Bible Book Intros Archive

Collection of all the Bible book introductions in The Casual English Bible

Intro Notes to Malachi

Malachi is not a gentle touch. He might sound like a yeller when he quotes God.

“People, you bring me blind animals. That’s your sacrifice, your gift to me. Blind animals. And crippled critters. Diseased, as well….Try giving animals like that to your governor. Would he be happy with you? Would he say, ‘Thank you very much for all these sick animals, I gratefully accept them’” (1:8)?

Priests with bad attitudes toward God

“Priests…If you don’t start showing me respect and honoring my name when you use it….I’m going to punish you in a way that will affect you and future generations of your family. The shame you’ll have to live with will be like walking around with manure on your faces” (2:1-3).

Cheapskating around the tithe

“So, you think it’s okay to rob God? …You’re robbing me of tithes and offerings….Bring all the tithe to the Temple so we have food here at my house. Test me. Do it. Then watch what happens. I’ll open the windows of heaven and dump a barrel of blessing all over you” (3:8, 10).

Malachi, the last voice of a prophet in the Jewish Bible, sounds the alarm for the last day on earth. It’s the day the LORD comes to hold people accountable. Some scholars say when they read Malachi’s warning to the Jews to stop ignoring God and his laws, they see the end of humanity.

Others say they see Jesus as the LORD who came and made it clear what it means to live as a citizen of God’s kingdom, whether in heaven or on earth.

Others say they see layers of both: the birth and life of Jesus, followed someday by his return and Judgment Day.

For sinners, it’s cremation and The End of Days. For people devoted to God, it’s Happy Days and dancing.

“Look, judgment day is coming… And it’s going to light up like an oven fire. It’s going to burn away all the evil people like straw in a blaze…But there’s a better future for people who treat me with respect. The sun of goodness will rise on a brand new day, a day of healing. You’re going to dance like young calves turned out of their stalls” (4:1-2).

Writer

Malachi wrote this short prophecy or an anonymous writer did, and then described himself simply as God’s “messenger.” The name “Malachi” means “my messenger” in Hebrew, which is the original language of the Jewish Bible.

Timeline

Best guess: Malachi lived in the 400s BC, about a century after Jews returned to their homeland, which Babylonian invaders had decimated in 586 BC. They erased Israel from the world map.
Babylonians had leveled Jerusalem and deported most of the survivors, banning them from returning home to rebuild their rebellious nation.

But Persians from what is now Iraq defeated Babylon and freed the political prisoners, including Jews. Many Jews returned home and rebuilt the Jerusalem Temple by 515 BC.
Some clues of the timeline:

A governor ruled Israel (1:8). Persians allowed Jews to rebuild their nation, but only as the Persian Empire’s province of Palestine. Persian-appointed governors ruled from 536-332 BC.
Jews sacrificed in the Temple again (1:7). There was no Temple for 70 years after 586 BC.
Jews were possibly marrying non-Jews (footnote for 2:14). This was a problem Ezra viciously attacked in the mid-400s BC (Ezra 9—10; Nehmiah 13).

Location

The scenes probably took place in the Persian province of Yehud, which is translated Judah or Judea. It was roughly a 40-mile-wide square plug of ground (60 km), in territory that became known as Palestine. The Jewish province included Jerusalem and beyond, into what are now central parts of Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories. Jerusalem is where Jews sacrificed animals to God. And this was a topic Malachi covered with emotion and blunt words.

Purpose

Malachi warned Jewish priests to stop disrespecting God. And he told the Jewish people to straighten up, obey God’s laws, and stop sacrificing defective livestock. Otherwise, they’ll burn like straw on Judgment Day.

“Judgment day is coming. And it’s going to light up like an oven fire. It’s going to burn away all the evil people like straw in a blaze” (Malachi 4:1).

Some translate Malachi as saying Judgment Day is a “great and terrible day” (4:5). It’s a great day for God’s devoted people. But it’s the last day for a sinner.

Intro Notes to Zechariah

Fifty years before Zechariah opened his mouth to report his visions of:

a flying scroll (5:1-4)
celestial chariots (6:1-8)
and a little woman sitting in a bushel basket (5:4-11)

Jews considered themselves the privileged, handpicked people of God, prospering in the Promised Land.

But that was before he kicked them out, turned his back on them, and left them talking to themselves when they prayed.

People who felt Not Chosen

As the earlier prophets tell it, God and the Jews had an agreement. Jews broke it. They didn’t live up to their part of the contract. They worshiped idols and broke all the other 10 Commandments like a grandson eats candy at Grandpa’s house.

Prophets such as Habakkuk said God sent Assyrian and Babylonian invaders from what is now Iraq to conquer the two Jewish nations and deport Jewish survivors of the two wars. Israel fell to Assyria in 722 BC and Judah in the south fell to Babylon in 586 BC.

Jews come home to piles of rock

Now, freed by Persians who conquered Babylon, some Jews like Zechariah moved back to what is now Israel and Palestinian Territory.

They didn’t seem eager to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple. It took them more than 20 years after the first Jews came home, in 538 BC, to finish it. Perhaps they felt they were just another group of refugees, and nothing special to God anymore.

Prophets and leaders like Haggai and Zechariah had to find the balance between kicking their fannies and lifting their spirits.

There’s a bit of violence ahead: rotting eyeballs, Judean Hills collapsing flat, and the Mount of Olives splitting in two. Typical apocalyptic word pictures to prep the reader for an apparent Battle of Armageddon.

But after that, Utopia, or at least nearly so.

