For many Bible students, the term “prophecy” has connotations of predictions of future events. Throughout the Christian church’s history, the Prophets have been read as sources of foretelling events concerning the Second Coming of Christ and the end times. Yet in the Old Testament, the term refers to women and men who presented to Israel’s people God’s message in their contemporary setting. Judaism saw the Prophets as teachers of Torah.
Frequently that message was linked to a social analysis, bringing a message that condemned contemporary practices of injustice and encouraged Israel to reform its attitudes and actions. To be prophetic was to stand for truth and justice and often against popular opinion.
The Prophets were often ordinary people from both the Northern (Israel) and Southern (Judah) kingdoms of Israel. They were from a variety of occupations, from shepherds (Amos) to priests (Ezekiel and Jeremiah). The Prophets who preached before the Exile regularly condemned the sin that would bring about God’s judgment (Amos, Micah and Hosea); the Prophets who proclaimed God’s message after the Exile brought a message of hope, the encouragement of a return to Jerusalem and the restoration of the Temple (Haggai and Zechariah). It is important to note that the order in which they appear in the Old Testament is not chronological.
The terms “major” and “minor” are often used to describe the Old Testament prophetic books, not in the sense of more or less important but regarding the books’ length. There are 12 Minor Prophets in the Old Testament. They are relatively brief compared to the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. These “prophets” can be traced back to historical figures who functioned as God’s messengers in ancient Israel and whose words and deeds were collected and recorded by their followers. Hence emphasis is rightly placed upon identifying the proper cultural and historical context in which they functioned. Once a book’s context is determined, then it can be interpreted against its religious, cultural and historical background.
Four Prophets are dated from the middle to the end of the eighth century: Amos, Hosea, Micah and Isaiah. After Samaria, the Northern Kingdom’s capital, fell in 721 B.C. and prior to the fall of Judah and Jerusalem in 587 B.C., Prophets such as Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Ezekiel and perhaps Obadiah were active in ministry. After a generation, when Cyrus’ decree in 438 B.C. allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the city and the Temple, we have the books of Haggai and Zechariah. The century after that is probably when the books of Malachi, Jonah and Joel were written.
While in a sense human compositions, the prophetic works were all inspired by the Holy Spirit. They contain more than just human efforts to explore a religious message. The Prophets were accurate observers of their historical circumstances and insightful as to the state of their society. But first and foremost, they were communicating God’s word to His people. The Prophets came at a significant period in the history of God’s people. When the nation had failed so disastrously to listen to God’s voice, they rose up with particular messages and ministries, interpreting the new contexts of exile and judgment to help people see the way forward. Sometimes the messages were condemnatory, but more often than not, they included hope.
The 21st century has sometimes been called the century of the refugee, the “displaced person,” in reference to the way people have been displaced from their homes by war or genocide. The history of Israel and Judah is one of displacement as well. The first major exile took place under the Assyrians. We read in 2 Kings 15:29, “In the days of Pekah, king of Israel, Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, came and … carried the people captive to Assyria.” Following the Assyrian Empire’s collapse, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. In 2 Kings 24:14, we read, “Judah was taken into exile out of its land.” The Prophets proclaimed God’s word before, during and after the experience of exile and judgment.
Paul House, professor of Old Testament at Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, has identified three major themes that can be found in prophetic literature: sin, punishment and restoration. These are “the sin of Israel and the nations, the punishment of sin and the restoration of both from that sin. These three emphases represent the heart of the content of the prophetic genre.”
Hosea and Amos are two examples that demonstrate the way the historical context of their times can help us to understand their message and hear God’s voice speaking into our lives in the 21st century.
Hosea is rooted in the life and experience of a Northern Kingdom prophet in the eighth century B.C. His message is clearly related to the rise and threat of the Assyrian empire, which would destroy the Northern Kingdom in 721 B.C. and threaten Jerusalem in 701 B.C. The book contains a series of “lawsuits” that indict Israel and warn it of coming judgment. In Chapter 4, we read, “The Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. … There is no faithfulness or loyalty and no knowledge of God in the land” (1–2).
