. Hopefully this will make it easier for English readers who do not know Hebrew to be able to pronounce the words.Without doubt, the prophetic books of the Old Testament are among the most fascinating, powerful, and important works of literature ever written. What a privilege it is to read them, study them, and engage with them! God speaks through these books both to the ancient audience and to us today. Time spent immersed in the prophets will be time well spent. Welcome!
This book is an introductory survey of the Old Testament prophetic literature. Part One (The Big Picture) will present methodological and background material that will assist the student in understanding the prophets and their message. It also provides an introductory overview of the prophets as a whole. In Part Two we will analyze each of the four “major prophets,” and in Part Three we will explore the “Book of the Twelve,” commonly called the “minor prophets.”
The ministry and the message of the prophets is integrally interconnected to the tumultuous historical events of their day. Thus we will frequently pause to place them into their proper historical setting and to ask the question of what their message meant for those who first heard it. Yet the primary focus of this book is not on historical background but on the message of the prophets; thus, we will spend much of our time dealing with literary meaning as expressed in the written form of their proclamation, that is, the books of the prophets as we have them. Likewise, while historical setting will be important to us, we will also explore the meaning implied by canonical location, especially in the “minor prophets” (Book of the Twelve). In addition, while this book seeks to engage with the very best of Old Testament scholarship, especially that of the evangelical tradition, it also seeks to move beyond mere academic study to help the reader ask the bottom-line theological question, “What impact should this have on me?” Thus, throughout the book we will pause from time to time to grapple with theology for today and contemporary application. This will be especially true in the Discussion Questions and Writing Assignments at the end of each chapter.
The Old Testament prophetic books provide a crucial bridge for continuity between God’s message in the Old Testament and God’s message in the New Testament. The New Testament itself frequently alludes to the prophets, and the New Testament story is difficult to understand accurately without a good grasp of the Old Testament prophets. This book assumes that its readers are Christians and that their ultimate interest is biblical theology, that is, a theology that encompasses the entire Christian canon. Thus, while we will resist the temptation to read the New Testament back into the prophets in an unwarranted allegorical manner, we will, however, frequently point to New Testament connections with the prophets, noting especially how Jesus and the New Testament writers used specific prophetic texts.
Finally, this book attempts to reflect a mainstream, “critical conservative,” evangelical approach to the prophets. Within evangelicalism there are several different theological “systems” that influence how people read and understand the predictive passages in the prophets (amillennialism, premillennialism, etc.). This book attempts to stay neutral in this contentious debate, striving to present the range of possible understandings that are held by respectable evangelical Old Testament scholars.
I want to thank my good friends and colleagues Scott Duvall and Marvin Pate for encouraging me in this project and allowing me to borrow freely from works that we have coauthored together (especially Grasping God’s Word; Dictionary of Biblical Prophecy and End Times; and Iraq: Babylon of the End Times?). Likewise, my heartfelt thanks goes to Tremper Longman, the Old Testament editor of this textbook series, for entrusting me with this project and providing helpful advice and guidance. Several people currently and formerly at Zondervan played important roles as well in getting this book produced, and I want to thank all of them—especially Katya Covrett, Jack Kuhatschek, Jim Ruark, Kim Zeilstra, and Jack Kragt, who first suggested the idea to me.
Scripture quotations throughout the book are usually from the New International Version, although I have modified the text by substituting “Yahweh” for “the LORD.”
For the transliteration of Hebrew words in English, I have attempted to use the English letters that best approximate the sound of the Hebrew letters rather than follow the standard scholarly transliteration guidelines of the Society of Biblical Literature. Thus I use sh instead of š and ts instead of . Hopefully this will make it easier for English readers who do not know Hebrew to be able to pronounce the words.