A Review of The Minor Prophets

This month we conclude the reading of the minor prophets, and this interest­ing group will provide ample matter to ponder over. The last twelve books of the Old Testament are “minor” only in the sense of being shorter than the “major” prophets, the total space occupied be­ing less than a quarter of that in the four previous books. But their message is of equal importance. The shorter prophets are quoted or referred to over 40 times in the New Testament, com­pared with about 100 refer­ences to the four major pro­phets. On a “page for page” basis, the “twelve” thus receive almost twice as much attention as the “four”.

To many people the word “prophet” suggests mainly a predicter of future events; but this is not the primary meaning. The dictionary tells us that the word was transferred to English from the Greek word used in the New Testament, and that its basic meaning is an inspired teacher or revealer of God’s will. The idea behind both Hebrew and Greek words seems to be the “speaking forth” of the message from God. However, as God’s plan to fill the earth with His glory looks forward to the appointed day of Christ’s coming, it is natural that the message concerning it should be largely in the future tense.

Throughout the whole period of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel there ap­pear to have been prophets of the Lord, through whom He gave to kings and people His messages of encourage­ment, of warning, or of doom. We think of Nathan and Gad in David’s days, of Ahijah and Shemaiah at the time of the division of the kingdom, of Micaiah in Ahab’s reign, and of the great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, the latter of whom had a ministry of nearly 60 years. To these and others, including some prophetes­ses, the kings could seek when they felt special need for God’s counsel and help. These have left us no writ­ten records, whereas many of the prophetical books were written by men who were less prominent in pub­lic life.

The order in which the prophetical books are arran­ged in our Bible does not correspond to the chrono­logical sequence of their writing, partly because the four longer books, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, are given first place. The earliest of the 16 books appears to have been written about 200 years after the time of David, during the reigns of Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam II of Israel, and all except Malachi fall in the three centuries be­tween 800 and 500 B.C.

In the opinion of many literary experts, Jonah was the earliest of all the pro­phetical books. There is little in the book to give a clue to its date, but Jonah is mentioned in 2 Kings 14. 25 in the reign of Jeroboam II, the son of Joash, king of Israel, not long after the death of Elisha. In many of the books the period is in­dicated by references to contemporary kings, but in five cases, Joel, Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk and Mal­achi, there is no such clue, and the conditions sugges­ted in the prophecies pro­vide the only evidence for estimation of date.

The table sets out the generally accepted sequence of the prophetical books, the approximate dates, and the names of the kings in whose reigns the prophets minis­tered. When a stroke is used between two dates, it indicates that the prophet’s ministry was a short one somewhere between the dates shown.

Rewarding Study

Cannot the message of the prophets for us, in these last days, be understood without a knowledge of the times and circumstances of their ministry? To a great extent, Yes. God’s will and purpose are unchanging. But there is no doubt that, by comparing the utterances of the prophets with the historical record of the conditions which caused God to send them forth, we can get a better understanding of their message, and also find greater interest in our study of it. The evils that they rebuked, the discouragements for which they provided hope, have their counterparts today, and, by searching out these things in the inspired writings, the man of God may be more “thoroughly furnished” for his work.

Concerning the prophets themselves we are told prac­tically nothing. Zephaniah may have been of the royal house. The name of his an­cestor Hizkiah (Zeph. 1. 1, A.V.) is given in all other translations as Hezekiah, and, according to an ancient tradition, this was King Hezekiah. Amos, a herd-man and gatherer of wild figs, was right at the other end of the social scale. The others say nothing at all about themselves. The hum­an element is kept well in the background, so that the whole emphasis is upon God, the real giver of the mes­sage.

There are certain features common to all the prophet­ical books. They all de­nounce the waywardness of God’s people, their persis­tent tendency to ignore His law and to follow the flesh-pleasing practices of sur­rounding nations. And al­most all, after their reproofs and pleadings, crown their message with an emphatic assurance that God will surely fulfill His promises to the Fathers.

