How to Read the 15 Prophetic Books in the Bible

Ezekiel, Obadiah, Habakkuk What do these names have in common? Well, they are 3 of the 15 prophets that have their own books in the Bible. If you have tried to read these books, odds are you got lost in their dense poetry and strange imagery.

But these books are super important for understanding the overall biblical story. So, let's talk about "How to Read the Prophets". When I hear the word "prophet", I think of a fortune teller, someone who predicts the future.

That is what being a prophet means in many cultures, but not in the Bible. While the biblical prophets sometimes speak about the future, they are way more than fortune tellers. How should I think about them?

Well, they were Israelites who had a radical encounter with God's presence and then were commissioned to go and speak on God's behalf. Like a representative. Right!

And the thing that they cared about the most. It is the mutual partnership that existed between God and the Israelites. Right!

the partnership. God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt and invited them to become a nation of justice and generosity, that would represent his character to the nations. So, this partnership required all Israelites to give their trust and allegiance to their God alone.

In the Bible, this partnership is called the "Covenant". But the leaders - the priests, the kings - led Israel astray and they broke the covenant. So, this is where the prophets came in, to remind Israel of their role in the partnership.

They did this in 3 ways. First, they were constantly accusing Israel for violating the terms of the covenant. The charges usually include idolatry, alliances with other nations and their gods and allowing injustice towards the poor.

So, they are like covenant lawyers. Right. So, second, the prophets called the Israelites to repent, which means simply, "to turn around".

They spoke of God's mercy to forgive them if they would just confess and change their ways. But, Israel and its leaders didn't change. Things went from bad to worse.

That brings us to the third way that prophets emphasized the covenant. They announced the consequences for breaking it which they called, "The Day of the Lord". Oh, yeah!

The apocalypse. Visions of the end of the world. Well, sort of.

The prophets were mostly interested in how God would bring his justice on Israel's corruption and on the violent nations around them. While explaining these local events, they often used cosmic imagery. Cosmic imagery?

Yeah! like Jeremiah. He described the exile of the Israelites to Babylon as the undoing of creation itself.

The land dissolves into chaos and disorder, no light, no animals or people. Or Isaiah described the downfall of Babylon as the disintegration of the cosmos. Stars falling from the sky, the sun going dark.

For the prophets, when God acts in human history to bring justice, it is a "Day of the Lord". So, the prophets aren't talking about the end of the world. Well, hold on.

They are doing many things at once. The cosmic imagery shows how these important events of their day fit into the bigger story of God's mission to bring down every corrupt and violent nation once and for all. The prophets cared about the present and the future.

The cosmic imagery allowed them to talk about both at the same time. Got it. So, no matter when you live, the Day of the Lord is bad news if you are part of Babylon.

But, it is good news if you are waiting for God's kingdom. The Day of the Lord pointed to the return of the exiles to Jerusalem. Once again, the prophets use cosmic poetry to describe it.

They see a New Jerusalem, like a new Garden of Eden, with all humanity living at peace with each other and with the animals. And, there is a new Messianic King who restores God's kingdom in a renewed creation. Beautiful!

So, those are the three themes in the prophets. These prophets must have been very powerful, persuasive speakers. Well, some were.

But others lived on the margins. They would often perform strange, symbolic stunts in public to communicate their message. Like when Ezekiel lay in the dirt and built a model of Jerusalem being attacked by Babylon.

Or when Isaiah walked around naked for 3 years as a symbol of the humiliation of exile. So, did people pay attention to them? Not really.

The stories in these books show how the prophets were a minority group mostly shunned by Israel's leaders. Their writings were a kind of resistance literature. Most people ignored them.

That is, until their warnings came true in the Babylonian exile. After that, people began to take their word seriously. Yes!

The works of these earlier prophets were inherited later by unnamed prophets who studied these texts intensely. They are the ones who arranged the Hebrew scriptures as we know them, including the books of the prophets. Okay.

And there are 15 books of the prophets. The big 3 are Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Then, there is a collection of 12 smaller prophetic works unified on a single scroll.

In each of these books, you will read stories about the prophets and their poems and visions, all arranged to show the cosmic meaning of Israel's history. How God will turn their tragic story of failure and exile into a story of hope and restoration for all nations. It is that twin message of prophetic warning and of hope that the prophets cared about so much.

And, it is a message that we still need to hear today.