Jews are forgiven, welcomed, and protected.
Nations enrich Jerusalem with gifts, and visit the city each autumn to celebrate the Last Harvest Festival of the year.
The world finally recognizes God as the one and only.

“When that time comes, there will no longer be warm sunny days or cool moonlit nights. Instead, it will remain daylight all the time. God knows how and when. Even at night, it’ll be daylight bright” (Zechariah 14:6-7).

Writer

Zechariah was a prophet and a priest. He was born in exile, probably in Iraq. But like many Jews, he moved back to what was left of the Jewish homeland.

Fifty years earlier, Babylonian invaders levelled Jerusalem and other cities in the region. Then they deported the survivors.

Most Bible scholars seem to agree that Zechariah wrote at least chapters 1-8. They say they aren’t so sure about chapters 9-14. Those chapters seem to reflect a later time—perhaps in Greece’s glory days, after the Persians lost to Alexander the Great. Those chapters also seem written in a different style. Yet some scholars argue Zechariah may have written that section late in life.

Timeline

Zechariah and Haggai prophesied at the same time, when Jews were rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple—a job completed in 516 BC.

Zechariah got his first vision four years earlier: “almost a year and eight months” into Darius’ reign as king of Persia (1:1). On today’s calendar, that’s October or November 520 BC.

Two years later—the last date in Zechariah’s prophecy—he said the LORD gave him another message. This one came on December 7, 518 BC, “the fourth year, ninth month, and fourth day of King Darius’ reign” (Zechariah 7:1).

Zechariah may have continued his ministry as a prophet. Or perhaps he returned to the family business of the priesthood once workers finished the Temple.

Location

Zechariah’s ministry seems to have taken place in Jerusalem, a fitting location for him as a priest. But his words reached out to all Jews in what had become the Persian province of Judah, in the territory known as Palestine—formerly David’s kingdom of Israel.

Purpose

Zechariah is a prophet bringing good news to the Jews.

They need it. They’ve just come back from a generation in exile, to their native homeland and to the ruins Babylonian invaders left behind.

Zechariah says not to worry. Jerusalem is safe. Their enemies are doomed. And the Temple and the city will be greater than ever.

Best of all:

“People will see the LORD as King of the World. People everywhere will finally recognize him as the LORD, and as the one and only God” (Zechariah 14:9).

Hints of Jesus

Students of the Bible say they see more clues about Jesus in this book than in any other book of the Old Testament, except Isaiah.

“Celebrate, Mount Zion.
Sing and shout, Jerusalem.
Look, here comes your king,
The good savior.
Humbly riding a colt,
The young foal of a donkey” (9:9; see Matthew 21:9 about how Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, before his Friday execution).

“I told them, ‘If you want to pay me what you owe me, I’ll take it now. If you don’t want to pay, fine.’ So, they shekeled me 30 pieces of silver. How pitifully noble of them. The LORD said, ‘Shuck it back. Toss it to the potter.’ So, I threw that miserly noble salary to the Temple potter” (11:12-13; see Matthew 27:7 about what Judas did with his 30 pieces of silver, his reward for betraying Jesus).

“Kill the shepherd,
But let the sheep run away and scatter” (13:7; see Matthew 26:31 about what happened to Jesus’ disciples when Temple police arrested him).

Intro Notes to Haggai

Jews rebuilt their own destroyed houses before they rebuilt God’s house—the Jerusalem Temple.

God didn’t like that one bit.

He had the prophet Haggai tell ‘em so.

“You say it’s not yet time to rebuild the LORD’s house from the ruins. But I’ve noticed it is time for you to live in nicely appointed houses paneled in wood” (Haggai 1:4).

That’s called a divine zinger, one of many in the Holy Bible.

Jews ordered to stop building in Jerusalem

Jews apparently felt they had good reason not to rebuild the temple. They had started the work as soon as they got back from exile in Iraq. That’s where Babylonians forced them to stay for 66 years. Persians from what is now Iran defeated Babylon and told the Jews they could go home.

Settlers who had moved into the region objected. They didn’t want Jews dragging their dead nation up out of the dirt. So, they threatened them. Later, they convinced a new Persian king to stop all building projects in Jerusalem.

Eighteen years afterward, Haggai shows up, but for just four sermons—one a month.

How to get good crops through carpentry

On August 29, 520 BC, at the end of what sounds like a terrible year for farmers, Haggai tells them how to fix it.

He says God broke it.

And God will fix it.

But only if they get back to work on the Temple.

“I’m the LORD and I did it. I hit you with heat, mold, and hail. But you didn’t get the message. You didn’t come back to me” (2:17).

Jews rushed back to work on the Temple before the month is up: September 21.

Jews get the blues rebuilding the Temple

But they apparently get bummed out by December. Perhaps it’s because the Temple isn’t shaping up as magnificent of Solomon’s Temple.

Haggai apparently pumps them with a reminder about a good harvest ahead—and with the promise that this Temple will be bigger and better than Solomon’s.

The Little Temple that wasn’t big

As it turns out, it wasn’t. Jews finished building Zerubbabel’s Temple on March 12, 515 BC, some four and a half years after they started the work. Solomon mobilized the nation’s top artisans and drafted citizens who spent seven years working on that Temple.

Haggai’s promise for the bigger Temple had to wait another 500 years. That’s when King Herod the Great started expanding the Temple into what some scholars call the Third Temple. But it’s better known as Herod’s Temple. The expansion project continued for 80 years, until AD 64.

It lasted six years. Jews revolted against their roman occupiers in AD 66. They lost the war and lost Jerusalem—Romans leveled it. Throughout known history, only the Babylonians of what is now Iraq and the Romans of Italy have leveled Jerusalem.

