(Part 1)

JBTM Daniel I. Block
71
Jeremiah 18:18 suggests that in the seventh–sixth centuries BCE Israelites distinguished
three types of officials, whose differences are highlighted as Table 1:
Table 1: Who Speaks for God?
The Classes of Leaders in Ancient Israel according to Jeremiah 18:18
Basis of
Authority
Source of
Information
Scope
Priest Prophet Sage
Inheritance in YHWH’s
Covenant with Levi
The Torah of Moses
Israel: ethnocentric
A personal and direct call
of God
Direct revelation from God
Primarily Israel:
ethnocentric
Popularly/officially
recognized common sense,
practical wisdom
The world out there:
observation, experience,
tradition
The world: universal
Addressee
Message
Israel: the covenant
community
Instruction in the Torah of
Moses
Israel: the Nation and its
leaders
Proclamation to return to
and live by the Torah of
Moses
The individual
Counsel on prudent living
We may summarize the method and goals of the sage as follows:
1. The source of information is the world out there.
2. The scope is universalistic. The wisdom writings do not address Israel as a nation. The
closest they come is the occasional use of the divine name YHWH. Otherwise they deal
with issues that are common to all people.
3. The emphasis is on the personal, practical well-being of the individual. Almost nothing
is said of institutional religion.
4. The audience is the individual. Even then, a book like Proverbs has a particular
individual in mind. “My son” is a young man preparing for responsible adulthood in the
court or in the counsel of elders.
In contrast to the Torah and the prophetic writings, on the surface wisdom literature
appears to be relatively secular. There are no appeals to special divine revelation, no grounding
of ethic in gratitude for YHWH’s rescue from slavery or in the covenant he established with
them at Sinai (Exod 20–24) and confirmed on the Plains of Moab (Deuteronomy), indeed
no overt call for covenantal fidelity. The source of sages’ information is general revelation,
the world of nature and experience. The amount of God-talk is diminished and generally
restricted to general adherence to the divine order built into the universe. This means that
the perspective is not actually secular—there were no secularists in the ancient world!
Actually, the sage makes four important assumptions concerning the universe.
(a) The universe is ordered and life proceeds according to a fixed order.
(b) This order is learnable and teachable.
(c) By learning the order in the universe the individual is handed an instrument with