prophetic

African-American Preaching

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African-American preaching arises out of the cultural and religious experiences of the oppressed. It reaches people in their dislocation and relocates them in God and in the promise of a brighter future.

“Telling the Story”

The proclamation of the Word of God, the “telling of the story” is essential to authentic African-American worship. There is a saying among some African-American preachers that the brothers and sisters will forgive you for anything but not preaching. African-American folk expect the preacher to “tell the story.” What does it mean to “tell the story?”

Biblical Emphasis. African-American preaching, almost without exception, is biblical. It takes the biblical message and the biblical stories and weaves them in such a way that the stories come alive and relate to the lives, needs, feelings, and existential situations of those gathered in the congregation. Each story is told in a way consistent with the biblical story, yet having relevance and application for African-American people. This storied preaching is rich with sharp words and vivid imagery for disillusioned and disinherited people. African-American preaching is filled with stories that set hearts aflame and spirits right to have faith that God is more than a match for the evil structures of oppression. This preaching supremely illustrates Jesus’ power to overcome these structures through his death and resurrection.

Prophetic Rather than Pastoral. African-American preaching is characterized generally as prophetic rather than pastoral. The Old Testament and the prophetic literature are used as material for sermonizing rather than the more pastoral material of the Bible. In addition, the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are used as the testimonies of those who knew the prophet Jesus and his revolutionary activities in and around Galilee as he struggled with the powerful Roman government and the religious establishment of his day.

One illustration of African-American preaching’s prophetic edge is that on the Sunday morning on which the four African-American children were bombed to death at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, a survey of the sermons preached in that city on that Sunday morning revealed that, almost without exception, the African-American preachers preached from the Old Testament. The white preachers without exception preached from the New Testament. That was not a coincidence. African-American preaching tends to announce judgment on the nation, and to call into question the institutions in society in a prophetic fashion whereas white preaching tends to be of a pastoral nature. Part of the reason for this is that the Anglo-American church has a different relationship to the establishment than the African-American Church.

Anglo-American Christianity is so inextricably bound to the American way of life that it sees God, country, and the American flag as almost synonymous terms. The emphasis more often than not in Anglo-American preaching is personal behavior and the individual rather than the revolutionary ethic of Jesus and the prophetic judgment on the whole community. In addition, there is not the strict dichotomy in African-American preaching of the priestly and the prophetic, the sacred and the secular. The priestly and the prophetic coexist as part and parcel of the same reality. Even where there is a clear element of judgment and the prophetic message, the celebration of life is present.

Poetic in Style. Generally, African-American preaching is poetic rather than rigorously logical and stymied by rationality. As Hortense Spillers has pointed out in her analysis of the style of the African-American sermon in reference to Martin Luther King, there is considerable use of metaphors and a greater number of nouns, adjectives, and adjectival clauses rather than verbs and verb forms. These combine to create a picturesqueness and grandness of speech. The African-American preacher relies on imagery to carry the subject, much like the language of the Bible. In the following excerpt from a sermon preached in 1962 by J. H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, it is clear that the preacher is painting a picture on the canvas of the mind. Jackson addresses facing the future with God:

But I say to you my friends, fear not your tomorrow and shrink not from the task or the lot that is yet to come. The future belongs to God, and the last chapter in the story of human life will not be written by the blood-stained hands of godless men but by the God of history himself. The same hand that raised the curtain of creation and pushed back the floating worlds upon the broad sea of time and flashed forth the light of life that put an end to ancient chaos and darkness; the same hand that erected the highways of the skies and rolled the sun like a golden ball across the pavement of the dawn; the same God whose hand has guided the destinies of nations, fixed the time and seasons and superintended the whole order of time and eternity will at His appointed hour pull down the curtain of existence, and will Himself write the last paragraph in the last chapter of the last book of human life and cosmic destiny. (Warner R. Traynham, Christian Faith in Black and White [Wakefield, Mass.: Parameter Press, 1973])

Such poetry, vivid imagery, and word pictures can be heard again and again in African-American preaching. The African-American preacher is confident that preaching is primarily an effort at communication both to the mind and to the emotions.

