INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT PROPHETS

E. Ray Clendenen

T he book of Leviticus is often trotted out to explain why the casual Bible reader becomes discouraged and gives up. But the persistent reader who is unfamiliar with ancient Jewish literature will likely also be challenged by the Old Testament (OT) prophetic books, since their language and structure are unlike almost anything in modern literature. Even Martin Luther (AD 1483-1546) said that the prophets “have a queer way of talking, like people who, instead of proceeding in an orderly manner, ramble off from one thing to the next, so that you cannot make head or tail of them or see what they are getting at.” Nevertheless, with a modern translation and some guidance, a Bible student can have an exciting time encountering afresh the Holy One of Israel in the prophets.

THE NATURE OF THE PROPHETIC BOOKS

What are the OT prophetic books? First, they are the books written by or containing the messages of ancient Israel’s “writing prophets” (as opposed to prophets like Elijah and Elisha). The prologue to the Greek translation of Ben Sira (also known as Sirach or Ecclesiasticus), written in 132 BC, notes that “many and great things have been given to us through the Law and the Prophets and the others that followed them.” By this time, then, the Jews recognized three divisions in their canon of sacred books. The third division (here called “the others”) came to be called the Writings. The second division was divided into the “Former Prophets” (Joshua through Kings, excluding Ruth) and the “Latter Prophets” (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Minor Prophets). “Former” and “Latter” refer not to chronology but to their position in the canon. Daniel was placed in the Writings, presumably because of its unique character (for example, the absence of an opening verse like those found in the other prophetic books) and the fact that Daniel was technically a statesman rather than a divinely appointed mediator (he distinguishes himself from “the prophets” in Dn 9:6,10; but Jesus acknowledged his possession of a prophetic gift in Mt 24:15).

The eighth-century prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz. Relatively little is known about the prophet in spite of the large book associated with him. Jewish tradition mentions his father Amoz as the brother of King Amaziah of Judah. If this assumption is correct, Isaiah and Uzziah were cousins, thus making Isaiah a member of the nobility. This family connection would explain the impact of Uzziah’s death (chap. 6) on the prophet as well as the apparent ready access Isaiah had to the kings to whom he ministered.

The “Minor” Prophets are so named not because of their lesser importance but their length. The longest, Hosea, occupies about fourteen pages in an average English Bible, whereas the “Major” Prophets range in size from twenty-four (Daniel) to ninety-seven pages (Jeremiah). Altogether the “Minor” Prophets are about the size of Ezekiel. In spite of having been written at different times as separate books, sometime in the development of the Hebrew canon these twelve books were all bound together on the same scroll, and in an order that has generally remained unchanged. Consequently, they came to be known in Jewish tradition perhaps more appropriately as “the Twelve,” or “the Book of the Twelve.” Some have argued that they exhibit an overall plot or structure. Paul House has observed that the first six books, Hosea-Micah, emphasize sin, Nahum-Zephaniah stress punishment, and Haggai-Malachi stress restoration.

The nature of the prophetic books is essentially the same as the nature of a prophet. The verb prophesy occurs for the first time in Numbers 11:25-27, where “prophets” (v. 29) are identified with those who, like Moses, were God’s Spirit-endowed servants and spokesmen, whom God used to confront the people of Israel when they strayed. Their function as mediators or spokesmen is also illustrated by Aaron’s relationship to Moses, as the Lord declares in Exodus 7:1 (“See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother will be your prophet”). Sometimes a prophet was called a “man of God” (1Kg 13:1-8) or a “seer” (1Sm 9:9).

THE STYLE OF THE PROPHETIC BOOKS

The prophetic books may also be characterized by style and function. First, they employ an elevated rhetorical style that often takes the form of poetry. Second, they present their messages as received directly from God (as seen in their opening verses). Third, they use an inventory of literary forms such as lawsuit, lament, woe, and promise. And fourth, because of the common function of the prophets as “enforcers” or “prosecutors” of God’s covenant, these books call for behavioral changes on the part of the disobedient covenant people. Such a role may be seen in 2 Kings 17:13: “Still, the Lord warned Israel and Judah through every prophet and every seer, saying, ‘Turn from your evil ways and keep my commands and statutes according to the whole law I commanded your ancestors and sent to you through my servants the prophets.’” Likewise, the Levites after the exile prayed, “Your Spirit warned them through your prophets” (Neh 9:30; see also Jr 25:4; 35:15; Zch 1:4).

THE KEY TO INTERPRETING THE PROPHETS

This focus on behavioral change explains the prophets’ use of messages of indictment, instruction, judgment, and hope or salvation. Indictment messages identified Israel’s sins and God’s attitude toward them. Instruction told them what they must do about it, and judgment and hope messages motivated the listeners to obey by explaining the consequences of disobedience (judgment) or of repentance and faith (hope). Messages of judgment involve specific applications of the covenant curses found in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 (see for example, Jl 1:4-20; Am 4:6-11; Zph 1:13; Hg 1:10-11). They serve, then, as reminders that sin has its consequences.