The warnings of retribu­tion take numerous forms. Joel takes the devastating effects of a terrible plague of locusts as a type of an irresistible invasion by the Assyrians. But far beyond this was the vision of the greater invasion of the last days, when God will gather all nations to the land of Israel for judgment. Through Isaiah (ch. 10. 5) God calls the Assyrians the rod of His anger, but tells that they would exceed their task in a spirit of arrogant self-glory, and would, in turn, have to be humbled. Similarly, Joel tells how the latter-day Assyrian will come under the humiliating judgments of God. In des­cribing the intense militar­ism of these days, the pro­phet uses the metaphor of “beating plowshares into swords”. This, together with the inverse expression used by Micah, has caught the Gentile fancy perhaps more than any other Bible figure of speech. The annual bud­gets of the nations today bear testimony to the apt­ness of the figure. Joel’s final note of hope is expres­sed in the promise, “But Judah shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from genera­tion to generation . . . for the Lord dwelleth in Zion”.

Another visitation of nat­ure, earthquake, appears in the prophecy of Amos as an instrument of God’s chas­tisement. The prophecy was given “two years before the earthquake” (ch. 1. 1). So severe was this convulsion that, 250 years afterwards, the prophet Zechariah (ch. 14. 5) refers to it as still a terrible memory. Amos speaks throughout his pro­phecy of the havoc wrought by earthquake and its so frequent accompaniments of tempest and fire. “Shall not the land tremble for this … and I will darken the earth in the clear day” (ch. 8. 8-9). “The Lord God of Hosts is He that toucheth the land and it shall melt . . . all of it rises like the Nile, and sinks again like the Nile of Egypt” (ch. 9. 5, R.S.V.).

The reign of Jeroboam II was a time of material pros­perity but spiritual bank­ruptcy. In his condemna­tion of the godless self-indulgence of the rich, Amos speaks of “houses of ivory” (ch. 3. 15) and “Beds of ivory” (ch. 6. 4). The ivory house that Ahab built is mentioned in 1 Kings 22. 39 as a notable display of his wealth. Excavations at Samaria have brought to light evidence of this vogue for ivory as an adornment—not a structural material—in the northern capital, and some beautiful carvings are illustrated in Nelson’s Atlas of the Bible and other books.

Final Restoration

But, in spite of the apos­tasy of His people, God will fulfil His Covenants, and Amos concludes his book with one of the most beau­tiful and emphatic promises of restoration, when God will “raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen”, and will “plant his people upon their own land, and they shall no more be pulled up”. This passage is quoted by James in Acts 15. 16-17 to show that the call of the Gentiles had been foretold. This implication is not ap­parent in our version of Amos, but James quoted from the Septuagint Greek version in which the sense of the words is somewhat different.

The prophecies of Obad­iah, Jonah and Nahum re­late wholly, and some of the others in part, to God’s judgments on various Gent­ile nations. Except in the strange case of Jonah, these prophecies had no effect on the countries concerned. Probably they were intended rather to bring home certain lessons to the Israelites; first, that they should not despair under the hostility and oppression of these nations, because their over­throw was determined by God; and also that, for the same reason, they should not lean on these powers politically, or follow them in their heathen practices.

Micah resembles his great contemporary, Isaiah, in the beauty and vividness of his language. Although neither of them mentions the other, some collabora­tion between them is sug­gested by the identity of Micah 4. 1-3 with Isaiah 2. 2-4. We can all agree that this splendid prophecy of glory to God in the highest, and the resulting peace and goodwill, is well worthy of inclusion in both books.

Micah’s prophecy (ch. 3. 12), that Zion would be plowed as a field, was used 100 years later by Jere­miah’s friends as a preced­ent to defend him against the charge of treason (Jer. 26. 18). Its literal fulfilment is recorded by historians who tell how the Em­peror Hadrian, after the suppression of the final re­volt of the Jews in A.D. 135, ordered that the exis­tence of Jerusalem as a city should be obliterated by raz­ing even the ruins left by Titus 65 years earlier, and the plough was passed over the foundations of the Temple.

It was another passage from Micah (ch. 5. 2) that was quoted by the priests and scribes to answer Herod’s demand, where the Messiah should be born.

True to type, the prophet concludes his message with a reminder of the compas­sion and forbearance of God, and the forthright statement, “Thou wilt per­form the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which Thou hast sworn un­to our fathers from the days of old” f we sometimes feel the language of the minor pro­phets is, in places, obscure and difficult, we must re­member that most of the books were written as poetry (they are printed as poetry in modern versions), and the mystical outlook of the poet calls for more mental effort on the part of the reader. It is also more difficult to translate from poetry than from prose, and so our task is harder still.