The Prophets, religious sages and charismatic figures, who were perceived as

endowed with a divine gift of revelation, preached during the period of the
monarchy until a century after the destruction of Jerusalem (586 B.C.E.). Whether as
advisers to kings on matters of religion, ethics and politics, or as their critics, under
the primacy of the relationship between the individual and God, the prophets were
guided by the need for justice and issued powerful commentaries on the morality of
Jewish national life. Their revelatory experiences were recorded in books of inspired
prose and poetry, many of which were incorporated into the Bible.
The enduring, universal appeal of the prophets derives from their call for a
fundamental consideration of human values. Words such as those of Isaiah (1:17) -"Be good, devote yourselves to justice; aid the wronged, uphold the rights of the
orphan; defend the cause of the widow" -- continue to nourish humanity's pursuit of
social justice.
The primary job of a prophet was to arouse the people and the government to
repentance and observance. The traditional view is that prophecy was removed
from the world after the destruction of the First Temple. Those prophets who are
mentioned after that were alive at the time of the destruction. Several explanations
are offered for why prophets no longer exist will be explained.
The fact that the Jews did not heed the calls to repentance of the prophets
showed that they were not worthy. When most of the Jews remained in exile after
Ezra returned, they showed that they were still not worthy of that level of holiness.
The second temple did not have the level of kedushah [holiness] of the first Temple
even from the beginning.
This was actually a sign of God's mercy. Had the Jews had a prophet and
continued to disobey (as was probable based on the behavior of the following

centuries) even after the punishment of the exile, they would have merited
complete destruction. Now they could say that had a prophet come they would have
obeyed and thus mitigate the punishment (though some consider the current exile
(i.e., the diaspora) to be harsh enough).
After the destruction of the first Temple the sages prayed for the removal of
the "Evil Inclination" of idolatry. Since the world exists in a balance, the removal of
the low point (idolatry) necessitated the removal of the high point (prophecy).
Another effect of losing prophecy is that it is no longer known the specific
acts that result in specific good and bad consequences. In the age of prophecy, a
person undergoing misfortunes could learn from a prophet what he or she was
doing wrong and how to do teshuvah (repentance). Today, some feel that a tzaddik
or a rebbe can provide spiritual guidance and advise paths for repentance.

In ancient Jewish culture, prophets were a part of every-day life. They

proclaimed what they understood to be Gods word, and lived according to it. In
times of crisis, prophets were even more present, to warn and give consolation to
the people. One time period in which there were many prophets was the Babylonian
Exile, where the people of Judah were taken and deported to live in Babylon.
The book of Isaiah can essentially be divided into three groups of authors, the
first being an eight century prophet called Isaiah of Jerusalem. The second is an
anonymous prophet who shares Isaiah of Jerusalems same ideal of the Davidic king.
The third prophet is possibly the same person as the second, or his disciple or group
of disciples. The third prophet or group lived in the land of Judah after the
Babylonian exile and wrote the chapters which will be discussed, and thus will be
referred to as Isaiah, rather than adding an indication of his place in the sequence

of prophets under the book of Isaiah. Whereas Isaiah was firm in his belief of the
Davidic king which stemmed from the southern land of Judah, the prophet Jeremiah
was from a small tribe whose influences were the older traditions of Mosaic
theology, which is closer to the ideals of the Northern Kingdoms many Tribes of
Israel. The excerpt that will be analyzed from the book of Jeremiah was written
during the exile, and will automatically have a different viewpoint than that of
Isaiah.
The first difference to note between the two passages is who is speaking, and
who is being addressed. I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lordand the
great favor to the house of Israel that he has shown them according to his mercy
Thus you led your people, to make for yourself a glorious name. Here, Isaiah is the
speaker, who, aside from the initial referral to God in the third person during the
first seven lines, is actually talking to God. Looking at the Jeremian passage, God is
the speaker who speaks through Jeremiah to his people, as he writes Thus says the
Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent from exile from
Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in themmultiply there, and do not
decrease.
It is arguable that the prayer in Is 63:7-64:12 was written either pre-exile or
post-exile, so there is no confirmed time or date. According to J. J. M. Roberts, the
audience that Isaiah addresses is once again living in Judah, which obviously implies
a post-exilic date. He uses Isaiah to suggest that the building of a temple had begun
or was soon to begin: what is the house that you would build for me, and what is
my resting place? Although not a part of the prayer being analyzed, Isaiah 66 was
said to be written in the same general time-period as Isaiah 63:7-64:12. With the
return of the people to the land of Judah, they are having difficulty trying to