At least in some cases where judgment is announced with no explicit expression of hope, the possibility of avoiding punishment through repentance may be assumed (e.g., Jnh 3:4; Jr 18:1-12). But even when judgment is decreed as inevitable due to Israel’s continued obstinacy, the function is to motivate repentance on the part of those who survive the judgment (cp. Jr 23:20). In these cases the judgment and salvation oracles combine in a special way to motivate right behavior by a purified remnant. Our historical perspective allows us to recognize that in some cases announcements of future judgment or salvation concerned the distant future, beyond the lifetime of the prophet’s immediate audience (e.g., Is 24-25; 40-48; 53; Jr 30-33; Ezk 34:23-24; 36-48; Dn 7-12; Jl 3:14-21; Zch 9:9-17; 12-14; Mal 3:1). But like the assurance of Christ’s return for the Christian, this was to have a motivating effect regardless of the time it would occur (e.g., 1Th 4:18; 5:6-11).

The prophets did not always motivate in terms of the future, however. Incentives to obedience (positive motivation) could be given in terms of: (1) past blessings (e.g., Hs 2:8; 7:15; 11:1-4; 12:10; 13:4-5; Am 2:9-11); (2) present realities (e.g., Hs 3:1; 14:8-9; Mal 1:2; 2:10a); or (3) future blessings (e.g., Hs 1:7,10-11; 2:14-23; 3:5; 6:1-3,11; 11:10-11; 13:14; 14:4-7; Jl 2:18-3:21; Am 9:11-15; Zph 3:14-20; Hg 2:6-9). Deterrents to disobedience (negative motivation) likewise could be in terms of: (1) past judgment (e.g., Am 4:6-11; Zch 1:6); (2) present circumstances (e.g., Hs 1:9; 4:3; 5:11-12; 6:5; 7:9; 8:7-8; 9:7; Jl 1:2-12; Hg 1:6,9-11); or (3) future punishment (e.g., Hs 1:4-6; 2:3-4,6,9-13; 3:4; 4:5-7; 5:2,6-7,9-10,14-15; Am 2:13-16; 3:11-15; 5:16-23; 6:7-11; 8:7-14).

Recognizing the vital relationship between words of indictment, instruction, judgment, and hope in the prophets is an important step toward understanding their message. For many the word prophecy has only one association—“fulfillment.” Students of the prophets often concentrate on the “good news” of prophetic fulfillment to the neglect of the rest of the prophet’s message. Or in some cases the preferred focus is on social critique. By all means, fulfilled and yet-to-be fulfilled prophecy is an important and fruitful subject for study, as is also the divine displeasure with certain social and religious practices. But recognizing the nature of the prophetic books as behavioral exhortation has important implications. In such discourses the most prominent element is the behavioral change being advocated. All the other elements in the discourse must relate to it. Therefore it is a misuse of Scripture to listen to only one of the supplementary elements, such as predictive prophecy, without relating it to the central message of the book.

In the book of Amos, for example, God through the prophet denounces Israel for oppressing the poor and denying them justice out of greed and self-indulgence (Am 4:1; 5:10,12; 6:4-6). They were at the same time practicing empty religion, mixing idolatry with worship in the Lord’s name (Am 4:4-5; 5:18,21-24). They had a veneer of law and piety covering a core of injustice that the establishment seemed to accept. Therefore, Amos urges Israel to delight in and seek the Lord only, and as a corollary to strive for justice, fairness, and compassion (Am 5:4-6,14-15). Failure to respond would bring destruction, death, and exile (Am 3:11-15; 6:7-11; 8:7-14). As an incentive, Amos reminds Israel of God’s election, redemption, and care of them in the past (Am 2:9-11). God also promises to preserve a remnant, to reestablish the nation in the land with the Messianic ruler, and to bring them prosperity (Am 9:11-15).

THE PROPHETS AND THE COVENANT

As Bo-Krister Ljungberg pointed out, the prophets were “neither radical social reformers nor innovative religious thinkers . . . what they said had already been revealed in the covenantal law and their message was therefore not innovative.” The prophet Joel, for example, brings no charges against Israel, and his only message of instruction from God is found in Joel 2:12-13: “Turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Tear your hearts, not just your clothes, and return to the Lord your God.” Joel was relying on Israel’s knowledge of the covenant, especially the biblical teaching on repentance, and on their ability to connect his message with that teaching. This strategy, together with the vividness of his imagery of a locust plague, gives Joel’s prophecy its unique power.