Jewish Temple: Never rebuilt

The Temple hasn’t been rebuilt.

That’s because Jerusalem’s most visible landmark sits about where the Temple once did. The iconic building is a 1400-year-old Muslim shrine called the Dome of the Rock. A huge rock inside is tied to various legends such as: Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac there; Muhammad ascended to heaven from there, escorted by the angel Gabriel.

Writer

If Haggai didn’t write these 38 verses presented as two chapters, at least he spoke them. Scholars say his words were likely preserved soon after he spoke.

A low-profile prophet, Haggai shows up for only four months in his own book and twice outside his book: Ezra 5:1; 6:14. We know nothing about his age, where he came from, how long he had been in Jerusalem, or if he was old enough to remember Solomon’s Temple from 66 years earlier.

Timeline

Haggai preached four times between August and December in 520 BC:

August 29
September 21
October 20
December 18

Oddly, Haggai did what we wish all the Bible writers had done. He gave us timeline landmarks by identifying the year, month, and day in relation to when the current king took the throne, Persian ruler Darius the Great. Persian documents, such as the Cyrus Cylinder, along with timeline clues in other Bible prophecies help scholars, in a way, triangulate the location on the calendars.

Location

Jerusalem, or what’s left of it. Babylonian invaders tore down the walls, homes, and Temple 66 years earlier, and deported many of the surviving Jews. Persians freed Jews to go home in 539 BC, some 18 years before Haggai. They started rebuilding, but Persians made them stop after non-Jewish settlers in the area warned Persians about how rebellious the Jews have always been. A later king reversed the work stoppage order.

Purpose

Haggai says God wants the Jews of Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple: “Don’t be discouraged…. I am with you. So, get back to work” (Haggai 2:4).

Ezra and Nehemiah say the people were disappointed and afraid of rebuilding. That’s because non-Jews who moved into the Jewish homeland while the Jews were exiled to Iraq didn’t want them rebuilding their nation. And they talked a new Persian king into ordering Jews to stop rebuilding.

Haggai told them not to be afraid because God is with them—and he wants them to get back to work.

Intro Notes to Zephaniah

How are we supposed to make sense of a prophecy that starts with God killing all life on earth and ends with God singing for joy in Jerusalem?

Who knew God sang?

So far, this is sounding like a joke, with God singing for joy because people are finally making him happy.

Aren’t they all dead?

It seems not.

They’re alive. That’s what’s confusing.

How did they survive after God vowed,

“I’m going to kill everything… I’ll erase them from the face of the earth” (Zephaniah 1:1, 3).

One of the big challenges of Zephaniah’s prophecy is figuring out who he’s talking about. Who’s doomed? And who’s singing with God in Jerusalem at the end of the story?

Are we doomed?

Many students of the Bible say Zephaniah is talking about the future and the end of humanity followed by life in heaven, with a new Jerusalem.

It’s an idea that New Testament writers later picked up:

“I saw the city devoted to God, New Jerusalem” (Revelation 21:2).

Or were they doomed?

There are other contenders for doom and damnation.

Zephaniah criticizes the sins of the Jewish nation of Judah, and its capital city of Jerusalem.

He criticizes Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire that wiped out the northern Jewish nation about 70 years earlier.

He targets Moab, Judah’s neighbor to the east.

And he talks about Philistines, Judah’s neighbor to the west.

But in the third and last chapter of Zephaniah’s message, he dooms an unidentified “rebellious and sinful city” (3:1).

Though he doesn’t name the city, many scholars say the clues and context point to Judah, the nation Babylon would erase a generation later.

Perhaps the doom was hyperbole, exaggeration to emphasize how life-changing God’s punishment would feel. If so, then the message of joy and hope in the closing verses may have described what Jews experienced when Persians defeated Babylon and freed the Jews to go home and rebuild Jerusalem and Judah’s other cities.

Many Bible scholars, perhaps most, seem to lean in that direction. But even many of them say they get a sense of the apocalyptic in the message as well—as though the prophecy was intended to work on two timelines: Zephaniah’s, and again on some other Judgment Day in the future.

Writer

Zephaniah is the only prophet to climb four generations up his family tree. He may have done this to name-drop his most famous relative: King Hezekiah.

“Zephaniah was the son of Cushi, grandson of Gedaliah, great-grandson of Amariah, and great-great-grandson of Hezekiah” (Zephaniah 1:1).

If this Hezekiah was King Hezekiah, then Zephaniah was also related to the current king, Josiah. All kings of Judah descended from King David.

But other scholars say if Zephaniah wanted to name-drop his great-great grandpa King Hezekiah, he would have made it clear which Hezekiah he was talking about because Hezekiah was a common name.

Timeline

Zephaniah prophesied during the last generation of Israelites in Judah before Babylonian invaders, in 586 BC, erased it from the world map and deported many survivors to what is now Iraq. Zephaniah ministered during the reign of King Josiah (ruled 640-609 BC.) Josiah was a religious reformer. He tore down shrines and worship centers devoted to other gods. But his effort seemed too little, too late. It didn’t stop the Babylonians, which the prophets described as God’s punishment of Judah.

Location

Zephaniah lived and ministered in the southern Jewish nation of Judah, headquartered out of Jerusalem. The northern Jewish nation of Israel had been gone for about 70 years, wiped off the map by Assyrian invaders from what is now northern Iraq in 722 BC.

Purpose

This short prophecy of 53 verses is a “last chance to repent” message for Judah—a nation stubborn and independent toward God and anyone else who told them what to do.