reestablish themselves, with economic oppression and a revival of pagan rituals

(Meeks 1013). However, some scholars argue that the prayer is pre-exilic, referring
the response to the prayer in Is 65:1-16a, stating that it has features that are more
indicative of the adoption of pagan, specifically Canaanite, rituals that occurred
prior to the exile. Also, the following chapters have a citation from Is 11:6-9 and
other traditions that supposedly do not belong to what has been gathered and
suggested as the Isaiah of the post-exilic Judean society.
As stated earlier and quoted from the passage itself, the Jeremian passage
was written during the Babylonian exile and deals with that current situation. It
begins with God directly addressing his exiled people, and goes on to tell them what
he plans for them. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile,
and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfareFor
thus says the Lord: Only when Babylons seventy years are completed will I visit
you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For surely I
know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for
harm, to give you a future with hope (Jer 29:8,10,11).
It is important to note the fact that after his initial acknowledgement of Gods
gracious deeds and praiseworthy acts, Isaiahs confidence in God deteriorated
and not once throughout the rest of the passage did he regain any of it. The prayer
is a communal lament, but disorganized in such a way that it adds a feeling of
desperation. It could be said that the whole prayer could show a downward spiral,
and show the progressive degradation of not only Isaiahs confidence in God, but his
knowledge and comfort in Gods plan as well. Isaiah is uncertain; he asks questions,
makes requests, and pleads. He asks why God will not help them now, when he has
helped them so many times before: Where is the one who put within them his holy

spirit, who caused his glorious arm to march at the right hand of Moses (Is 63: 11c12a)? In 64:9 the prophet even tries to remind God of his duties and persuade him
to help: Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity
forever. Now consider, we are all your people. Isaiah ends the prayer with a true
sign of desperacy, by questioning God with a challenge: Our holy and beautiful
house, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our
pleasant places have become reuins. After all this, will you restrain yourself, O Lord?
Will you keep silent, and punish us so severely
One might be inclined to say that Jeremiah 29:4-23 may be Gods response of sorts
to Isaiahs prayer. God speaks to his people, through Jeremiah, words of consolation
and encouragement. The Jeremian passage is obviously not a direct answer to
Isaiahs prayer, but it does contain responses to things mentioned in the excerpt
from Isaiah. One thing Isaiah does is ask God What should we do? in which
Jeremiah gives the response in telling them to raise families and settle their lives in
Babylon. As Isaiah had asked God the question of What are you doing? Jeremiah
replies by telling everybody just what God planned to do and plans to do with his
people. Throughout the passage in Jeremiah, Isaiah is affirmed; he told God to
remember his people, and in Jeremiah 29:12 God says: Then when you call upon
me and come pray to me, I will hear you. Although chronologically the argument
may not make sense, in terms of question and answer, the two passages fit
together as one conversation between God and his people.
Literally, the viewpoints of the two passages from Isaiah and Jeremiah differ
because Isaiah is a man speaking to God, and Jeremiah is a man speaking for God.
The goals of the excerpts are dissimilar, one asking and the other commanding and
declaring. Chronologically, the two selections cover different topics: Isaiah of Judah

before or after the exile, and Jeremiah during the exile. Even as the two passages
differ in certain ways, it is known now that at the very least, they are truly indicative
of Gods relationship with his people.
That is how the word prophet is defined in Websters dictionary, but a prophet
is much more. A prophet is someone who is chosen by God to convey his message
to the people; a middleman between God and his people. A prophet is someone who
God selects as the embodiment of himself. Someone that people will listen to.
Someone with a presence. Now the prophets did not all lead perfect lives, but they
all had a bond with the Lord that could not be matched. The Prophets were holy
people but they were in no way God-like. They were humble people that gladly
served their God. This summary of a prophet is what most people believe the
prophet Obadiah was like.

