Priestly Rites and Prophetic Rage: Post-Exilic Prophetic Critique of the Priesthood

Although Judah’s prophets and priests often stood united in their concerns for the cult, many prophetic texts from the 6th and the 5th century BC testify to a major disagreement between them as to how to worship God. Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer analyzes the critique of the priests as found in the prophetic texts from that period. In these texts, the prophets accused the priests of misdemeanours in both the cultic and the social realm. The author further explores how the same prophets envisioned a more righteous priesthood. The earlier promises in Isaiah 40-55 form the background of this critique. Much of the post-exilic prophetic literature sought to explain the non-fulfilment of these promises. The author shows that the shared focus of most of these explanations is a culpable priesthood. She further demonstrates a different picture of the post-exilic priesthood from the one often previously assumed. Rather than attributing cultic monolatry to the post-exilic priests, reformed through their suffering following the destruction of Jerusalem, she shows that the emerging new clergy were not so very different from their pre-exilic predecessors. In addition, in contrast to the common assumption that the prophetic literature displays contradictory views, the author stresses the similarity between the thoughts and ideas displayed throughout Isaiah 56-66, Haggai, Zechariah 1-8 and Malachi.