Israelite ancestors of today’s Jewish people developed the reputation for rebelliousness among empires that tried to control them. They rebelled when Assyria, Babylon, and Persian put the squeeze on them for tax money like a bully steals lunch money. Israelites didn’t like bullies.

They didn’t seem to care much for God’s rules, either.

Too bad, Zephaniah essentially says. If they don’t fall in line, they’re going fall in the dirt. He quotes God saying,

“I’m going to kill everything.

I’m going to sweep the earth clean.

I’ll kill all the people and animals,

birds of the sky, and fish of the sea” (Zephaniah 1:2-3).

That’s the reverse of Creation. People and animals die in the reverse order that Genesis says God created them (Genesis 1:20, 24, 27).

Intro Notes of Habakkuk

Habakkuk’s three-chapter prophecy reads like a play in five acts.

Habakkuk’s complaint

The prophet complains that the southern Jewish nation of Judah has gone bad.

It’s overrun with so much violence, destruction, arguing, fighting, and injustice that “There’s too much of it for the law to handle” (1:4).

God’s shocking answer

God says he’s bringing in Babylonian invaders to punish the Israelite nation.

“The army comes to hurt and to kill.
They blow in like a desert storm” (1:9).

Habakkuk’s blunt question to God

“Why on earth would you tolerate these intolerable people?
How can you side with the bad guys,
Letting them kill people better than they are?” (1:13).

God’s reassuring answer

God says the Babylonians will one day answer for their cruelty: “In the end, you’ll die for what you did” (2:10). But not yet.

Habakkuk’s stunning prayer of faith

God had told the prophet that good people will live “because of their devotion” (2:4). Some Bibles say it’s because of their faith or faithfulness. That single verse, quoted by Paul (Romans 1:17) helped launch the Protestant Movement—in a breakaway from the Roman Catholic Church, led by German priest Martin Luther (1483-1546).

“Devotion,” “faith,” “faithfulness.” Whatever word we pick, Habakkuk showed his trust in God. We see it in a prayer that describes what Babylonian invaders would do to decimate the Promised Land of the Jews:

“When fig trees don’t blossom,
Grapes don’t grow,
When olive crops disappear,
Fields produce dirt,
When sheep are taken,
Cattle gone from their stalls,

What will I do?

I will thank God that he is my Savior.
He gives me the strength to go on.
He gives me the sure-footed speed of a deer,
And to higher ground he leads on (3:17-18).

Writer

“This is a message the prophet Habakkuk was told to deliver” (1:1).

In one way, Habakkuk is like most Bible prophets: We know almost nothing about him. He may have lived when Jeremiah did. And, like Jeremiah, he may have suffered through Babylon’s siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC.

Timeline

Most scholars seem to presume Habakkuk wrote his prophecy sometime after Babylon rose to power by defeating Assyrians in 612 BC. But they say he like wrote it before Babylonian invaders destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple about 26 years later, in 586 BC.

Habakkuk mentions the Babylonians by name (1:6). They became the leading power in the region when they destroyed Assyria’s capital city of Nineveh in 612 BC. Babylonians then mopped up Assyria’s remaining forces a few years later, at the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC.

Babylon invaded the Jewish nation of Judah in 605, 597, and then in 586 BC, when it destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple and deported most surviving Jews to what is now Iraq. That’s where Babylon was based, in southern Iraq. By keeping most Jewish leaders

nearby, Babylon made it harder for the Jews to rebuild their nation. For a generation, the world lived without a Jewish nation.

That disaster, the end of Judah, was the prophecy of Habakkuk and many other Bible prophets.

Location

Habakkuk lived in the southern Jewish nation of Judah, which had its capital in Jerusalem. The northern Jewish nation of Israel, with its capital in Samaria, was gone. Assyrians defeated it in about 722 BC and deported most of the survivors to what is now Iraq. They became known as the Lost Tribes of Israel.

Purpose

Habakkuk’s prophecy warns that God is going to use Babylonian invaders to punish the Jewish nation of Judah by attacking them. The point doesn’t seem so much about warning them, though.

This is a conversation between Habakkuk and God about injustice. It’s about Habakkuk’s decision to keep trusting God in the hard times, even when Habakkuk doesn’t understand why God is allowing the injustice and deadly cruelty to continue.

Intro Notes of Nahum

Sin city

“Sin city, where crime calls home….the city where sin never sleeps” (3:1).

That’s how Nahum described Nineveh, capital of the vicious Assyrian Empire, before predicting it’s going to get erased.

Jonah came first

A hundred years before Nahum, in the 700s BC, a reluctant prophet named Jonah delivered a similar message:
“In 40 days Nineveh will be destroyed” (Jonah 1:4).

Didn’t happen.

The Assyrian king ordered the people to repent. Everyone fasted and dressed in mourning clothes made of scratchy feed sack fabric. “Humans and animals alike” (Jonah 3:8).

That last line (try dressing a bull in a feed sack) is one of several reasons some scholars say they read Jonah as a parable about God’s concern for everyone, not just for the Jews.

But in Nahum’s message, God is fed up with the Assyrians and concerned for the Jews. So much so that he said he would put a permanent end to the Assyrian Empire:

“Shepherds who led your nation are sleeping.
Great King of Assyria, they’ll never wake up.
What’s left of your people now hide in the hills.
There are no shepherds left to lead them” (3:18).

Babylonians from what is now southern Iraq not only overran the Assyrian Empire and took control of a swath of what is today the Middle East. They recorded the history.

