In While I Was Praying, Ralph Hawkins has provided us not with a how-to book on prayer but a theologically and archaeologically grounded study of who God is as revealed in OT prayers. Hawkins does not provide readers with specific guidelines for prayer or even a theology of prayer. Readers instead find themselves immersed in the religious, cultural, and political situations in which real OT figures lived and struggled to know their God. In turn, the bold, yet at times simple, prayers of these men (and one woman) show us the progressive revelation by God of himself to his people.
Hawkins finds value in the study of OT prayers because it is in these that the Israelites began to wrap their minds around the nature of God (see Hawkins’s Introduction). In contrast to their ANE counterparts—and contrary to the propositions made by modern scholars since the 1800s—the Israelites were predominantly monotheistic apart from the syncretism practiced at some points of Israelite history. The Israelites knew their religion to be different from the beliefs of other nations and they increasingly understood this through their personal experiences with God.
The book consists of twelve chapters, each chapter dealing with a different OT figure (excluding chap. 12) and prayer offered to God. Beginning with Abraham’s intercession on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah and ending with the Lord’s Prayer, While I Was Praying spans much of biblical history. Especially noteworthy themes include “bargaining” with God (chap. 1); a God who withholds judgment (chap. 3); God’s concern for the downcast (chap 4.); the forgiveness of God (chap. 5); and God’s OT missionary zeal (chap. 10). Chapter 7, covering Elijah’s encounter with the prophets of Baal, contains some of the book’s best discussion of the contrast between the prayers of the Israelites versus the prayers of other ANE peoples. The inclusion of the Lord’s Prayer in chapter 12, while seemingly out of place, may in fact serve to link the more distant OT people of prayer with those who have called upon Jesus Christ for two millennia.
Although not a glaring weakness, an area over which one could quibble is that some readers will remain dissatisfied with Hawkins’s treatment of 1 Chr 4:9-10 (chap. 8). Hawkins rightly places the passage in the larger context of the nation of Israel (pp. 102-4), and he properly confronts popular notions of the Jabez story, namely that God will mechanically answer prayers for material blessings. He affirms that a primary blessing in the life of God’s people is sanctification (p. 100), but he unfortunately omits this point when summarizing the topic (pp. 105-6). Rather than completely dispelling the popular approach to this passage, Hawkins allows the reader to assume that application of the Jabez prayer can remain focused on some sort of external blessing (even a “ministry” blessing), not the internal blessing of undergoing the sometimes messy process of sanctification.
While I Was Praying should be considered for use by professors of undergraduate, introductory courses in spiritual formation or as recommended reading for OT survey courses. As the preface states, the book is intended “for a general readership,” and Ralph Hawkins has the church in mind, too. Endnotes keep readers engaged in the text rather than tied up in details of scholarship but they also provide additional direction for readers willing to probe subjects more closely. In addition, the book can be used for small group discussion because each chapter concludes with summary and application questions. Thus Hawkins has helped to bridge the gap between current evangelical OT scholarship and a church that often regards the volume of the OT unapproachable and its contents irrelevant. Would that more scholars would descend from the tower to reach the church!