Dialogue between Pastor and People. African-American preaching is dialogical; it is a cooperative effort between the pulpit and the pew. The dialogue does not take place after the sermon but during the sermon. Sometimes an unpoetic preacher can be brought to new life, brilliance, and lyrical power when there is cooperation in the pew, with the help, expectancy, encouragement, and enthusiasm of the congregation.

Part of the African-American preaching tradition has been the prayers of the laypeople for the preacher and/or the expectancy about the sermon. These prayers reflect the same vivid imagery and poetry and imagination mentioned earlier. The following prayer is an example:

And now, O Lord, this man of God,
Who breaks the bread of life this morning—
Shadow him in the hollow of Thy hand,
And keep him out of the gunshot of the devil.
Take him, Lord, this morning
Wash him with hyssop inside and out,
Hang him up and drain him dry of sin.
Pin his ears to the wisdom post,
And make his words sledgehammers of truth,
Beat on the iron heart of sin,
Put his eye to the telescope of eternity
And let him look upon the paper walls of time.
Lord, turpentine his imagination,
Put perpetual motion in his arms,
Fill him full of the dynamite of Thy power,
Anoint him all over with the oil of Thy salvation,
And set his tongue on fire.

The dialogical style of African-American preaching reaches back into the wombs of Africa engendering, a call-and-response style that elicits participation of all those gathered. This makes African-American preaching a uniquely creative and beautiful art.

Teaches and Inspires. African-American preaching is didactic as well as inspiring. It seeks to inform as well as inspire. It seeks to discern the action of God in history as it relates to the existential dilemma of the African-American person, lends healing to people’s hurts, and proclaims a liberating word while not denying the reality of pain.

Some have accused African-American preaching and the African-American church of anti-intellectualism. What may be more accurate is that there is little tolerance for rarefied abstraction. The African-American preacher can discuss anything of philosophical and theological import as long as it is presented in such a way as to make sense of life and relate to the lives of the hearers. How an issue is presented is often more important than what the issue is. People such as Gardner C. Taylor, Howard Thurman, George Outen, Vernon John, and Martin Luther King, Jr. have proven that African-American preaching can contain intricate historical, political analyses while at the same time “feeding the flock.”

Declares Rather than Suggests. African-American preaching is characterized as declarative rather than suggestive. Someone once said when the Roman Catholic priests speak, they say, “The church says … ” When the Jewish rabbis speak, they say, “The Torah says … ” But when the African-American preachers speak they say, “My God told me … ”

There is little room in African-American preaching for equivocation and spurious sophistry. The moral issues of the nation are far too clear, the presence of evil too certain, to be tentative. A stand is taken on an issue. Even when a logical argument is used to present the case, the force of the preaching does not depend on argument and logical persuasion, but rather on the ability of the African-American preacher to probe the depths of the issue, to guide the hearers to reach the same conclusion. But always it is declarative rather than suggestive, a matter of fact rather than tentative. The African-American preacher is neither too timid nor hesitant to say, “Thus saith the Lord!”

Slow and Deliberate in Buildup. African-American preaching is characterized by a slow and deliberate buildup. The path the preacher takes may be winding with a few detours, but always he or she is expected to be heading someplace and to take time getting there. In fact, in many congregations, the African-American preacher can hear some members of the congregation admonishing, “Take your time.” He or she is expected to allow time for both the mind and the emotions to react in a natural process. The African-American preacher is deliberate with the material, and nobody has the sense that he or she is in a hurry, for there is no place more important and nothing more significant than what the preacher is doing: rightly dividing the Word of truth. It is more important to say fewer things and be heard and felt than to present many ideas that are merely words and concepts introduced.

The Dramatic Pause. The dramatic pause by many preachers is used as an effort to force the congregation both to reflect upon what has been said and to anticipate what is to follow. This leads to an antiphonal response and sometimes into a rhythmic, harmonious singsong. One can describe this pattern as the Four Rs: rhetoric, repetition, rhythm, rest. This was heard often in the preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr., and thousands of other African-American preachers. Often it is the repetition of a single word or phrase in which the congregation picks up the cadence of the preacher and there is almost a refrain. Recall King’s speech at Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963 in which he repeats, “I have a dream … ” By repetition and amplification, the speech builds. There is rhetoric, repetition, rhythm, and rest. The congregation echoes and verifies the preacher’s own words in such a way as to make them emphatic.

