Day 14: The Prophets
The books of the Hebrew prophets are some of the most challenging books of the Bible to read and comprehend, but they are also some of the most beautiful books! Learning to read them takes some effort, but it is totally worth it. The fifteen prophetic books are a mosaic collection of narratives, poems, and essays
that represent the message of the Israelite prophets. These collections have been expertly crafted over a long period of time, and they were eventually integrated into the larger collection of the Hebrew Bible. Here are some fun facts about the prophetic books:
1. The prophetic books take up as much page space in the Bible as the entire New
Testament (27 percent).
2. Jesus and the apostles constantly quoted from the prophets to explain how Jesus was bringing Israel’s story to its fulfillment (77 times in the Gospels and 98 times in the rest of the New Testament).
The prophets are the bridge between the past story of Israel and the covenant and the future story of God’s rescue plan for the world through Jesus. Each prophetic book has a unique design and organized flow of thought, but it’s rarely chronological. Reading the prophets is a lot like listening to a symphony.
There’s an opening introduction to all the main themes, but then the work is broken up into multiple movements or sections. But if you pay attention, you’ll hear the key themes being repeated and developed throughout the book, and then you’ll begin to see how all the parts fit together. Key insights from the prophets:
1. God loves justice: Israel had been called to a higher level of justice than the surrounding nations, especially in the treatment of their land and the poor (See Isaiah 1:10-20).
2. God gets angry at evil: The prophets give a lot of space to God’s exposure of evil among Israel and the nations. It can be intense, but it reveals how much God cares about the goodness of his world (see Hosea 13).
3. God has hope for our world: God refuses to let Israel’s sin get the last word, so all the prophetic books contain profound images of future hope and restoration for God’s people and for the entire world (see Isaiah 11:1-9).
In today’s video, we’ll learn how these prophetic books contribute to the storyline of the Bible and why it’s worth learning how to read them more attentively. Let’s take a look!
Isaiah 1:10-20
10Hear the word of the Lord,
you rulers of Sodom!
Give ear to the teaching of our God,
says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of well-fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of goats.
12“When you come to appear before me,
who has required of you
this trampling of my courts?
13Bring no more vain offerings;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations—
I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.
14Your new moons and your appointed feasts
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
15When you spread out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
16Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
17learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
plead the widow’s cause.
18“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.
19If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
20but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be eaten by the sword;
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
Hosea 13:1-16
1When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling;
but he incurred guilt through Baal and died.
idols skillfully made of their silver,
all of them the work of craftsmen.
It is said of them,
“Those who offer human sacrifice kiss calves!”
3Therefore they shall be like the morning mist
or like the dew that goes early away,
like the chaff that swirls from the threshing floor
or like smoke from a window.
4But I am the Lord your God
from the land of Egypt;
you know no God but me,
and besides me there is no savior.
5It was I who knew you in the wilderness,
in the land of drought;
6but when they had grazed, they became full,
they were filled, and their heart was lifted up;
therefore they forgot me.
7So I am to them like a lion;
like a leopard I will lurk beside the way.
8I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs;
I will tear open their breast,
and there I will devour them like a lion,
as a wild beast would rip them open.
9He destroys you, O Israel,
for you are against me, against your helper.
10Where now is your king, to save you in all your cities?
Where are all your rulers—
those of whom you said,
“Give me a king and princes”?
11I gave you a king in my anger,
and I took him away in my wrath.
12The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up;
his sin is kept in store.
13The pangs of childbirth come for him,
but he is an unwise son,
for at the right time he does not present himself
at the opening of the womb.
14I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol;
I shall redeem them from Death.
O Death, where are your plagues?
O Sheol, where is your sting?
Compassion is hidden from my eyes.
15Though he may flourish among his brothers,
the east wind, the wind of the Lord, shall come,
his spring shall be parched;
it shall strip his treasury
of every precious thing.
16Samaria shall bear her guilt,
because she has rebelled against her God;
they shall fall by the sword;
their little ones shall be dashed in pieces,
and their pregnant women ripped open.
Isaiah 11:1-9
1There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
2And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
3And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide disputes by what his ears hear,
4but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
5Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,
and faithfulness the belt of his loins.
6The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.
7The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
9They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Psalm 92:11-15
11My eyes have seen the defeat of my adversaries;
my ears have heard the rout of my wicked foes.
12The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
13planted in the house of the Lord,
they will flourish in the courts of our God.
14They will still bear fruit in old age,
they will stay fresh and green,
15proclaiming, “The Lord is upright;
he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”
Revelation 21:1-3
1Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride
beautifully dressed for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.