Introduction to the Canonical Prophets

While each prophet addresses a particular historical context and crisis in the
life of Israel, the following broad observations about their contents serves to
orient you to your first reading of the prophetic canon. In general, the
prophets indict Israel for covenant violations. In general, they begin with
warnings about impending judgment and link current events with God's
judgment. In general, they end with an affirmation of God's faithfulness to
Israel and a message of hope. The following summaries identify the historical
context and crisis addressed by each book and particular features of their
indictment and message of hope.

First time readers of the Prophets often find their rhetoric excessive and their
poetry hyperbolic. Perhaps the following quotations from Abraham Heschel’s
The Prophets (Harper and Row,1962), in which he describes the sort of men
who are called to be prophets and the nature of their call, will assist you.
(Please note that while all of the canonical prophets are men that there are
some historical prophets who were women.)

"The prophet is a person, not a microphone. He is endowed with a mission,

with the power of a word not his own that accounts for his greatness -- but
also with temperament, concern, character, and individuality. As there was
no resisting the impact of divine inspiration, so at times there was no
resisting the vortex of his own temperament. The word of god reverberated
in the voice of man." (x)

"We and the prophet have no language in common. To us the moral state of
society, for all its stains and spots, seems fair and trim; to the prophet it is
dreadful. So many deeds of charity are done, so much decency radiates day
and night; yet to the prophet satiety of the conscience is prudery and flight
from responsibility. Our standards are modest; our sense of injustice
tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent; yet human violence is
interminable, unbearable, permanent. To us life is often serene, in the
prophet's eye the world reels in confusion. The prophet makes no concession
to man's capacity. Exhibiting little understanding for human weakness, he
seems unable to extenuate the culpability of man." (p. 9)

"The words of the prophet are stern, sour, stinging. But behind his austerity
is love and compassion for mankind. Ezekiel sets forth what all other
prophets imply: 'Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the
Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?' (Ezek
18:23). Indeed, every prediction of disaster is in itself an exhortation to
repentance. The prophet is sent not only to upbraid, but also to 'strengthen
the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees' (Is 35:3). Almost every
prophet brings consolation, promise, and the hope of reconciliation along
with censure and castigation. He begins with a message of doom; he
concludes with a message of hope." (p. 12)

"An analysis of prophetic utterances shows that the fundamental experience

of the prophet is a fellowship with the feelings of God, a sympathy with the
divine pathos, a communion with the divine consciousness which comes
about through the prophet's reflection of, or participation in, the divine
pathos. The typical prophetic state of mind is one of being taken up into the
heart of the divine pathos. Sympathy is the prophet's answer to inspiration,
the correlative to revelation.

"Prophetic sympathy is a response to transcendent sensibility. It is not, like

love, an attraction to the divine Being, but the assimilation of the prophet's
emotional life to the divine, an assimilation of function, not of being. The
emotional experience of the prophet becomes the focal point of the prophet's
understanding of God. He lives not only his personal life, but also the life of
God. The prophet hears God's voice and feels His heart. He tries to impart
the pathos of the message together with its logos. As an imparter his soul
overflows, speaking as he does out of the fullness of his sympathy. " (p. 26)

The Major Prophets:

Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are called the major prophets because they are
contained in individual scrolls. The minor prophets fit together onto one
scroll.

Isaiah: This book is divided into three stages of prophecy. First Isaiah
addresses the Assyrian crisis and calls Israel to trust in the Lord, to place
total reliance on God's power to save, and predicts that a Davidic heir will
establish universal peace and justice. Isaiah's call is set in the temple and his
prophecy is filled with cultic imagery. Israel will become a holy remnant (that
which remains of a whole burnt offering). The nations will gather and come
to Zion, to the mountain of the Lord. Read Isaiah 1-6. What are the key
themes that are introduced? Create a cartoon or drawing that illustrates
Isaiah's call to be a prophet. Read chapters 7-9 which contain prophecies
about signs later linked with Jesus. Which signs do you associate with Jesus?
Which signs are new to you? Read 25:6-10 which contain an important
passage about God's banquet for the nations. What is Isaiah's idea of
appetizing food? What would you put on the menu? Second Isaiah, chapters
40-55, addresses the community of the Babylonian Exile. Read chapter 40.
What is comforting in this proclamation of God's majesty? Read 42:1-9; 44:9-
20; 52:13-53:12. What elements in these verses do you suspect will be
important keys to understanding Jesus? Second Isaiah’s poetry contains the
clearest statements of monotheism in the canon. He also gives us four songs
called "The Suffering Servant Psalms." In their immediate context, these
hymns depict the redemptive role of God's servant, Israel. These psalms
become the hermeneutical key with which the early church made sense of
Jesus' death. Third Isaiah, chapters 56-66, delivers a series of oracles in
condemnation of the restored community's religious failures. Read Isaiah 61.
Jesus reads the first verse and the first independent clause of the second
verse in the Synagogue in Nazareth at the beginning of his public ministry
(Luke 4:18-19) and raises objections when he implies that he fulfills this text.
This good news is the meaning of the word Gospel. If you were living in
shame in exile, which words would you find to be good news?

