Mobility and Immobility

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers prophetic mobility and immobility. The prophetic body is also a body in motion. Movement is not incidental or prefatory to prophetic mission but a critical component of it. A corollary to prophetic movement is the importance of place, proximity, and bodily co-presence. Prophetic mobility mediates the production of knowledge and relationship. The mobilities of Moses, Balaam, and Jonah variously mirror and respond to divine mobility and channel divine power to catalyze movement and change. Elijah’s supernatural transport defers this catalyzing potential to the future, while Ezekiel and Habakkuk bridge homeland and exile to mediate and re-create home across boundaries of time and space, place and non-place, life and death. Immobility could also mediate. Ezekiel’s binding simultaneously embodied human constraint and divine inaction. Jeremiah’s incarcerations dramatized and portended the siege and captivity of Jerusalem. The oracular body of the prophet thereby frustrated attempts to curtail or manage the prophet’s power by immobilizing the prophet’s body.