The Prophetic Mind

“What is to be noted is not just the the prophetic mind is lucid, but that the prophetic personality is sufficiently grounded in something other than the shifting sands of the social order to withstand the contagious power of social consensus. The clearest proof that Micaiah has managed to stay outside that vortex is that when he looks at the Israelite gathering, it isn’t a nation firmly united for combat with its enemy that he sees. What he sees, and what Zedekiah and the raving prophets in his entourage cannot even imagine, is ‘Israel scattered like sheep without a shepherd..’ The ability to see that under those social circumstances is the prophet’s chief social distinction and what makes his existence so anthropologically extraordinary” (Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, p. 176).