Some of the documents, known as the Babylonian Chronicles, have the stories about it pressed into dried clay, written in wedge-shaped cuneiform characters:

“The king of Babylonia called out his army and…pitched camp by Nineveh…They made a strong attack…They carried off much spoil from the city and temple area and turned the city into a ruin mound and heap of debris.”

The city remains a ruin today, as Nahum said: “Gone for good” (1:15)

WRITER

Nahum, from Elkosh (1:1) is the reported source of this prophecy, whether he wrote it or spoke it.

Who he was, what he was, and where he came from all remain a mystery.

His name shows up in the Bible only here. Someone else by that name shows up in the family tree of Jesus in Luke 3:25.

Nahum isn’t identified as a prophet. He is someone who had a vision which became the three chapters in the Book of Nahum.

Location of Elkosh is unknown. Some scholars say they wonder if Elkosh ever existed. Jewish scholars writing in the Targum, an ancient collection of Jewish Bible commentaries, said Elkosh might be a symbolic way of describing what God was going to do to Nineveh. Elkosh is a Hebrew wordplay that means “God is harsh.”

TIMELINE

Nahum lived sometime during a 50-year stretch in the 600s BC, scholars guess.

That guess comes from two clues.

1. Nahum reports the fall of Thebes, a city in Egypt. Assyrians conquered it in 663 BC.

2. And Nahum predicts the fall of Assyria, which happened in 612 BC.

However, it is possible someone preserved the story in writing long after Assyria fell, and simply tried to present the story in the voice of Nahum.

LOCATION

Nahum’s warning was for Nineveh, capital of the vicious Assyrian Empire. Nineveh’s ruins are on the east side of the Tigris River, across from the city of Mosul.

Yet what served as a warning for Assyria, also served as a message of consolation, retribution, and hope for the southern Israelite nation of Judah.

“Go ahead, Judah, celebrate your festivals.
Make your vows to the LORD.
Your enemy will never come back.
They are as good as dead and gone for good” (1:15)

The northern Israelite nation of Israel was long gone. Assyrians wiped it off the political map in 722 BC and deported many of the survivors.

Judah remained under Assyria’s thumb and was forced to pay tribute in taxes and gifts. But in 612 BC, Babylon defeated Assyria. Power shifted from the Assyrian Empire in what is now northern Iraq, to Babylon and the Babylonian Empire based in southern Iraq.

PURPOSE

Nineveh was going to fall and never rise again.

That’s the message Nahum delivered about the capital of the Assyrian Empire.

Assyria had been terrorizing what is now the Middle East for about three centuries. So, Nahum’s prophecy was good news to Israelites in the southern Jewish nation of Judah.

Intro Notes to Micah

Intro notes to Micah

“You killed the country.” Boiled to a one-liner, that’s essentially Micah’s blunt message to political leaders and judges in Jerusalem, capital of the southern Jewish nation of Judah.

He didn’t tell them to change. He said God had already sentenced the nation to death.

Moses had warned their ancestors that if the nation didn’t live up to the agreement with God, they would lose the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 28:63).

Micah said it’s too bad, they messed up big time. So, God would give the Jewish homeland to ancestors of today’s Iraqi people, the Babylonians.

That’s odd because Assyria was the superpower of the moment. Babylon wouldn’t take down Assyria for a century, in battles beginning in 626 BC. That leads some to speculate that someone later wrote at least part of Micah’s book, as history presented as prophecy.

Babylonian invaders turned Jerusalem into a rock pile in 586 BC and then deported the Jewish survivors into an exile that lasted 50 years.

The crime

Micah told the leaders why they didn’t deserve to live in the Promised Land of Judah any longer.

They worship “idols built with money paid to prostitutes” (1:7)
“You eat my people for breakfast” (3:3)
You “declare war on the poor” (3:4)
“Judges settle cases for a bribe” (3:11)
Merchants use “dishonest scales” (6:10)
“Your violent rich people have blood on their hands” (6:12)
“Your people lie with tongues tuned to lie” (6:12)

The time

With graphic word pictures, Micah tells one city after another what will happen to them.

The word pictures become clear when we translate the Hebrew names of the cities into their English meanings.

Dust House Town will “roll in the dust” (1:10).
City of Beauty will leave “naked and walking in shame” (1:11).
Entitlement Town will “lose it all” (1:15).

Mercy ahead

In spite of Israel’s serial sin, God doesn’t quit on them.

He punishes them royally. But when they’ve paid the price, their sins are gone—stomped to death in the ground and buried “into the deepest sea” (7:19).

Micah says once again God will do incredible miracles, like those he did to free their ancestors from slavery some 700 years earlier, in the days of Moses.

Micah advises the people to take their punishment with confidence in God (7:7), counting on his love.

In a prayer at the end of the prophecy, Micah’s explains the reason for the endurance of God’s love.

“You’ll stay devoted to us,

Jacob’s kids.

You won’t stop loving us,

Abraham’s children.

You promised our ancestors long ago

That you’d love us and always stay true” (Micah 7:20).

But Micah makes it clear that God isn’t doing this just to keep a promise. He’s doing it because of who he is:

“What kind of God are you?

What God would pardon a sinner

And overlook sin—

Like the sin in what’s left of his people?

He doesn’t obsess over anger

Because he’d rather love instead” (7:18).

Writer

The Bible says almost nothing about Micah. He’s one of the rare prophets identified by his hometown instead of his dad.

Scholars say that little detail might suggest he wasn’t from an influential family and that he may have moved to Jerusalem, the city he targeted with his prophecies. Scholars explain that if Micah hadn’t reported his hometown, people would have thought he came from the city he was living in at the time of the prophecies. But that’s a guess.

