fields and don’t pin hopes on them).
- For almost every example you brought I can offer interpretations that fit and “save” it, but the principle is clear. You choose — in many cases tendentiously — “against” interpretations, and one could just as well choose (sometimes tendentiously) “for” interpretations. I don’t see what conclusions you can draw from this. That is exactly why the subject doesn’t really interest me and doesn’t occupy me. But as I mentioned, there are others who deal with it, and if you’re really looking for good answers you should turn to them. All the rabbis from Gush who deal with the Hebrew Bible — Rabbi Yaakov Medan, Yoel Bin-Nun, Amnon Bazak, Elchanan Samet, and others. I do not deal with the Bible, and as I mentioned, among other reasons that’s because of what you wrote and what I answered you. You learn nothing from this and I don’t think any conclusion can be drawn from it.
J. To conclude, from what I’ve said so far you can understand that just as what you hear sounds apologetic to you (the answers you wrote that you’re sick of), so too others will see your words as tendentious. Apologetics is not a dirty word in these contexts. It is simply an awareness that we all have starting points and we all have a (legitimate) tendency to defend them. If the prophecies were the basis of my faith, then you’d be right that it would be improper to interpret them apologetically. By the same token, if they are the basis of your skepticism, it is likewise improper to base that on a tendentious choice of the opposite side. But if my faith is based on other considerations, and I now encounter difficulties because of one prophecy or another, then it is only reasonable and sensible to look for explanations that fit my beliefs so long as they hold water (I assume that when you encounter a prophecy that really was fulfilled, you will use your interpretive tools freely to explain why it didn’t really happen. As can be seen here, you even do that in order to raise difficulties rather than resolve them — in the spirit of “and one can raise an objection, though only with difficulty”). The degree of interpretive freedom is proportionate to the strength of the considerations on which my faith is based. A strong faith is willing to go farther in defending itself against difficulties. Just as Thomas Kuhn explained regarding scientific paradigms. I have discussed this in various places on the site when I spoke about judging favorably as a legitimate and substantive way of loading the evidence (you can search here on the site for discussions of the Mishnah “Judge every person favorably,” and its early commentators, who explained this well).
All the best.
Discussion on Answer
I forgot to say thank you very much for the effort.
Above I sent you Rat’s response.
And when I sent Moshe Rat your words, he responded as follows:
Indeed, these are correct points, and over the course of the day a few more arguments and refutations of the points in the message you sent came to mind. For example, from God’s words to David it sounds as though his kingdom will exist forever — but already to Solomon God states in no uncertain terms that if his sons go after other gods, He will destroy the Temple and exile Israel from its land. So there is a clarification here that there is no “blank check” that David’s monarchy will endure forever no matter what; rather, it depends on their deeds, as all the later prophets emphasized. Likewise, prophecies that speak about a place being “desolate forever” and the like do not necessarily mean until the end of days, but rather for a very long time — as Rabbi Michi noted. And there are also prophecies that were stated conditionally and are affected by human actions. As for historical events that he claims did or did not happen — you can’t always know for certain, and the fact that historians claim something does not necessarily mean it’s correct, given the scarcity of sources from that period. And of course the writer decides that every prophecy that was fulfilled was written after the fact — which is really quite clever…
In short, one could go through all his arguments and address them one by one, and I think there wouldn’t be much left of them. This sounds like the sort of thing Rabbi Yehoshua Enbal would be suited to do; maybe send it to him. But as I wrote, my principled approach is that the books of the Prophets and the Writings are a collection of texts that the Men of the Great Assembly saw educational value in and therefore chose to preserve, but that doesn’t mean every word in them is precise or that corruptions did not creep in. Therefore the attitude toward them is to a large extent like the aggadic literature of the Sages — learn the message from them, don’t get hung up on the details.
This is how Moshe Rat responded to the above question:
There are a lot of inaccuracies and distortions here,
but broadly speaking, it’s true —
The books of the Prophets and the Writings are not always precise. We do not know exactly how they were written or by whom. They were included in the Hebrew Bible by the Men of the Great Assembly, who saw educational value in them — prophecy that was needed for future generations — but they do not have the authority of the Torah, which was given directly from the mouth of God. Therefore one can also find in them prophecies that were not fulfilled.
By contrast, the Torah’s prophecies about the future of the Jewish people were in fact fulfilled precisely over thousands of years, which shows the difference between the attainment of Moses our teacher and that of the other prophets. End quote.
Do you agree with him? (Especially with the part about the prophets)?