Obadiah, the shortest book in the Old Testament consisting of only one chapter, is
the pronouncement of doom against an ancient and long-forgotten nation, the land
of Edom. It was written in 587 B.C.E, after the destruction of Jerusalem. But there is
more to this book than that. The Scriptures have that ability of appearing to be one
thing on the surface, but on a deeper level, yielding rich and mighty treasures. This
is definitely true for the short, but meaningful book of Obadiah.

We know very little about Obadiah except that he was one of the minor prophets.
There is a reference to a prophet Obadiah in the days of Elijah and Elisha and there
is some thought that perhaps he is the same man. The name Obadiah was a very
common name among the Hebrews though, and it is very likely this is not the same
prophet, for in this book Obadiah mentions the day when Jerusalem was destroyed,

captured by the alien armies, and that occurs long after the time of Elijah and
Elisha. So most Bible commentators believe the author of this book was a
contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah, the last of the prophets before Israel went
into captivity.

The name Obadiah means "the servant of Jehovah;" He fulfills the position of a
servant. He comes and does his work and fades into the background; he delivers his
message and he is gone. That is about all we know about the man behind this book.

The book of Obadiah tells the story of two nations, the nation of Israel and the
nation of Edom, the country to the south of Israel that is now usually referred to as
the Negeb. Through this ancient land of Edom the Israelites marched as they came
into the land of Israel out of the captivity and slavery of Egypt. As they came into
the land they had difficulty with the Edomites; they were enemies of Israel from its
very beginning.

I have come up with what I think is a very adequate and meaningful theory about
this book. I think this is a story about these two nations, but behind that is a story
about two men. Every nation in the Bible is a lengthened shadow of its founder, and
the two men behind the nations Israel and Edom were twin brothers from Genesis,
Jacob and Esau. Jacob was the father of Israel, and Esau, his twin brother, became
the Father of the Edomites. In the story of these nations you also have the extended
story of these two men, Jacob and Esau. God, in a sense, has made these two into
the size of nations. As the prophet discusses this you can see that the story of these
two men continues; Israel is still Jacob and Edom is still Esau.

Jacob and Esau were in constant conflict. We read in the book of Genesis that even
before they were born, they struggled together in their mother's womb. That conflict
marked the lives of these two men, and the lives of their descendants, the two
nations of Israel and Edom.

In Genesis, Jacob was Mother's favorite and Esau was Dads favorite, and there was
one unending conflict between these two men, which did not end with their deaths.
The nations carried on this same conflict, and all the way from Genesis through
Malachi there is the threat of struggle and unbroken conflict between them. In the
book of Malachi (Genesis records the beginning of these nations), the last book of
the Old Testament, God says, "I have loved Jacob but I have hated Esau, God has
taken these two men and the subsequent nations that came from them, and used
them through the Bible as a consistent picture of the conflict between the our lives
and our spirit; Jacob and Esau, Israel and Edom.

Edom ( and Esaus) problem is pride. The pride of your heart has deceived you, you
who live in the clefts of the rock, whose dwelling is high, who say in your heart,
"Who will bring me down to the ground?" Though you soar aloft like the eagle,
though your nest is set among the stars, thence I will bring you down, says the Lord.
Here God tells Edom that its pride is false and that it has blinded them from God,
Edoms pride stood in the way of them accepting the Israelites, just as Esaus pride
stood in the way of him excepting Jacob. Edom starts getting cocky and believes
that it is untouchable, but that thought is halted when God claims that no matter
how high up Edom is, He will bring him down.

Obadiah was not a visual prophet. He was not a public speaker. No one really even
knew who he was or when he lived or what he looked like, it is possible that this
prophet could have been female. That would be an excellent interpretation. But
despite the short comings, it is a very important book. God conveys to Obadiah all
emotions, love, anger, forgiveness, and he tells the people this straight forward.
This book is short and stern. God deals directly and intimately, telling the people his
true message; follow me and believe in me and goodness shall come to you;
however if you do not follow me and doubt me, I will have no love for you. The book
of Obadiah is small and can be easily passed over, this book is more than worth the
time it takes to read it.