Ammon continues to explain what a seer is. He declares that a seer is greater than a prophet. How could that be? Ammon explains that both prophets and seers have the ability to reveal things. The concept of revealing things is to bring to light that which is otherwise hidden. Both prophets and seers are able to reveal things hidden to most humankind. The difference is that a seer can see the past, as well as things to come. In this case, the seer can see the past in written language that necessarily encodes the past, since whatever is recorded becomes the past as soon as it is read, and certainly before it is read.
Thus, the seer can not only display Jehovah’s future plans, but can see into the past to reveal both events and the meaning of texts. Why is the past important? Both in Israel and in Mesoamerican society, time was considered to be cyclical rather than an unbending straight line. Thus, the past instructed the future, as the cyclical nature of humanity would bring those same conditions to new people. That past would provide the solutions to apply to past problems, or at least show the solutions that would not work. Thus, the seer saw a wider range of important details that could help a current population.