Prolepsis: How The Bible Tells Us The Future
Va-yera 5772, Genesis 18:1–22:24
Regular screen watchers know that if in an opening scene the camera pans in on a detail like a dagger or a bicycle, then that detail—the dagger or the bicycle—will somehow have an important role to play later on in the movie. Known as foreshadowing, this cinematic technique has its parallel in literature in the rhetorical device known as prolepsis, which indicates a future event that is presumed to have occurred. Prolepsis is also known as anticipation, which is what the term literally means, because the details are anticipated or foreshadowed before they are developed in the ensuing narrative. Prolepsis is a characteristic feature of biblical Hebrew narrative, and, in recent studies, my colleague Dr. Robert Harris has convincingly demonstrated that it was a rhetorical feature well known to 12th-century Jewish medieval exegetes such as Joseph Kara, Rashbam (Samuel ben Meir), and Eliezer of Beaugency.
In the Bible, prolepsis is used in various ways. One is in the introduction of characters by names, descriptions, and epithets that will have relevance for that particular story. Thus, the meanings of the patriarchal names Abraham (Great Father) or Sarah (Princess) both have significance as the progenitors of the Jewish People. Abram will indeed be a father of a great nation, and Sarah will indeed be a princess, the ancestral mother of all of us. The proleptic knowledge that Sarah is barren clues the reader in advance of the importance of that detail when, in this week’s parashah, we read of the birth of Isaac to very elderly parents.
Another type of prolepsis occurs when statements are made or details inserted that appear to be unnecessary or out of context. For example, when Bathsheba is first introduced in the story of David and Bathsheba, she is described as being the daughter of Eliam (2 Sam. 11:3). This detail is unnecessary in that particular story, but is proleptically given in anticipation of the fact that Ahitophel, David’s chief advisor, will later join Absalom’s revolt against David (15:31). Eliam, we will be later told, is the son of Ahitophel (23:34), so Bathsheba is none other than Ahitophel’s granddaughter. Ahitophel’s rejection of David is now made clear to us. He did it because of David’s outrageous treatment of his granddaughter and her husband: David had an illicit affair with Bathsheba, and had Uriah, her husband, killed.
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