An Introduction to the Twelve: The Minor Prophets

I’m excited to start a new expository teaching series today -- we’re calling it “The Twelve” --not the Twelve Apostles, but the portion of the Old Testament known as the “Scroll of the Twelve” or the “Book of the Twelve Prophets” -- known to us in our Bibles as the Minor Prophets -- many thanks to Kyle for the amazing graphic he designed to showcase these books.


I want to make something clear from the very beginning -- this the last time you’ll hear me use the word “minor” regarding these books… they are filled with God’s truth both for those who heard them the first time in their immediate setting, and for us today as New Testament believers… the distinction between these twelve, who are usually regarded in both Jewish texts and in modern Bibles as a group, and other prophetic books such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel is made based almost entirely on the length of the books, not their importance…in fact, the descriptors “minor” and “major” were coined by St Augustine in the fifth century, but they have stuck, so that’s how this precious collection of prophetic writings is known today.


The order in which these books appear in our Bibles is the same as the order in which they appear in Jewish texts…and in broad terms, they are in rough chronological order, beginning with Hosea, and with a consensus that the final book of the twelve, Malachi, is the last prophetic voice to be heard in Israel or Judah until the coming of John the Baptist, with a period generally known as the “400 years of silence” between the two events. 


But I’ve chosen to reorder these books in terms of the sequence in which we’ll consider them, for one primary reason: the difficulty Bible students face when we take them in the Table of Contents order, because while they are in rough chronological order, that ordering makes it more difficult to keep our grip on the context of the book… from one book to the next, the context often changes from the northern kingdom to Israel to the southern kingdom of Judah, from one century to the next, from before an exile to after an exile, from prophecies intended for a rebellious, ungodly king, like Ahab, to a good and godly reformer king, such as Josiah.


It’s important to help us keep a handle on the important consideration of context -- religious, political, social, even economic -- and by doing that, better understand the message of the book itself… so we’ll divide the books into two groups -- those written to Israel and those written to Judah -- then we’ll take them in chronological order, so we can see the change in the prophetic messages as religious and political events unfold, and frankly, be more effective at remembering the context week after week.


So, in a sense, we’ll live in ancient Israel for four books and in ancient Judah for eight books as we explore The Twelve together.


Now let’s set the stage as we begin…


In broad terms, we recall the broad movements of the history of the people of Israel -- God’s call of Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees to a land that He would show him… the covenant promises of God continuing through Isaac and Jacob, renamed Israel, and his twelve sons…this collection of families, numbering fewer than 100, as we see in Genesis. 


Genesis 46.26-27 26 All the persons belonging to Jacob who came into Egypt, who were his own descendants, not including Jacob's sons' wives, were sixty-six persons in all. 27 And the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two. All the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy.


This period of the Patriarchs was followed by the sojourn in Egypt, lasting 430 years. 


Exodus 12.40-41 40 The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. 41 At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.


While there is some debate on the length of time, I believe the strongest evidence rests with 430 years. 


Highlighted by the service of Moses as the leader of the people, and with the celebration of Passover instituted to both observe and rejoice in the deliverance of the people of Israel from bondage in Egypt, the people left Egypt, but after the failure of the people to trust God and cross into the promised land, they spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. 


Finally, after that generation had all died (with the exception of Joshua and Caleb), Moses finally dies without crossing over into the promised land, and Joshua is named by the Lord as the new leader of the people…they cross into Canaan but fail to completely conquer the promised land; all this is recorded in the book of Joshua.


This led to the dark period of the Judges, which ended with the prophetic ministry of Samuel and the unified monarch under Saul, David, and Solomon, a period of almost 120 years, 1047 BC to 930 BC, as recorded in the historical books of the Old Testament.


The unified monarchy ended with Solomon’s death and the division of the kingdom into two parts, in 930 BC (I Kings 11 and 12)… so that was about half the Old Testament in a couple of minutes…all of that was to set the stage for our look at the context of both the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah in the period from 930 BC to about 400 BC.


Let me make one key point -- I have adopted the best efforts possible at dating the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah, and the prophets, that I could find; there is not a consensus on these dates, except in those instances that internal evidence from the books themselves or archaeological discoveries help to place some rulers with a high degree of accuracy, or link to well-known events; and unfortunately in many cases we know little about the prophets themselves… but when you think about it, that isn’t too great a problem, since of course the most important thing about these books is what God is saying through them… so while some might disagree about the dates by a decade or two, we can all agree to focus on the content we find in these precious books.


Note below the timeline the kings in blue according to their reigns as we know them; the prophets appear in green above the timeline; and in red is the key event for this period, the exile of the kingdom of Israel, and its capital, Samaria, into the kingdom of Assyria.