King was familiar with this technique, for he had learned it from his elders and had seen it work time and time again. He was a master at euphony, carefully selecting and using a combination of vowels and consonants so as to make his sounds and words pleasing. These need to be heard to be understood, for the most effective observer of this style and technique is the human ear.

Life Situational. African-American preaching is expected to relate to life and the life situations of the audience. When it does not, no matter how well-conceived or how well-constructed or how theologically sound, that sermon is considered a failure. Illustrations are often used—drawn from history, everyday experiences, African-American history and culture, and literature. Illustrations from biblical literature are shaped in such a way as to relate the experience to the lives of as many persons as possible.

The Element of Hope. There is always an element of hope and optimism in African-American preaching. No matter how dark or gloomy a picture has been painted, there is always a “but” or a “nevertheless” or an element in the climax of the sermon that suggests holding on, marching forward, going through, or overcoming.

This is illustrated in a sermon preached by Otis Moss in which he described drug addiction and its terrible effects on the minds of African-American families and the African-American community.

The last time that I saw the man he was on his way home. His eyes were clear with sight and insight. The scars of dull and dirty needles had been washed from his body. He was no longer the vehicle of dope but the instrument of hope. The last time that I saw him he was on his way home. His children saw him walking and smiled to themselves and said, “That looks like my daddy.” His wife looked out and saw him and said, “That’s my husband.” And I could hear the man describing what had happened to him. Can’t you hear him saying, “I met a man named Jesus and I had an exchange with him.”? I gave him my sorrows, he gave me his joy; I gave him my confusion, he gave me his peace; I gave him my despair, he gave me his hope; I gave him my hatred, he gave me his love; I gave him my torn life, he gave me his purpose. I met a man—a man named Jesus.”

African-American Preaching and African-American Theology

Authentic African-American preaching provides a gospel message to African-American people whose lives and very existence are threatened daily by the insidious tentacles of power and oppression. If preaching fails to speak to the condition of African-American people and offers no promise of life for the African-American person, then it is not gospel to them. It is simply lifeless rhetoric.

Preaching is at the heart of Christianity. Not rapping, not unintelligible gibberish, not “sound and fury signifying nothing,” not hip anecdotes from Playboy magazine or comic vignettes from “Peanuts,” not recovery groups (as helpful as those may be), but preaching in which the Word of God is declared with clarion sound and an impassioned heart that has been set on fire by inspiration and the experience of a God who calls the person to declare his Word. Such persons do not just preach sermons but preach that event in history and eternity by which God entered most fully and effectively into human life. Preachers must be persons who preach the judgment and the grace of God with passion and preparation, with fervor and faith, with prophetic vision and priestly hearts.

As important as ritual is to symbolize the acts of the faith and experience with God; as important as music is to convey the gospel of hope and the beauty of God’s holiness, in the Christian religion these can never be substitutes for the proclamation of the Word of God, the “foolishness of preaching,” the “inescapable claim” upon us. Jesus did not neglect the blind and the lame, the deaf and the lepers, the poor and the broken-hearted, the captive and the bruised—his gospel of liberation, love, and freedom was a declaration of the rule of God breaking in upon the forces that hold humans captive. He did not separate a gospel of changing conditions in society from changing the individual. His gospel is always personal and social. He knew nothing of a religion that spoke to the heart and not the conditions in which men and women live. But his words in Matthew 10 are clear: “As you go, preach!”