Amos was identified by his hometown, too. If these hometown links suggested Amos and Micah came from less influential families, that could help us understand why both were so passionate about justice and compassion for people at greatest risk: widows, orphans, and immigrants.

Timeline

Micah’s ministry spanned about 55 years, from about 742-687 BC. Judah had three kings during that time: Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Hezekiah was good and godly. But his dad, Ahaz, king before him, sacrificed one of his sons to the god Moloch (2 Kings 16:3).

Micah ministered at the same time as Isaiah, Hosea, and Amos.

Micah was on hand to witness the fall of the northern Jewish nation of Israel in 722 BC. Assyrian invaders destroyed many cities and deported survivors so they wouldn’t rebuild the Jewish country that Assyrians considered perpetually rebellious. Assyria had to repeatedly reign them in.

Location

Moresheth was apparently a small town in southwest Judah, near the city of Gath, and about 20 miles (32 km) from Jerusalem. That’s a day’s walk. Micah calls it by the twin cities name of Moresheth-Gath (1:14).

That places Moresheth on the toenails of the Judean foothills. That’s where the hills flatten out into the coastland. Another 10 miles (16 km) west, and Micah is wading in the Mediterranean Sea.

Purpose

Micah directed his message at movers and shakers and trendsetters in the capital city of Jerusalem.

He didn’t tell them to shape up. He told them it was too late.

God was going to invoke the ultimate penalty clause in the agreement he made with Moses and the Israelites of the Exodus. It was the worst-case scenario:

“The LORD was happy to show kindness to you and help you grow into such a large nation. But now, the LORD will be happy to vacate you from his property and get you out of here” (Deuteronomy 28:63).

Scholars call it the Exile. Jerusalem leaders who survived the battles with invading Babylonians were exiled to what is now southern Iraq.

Micah told Jerusalem that their country was going to fall to Babylon. He didn’t live to see it. Jerusalem and all of Judah fell a century later, in 586 BC.

Micah explained what the leaders had done to deserve this. Corruption ran the country, money bought judges, the rich exploited the poor into the dirt.

Yet Micah wrapped his prophecy in comfort and hope. He seems to give the people a script to show them how to react to this tragic news. In the spirit of the prophet Habakkuk, reflected in Habakkuk’s final verses on the topic of Jerusalem’s fall, Micah offers similar advice:

“Well, here’s what I going to do about it.

I’m going to trust the LORD.

I’ll wait for him to save me.

I know he’ll hear my prayers” (Micah 7:7)

Micah’s generation wouldn’t see any of this. But a future generation would experience the tragedy. And the one that followed the tragic generation would experience something else Micah predicted:

“You’ll have mercy on us once again” (Micah 7:19).

Fifty years after Jerusalem fell, Persians from what is now Iran defeated Babylon and freed the Jews and other captives. Jews started returning home to rebuild their nation as best they could, on a smaller scale.

Intro Notes of Jonah

Jonah delivered just a one-liner of a prophecy:

“In 40 days Nineveh will be destroyed (3:4).

Didn’t happen.

By definition, according to Moses, Jonah wasn’t an authentic prophet:

“If a prophet speaks on behalf of the LORD, but the prophet’s prediction fails, then that wasn’t a message from the LORD. The prophet only presumed to speak for the LORD. No need to fear a person like that” (Deuteronomy 18:22).

Yet Jonah, like no other prophet in the Bible, accomplished his mission. He convinced a nation’s king and the people to repent. These were Assyrians of what is now northern Iraq, feared for their terror tactics such as impaling citizens of enemy nations.
Their repentance in response to Jonah convinced God to change his plans to destroy Nineveh, their capital city.

Jonah wants fireworks

Shockingly, Jonah got mad about it.

It sounds like he wanted to see Sodom and Gomorrah fireworks in Nineveh. Jonah may have felt that God’s change of plans made him look like a fake prophet. Jonah might have thought no one would ever believe his predictions again.

Jonah is a prophet who shows up in 2 Kings 14:25. He was real. But many Bible scholars seem to read this story in the book of Jonah as fiction—like a parable with a message about what God is like and who God cares about.

Fish catches Jonah

Jonah is most famous for trying to run away from God, getting caught in a violent storm on the Mediterranean Sea, and getting swallowed by some large fish, not identified as a whale or anything else. Three days later, the fish spits him back out on shore, like a fisherman throwing back a catch he didn’t like.

The story ends oddly, like many parables do. Jonah is sitting by a dead bush near what is now Mosul, Iraq. He’s pouting and God is humbling him further by saying, essentially: You grew attached to that shade bush. It mattered to you. Shouldn’t the 120,000 souls in Nineveh matter to me?”

That’s called a zinger.

Some 1,300 years later, Jesus would become famous for the zingers he delivered in his fictional parables. Those stories were intended to teach people about what God is like and about how citizens of God’s kingdom should behave.

Yet many Christians, perhaps most, read Jonah’s story as history. And they argue that if God can make the universe, he can make a fish big enough to swallow someone thicker than a beachball. That’s what a whale could swallow, up to about 12-15 inches or 30-40 centimeters.

Back in Nineveh, everyone’s on board with God except Jonah, God’s prophet.

He may have needed some time to figure things out. Like the rest of us.

Writer

Jonah didn’t seem to write his own story. The story isn’t told in the first person, with a bunch of “I’s” and “me’s.” Whoever wrote this, the story is about Jonah, son of Amittai. Jonah was a prophet who lived in Galilee, in what is now northern Israel. He lived in the village of Gath Hepher (2 Kings 14:25). Scholars associate that with the Arab village of el-Meshed, about three miles (5 km) north of Jesus’s hometown of Nazareth.

