Is a prophet someone who predicts the future?

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Is a prophet someone who predicts the future?
Gilles Castelnau

The evangelist Matthew writes that when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday :

This was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet:
Say to the daughter of Zion:
Behold, your King is coming to you,
Gentle and riding on a donkey,
On a colt, the foal of an ass.
(Mt 21.4 and Zechariah 9.9)
If anyone thinks that the prophets predicted the future, then it would have been necessary to wait four centuries to understand the word uttered by Zechariah in the 4th century B.C. It would therefore have made no sense, neither for him, nor for his contemporaries, nor for the countless scribes who copied and transmitted it.

But we know that Zechariah said this in a Jerusalem in turmoil at the time of the magnificent entry – on horseback! – of King Alexander the Great, who was conquering the entire Middle East.
He was bringing a veritable renaissance with the Greek language and culture.
He went to Egypt, where he founded the city of Alexandria and where the priests called him the « Son of God », and as far as India: Greek colonnades were popping up everywhere, even in the sands of Afghanistan.

Rejoice, daughter of Zion!
Shout for joy, daughter of Jerusalem
Behold, your King comes to you, righteous and victorious!
The boys of Jerusalem enthusiastically joined his cavalry and the girls ogled the beautiful uniforms.
But Zechariah continued:

He is gentle and rides on a donkey, on a donkey, the foal of an ass.
I will destroy (says God) the war chariots and the horses of Jerusalem
He will proclaim peace to the nations.
Then people remembered the city of Tyre, which had closed its gates to him: obviously it had been captured, 8,000 of its inhabitants slaughtered and 30,000 sold as slaves. The great Alexander, mounted on his war horse was not gentle. It was to an entirely different king that the people must open up.

And for three centuries these words, repeated and re-read in the synagogues, taught to children, helped to spread God’s spirit of peace and love for all people.

When Jesus chose to enter Jerusalem on a donkey, or more likely when the evangelists shaped the story after the Roman general Titus had forced his way into Jerusalem with his cavalry in the year 70, carried out a terrible massacre and destroyed the Temple and the walls, the cry of Zechariah once again found its former meaning: a proclamation of the harmony brought about by the Spirit and not the deadly enthusiasm of the spirit of violent domination.

A prophet does not reveal a future directed by the planets, as astrologers claim, or written in advance by an omniscient God, but he is sensitive to the creative Spirit of the God of life and knows how to transcribe it and make it heard.

NB. The Hebrew language knows only one verb tense (apart from the past tense), which grammarians call the « imperfect ». It includes the future, the present and the conditional.

So the prophet Isaiah does not announce a distant – and improbable – future when he sings: « The wolf will lie down with the lamb ». The « imperfect » he uses refers in general terms to the harmony that reigns today – among men of good will – as it will tomorrow and on the Day of the Lord, and moreover as it could reign today.

It’s a good thing that the Word of God is not reduced to a distant future that would obviously be of interest only in the very distant future!

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