More on Prayer

Prayer

God wants us to pray for mercy/against his judgement

–Intercession, understood as the prayer of one or more in behalf of another party, was not the primary mode of prayer in ancient Israel. Where such prayers occur, their primary focus is the threat or reality of judgment and their aim is to avert God’s judgment (Miller pg.452)

-Several times, the Lord tells Jeremiah not to intercede for the people even though no such intention has even been indicated by the prophet (Jer. 7:16; 11:14; 14:11). On one such occasion, the Lord says: ‘Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people’ (Jer. 15:1). There are two things particularly noteworthy about this prophetic intercession: a. The Lord expects the intercession of the prophets and takes it into account in whatever action is taken. Or to put it another way, the responsive action of God to the human situation is dependent upon the intercessory prayer of the prophet. Several texts attest to the fact that God is not simply open to prayer at this point but depends upon such prayer to affect and effect God’s actions. The instances in Jeremiah where the Lord forbids Jeremiah to intercede suggest this indirectly. That is, there is no reason why the prophet should forbear interceding unless in fact it is going to have some effect on the Lord’s response to the people. If it is simply a matter of ignoring the intercession or saying no to it, then there is no point in restraining the prophet. Only in one instance is there some intimation that God can ignore the intercession of the prophet. That is the passage already cited from Jer. 15:1, which indicates that there would be no divine change of mind even if Samuel and Moses interceded. That text simply highlights how far things have progressed in the disintegration of the covenantal life of Judah. Intercession may have been effective up to this point, but now the situation is past all possible redemption. It is not unlike the vision reports of Amos 7 where the prophet intercedes twice effectively, but things are so bad that in the final two vision reports, there is not even an attempt at intercession. (Miller 453).

-Just before Moses’ plea in behalf of the people, the Lord says to him: ‘I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them …’ (vv. 9–10; cf. Deut. 9:14). In other words, the deity, as in the case of Jeremiah, puts off Moses so as not to be affected by the prayer of Moses for the people. The burning wrath of the Lord can only come to expression if it is not derailed by the prayer of God’s prophet. But of course, derailment is exactly what happens. Moses prays, and the narrative reports: ‘And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people’ (Exod. 32:14). Prayer thus interferes with the impetus for judgment. Furthermore, the divine rebuff, ‘Let me alone’, actually serves, indirectly, to invite the response of intercession. The deity could simply act, but this word to Moses is itself an indication that Moses’ prayerful involvement can and will affect things. ‘[J]ust as God involved Abraham in the “consultation” prior to the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah …, so here God pauses and makes the divine will “vulnerable” to human challenge.’ That the prayer of intercession can and does change the mind of God or move God to act differently than once intended is clear in the biblical story. But that prayerful intervention is not in fact an intrusion on the divine rule, as Kaufman, for example, seems to characterize it. Rather it is ‘an integral part of the way God’s sovereignty in history is exercised … God not only allows human intercession, God invites it and builds it into the decision-making processes of the heavenly council in ways we can never fathom’. Moses does not so much argue against God as participate in the ongoing argument within God. That God’s purposive activity builds into itself the intercessory act is most clearly indicated by two texts from the book of Ezekiel. In a condemnation of the ‘senseless prophets who follow their own spirit’, the Lord tells Ezekiel to prophesy against them saying, ‘You have not gone up into the breaches, or repaired a wall for the house of Israel, so that it might stand in battle on the day of the Lord’ (Ezek. 13:5). The significance of this indictment is only clear when one sets it against Ezek. 22:30–31: And I sought for anyone among them who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land so that I would not destroy it, but I found no one. Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath; I have returned their conduct upon their heads, says the Lord God. (Miller 453-454)

-Therefore he said he would destroy them— had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them (Ps. 106:23). The imagery of the wall and the breach comes into play in a different but related way elsewhere in the prophets and serves to connect the intercessory involvement in the divine activity with what has been said above about the persuading involvement in God’s activity: (Miller 454).

-There is a common tendency to see all prayer as somehow ‘interfering’ or ‘intervening’ in God’s purposive activity. That is not quite the picture that comes from the Scriptures. In that context, one presumes that the case presented by the petitioner who is in trouble, oppressed, sick, or suffering in some fashion will have its effect on the deity because God is ‘bent’ in that direction. Where the change of mind takes place is in relation to the purpose of God to punish or judge those who have sinned, broken covenant, and the like and in response to the prophetic intercession. In other words, the one ‘violation’ of the divine intention that can be identified, and indeed with some frequency, is in regard to judgment. (Miller 456).

-My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has … I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly … (Job 42:7b, 8b).

-the whole story of Jonah warning Ninevah

-In the Psalms, often prayers start out with a petition, end with a promise of praise