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AnonymousBible: Old Testament: English Standard Version
Nonfiction | Scripture | Adult | Published in 1611A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Minor Prophets Part 1 (Hosea-Micah)Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Hosea Summary
Hosea served during the period of the divided monarchy and was a contemporary of Isaiah, both of whom ministered in the eighth century BCE. Hosea is thus one of the earliest of the minor prophets, and his book, at 14 chapters in length, is one of the longer texts in that collection. Chapters 1-3 tell a poignant tale in which Hosea’s family life is made into an allegory of God’s relationship with his people, and Chapters 4-14 consist of a series of prophetic judgments against Israel and Judah.
Much as in Ezekiel, God commands Hosea to undertake prophetic actions as examples of divine messages. In Hosea’s case, this involves taking an unfaithful woman for his wife, illustrating the unfaithfulness of the Israelites to the God who has set his love upon them. Despite their unfaithfulness, God pledges a day when his covenant of love with Israel and Judah will be fully realized: “And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy” (Hosea 2:19). The remainder of the book’s prophecies focus on the dark picture of the Israelites’ immediate future, as their rebellion against God leads to an ever more dangerous political situation: “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7).
Joel Summary
Joel has just three chapters, and very little is known of the author or his context. Although his name is given in the opening attribution, “Joel, the son of Pethuel” (Joel 1:1), the internal evidence of the book’s text is insufficient to fix it with any known figure. Even assigning it to a particular period of history is challenging, and dates from the ninth century to the second century BCE have been suggested. The mainstream opinion usually places it as a post-exilic work, perhaps near Nehemiah’s context.
Much of the text is structured as a lament, and it is possible that the book of Joel found usage as a liturgical text in services of lamentation. It urges God’s people to repent in response to the devastation that faces them: “Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD” (Joel 1:14). Despite the difficult circumstances described and the intimation that darker days of God’s judgment will come—a theme addressed in prophetic literature as “the day of the LORD” (Joel 2:11)—there are also forward-looking prophecies that foretell a coming age of redemption and restoration. In the Christian tradition, one of the most important passages is Joel 2:28, which is taken as a prophecy of the events of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit is sent to the community of believers after Jesus’s resurrection and ascension: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy […].”
Amos Summary
Amos was a prophet in the eighth century BCE, an early contemporary of Isaiah and Hosea. Although he was from the geographical territory of Judah, his prophetic preaching is largely directed against the northern kingdom of Israel. At the time of his ministry, still decades before the depredations of the Assyrian Empire, the divided monarchy of the Israelite states was enjoying its greatest period of strength and prosperity. In contrast to these good political fortunes, Amos bears a message of warning and reproach, castigating the wealthy elites of Israel’s capital, Samaria, for their disregard of God’s law and their lack of care for the poor:
Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy […] behold, the days are coming upon you when they shall take you away with hooks […] (Amos 4:1-2).
Many of Amos’s prophecies appear to point to the coming devastation of the Assyrian invasion later in the century. Israel’s practices have become so abhorrent in God’s sight that he rejects even their acts of worship directed toward him, as related in a passage that later became an important refrain in the Christian tradition: “Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:23-24). As with many of the prophets, Amos closes with an optimistic vision of a future age of restoration.
Obadiah Summary
A single chapter, Obadiah is one of the shortest books of the Bible. It is composed of prophetic denunciations of Edom (a neighboring state to the east of Judah), and thus falls into a category called oracles against the nations (abbreviated OAN in Old Testament studies), examples of which also occur in the works of other prophets. Because the text references the actions of Edom in rejoicing over Jerusalem’s fall, it likely comes from a sixth-century context, shortly after the Babylonian destruction of the city in 586 BCE. Obadiah follows common prophetic themes by predicting a “day of the Lord” against all nations, but a coming restoration for the covenant-people of God (referred to as Zion, the mountain of Jerusalem): “For the day of the LORD is near upon all the nations. As you have done, it shall be done to you […]. But in Mount Zion there shall be those who escape, and it shall be holy […]” (Obadiah 1:15-17).
Jonah Summary
In four chapters, Jonah transmits one of the classic stories of the Old Testament. Jonah son of Amittai is a prophet known from other references in the Old Testament (see 2 Kings 14:25). God calls Jonah to deliver a message to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire. The context of the story falls within the eighth century BCE, but the date of the text’s authorship is a subject of significant debate.
