In mid-April, I commenced the start of our semester’s third unit, on the prophets, with an SNL sketch starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, who plays an eager substitute teacher in a public high school classroom. Miranda stands before the class -- cocky as all get-out -- prepared (as many new teachers are) to transform the hearts and minds of his pupils with a single shattering lesson; donning four layers of clothing, inclusive of an unbuttoned flannel shirt and a corduroy sportcoat, he alights upon a backwards chair, introduces himself as Dale Sweeze: “You can call me ‘Dale,’ you can call me ‘Sweeze,’ but let’s take the ‘Mr.’ out of the picture.” Lin-Manuel points at Kenan Thompson as he delivers this line, to which the latter facepalms and groans, “Oh, man, not this guy…” The kindly though naive substitute proceeds to attempt to teach Shakespeare through hip-hop, but the teenagers see it coming.
“You like hip-hop? You like dope beats? Well what if I told you that the greatest rapper of all time isn’t 2Pac, isn’t Biggie, it’s actually…”
“Shakespeare,” replies Kenan, tilting back his head in lithe sarcasm.
“It’s actually Shakespeare!” affirms Lin-Manuel.
I wanted my freshpeople to know that I was going to attempt the not-unprecedented for this unit, and would quite possibly (read: most definitely) come off as a tool for doing so. Surely, they’d had whitey white boys like myself try such tomfoolery before. This would be an experiment that might go horribly, horribly wrong. I spent months listening to hip-hop, sifting around for those tracks most conducive to undertaking comparative analysis alongside the Hebrew Bible’s prophetic literature. I knew next to nothing about the stuff, and in order to seem somewhat educated on the material, I had to do some research. Rob’s recent post on Chance the Rapper got my juices flowing, and I present to you the fruits of some of my studying and teaching.1
They say we N-I double G-E-R, we areIn his song “N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave and the Master),” Nas throws down some unsettling lyrics, rapping about the plight of the African American in contemporary society, a society in which the legacy of slavery has been constitutionally institutionalized2 and its repercussions still deeply felt and experienced. The timbre of anger and hostility surrounding the n-word cannot help but manifest in this song, and I feel uncomfortable listening to it. Then again, I get the same feeling when I read the prophets.
Much more, still we choose to ignore
The obvious, man this history don't acknowledge us
We were scholars long before colleges
They say we N-I double G-E-R, we are
Much more, but still we choose to ignore
The obvious, we are the slave and the master
What you lookin for? You the question and the answer
As I’ve written before, the prophetic literature took shape during the period surrounding the Babylonian Exile, the single most devastating and formative historical event in ancient Israel’s/Judah’s history. Scribes, priests, and the literati of Israel penned the entirety of the Hebrew Bible during and after the Exile. While the history of this composition remains much-debated given its vast complexity, there is no doubt that while some of its content can be traced to periods before the Exile, the Hebrew Bible’s contextual surroundings of that cataclysmic event gave shape to the many books within it. We therefore cannot forget that every single word, every single iota and pen stroke within each and every book, came directly from the hand of someone who intimately knew enslavement and political subjugation.
On the whole, the prophets echo the sentiment of Nas. When we search for evidence of Israel and Judah throughout ancient Near Eastern literature, the texts left by Babylon and Persia mention these nations in passing. Not only does this speak to the relative insignificance of the biblical nations in the geopolitical sphere, but it directs us to one of the primary reasons for the basic existence of the Bible: Judeans penned the Bible as an act of political, cultural, and theological rebellion against surrounding powers. It takes mythology from its neighbors, and imbues ancient stories with newfound perspectives on the nature of God.
The prophets who wrote in Exile -- primarily Deutero-Isaiah (chapters 40-55) and Ezekiel -- preached for audiences who knew enslavement at the hands of the Babylonian Empire. As I explained in my last post, Deutero-Isaiah so forcefully argued for radical monotheism in order to imbue the enslaved with hope. Ezekiel, likewise, in his horrific vision of the resurrection of the dry bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14) posits his experience as nothing less than hope for the future. What has been decimated and stripped of flesh will one day be re-animated, literally in-spired with the breath of the divine. No wonder “Dem Bones,” the children’s sing-song anatomy lesson based on this paradigmatic text, has its roots in African slave spirituals. Enslavement permits few external liberties, though the interior freedom to respond with creativity can never be revoked.3
Taking up the mantle of the prophets, Nas addresses the modern enslaved, preaching to his listeners that the modern-day “N-I-double-G-E-R” is both “the question and the answer,” both “the slave and the master.” The very same paradoxical identity lay embedded within the heart of the ancient Judean, who found him- or herself in captivity, with no hope for salvation outside of their own individual person. The very fact of the Judeans’ existence remained in question, though it was nonetheless the very answer for their continuation as a people.