The story of the political and religious leadership of Israel is one of steady and steep decline -- from their rebellion against the house of David in I Kings 11; to the establishment of the idolatrous worship of golden calves in Bethel and Dan in I Kings 12; to the Baal worship of Ahab and Jezebel in I Kings 18.


There are some memorable passages in Scripture in this period in Israel -- Elijah’s raising of the widow’s son…Elijah wiping out the prophets of Baal in the contest of deities, as fire fell from heaven and consumed the water-soaked offering and the altar, too… the story of Elijah in a cave hiding from Jezebel and hearing the “still, small voice” of the Lord… the passing of the prophetic mantle and mission from Elijah to Elisha and Elijah’s departure to heaven in a chariot of fire… the healing of Naaman the Syrian of leprosy… so while the nation continued to reject the God of Israel and pursue idolatry instead, the sovereign God was absolutely still at work, working through His prophets to ensure the leaders and people continued to hear His Word. 


Jehu, probably the best of the miserable lot of the kings of Israel, wiped out all the descendants of Ahab and Jezebel, but he also brutally murdered scores of others, and did not turn from the sins of idolatry begun by Jeroboam; most scholars recognize not a single king of Israel as a good king, and none are unequivocally praised in the record of Scripture.


Note the four prophets from among the twelve whom God sent to Israel, shown in green above the timeline -- Jonah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah – and the timing of their ministry…God reached out to his people through the prophetic voice right up to the time of the exile but not after…there’s no record of a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel after the Assyrian exile.


So, from the beginning of the divided monarchy in 930 BC, Israel steadily moved toward the decisive event in this period -- Israel’s exile to Assyria, as described in II Kings 18.9-12:


9 In the fourth year of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah, king of Israel, Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against Samaria and besieged it, 10 and at the end of three years he took it. In the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel, Samaria was taken. 11 The king of Assyria carried the Israelites away to Assyria and put them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes, 12 because they did not obey the voice of the Lord their God but transgressed his covenant, even all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded. They neither listened nor obeyed.


But interestingly, some of the poorest of the nation were left in the land by the Assyrians… a remnant, of sorts… and after the great majority of the Israelites were taken into exile from 740 to 722 BC, those few were invited by King Hezekiah of Judah to come to Jerusalem and celebrate the Passover II Chronicles 30.1 Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem to keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel.


After some narrative about process and response, we learn that some did return to celebrate Passover, though the nation as a whole were never to return to the land II Chronicles 30.10-11 10 So the couriers went from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, and as far as Zebulun, but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them. 11 However, some men of Asher, of Manasseh, and of Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem.


The story of the northern kingdom of Israel is a sad one…it’s a good example of what happens when fallen mankind tries to lead and govern from their own wisdom and strength; the nation ultimately was scattered among the pagan kingdoms of the middle east and were never to return to the blessing intended for them by their covenant God. 


Now let’s turn to the southern kingdom, the nation of Judah. 


Slide 2 -- Judah in the Time of The Twelve


Note again selected kings of Judah in blue below the timeline, and the prophets among the Twelve who prophesied to Judah are shown in green both above and below the timeline; the key event for the southern kingdom of Judah was the exile and deportation to Babylon in 587 BC and the return of the people of Judah to the land, particularly Jerusalem, in 539.


Starting point of the timeline remains the same as for the northern kingdom, 930 BC, following the death of Solomon…but we see now the beginning of the judgment of God upon the house of David in I Kings 11.9-13


9 And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice 10 and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the Lord commanded. 11 Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. 12 Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. 13 However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen.”


Solomon falls into idolatry because of his disobedience to the Lord’s command regarding foreign wives, and as a judgment for that terrible sin, the Lord takes the kingdom not from Solomon himself, but from his son, Rehoboam, leaving to him only the tribe of Judah and the smaller tribe of Benjamin as the remaining house of David…adding the reference to Benjamin in verses 21-24 of the same chapter.


Unlike Israel, the people of Judah were fortunate to have four good and godly kings leading them during these years: Asa and his son Jehoshaphat fairly early in the period, and Hezekiah and Josiah later in the period, interspersed with a mixture of average kings, sort of a mix of good and bad, and some bad kings, along with one bad queen, Athaliah, who reigned for almost seven years, until she was deposed and Joash became king at the age of seven.


The chronicles begin with the immediate fall of the nation into idolatry I Kings14.22-24


22 And Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins that they committed, more than all that their fathers had done. 23 For they also built for themselves high places and pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree, 24 and there were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.


