The Twelve Minor Prophets and Today’s Church (Part 1)
Not long ago, I was asked to speak to a group of about fifty ministers who were preparing to preach through the Minor Prophets, a.k.a. the Book of the Twelve. The men and women who had committed to helping their congregations hear from God’s ancient spokespeople wanted also to hear a Word for themselves since no one can preach faithfully without first internalizing the word preached.
In this series of blog posts, I will present some of the main points from those discussions, as well as other relevant ideas. I hope these brief essays will stimulate further conversations and will aid preachers and teachers in particular. These women and men do important work by helping communities of truth-seekers understand, value, and live out the words, images, and ideas of the ancient prophets.
To begin, we all know at least some snippets from the Minor Prophets:
“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a perpetual stream” (Amos 5:24).
“Should I not be concerned about Nineveh the capital, where there are 120,000 people who don’t know their right hand from their left, along with all the animals?” (Jonah 4:11).
“What does the LORD require from you? Doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
“I will pour out my spirit on all flesh so your sons and daughters will prophecy. Your old ones will dream dreams; your young ones will see visions”(Joel 3:1 [English 2:28]; cited in Acts 2:17).
Among texts from the Minor Prophets, preachers have often addressed the titillating story of Hosea and Gomer, a story that plays on male fears of cuckoldry and infidelity to provoke an audience into self-examination—everyone is the unfaithful wife.
Yet the quotable lines above come from larger literary contexts. These larger contexts (paragraphs, sections, books, the Book of the Twelve as a whole) explore Israel’s relationship to the God who redeems, the dynamics of communities and families within Israel, and the moral obligations Israel and its neighbors share. The Minor Prophets depict a world, or perhaps a series of worlds, spanning centuries. They invite their readers to consider their own place in the proffered world. They think theologically about their contexts and invite readers to do the same in their own day.
If we attend to these larger contexts, moving beyond the soundbites, we notice that these books repeat themselves a bit. The king of Assyria in the book of Jonah asks “Who knows? God may turn around, relent, and then turn from his fierce anger so we won’t be destroyed” (Jonah 3:9). And the same plaintive question about the divine will to mercy occurs in Joel 2:14. “Who knows?” Joel asks. “He [God] may turn and relent and leave a blessing in his wake.” The question links the two texts together, even though one concerns the Assyrians and the other Israel itself. God’s mercy and God’s justice aim at all human beings, but neither mercy nor justice is subject to human manipulation. We cannot game the system. We must trust.
Or to take another example, Joel ends (almost) with an image of a roaring lion (Joel 4:16 [English 3:16]), and Amos opens (almost) with an identical line (Amos 1:2). Moreover, several prophets refer to the so-called “Mercy Statement” from Exodus 34 (“the LORD, the LORD, merciful and gracious…”). These references occur in Joel 2:12-14, Jonah 3:10, Micah 7:18-20, Nahum 1:2-3, and Malachi 1:9, and they help build the links among these books.
And yet again, each of the twelve small prophetic books begins in a similar way: the name of the prophet, his time of life, and something about a connection between the words of the prophet and their divine origin. Then, each book ends with some word of hope, whether it’s Hosea’s promise that God will be like a juniper tree for Israel, or Amos’s and Joel’s promises of agricultural plenty, or Micah’s promise to cast Israel’s sins “into the depths of the sea.”
In short, we should read these twelve short little books as a single work. The book of the “Twelve Minor Prophets” spans several hundred years, from the eighth century BCE down to the fifth, or possibly even later. So, it’s a single work with many cross-book connections, but it’s also an anthology. We can think of the Twelve as a chorus singing together, not in unison, but in harmony.
What is their song about? That is the topic of the remaining four posts in this series. But first, a foundational question:
Why should we listen to these prophets? We could start with the obvious: these texts were part of the Bible of Jesus and the apostles (see, just to name two well-known examples, Jesus’s use of Hosea 6:6 in his word to the Pharisees in Matthew 9:13, and Peter’s quotation of Joel 3:1-5 [English 2:28-32] in his Acts 2 sermon). Who would we be to reject the words our Lord took to heart?
But we should be more specific. Why do the words matter? The Twelve speak about God’s majesty and mercy, human sin and human need, all over a period of centuries. Some of the specific contours of human life change over time, and some do not. By listening to the chorus and each voice within it, we hear how the particular details of each time, despite their variety, can still point to the character and plans of God. The horrors of forced migration and the joys and challenges of return lie just beneath the surface throughout the Twelve. So, too, does the work of God with suffering people.
The exploration of those dynamics merits our ongoing reflection. They matter. How they matter is the subject of the posts ahead.