Timeline

Jonah ministered during the reign of King Jeroboam II (about 793-753 BC). He correctly predicted that Jeroboam would regain all the land that belonged to the northern Jewish nation of Israel. That’s from the Mount Hermon region in the north to the Dead Sea in the south, where the southern Jewish nation of Judah began.

Location

Jonah’s story begins in the northern Jewish nation of Israel, which maintained a capital in the village of Samaria. Jonah lived north, in the Galilean village of Gath Hepher. He went to Joppa, caught a ship to Tarshish, possibly in what is now Spain, but got thrown overboard in a storm. He finally traveled to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, now the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. He went there to deliver God’s warning that Nineveh had 40 days left before God dropped a hammer on them.

Purpose

The big takeaway—beside the flaws in Jonah’s character—seems to involve who God cares about.

—The LORD is presented as God of everyone, not just of the Chosen—the Israelite ancestors of the Jewish people.
—God cares about everyone and is willing to forgive anyone, including vicious Assyrians who, in about 722 BC, would erase Jonah’s nation from the world map. But that would have been a different generation of Assyrians. God forgave Jonah’s generation of repentant citizens of Nineveh.
—With apologies to Moses, God can change his plans when people change their plans.

Intro Notes for Obadiah

In the Bible’s shortest book, almost as brief as Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address, Obadiah says the country of Edom is about to go extinct.

This warning might run 500 words or more in English. But in Hebrew, it’s just 291 words in 21 verses.

The book of Obadiah preserves the message delivered on what is said to be orders from God.

Not kissing cousins

Edom’s people were related to the Jews. Hard to tell, based on charges leveled against them by Obadiah and other prophets: “Those people are tagged for destruction” (Isaiah 34:5).

God, apparently through a vision to Obadiah, accuses the people of Edom with:

Collaborating with invaders who decimated Jerusalem
Gloating over the fall of the Israelite nation
Arresting people of Judah as they tried to escape
Turning them over to the enemy
Pillaging Jerusalem’s ruins for leftover valuables

Obadiah never identifies the invading nation.

Jerusalem, over the years, had been attacked by many nations, including Egypt, Syria, Israel of the north, Assyria, and Babylon—which was the attack that finally destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple.

Babylon was the likely invader here, many scholars say. But Obadiah wasn’t focused on the invader. His message identifies only one enemy by name, and it’s Edom.

Obadiah said their doomsday was now on God’s calendar.

“You killed the people of your brother, Jacob.
For that, I’m shutting you down forever” (1:10).

One difference, though. Obadiah said the Jewish nation would rise from the ruins. Edom, he said, would stay dead.

Writer

“Obadiah” might not have been the writer’s name.

That Hebrew word means “servant of God,” or “worshiper of God,” or as some might say today, “a man of God.”

For that reason, some scholars say they wonder if Obadiah should be spelled obadiah—as though the word is a title and not a name. (Malachi raises the same question for the last book of the Old Testament.) Yet “Obadiah” was a legit name. There were about a dozen Obadiah’s in the Bible.

Timeline

Most scholars don’t tag dates to this book. That’s because the only clue we get about the timing is the name of Edom. It’s doomed but not yet dead. It’s still alive but with the future of a nest of bunnies in the backyard of a dog breeder.

The charges Obadiah levels against Edom sounds like they could track with the fall of Judah in 586 BC. That’s when Babylonians invader destroyed cities throughout the nation. Then they knocked down Jerusalem’s walls and looted and leveled the Temple King Solomon built.

Jerusalem has been destroyed only twice that we know of: Babylonians in 586 BC and Romans in 70 AD. But the city has been attacked and pillaged dozens of times—by Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, himself, invaded Judah three times—and came away with some valuables every time. The third time was a charm; he took it all.

Location

Edom was the bullseye of Obadiah’s prophecy of doom. Edom was Esau’s nation and Israel’s neighbor to the southeast, headquartered in what is now the country of Jordan. The central spin of the mountainous territory is roughly 20 miles wide and 100 miles long (30 by 160 km), from the Zered River in the north to the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba in the south. The caravan route called the King’s Highway, on the threshold of the Arabian Desert, ran through part of Edom. West of the mountains is the massive trench south of the Dead Sea, the Wadi Arabah. Wadi is a word for a riverbed that in this part of the world is usually dry. It runs along the border of Israel and Jordan.

Edom’s apparent founder, Esau, left his father, Isaac, who lived in what is now Israel. Esau moved to Edom, a nation possibly named after him. “Edom” means red. It might take its name from the red rocks in the area. But some guess it came from Esau, who was born “looking red, covered in hair like a tiny fur coat” (Genesis 25:25).

But Esau also made “red” famous for another reason. He traded his rights as the oldest son—which included a double share of the family estate—for a bowl of stew his brother made. Esau said, “Give me some of that red stuff” (Genesis 25:30).

Purpose

This prophecy reads like a “You’re gonna die” warning to Edom. But some say it’s more likely a hopeful promise of justice for the Jewish people.

Edom had collaborated with invaders who decimated Jerusalem. For this, Obadiah said God would end them:

“All that will be left of Edom
Is the shame of what you did” (1:10.)

And that’s what we’re reading about now.

Some scholars say this message isn’t just about Edom. They say it’s also about any nation that mistreated the Jewish people.

“There’s a day coming, and it’s almost here,
When God will deal with the nations.
What you’ve done to others will be done to you.
What you gave is what you’ll get” (1:15).

