1 Samuel 9:9 - "Formerly in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he said, ‘Come let us go to the seer’; for he who is now called a prophet was formerly called a seer."

It is presumed (especially when reading our text), that the office of the seer antedated the office of prophet in Israel, although the functions of each were the same. Our text is probably a gloss on the original text, added at a later date by someone who realized that Samuel was not a member of a roving band of ecstatics, such as the early prophets (see PROPHET), but that he was a solitary man in close communication with God, who spoke the messages of God.

The office of the prophet, as we generally think of it, did not clearly emerge until the tenth century B.C. at the earliest, but it is obvious that there were, at…