But there were better days… while Israel steadily declined toward full apostasy and judgment, Judah went through cycles of idolatrous sin followed by reformation and return to their covenant God… Asa and his son Jehoshaphat led the nation well, and after a series of ungodly kings, Joash became king and led in the restoration and renewal of the house of the Lord… when faced with an attack from Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, Hezekiah sought the Lord and the Lord granted the nation of Judah deliverance, as the Assyrians were camped before the city gates of Jerusalem, but the Lord struck the Assyrians down in one night, all recorded in II Kings 19.32-36


32 “Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. 33 By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. 34 For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.” 35 And that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. 36 Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went home and lived at Nineveh.


Following the evil kings Mannaseh and Amon, God raised up Josiah as king over Judah in 640 BC… he walked in the way of David and led the people well, restoring and rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem, and leading the people in the revival of their commitment to the Law… Josiah also destroyed the places of idolatrous worship to the false gods of the Canaanites, killed the priests of the false gods, destroyed their temples of worship and ritual practices, including even those places that were in Samaria, the former capital of Israel in the north… he removed the mediums and the spiritists and the necromancers and the household gods from Judah and Jerusalem… II Kings 23.1-3


1 Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. 2 And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. 3 And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant.


 No other king did as much as Josiah to turn the nation back to the covenant God of Israel…but it was not enough…we find the judgment of God in II Kings 23.26-27


26 Still the Lord did not turn from the burning of his great wrath, by which his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him. 27 And the Lord said, “I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and I will cast off this city that I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.”


So, while there were positive events from time to time in Judah, and they were more faithful, or at least they sought to be faithful more frequently, than Israel, ultimately the people did not obey the Law of God and were judged because of it… we read of the final siege of Jerusalem and its destruction at the order of the king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in II Kings 25.8-12


8 In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month—that was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon—Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. 9 And he burned the house of the Lord and the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. 10 And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem. 11 And the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the multitude, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile. 12 But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and plowmen.


So, to pull together the disobedience and rebellion of both Israel and Judah during this period, that brought down upon their heads the judgment and wrath of God, II Kings 17.15-20 is a fitting summary… listen carefully to the unflinching description of the sins of the people: 


15 They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them. 16 And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves metal images of two calves; and they made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. 17 And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. 18 Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only. 19 Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. 20 And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had cast them out of his sight.


But by God’s grace, that wasn’t the end of their story -- Israel lost in the far reaches of the fallen Assyrian empire, and Judah now in exile in Babylon – the Sovereign God still had much to do as He continued to bring about His purposes in and through His people.


For God had already given a prophecy through the prophet Jeremiah, in chapters 30 and 31, of the restoration of the people… Jeremiah 30.1-3


The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you. 3 For behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah, says the Lord, and I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall take possession of it.”


This was brought about by the work of God in the heart of the king of Persia, Cyrus, who had defeated Babylon in 539 BC at the Battle of Opis and taken Babylon without a fight, consolidating the Medea-Persian Kingdom as the only empire in western Asia… one of the first acts of Cyrus is recorded in Ezra 1.1-3


1 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: 2 “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. 3 Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem.


And with that proclamation began the era known as the post-exilic period…as the people of Judah returned in several waves from Babylon to Jerusalem beginning in 539 BC, and we find the story of God’s people continuing in the historical narratives of Ezra and Nehemiah, and in the prophetic books of Haggai and Zechariah, as the prophets call the exiles to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple and return to the worship of their covenant God.


The final book of the Old Testament is also the final book of the Twelve, the

book of Malachi. 


This short book of only four chapters, particularly the last chapter, is a rebuke and a challenge to the returning exiles to turn from their sins and come back to the Lord, forsaking their neglect of the tithe, their dishonoring of the covenant of marriage, especially in the acceptance of foreign wives into the covenant community, and the failure of the priesthood to keep the Law.


It is also a prelude to the 400 years of prophetic silence until the coming of John the Baptist, that forerunner of the Messiah who is predicted in the final verses of the Old Testament…Malachi 4.5-6


5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”


Jesus Himself identified John the Baptist as the “Elijah” of this passage in Malachi, linking the end of the Old Testament prophetic message with the coming of Messiah and the dawning of the apostolic age.


So that’s where we will begin next week -- examining the message of the Twelve as that message leads us to the very doorstep of the birth and ministry of Jesus Christ. 


As we close, let me remind you that we love you and care for you, and we’re always ready to pray with and for you -- look for our prayer team to your left/my right after the service… whether you need to meet this Jesus we speak of so much here at VBVF, or you need to connect with our counseling ministry, or you just would like to talk with someone, we’re here.