In the line that most catches my attention, Nas proclaims, “I spit Moses’ lost commandments like a gross sandwich out my mouth.” We tend to think of just the first Ten when we consider the Commandments, but there were -- and are -- 603 others; and while the vast majority of them are not so applicable to the 21st century, certain among them form the heart of the prophetic message.4 See that footnote for the most notable ones, which provide a sort of social safety net for those most likely to be forgotten and in profound lack of basic rights and necessities.
Time and time and time again, the prophets declare that the destruction of Judah and Israel is due to nothing more than the forgotten commandments, the fact that the kings5 of these tiny kingdoms had exploited the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant -- the anawim, the most vulnerable in society -- for the purposes of increasing the wealth and the power of the government and the Jerusalem Temple. Jesus flipped his lid, along with some tables, filled with this same anger. 2pac, Lauryn Hill, Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, and many others do the same.
I do not laud the reckless condoning of misogyny and violence in a lot of hip-hop, but the Hebrew Bible doesn’t ignore the ugliness that infects a people whose backs are up against a wall, either. Jeremiah declares in verse 9 of chapter 19, “I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they will eat one another's flesh in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life will distress them." While this might be exaggerated symbolism, human beings in states of profound disenfranchisement have committed more bizarre atrocities than cannibalism. Psalm 137, whose composition took place during or soon after the Exile, goes like this, expressing the all-consuming rage that might possess the enslaved:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
Remember, Lord, what the Edomites didWhen searching for a facet of our culture that hearkens to the prophetic culture, we need look nowhere else than American hip-hop, which can trace its lineage back to slave spirituals thru the Delta River blues thru jazz thru b-boys on the streets of Harlem. Enslavement and oppression birthed these musical genres, which gestated for decades in the womb of institutionalized marginalization. The prophets in slavery had nothing save memory of Judah to fuel their hope, and nothing save their songs of hope and redemption.7 And this is the beauty of art in any form: human hands and voices can create marvelous reminders and beacons of light in overwhelming darkness. And the prophets sung their art; when you see poetic verse in the Bible, it was originally musical. The prophets didn’t read from scrolls, they sang! Or maybe they rapped.
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks. 6
I’ll close with one of Tupac Shakur’s poems, “The Rose That Grew from Concrete”.
Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.
1 My original game plan for this thing was to discuss three different prophets, but I quickly realized that doing so would require about 10 pages because I tend to ramble. So, please excuse the lack of detailed comparative analysis.↩
2 After all, when the amendments speak of “rights,” only free men possessed such rights. Women and slaves were not exactly in the minds of the founding fathers for being the recipients of such freedom.↩
3 For beautiful expositions of this notion, one need only look to Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel, and Viktor Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning is a must-read.↩
4 “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21)
“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:9-10)
“When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings. When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.” (Deuteronomy 24:19-20)
“If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.” (Deuteronomy 15:7)
“Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debts. And this is the manner of the remission: every creditor shall remit the claim that is held against a neighbor, not exacting it of a neighbor who is a member of the community, because the Lord’s remission has been proclaimed.” (Deuteronomy 15:1-2)
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5 The Kings were supremely messed up. David commits adultery and murders his cuckold; Solomon, despite his wisdom, maintains one thousand wives and concubines, which leads him to idolatry; Manasseh -- one of the final kings -- constructs idols in the Temple and immolates his own children. The Bible only maintains that Josiah, who ascended to the throne as a child, remained sinless; he was, however, too late to prevent destruction at the hands of foreign empires. We revere the kings, but in reality their whole purpose is to demonstrate the futility of earthly monarchy: “This will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place them for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots. He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and some to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants. He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys and use them for his work.He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants.Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” (1 Samuel 8:11-18) When the Hebrews ask for a king because the judges failed so hard, God warns that they won’t like the end result. Human weakness destined the kings for abject failure.↩
6 See Matisyahu’s song “Jerusalem”, based on Psalm 137. He used to be an Orthodox Jew (he’s still Jewish, though has disassociated himself from Orthodox Judaism), and his reggae-style rap is filled with biblical and religious allusions. Wild stuff.↩
7 See Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” for a piece that very much rings of the prophets…”Won’t you help me sing another song of freedom, ‘cause all I ever have, redemption songs, redemption songs.”↩
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