Intro Notes for Amos

There’s one quote in Amos that best describes him and his hot-headed message.

It’s a line he delivers to rich women in the Washington DC of his day, Samaria—capital of the northern Jewish nation of Israel:

Listen to me, you pampered cows,
Women grazing on Samaria’s hills,
Cheating the poor
And stealing from people
Who struggle to survive.
Yeah, it’s you women who say
To the man of the house,
“I could use another drink about now” (Amos 4:1).

No polish on Amos

Amos wasn’t a polished public speaker delivering a hard message in a mild manner. He was a dirty-fingernailed fig farmer and a shepherd with flock to get back to.

He didn’t beat around the bush. He set it on fire. Then he fed it on flaming words—until a priest in town told him to shut up and go back where he came from.

God’s message received.

Country boy

Amos lived in the town of Tekoa, about a day’s walk south of Jerusalem—which was the capital of the southern Jewish nation of Judah. The original Israel split over taxes after King Solomon died.

Oddly, as Amos tells it, God gave this comparatively poor southern farmer a message to deliver to Northern aristocrats who were living at a time of high prosperity for the rich and famous, if no one else.

Northerners and Southerners weren’t on good terms. So, Amos didn’t have a lot to lose by skipping pleasantries and giving them what for.

Idolatry was the big complaint for many prophets. And Amos covered that a bit, especially condemning Israel for worshiping and sacrificing outside of Jerusalem. God’s command through Moses was that Jews were to worship and sacrifice only at Jerusalem’s Temple (Deuteronomy 12:5).
But idolatry wasn’t the headliner for this a fig famer.

God told Amos to deliver a message that most any farmer in his day could get passionate about: greed, exploitation, and cheating the most vulnerable people in the world. Back then, it was widows, orphans, and immigrants—like it is today.

Writer

Prophet behind these quotes is Amos. He came from Tekoa, a city in Judah.

“I’m not a prophet. I’m not even related to one. I’m a herder and a farmer. I tend an orchard of sycamore fig trees. The LORD told me to leave my flock. He said, ‘I have some messages for my people in Israel. And I want you to deliver them.’ So here I am” (Amos 7:15-16).

Whoever wrote this was well educated. The writing is eloquent.

Perhaps Amos wrote it himself. But some scholars say the upbeat ending suggests someone else wrote it to preserve the message, but then added the only bright light in the book. It’s a promise that God will resurrect Israel.

Yet it comes just three verses after God says “I’ll wipe this nation off the earth” (9:8). That’s a threat that other prophets said God carried out, with a little help from Assyrian invaders based out of what is now northern Iraq.

Timeline

Amos likely delivered his message somewhere in a stretch of 25 years, between 767-742 BC.

“He received messages of prophecy about Israel two years before the big earthquake. He got those messages when Uzziah was king of Judah. Joash’s son Jeroboam was king of Israel at the time” (Amos 1:1).

So, the earliest possible date of Amos’ prophecy is 767 BC, the year Uzziah became king. The latest date is about 742 BC, two years before the end of Uzziah’s reign.

Ruins in the region suggest there was a major earthquake in the mid-700s BC, archaeologists report. This may have been the same earthquake in the days of King Uzziah that’s reported in Zechariah 14:5.

Uzziah reigned from 767-740 BC as full king, and as coregent with his aging father Amaziah from 791-767 BC.

Amos promised that God would turn the daylight into darkness, perhaps a reference to a solar eclipse in 763 BC.

Amos the one-year prophet?

Amos may have received all his messages in one year. But what year? It’s unknown when the earthquake took place. One guess is 760 BC. But the quake could have happened anywhere within a stretch of about 25 years: from 767-742 BC.

If Amos delivered his message around 760 BC, as some scholars guess, many northern Jews probably lived to see it. Israel fell to Assyria in 722 BC, erased from the political map.

Invaders led many Israelite survivors to exile into what is now Iraq. They became known as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. And they’re still lost. They never came back.

The southern Jewish nation of Judah survived for another 136 years, until Babylon erased it, too, in 586 BC. But afterward, they did what the northerners couldn’t or wouldn’t do. They came home and rebuilt part of their nation. Judeans started in Jerusalem and resettled into a smaller Judah—administered by a Persian governor.

Location

Amos came from Tekoa, a village about 10 miles south of Jerusalem, capital of Judah. That’s about a half day’s walk.

He delivered his messages to Samaria, capital of the northern Jewish nation of Israel, and in Bethel, a worship center up north. Samaria was about a three-day walk from his home, roughly 50 miles (80 km) as the raven flies.

Purpose

Imagine someone in America during the prosperous Roaring 20’s of the 1900s telling Americans that the Great Depression was coming (1929-1939).
Amos did that to Israel. But worse.

In their Golden Age of prosperity, when the rich slept on ivory-studded beds, he told them that God was going to wipe them off the map for their sins.

“You poison justice,
Knocking good people off their feet” (Amos 5:7).

Amos added that God was giving them a chance to save themselves:

“Come back to the LORD.
So he doesn’t have to rain fire on Joseph’s family,
And burn Bethel in flames no one can put out” (Amos 5:6).

As it turns out, Amos didn’t seem to have a prayer. He may have seen it coming, especially after a top priest tells him,

“Vision guy, get out of here. Take your visions back to Judah…But don’t ever prophesy here in Bethel again. The king worships at this temple. It’s a sacred place of worship for the entire nation” (Amos 7:12-13).

Amos apparently left, but not before telling the priest that his wife would become the town hooker (Amos 7:17).