The relationship of prophecy to the cult in ancient Israel may be viewed under three headings: (1) activity within the cult, (2) activity independent and often critical of the cult, and (3) utterances and compositions that, while not necessarily belonging to cultic occasions, reflect and echo, but often transform, liturgical language and themes. Here I propose, after a brief sketch of headings (1) and (2), to concentrate on some problems under heading (3), by an examination of the language and themes that link Isa. 33 to other prophetic passages (especially elsewhere in Isaiah) and to the Psalms. This will involve a re-examination of the notion of ‘prophetic liturgy’ and the suggestion that some themes, which have come to be regarded as looking forward to late apocalyptic eschatology, may rather be echoes of ancient rituals. It is a pleasure to offer Peter Ackroyd a development of some ideas first ventilated in his seminar, in which I have learned so much.

Activity within the cult

By ‘cult’ I understand primarily the liturgical and ritual activities contemporary with the prophets, but with due awareness that, whatever the original Sitz im Leben of the prophetic utterances, the texts as they stand also reflect their after-life and the use of them in other kinds of cult and devotional activity, which may have left its marks, as well as bequeathing to us a unified context in which we read the Old Testament, as Childs (1979) has so usefully reminded us. ‘Prophecy’ I am inclined to understand broadly (not, therefore, restricting the basis to particular characteristic terms) as utterance arising from the belief that someone has a communication from God that must be passed on.