The Jesus that African-American preaching must proclaim has to be able to walk the dark ghetto streets of the North and the hot, dusty fields of a sharecropper’s farm in the South. The Jesus that African-American preaching proclaims is the Christ of faith who is relevant to the needs, feelings, and aspirations of African-American people. It is Jesus whose face and image one sees in the rat-bitten, mutilated faces of children, and his suffering one sees in the scars from dull and dirty needles in the body of a drug addict in a stinking, dirty alley. That is the Jesus who is not only the liberator and emancipator, but he is the bishop of the souls of African-American folk. It was this Jesus that African-Americans’ forefathers and foremothers knew and sang about: “O fix me, Jesus, fix me.”

It has been an understanding of, and an acquaintance with, this Jesus that has led African-American preachers to create new Christological categories and to declare him to be “A Stone rolling through Babylon,” “Water in dry places,” “Bread in a starving land,” “The Rose of Sharon,” and “The Bright and Morning Star.” When one hears preaching in a church where these Christological categories cannot be used, one can be certain he or she is not worshiping in an African-American church.

The Authorship and Origin of the Psalms

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Although they bear the stamp of gifted poets such as David, the Psalms are conventional worship texts, adapted to the needs of the community as a whole. The prophetic voice that often speaks in the Psalms reflects their development through the work of the Levitical musicians of the sanctuary.

The book of Psalms is customarily associated with the name of David, though less than half of the Psalms (seventy-three) bear his name in their superscription or introductory note; of these, fourteen are related by their superscription to events in the life of David. Other names that appear are those of Asaph (twelve), the sons of Korah (twelve), Solomon (two), Heman (one), Ethan (one), and Moses (one). A third of the Psalms have no such attribution.

The meaning of the expression lƒDavid in the superscription has occasioned much debate; some exegetes are of the opinion that it does not mean “by David” but “for David,” that is, for the use of the Davidic ruler, whether for David himself or for one of his descendants on the Judean throne. In any case, several things are clear. First, the Davidic psalms have a poetic quality that seems to reflect the personal faith and creativity of a gifted individual such as David; moreover, these songs typically portray a worshiper involved in a struggle with powerful enemies, a situation that fits the circumstances of David’s career. Second, the sanctuary on Zion was established and maintained under the personal sponsorship of the royal house of David; its worship expressed, especially, the situation of the king as leader of the covenant community and the viewpoint of the prophetic architects of Davidic theology. Third, despite what has just been said, the language of the Psalms is generalized to fit the attitude and condition of any worshiper who, in covenant with the Lord, feels the pressures of others against his or her commitment and is moved to express that commitment in prayer and song. Fourth, the Psalms were not offered spontaneously by individual worshipers but were presented by the appointed musicians of the sanctuary in behalf of the king and of the entire community (although it is possible that the congregation joined in responses or other portions of the Psalms).

In sum, even if many of the Psalms did originate in specific events in David’s life, through their subsequent use in the sanctuary they have been adapted to the needs of the general worshiper and of the covenant people as a whole. Thus the psalmist’s description of his distress, for example, often fits many types of situations, as in Psalm 22:

I am poured out like water,
And all my bones are out of joint;
My heart has turned to wax;
It is melted away within me.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
You lay me in the dust of death.
Dogs have surrounded me;
A band of evil men has encircled me,
They have pierced my hands and my feet.
I can count all my bones. (Ps. 22:14–17)

The church has understood this psalm as prophetic of the suffering of Christ; as used by the Israelite worshiper, however, its language could well describe warfare, persecution, illness, old age, or a feeling of abandonment by God. This universal quality of expression has given the Psalms their continuing appeal in the worship of the church. Like the hymns of a church hymnal, the Psalms are conventional worship texts. In such texts, individual authorship is unimportant, for the aim is to express the corporate faith of the gathered community.