Jonah resists God’s calling to this mission, and instead books passage on a ship sailing in the opposite direction. When a storm occurs, Jonah realizes that it is an act of divine judgment against his disobedience, so he instructs the sailors to throw him overboard, at which point “the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights” (Jonah 1:17). The second chapter is a poetic prayer that Jonah prays from inside the fish, after which God causes the fish to vomit Jonah back onto dry land. After that experience, Jonah makes his way to Nineveh and preaches a message of God’s impending judgment against them. To Jonah’s great displeasure, the Ninevites respond by repenting, and God accepts their repentance. Jonah, who would have rather seen judgment played out against this enemy of Israel, ends the book by pouting on a hillside outside the city, but God rebukes him for his attitude, explaining that he has pity and compassion even for the city’s pagan residents.
Micah Summary
Micah was another prophet who was active in the eighth century BCE, during the period of the divided monarchy. His seven chapters have a rambling and disconnected structure, but offer elegant and rhetorically sophisticated poetry. Micah offers judgments against both kingdoms, directing his prophecies to the capital cities of Jerusalem and Samaria (Micah 1:1). Amid the predictions of coming desolations, Micah includes beautiful passages relating to an age of restoration yet to come:
[…] many nations shall come, and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ […] they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks […] Micah 4:2-3).
In an important passage for the Christian tradition, Micah prophesies the emergence of a great leader who will come from Bethlehem: “from you [Bethlehem] shall come forth for me one is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from old, from ancient days” (Micah 5:2). Despite the many prophetic denunciations and warnings in Micah, it follows a common theme among the prophets in ending with a positive note. In Micah’s case, this positive note is a reaffirmation of the character of God, who will prove to be faithful to his covenant and will forgive all the sins of his people.
Minor Prophets Part 1 (Hosea-Micah) Analysis
The first six of the minor prophets vary greatly in content and historical contexts, ranging from the height of the Israelite/Judaic monarchy to the exilic or post-exilic period. With the exception of Obadiah (and possibly Joel), the focus of their content tends to fall on the earlier end of the prophetic chronology, with the remainder of the minor prophets falling toward the later end, which may be a partial reason for their ordering in the Old Testament canon. One of the defining features of the minor prophets, aside from their shorter length, is the relative anonymity of the prophets themselves. While a few characters are known from oblique mentions in the historical narratives of other books, the minor prophets do not give us extensive personal information of the sort that we have on most of the major prophets.
The majority of the text in the minor prophets is poetic in nature, and as such it shares common features with the poetry of the wisdom literature, such as frequent uses of parallelism. Prophetic literature also has its own defining structures, including the transcription of divine messages, wherein the prophet relates a direct statement of God for the people of Israel/Judah. Such passages are usually prefaced or followed by a tagline ascribing the quotation to God, like “Thus says the Lord” (as in Obadiah 1:1) or “for the LORD has spoken” (as in Joel 3:8). Passages wherein the words of God are directly related are referred to as oracles, and some of these oracles fall into particular categories, such as the oracles against the nations (abbreviated OAN in Old Testament studies), in which the prophets denounce the wicked actions of other people groups beyond Israel/Judah.
The dating and authorship of the minor prophets is often difficult to place and sometimes speculative, as related in the summary sections for each book above. As with most questions of biblical authorship in the Old Testament, however, the assignation of a text to a particular time and place is often not considered as important in the Christian tradition as the actual content of the text. Historical context is extremely useful for interpretation when it can be well established, but the broader dimensions of theology, ethics, and the foreshadowing of New Testament content tend to loom larger in Christian reception of these texts.
Like the major prophets, the minor prophets minister in a period in which the connections between the great themes of The Problem of Sin, Faithfulness to God’s Law, and The Steadfast Love of God were coming to a point of greater awareness in their relation to Israel and Judah’s historical experience. Faced with the looming devastation of the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions, the sin of failing to abide by God’s law was directly linked to the sufferings of God’s people. In particular, two main categories of sins are pointed out by the minor prophets. First, the people fail to keep God’s law by worshipping other gods and thus directly violating the first of the Ten Commandments. This sin is often portrayed as a sort of sexual immorality, as if Israel and Judah were an unfaithful spouse who was breaking their marriage covenant with God. Second, the people of Israel and Judah ignore the portions of the law which require them to do good to the poor, a sin that is most pointedly illuminated in Amos. Nevertheless, the minor prophets continue to proclaim God’s faithfulness even when Israel and Judah are unfaithful to the covenant, and often hint of a great future restoration in which God’s love will be poured out in all its fullness. Remarkably, the loving character of God is shown being extended not only to the people of Israel and Judah, but to all nations, as evidenced most dramatically in Jonah’s mission to the Ninevites.
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