Hosea is best remembered, however, for his teaching on God’s love, especially his emphasis on how God identified with him in his pain and heartache over a failed marriage. The story of Hosea’s marriage and the sorrow he felt when his wife, Gomer, was unfaithful to him mirror the pain and suffering God experienced as Israel was unfaithful in its covenant relationship. Hosea made it clear that the nation had committed adultery against its husband by compromising its worship in following the Canaanite god Baal. God commanded Hosea to imitate the journey of suffering He had endured to make it clear to the nation that sin is an awful thing. Terence Fretheim, Elva B. Lovell professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., said, “The sufferings of the prophet and God are so interwoven that they cannot be meaningfully separated.”
God’s pain and suffering come to a climax in Chapter 11, in which we hear of the turmoil of His heart over Israel’s plight: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? … My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender; I will not execute my fierce anger … for I am God and not man” (5–9). As we read these verses as Christians, our minds jump forward to the climax of God’s suffering in the cross. God judged sin, punishing Christ, but also demonstrated the generosity of His grace. Hosea’s story must not be misunderstood to imply that God’s experience of pain does away with justice. Without treating sin seriously, love becomes mere sentimentality. Furthermore Hosea’s story is filled with a promise of hope and restoration if the people would only hear God’s word and respond. In Chapter 14, we hear God say, “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God. … I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them” (1, 4).
Amos was a contemporary of Hosea, although he prophesied in the Southern Kingdom. Taken in chronological rather than canonical order, Amos is the earliest Hebrew prophet with a book named after him. He prophesied sometime during the decade 760–750 B.C., a period of relative peace and prosperity for Israel. He spoke, for example, of those who had summer and winter houses, which were richly decorated (3:15). He was concerned that the rich were becoming wealthy at the expense of the poor and through an unjust use of the court system (5:10–12). He lived at a time when his culture’s class system was more concerned with luxury than justice (2:6–8; 8:4–6).
At first sight, the Book of Amos appears to be a collection of sayings with very little organization. But a close reading reveals that there are identifiable groupings of material. The book begins with a group of oracles directed against the nations (1:3–2:16), demonstrating the prophet’s conviction that God is king of all the earth and every nation is responsible for its actions. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 all begin with the same phrase, “Hear this word,” and Amos spells out in some detail the way God’s people had not only turned their backs on Him but also had a false sense of security that He would not judge them (4:4; 5:5, 21–24).
Amos is especially to be appreciated for his sensitivity to matters of social welfare in Israel. He spared no words in condemning Israel’s royalty and aristocracy, who abused the privileges of wealth and even used their authority to get richer at the expense of the poor.
In addition to castigating the rich, Amos was also critical of Israel’s centers of religious worship, where the people preferred the ritual action of worship rather than a real relationship with God. So we read in Chapter 5, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (21–24).
Amos took the religious concepts of justice and righteousness, which characterized how God deals with His people, and applied them to the way Israel’s people treated each other. Amos believed that Israel was just going through the motions of worshiping God and observing rituals, thinking that this was the sum total of its obligation to Him.
In Chapter 7, Amos saw Yahweh with a plumb line in His hand. This is not necessarily an image of destruction. God was holding a measuring device against which Israel was being evaluated (7:8–9). A plumb line is a construction worker’s tool consisting of a weight attached to a string. The weighted string provides a true standard by which doorposts can be built straight.
Judged against true vertical, Israel was tilted and misaligned. Consequently Amos warned the people that their worship centers would be destroyed, especially the “high places,” which had Canaanite associations.
Amos spelled out in detail the way false religion disrupts social relationships. Our vertical relationship with God inevitably impacts the way we treat other people. Amos was crystal-clear that the poor were being overlooked and oppressed in business and the law courts.
Merchants were using false weights to make money and defraud those who had little food to eat (8:4–6). Worst of all was the way justice within the legal system was being ignored.
Bribery and injustice were prevalent, and the disadvantaged had little recourse for compensation (5:12).
If we are ignorant of books such as Amos in our contemporary setting, then it is not surprising that issues of justice and concern for the poor are seen to be peripheral in modern-day Christianity.
Amos warned God’s people that they would experience “exile” at the hand of a foreign nation.
On 13 occasions, the prophet spoke of exile in nine separate passages. This was the greatest punishment with which God threatened Israel when He made a covenant with it (Deut. 28:64–68). Amos made the threat of exile a prominent aspect of his message.
The books of Hosea and Amos are two striking examples of the way God’s word, delivered many centuries ago, continues to speak to our personal and corporate lives, calling us to turn from sinful attitudes and actions and experience His grace that alone can change our lives.
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