It is often said that the Psalms are the voice of the worshiper calling out to God, rather than the word of God directed to his people. In actuality, the Psalms are a dialogue, for God speaks in them as well. Frequently we hear the prophetic word in the Psalms declaring the word of the Lord to the community or its representative for judgment or for encouragement:

The Lord will keep you from all harm—
He will watch over your life.
The Lord will watch over your coming and going
Both now and forevermore. (Ps. 121:7–8)

Where your fathers tested and tried me,
Though they had seen what I did.
For forty years I was angry with that generation;
I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray,
And they have not known my ways.”
So I declared on oath in my anger,
“They shall never enter my rest.” (Ps. 95:9–11)

Such utterances occur in perhaps a tenth of the Psalms and are a clue to the origin of psalmic worship in the cult of Zion during the Davidic era. Prophecy and music were closely associated in ancient Israel; the prophets were musicians, and the sanctuary musicians, at least, seem to have been prophets. When the ark of the covenant was brought to David’s tent on Zion, he appointed Levitical musicians “to prophesy with lyres, harps, and cymbals” (1 Chron. 25:1 NASB); regular animal sacrifices were not offered here at this time, but these priests “prophesied in giving thanks and praising the Lord” (1 Chron. 25:3 NASB). The origin of most Israelite psalmody with the Levitical prophet-musicians of the sanctuary would explain why the Psalms so seldom refer to the sacrificial cult of the Zadokite priesthood.

This is not to say that all the Psalms stem from the Davidic period; some of them, for example, obviously reflects the circumstances of later centuries, including the destruction of the temple and the exile in Babylon (Pss. 74; 137). However, the tendency of scholarship during the past century to assign a late, postexilic date to a large proportion of the Psalms does not do justice to that remarkable burst of insight and creativity that occurred during the era when the institutions of Israel’s covenant worship were being established in Jerusalem.

Prophetic Leadership in Old Testament Worship

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A careful survey of scriptural evidence discloses that the worship of the Lord is most significantly influenced, and often expressly led, by persons functioning in a prophetic role (as opposed to a priestly role). Prophets served as mediators of the covenant; they were closely associated with the sanctuary and vitally concerned with the integrity of worship; they functioned as directors and musicians.

Prophets As Covenant Mediators

The prophets of Israel, as God’s spokesmen (the probable meaning of the Hebrew term navi’), were mediators of the covenant and advocates of the covenant tradition. They called on the people to return to their loyalty to Yahweh, and they proclaimed the judgment of the Lord on an unfaithful people when the provisions of the covenant had been violated through idolatry and injustice. Since the enactment, renewal, and celebration of the covenant were a worship form, the prophets fulfilled a function as leaders in worship.

Moses, Israel’s prophet par excellence, mediated the Sinai covenant (Exod. 19:1–24:8), which had a worship structure incorporating the appearance of the Lord, the review of his historic act of deliverance of his people, the proclamation of his Word or covenant stipulations, the people’s pledge to obey the terms of the covenant, the giving of offerings to the Lord, and the eating of a covenant meal. Moses also presided at a renewal of the covenant, which had a similar structure, just prior to Israel’s entrance into Canaan. The entire book of Deuteronomy is devoted to a description of this ceremony in the form of a farewell address by Moses. Of special note here is the liturgical pronouncement of the covenant sanctions: blessing if the covenant is kept, curse if it is violated (Deut. 27–29). The people were summoned to choose the way of obedience that leads to life (Deut. 30:15–20), and witnesses to the agreement were invoked (Deut. 4:26; 30:19). The ceremony concluded with two songs, the first of which returned to the theme of the judgment inherent in the curse of the covenant (Deut. 32:1–43).

Joshua, though not called a prophet, inherited the mantle of Moses as the spokesman of the Lord’s covenant and presided over the curse liturgy for which Moses had given directions in his farewell address (Josh. 8:30–35). After the conquest of the land of Canaan, he officiated at another ceremony of renewal of the covenant at Shechem (Josh. 24:1–28). This ceremony recapitulated the same treaty-covenant structure familiar from earlier examples: the recitation of the relationship between God and people, the summons to choose between the Lord and other gods, the pledge of the people to serve Yahweh, the invocation of witnesses, and the presentation of the terms of the covenant, its “words,” or statutes.

Prophets and the Sanctuary

Samuel, who was to become Israel’s prophetic leader, was brought up in the sanctuary and “was ministering before the Lord” (1 Sam. 2:18); later his presence was required to “bless the sacrifice” of the feasts of the people (1 Sam. 9:12–13). Bands of prophets were apparently attached to the high places or local sanctuaries; Saul, after being anointed king by Samuel, also encountered such a group and prophesied with them (1 Sam. 10:1–13).