Jeremiah is set in the build up to and during the Babylonian crisis.

Jeremiah's career spanned the reign of a number of kings from Josiah (ca.
626) to Zedekiah (587 B.C.E.). Jeremiah follows the deuteronomic pattern by
identifying Babylon as God's chosen instrument of punishment. Jeremiah's
indictment against Judah includes charges that the people have oppressed
the alien, the orphan and the widow and shed innocent blood in Jerusalem
(cf. 7:6) and that they have worshiped other gods: "The children gather
wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for
the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to
provoke me to anger" (7:18). Perhaps the most striking elements of this text
are the stories of Jeremiah's own suffering. His rejection by the Jerusalem
leaders mirrors their rejection of God whom they treat as a cracked cistern
rather than a river of living water. Jeremiah's call to God's people to
circumcise their hearts reflects his use of and affirmation of the vision of
Deuteronomy. Read his call (chapter 1) and part of his lament and God's
response (11:18-12:13). When in his life is Jeremiah called to be a prophet?
To whom is he to serve as a prophet? Remember this call, because the
Apostle Paul will lay claim to the same call. To what does Jeremiah compare
himself in his lament? Of what does he accuse God? How does God respond?
Note how the Christian canon places the book of Lamentations right after
Jeremiah. Jeremiah is treated as a false prophet because he predicts the
destruction of the temple and the Southern Kingdom. Consequently,
Jeremiah contains an indictment against false prophets who say, "Peace,
peace, when there is no peace" (8:11) and "You shall not see the sword, nor
shall you have famine, but I will give your true peace in this place" (14:13).
Like all the prophets, Jeremiah is fraught with metaphors and imagery, but
his use of water stands out. Here are a few examples. He laments: "Is there
no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of
my poor people not been restored? O that my head were a spring of water,
and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the
slain of my poor people" (8:22-9:1). In his affliction, he accuses God, "Truly,
you are to me like a deceitful book, like waters that fail" (15:18). In his
indictment against the people, he accuses them of forsaking "the fountain of
living water, the Lord" (17:13). God brings a similar indictment, "for my
people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of
living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can
hold no water" (2:13). Jeremiah seems to also be influenced by the language
and pattern of the book of Deuteronomy. He describes a covenant
established, violated and renewed. Early in the book, Jeremiah invites the
people: "Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, remove the foreskins of your
hearts" (4:4). He predicts the establishment of a new covenant:

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new
covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like
the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand
to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I
was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make
with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law
within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and
they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to
each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of
them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and
remember their sin no more. (31:31-34)

Ezekiel: Ezekiel is set during the destruction of the First Temple and the
Babylonian Exile. It contains the visions of God's heavenly chariot leaving the
Temple and then returning to the Second Temple and the vision of God
restoring flesh to dry bone in the wilderness. Through prophetic acts, Ezekiel
portrays the siege of Jerusalem by painting a city on a brick and placing
siege works against it and, then, reclining on his left side for 390 days to
signify 390 years of punishment for the house of Israel and, then, reclining
on his right side for 40 days to signify 40 years of exile for Judah(4:1-17). As
an act signifying God's intent to restore a united kingdom, Ezekiel binds two
sticks together (37:15-28). On one he has written the words "For Joseph and
all the houses of Israel associated with it;" on the other appear the words
"For Judah and the Israelites associated with it." Read the first vision of the
chariot (chapter 1). What do you think the various parts of the chariot
symbolize? Ezekiel's message and visions, in many places, see to echo or
respond to prophecy in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah predicts:

At that time, says the LORD, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its
officials, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones
of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs; and they
shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven,
which they have loved and served, which they have followed, and which they
have inquired of and worshiped; and they shall not be gathered or buried;
they shall be like dung on the surface of the ground. Death shall be preferred
to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family in all the places
where I have driven them, says the LORD of hosts. (8:1-3)

Ezekiel contains a vision that points to God's restoration of this dead people:
The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of
the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He
led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they
were very dry. He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?" I answered, "O
Lord God, you know." Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones, and say
to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord God to
these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay
sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with
skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am
the LORD."
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly
there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its
bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon
them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he
said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath:
Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe
upon these slain, that they may live." I prophesied as he commanded me,
and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a
vast multitude.
Then he said to me, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel.
They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off
completely.' Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I
am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my
people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know
that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your
graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I
will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have
spoken and will act, says the LORD." 37:1-14

Ezekiel's vision tells the story of the departure of God's presence from the
temple in Jerusalem year's before the temple's destruction. He sees God's
presence moving unrestricted and dwelling with the people in exile. Chapters
40-45 contain a detailed vision of a new temple to which God's presence
returns. The book ends: "And the name of the city from that time on shall be,
The Lord is There" (48:35).