Typical of the prophets, Joel’s message is strongly dependent on Deuteronomy, in language, style, and themes. God had announced to Israel through Moses that failure to obey the Lord and follow his law would mean deprivation, barrenness, failure, ruin, loss, disease, drought, defeat, disappointment, frustration, death, sorrow, exile, shame, and locusts (Dt 28:38-42; see also 32:22-27). Strong emphasis is placed there on Israel being defeated, devastated, and destroyed by foreign nations and their being “scatter[ed] . . . among all peoples from one end of the earth to the other” (Dt 28:64). The specific disobedience cited is rejecting the Lord for idols and abandoning his covenant (Dt 29:18,25-26; cp. 32:15-18,21). But compassion, regathering, restoration, and spiritual rebirth are also promised to Israel if from their exile they would “return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and all your soul” (Dt 30:2). Furthermore, these same curses would then fall on Israel’s enemies (Dt 30:7; 32:39-43). Joel’s message would have triggered this entire script of judgment, repentance, and restoration, making it unnecessary for him to include an explicit citation of Judah’s sins. They were guilty of disobeying God’s law and abandoning him for other gods. Joel could concentrate, then, on motivating repentance by warning of a coming “day of the Lord” (Jl 1:15; 2:1,11,31). The primary goal of the prophets, in fact, was to persuade. The apocryphal book of Sirach (49:10) says, “May the bones of the Twelve Prophets send forth new life from where they lie, for they comforted the people of Jacob and delivered them with confident hope” (NRSVA). Yet the prophets do more than comfort God’s people. Their main function is to make us uncomfortable with lives lived apart from him.

THE PROPHETS AS INDIVIDUALS

Another issue to consider in orienting a reader to the prophets is the relationship of the prophets as individuals to the books that bear their names. The prophets’ role as preachers to the people of Israel is often apparent, as when God said to Isaiah, “Go! Say to these people” (Is 6:9), or when he said to Jeremiah, “Declare in Judah, proclaim in Jerusalem” (Jr 4:5), and even more explicitly, “Stand in the gate of the house of the Lord and there call out this word” (Jr 7:2). Even the prophets’ lives were often messages to God’s people (e.g., Is 8:18; Jr 13:1-7; 27:1-7; Ezk 4:1-5:4; Hs 1:2). These prophets were first and foremost preachers with a mission to their immediate audience, but preaching was not the end of their ministry. They were also called to have a continuing ministry through their writings. By what means, however, did the oral messages and accounts of the prophets become written?

That God wanted his people to have a written testimony is clear from the beginning of their history, as when he told Moses, “Write this down on a scroll as a reminder and recite it to Joshua: I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek under heaven” (Ex 17:14). This practice eventually produced “the book of the law of Moses” (Jos 8:31), but God did not stop there. He continued providing his people with a written testimony of Scriptures through other inspired prophets like Samuel (1Sm 10:25: “Samuel proclaimed to the people the rights of kingship. He wrote them on a scroll, which he placed in the presence of the Lord”) and then the later prophets. For example, God told Isaiah, “Go now, write it on a tablet in their presence and inscribe it on a scroll; it will be for the future, forever and ever” (Is 30:8; what he wrote may have included much of chaps. 28-32). We also have God’s command to Jeremiah to “Take a scroll, and write on it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah, and all the nations from the time I first spoke to you during Josiah’s reign until today” (Jr 36:2).

To what extent the books of the prophets were written by the prophets themselves or by their disciples based on the prophets’ oral and written messages we do not know. But 2 Peter 1:21 (“no prophecy ever came by the will of man; instead, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit”) affirms the inspiration of the original individual prophetic messages, and 2 Timothy 3:16 teaches that the completed books are nothing but God’s very words to us (“All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness”).

THE POWER OF THE PROPHETIC BOOKS

Finally, what may we say about Luther’s charge that the prophets, “instead of proceeding in an orderly manner, ramble off from one thing to the next”? That is, are these books simply collections of messages with minimal coherence, or is there an overall plan and purpose? Although the structure of the prophetic books is not always immediately apparent, and scholars often disagree on the extent to which an intentional structure may be discerned, in recent decades scholars have produced many studies demonstrating that these books possess a coherent structure. As Gordon McConville declares, for example, “The prophetic books are not just raw collections of disjointed sayings, but carefully constructed pieces of literature.”

The power of the prophetic word to inspire is illustrated by a bronze statue by Evgeniy Vuchetich titled Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares. It was inspired, of course, by Micah 4:3 and Isaiah 2:4: “He will settle disputes among many peoples and provide arbitration for strong nations that are far away. They will beat their swords into plows, and their spears into pruning knives. Nation will not take up the sword against nation, and they will never again train for war.” This statue stands in the garden of the United Nations headquarters in New York City and was a gift from the Soviet Union in 1959.

The prophet Jeremiah described his own experience with the prophetic word in Jeremiah 20:9—“I say, ‘I won’t mention him or speak any longer in his name.’ But his message becomes a fire burning in my heart, shut up in my bones. I become tired of holding it in, and I cannot prevail.” May God’s word through his prophets and the God of his word so overpower our hearts and lives and become a fire in our bones that burns ever brighter until the Lord returns and the earth is filled with the knowledge of his glory (Hab 2:14).