The prophetic association with the sanctuary continued into the period of the Israelite kingdoms; evidently, the festal gatherings of the people provided an audience for the prophet’s utterances, which were usually in the form of poetic compositions. Amos prophesied at the “sanctuary of the king” at Bethel and was ordered by the officiating priest, Amaziah, to return to his own country, Judah, and prophesy there instead (Amos 7:10–17). Isaiah received his prophetic vocation while attending a festival at the temple in Jerusalem (Isa. 6). He apparently was close to the king, a respected adviser to the royal house (Isa. 7:1–17; 37:1–38:22). It has been suggested that Isaiah served as the nation’s “poet laureate,” composing liturgical materials for public worship; the famous prophecy of the “child” who is to take the government upon his shoulder, reigning “on David’s throne and over his kingdom” (Isa. 9:1–7), may have been an oracle for the coronation of a Judean king such as Hezekiah. Jeremiah delivered his indictment of the people’s violation of the covenant while standing “at the gate of the Lord’s house,” addressing the Judeans who came there to worship (Jer. 7:1–2).

The integrity of the worship of the Lord was itself a major concern of the prophets of Israel, all the way from Samuel, who insisted that “to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Sam. 15:22), to Malachi, who proclaimed that the “messenger of the covenant” would come to his temple, refining the priesthood so they might “bring offerings in righteousness” (Mal. 3:1–4). Elijah officiated at a sacrifice that demonstrated to the people, who had been enticed to worship the Canaanite god Ba‘al, that Yahweh, “he is God” (1 Kings 18:36–39 RSV). The prophet Amaziah encouraged Asa, king of Judah, to undertake a restoration of the sanctuary, accompanied by the renewal of the covenant oath (2 Chron. 15:1–15). During the reign of Josiah, king of Judah, the prophetess Huldah was consulted in connection with the rediscovery of the Book of the Law by the priests; she declared the Lord’s judgment against the temple as a consequence of the violation of the covenant (2 Kings 22:12–20).

Amos declared, in the Lord’s name, “I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies” (Amos 5:21) because they mask injustice and the violation of the Lord’s covenant with his people. similarly, Isaiah declared that the appointed feasts had become a burden to the Lord (Isa. 1:14) because of the dissolution of the wealthy and their indifference to the plight of the poor, their fellow members of the covenant community.

Jeremiah and Ezekiel, prophets of the early exilic period, were both of priestly families (Jer. 1:1; Ezek. 1:3), and each in his own way was concerned with the integrity of worship. Jeremiah believed that trust in religious institutions, without an inward bond to the Lord, was deceptive (Jer. 7:3–11). Instead, he proclaimed the coming of a “new covenant” written on the heart (Jer. 31:31–34). Ezekiel was more institutionally oriented; his passion was the restoration of the ruined temple, filled once again with the glory of the Lord (Ezek. 40–43), a source of life and healing (Ezek. 47:1–12). In the postexilic period, the prophet Haggai urged Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the high priest to rebuild the house of the Lord (Hag. 1:1–11).

Prophetic Musicians in Worship

In ancient Israel, prophecy and music were closely associated. (A hint of this association, found in other cultures as well, appears in our English word music, which betrays its derivation from the ancient Greek concept of the muse, the spirit that inspires poets and musicians.) During the Exodus, Miriam the prophetess, sister of Moses and Aaron, took tambourine in hand and led the women in song and dance, celebrating the Lord’s triumph over the Egyptian pursuers (Exod. 15:20–21). As we have seen, Moses concluded his farewell address, an extended reenactment of the covenant ceremony, with a song of judgment and warning. The prophetess Deborah (Judg. 4:4) composed a song celebrating Israel’s victory over a Canaanite army (Judg. 5:1–31). The prophets that Saul encountered coming down from the high place were prophesying to the accompaniment of musical instruments (1 Sam. 10:5).

