The Prophets in Orthodox Worship

The prophets are not read only on their feast days; they are woven through the daily and festal worship of the Church — in the Old Testament readings (paroimiai) at the Vespers of feasts, in the Nine Biblical Odes that form the skeleton of the canon, and in the two great Sundays before the Nativity. This file gathers the liturgical life of the prophets, deferring the mechanics of hymnography to the wave-sibling collection.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Paroimiai: The Prophets Read at Vespers

At the Vespers of the great feasts and on many other days, the Church appoints readings from the Old Testament called paroimiai (“proverbs” or “lessons,” from the readings’ frequent opening formula) — normally three, and on the greatest days many more. These are, overwhelmingly, prophetic and Wisdom texts chosen because they foretell or figure the mystery being celebrated, so that the feast is heard first in the mouth of the prophets and then in the Gospel (the structure of the lectionary and the paroimiai is treated in the Scripture collection; see The Lectionary and the Cycles). The pattern is unmistakable once one knows what to listen for:

  • At the Nativity, the paroimiai include Micah’s Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), Isaiah’s Immanuel and the “child born” (Isaiah 7:14; 9:6), and the prophecies of Balaam’s star and Jacob’s blessing — the prophets announcing the birth before the Gospel proclaims it.
  • At Theophany (the Baptism), Isaiah’s waters and the “voice crying in the wilderness” (Isaiah 40; 35), and the crossing of Jordan and Elijah/Elisha dividing its waters — the prophetic types of baptism.
  • At the Annunciation and the Marian feasts, the Old Testament types of the Theotokos: Jacob’s ladder, Ezekiel’s closed gate (Ezekiel 44), Moses’ bush, Aaron’s rod — the prophets’ images of the Virgin.
  • On Holy Saturday, the great series of fifteen readings, dense with the prophets: Jonah entire (his three days), Ezekiel’s dry bones (Ezekiel 37), Daniel’s three youths in the furnace with the Song of the Three, Isaiah’s suffering servant — the whole prophetic witness to the death and resurrection gathered at the tomb (see Jeremiah and Ezekiel; Jonah and the Sign).

Through the paroimiai, the prophets are the Church’s chosen heralds of every feast: the Old Testament is not background but the first proclamation, and the prophet speaks at Vespers what the Evangelist will confirm at the Liturgy.

The Nine Biblical Odes: The Prophets’ Canticles

The single deepest structural presence of the prophets in Orthodox worship is the Nine Biblical Odes (or Canticles) — the nine scriptural songs that form the skeleton of the canon, the great poetic sequence sung at Matins (and at Compline and other services). The canon’s nine odes are each built upon, and originally sang, one of these nine biblical canticles, most of them prophetic (Biblical Odes, OrthodoxWiki; and, for the developed form of the canon, John of Damascus and Cosmas of Maiuma):

  1. The (First) Song of Moses at the Red Sea — “I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously” (Exodus 15:1–19).
  2. The (Second) Song of Moses — “Give ear, O ye heavens” (Deuteronomy 32:1–43), penitential, and so omitted on most days.
  3. The Prayer of Hannah — “My heart rejoiceth in the Lord” (1 Samuel 2:1–10).
  4. The Prayer of Habakkuk — “O Lord, I have heard thy speech… God shall come from Teman” (Habakkuk 3:1–19).
  5. The Prayer of Isaiah — “With my soul have I desired thee in the night” (Isaiah 26:9–20).
  6. The Prayer of Jonah — “I cried by reason of mine affliction… out of the belly of hell” (Jonah 2:2–9).
  7. The Prayer of Azarias — from the furnace (Daniel 3:26–56, LXX).
  8. The Song of the Three Holy Children — “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord” (Daniel 3:57–88, LXX).
  9. The Song of the Theotokos (the Magnificat, Luke 1:46–55) with the Song of Zacharias (the Benedictus, Luke 1:68–79).

Seven of the nine odes are Old Testament canticles — five of them (Moses, Habakkuk, Isaiah, Jonah, the Three Youths) drawn directly from the prophets and the prophetic narratives treated in this compendium. When the Church sings a canon — the Paschal canon, the Great Canon of St. Andrew, the canon of any feast or any weekday — she sings it on the frame of the prophets’ own songs: each ode’s irmos ties the newly composed troparia back to the biblical canticle beneath it, so that Moses’ Red Sea, Habakkuk’s Teman, Jonah’s deep, and the youths’ furnace are the permanent scaffolding of Orthodox hymnody. The mechanics of the canon — irmos, troparia, the eight tones, the hymnographers who built it — belong to the collection on hymnography and are deferred there (see The Akathist and Hymnography); what belongs here is the recognition that the prophetic content of the odes makes the prophets the constant, if often unnoticed, singers within every canon.

The Two Sundays Before the Nativity

The prophets’ liturgical year culminates, as noted in the opening section, in the two Sundays before the Nativity — the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers and the Sunday of the Holy Fathers — on which the whole company of the Old Testament righteous is commemorated together, the second focused through the genealogy of Christ read from Matthew 1 (see the fuller treatment in The Prophets as Saints of the Church). The hymnography of these Sundays is a roll-call of the prophets: Daniel and the Three Youths, Isaiah, Moses, Elijah, and the rest are named and praised for having foreseen and proclaimed the Christ, so that the Church, before she keeps His birth, keeps the memory of all who longed for His day. The Nativity is thus liturgically framed as the harvest of the prophetic expectation, and the prophets are its honored heralds.

Prophets Prayed, Not Only Studied

The upshot of all this is that Orthodoxy prays the prophets. They are read at Vespers as the heralds of every feast; they are sung, in their own canticles, as the frame of every canon; they are commemorated, name by name, before the Nativity; and their prophecies are put in the mouths of the faithful as the Church’s own words. This liturgical saturation is the practical form of the doctrine set out at the beginning of this compendium: that the prophets are saints of the Church and that the Spirit who spoke by them was the Spirit of Christ (see What a Prophet Is). The prophets in worship are matched by the prophets in image and relic — the icon-screen and the traditions of their tombs — to which the companion file turns, with the source-critical honesty those traditions require (see The Prophets in Icon, Relic, and Legend).

See Also

References

  • Biblical Odes, OrthodoxWiki (the nine canticles and their scriptural sources; their place as the frame of the canon).
  • The Festal Menaion and The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber, 1969 and 1978) — the paroimiai for the feasts; the Holy Saturday readings; the canons.
  • The Holy Bible, KJV, with LXX (Exodus 15; Deuteronomy 32; 1 Samuel 2; Habakkuk 3; Isaiah 7:14; 9:6; 26; 35; 40; Ezekiel 37; 44; Daniel 3 LXX; Jonah 2; Micah 5:2; Luke 1:46–55, 68–79).
  • Pentiuc, Eugen J. The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. (The Old Testament in Orthodox liturgy.)