The prophets of the period of the Israelite kingdoms continued the same alignment between spoken word and music. Second Kings 3:15 records that Elisha called for a “minstrel” (mƒnaggen, a player on a stringed instrument) in order to prophesy to the kings of Israel, Judah, and Edom, assembled for battle against Moab. The prophets who produced the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible composed lyric oracles, which they probably sang to their hearers—at least to their disciples, if not always to the public. Isaiah’s “song of the vineyard” (Isa. 5:1–7) expresses the Lord’s disappointment with his unfaithful people. Another song in Isaiah 26:1–6, celebrating the Lord’s deliverance of those who trust in him, perhaps was composed as part of a liturgy of entrance into the sanctuary (Isa. 26:2). Jeremiah composed a chant of lament upon the death of King Josiah (2 Chron. 35:25), and his book of Lamentations is a song. Most of the material in the prophetic books is, in fact, poetic song, and some material in the later Prophets, now preserved in prose form, was probably originally written as song. Indeed, prophecy was so closely associated with music that Ezekiel complained that to the public he was simply a musical entertainer (Ezek. 33:32).

It is David the king, however, whose name is most closely linked with prophetic song and musical leadership in the liturgy of the sanctuary. In connection with his bringing the ark of the covenant up to Zion, David instructed the Levites to provide singers and musicians to celebrate the event (1 Chron. 15:16–24). Once the ark had been placed in its tent, he appointed Asaph as chief musician in charge of continual thanksgiving and praise before the ark (1 Chron. 16:1–7). The Levites were priests, but later we learn that David had appointed them to “prophesy”—to give thanks and praise to the Lord (1 Chron. 25:1–7). The description of their activity suggests that these musicians led in a spontaneous and overwhelming outpouring of worship, especially on high occasions such as the dedication of the temple of Solomon (2 Chron. 5:11–14).

David is associated with about half the Psalms, for which he is called a “prophet” in the New Testament (Acts 2:29–31). Many of the Psalms must have originated in the prophetic worship he instituted before the ark on Zion during the period prior to the erection of the temple, when the Mosaic sanctuary with its priestly sacrifices remained at Gibeon (1 Chron. 21:29). This explains the prophetic voice in which God himself speaks in a number of the Psalms (e.g., Pss. 2; 46; 50; 81–82; 89; 91; 95; 105; 108; 110; 132), many of which are attributed to David or to the Levitical musicians.

Certain of the sanctuary musicians were appointed to direct the performance of the music (1 Chron. 15:21), and the superscriptions to fifty-five of the Psalms refer to the choirmaster, or “director” (mƒnatztze‡ḥ), often with instructions for performance (Pss. 4–6; 8–9; 12; 22; 45–46; 52–62; 67; 69; 75–77; 80–81; 84; 88). Of these Psalms, thirty-nine are associated with David, nine with the sons of Korah, and five with Asaph. (A similar designation appears in Hab. 3:19.) The director of music evidently played an important leadership role in the worship of the sanctuary from the time of David onward, as the vocal and instrumental praise of the Lord assumed greater importance. The book of Chronicles especially highlights the prominence of the prophetic sanctuary musicians as leaders of corporate worship. A well-known example of their activity occurs in the account of the invasion of Judah during the reign of Jehoshaphat, when Jahaziel, a Levitical musician, prophesied encouragement and victory to the beleaguered king and nation. The musicians then went before the army into battle, praising the Lord in full vesture, and led in celebration of the ensuing victory (2 Chron. 20:14–30). In the restoration of worship after the Exile, Ezra made a point of recruiting more than two hundred Levites for the service of the sanctuary (Ezra 8:18–20).

In Israelite worship, prophetic and musical activity offered virtually the only outlet for leadership in worship on the part of women. The prophetesses Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah have been mentioned. The enumeration of members of the assembly who returned to Jerusalem after the Exile includes 245 male and female singers (Neh. 7:67). Moses expressed the desire that all the Lord’s people might be prophets (Num. 11:29). Indeed, in Psalm 105 the Lord calls all the covenant descendants of Abraham “my prophets” (Ps. 105:8–15). The spirit of prophecy, then, is the rightful heritage of all who are bound to the Lord in covenant.