It’s not often that we hear from the Minor Prophets, and so the new book from Alan Fuhr and Gary Yates has caught our attention. It’s entitled, The Message of the Twelve: Hearing the Voice of the Minor Prophets. As you will remember, we talked to Alan Fuhr and Gary Yates last time, and today we want to pick up the discussion again!
Al, Gary – welcome! And thanks for talking to us today.
Fuhr & Yates:
Thanks for having us again; looking forward to the conversation.
Zaspel:
By way of review, tell us what your book is about and the contribution you hope to make.
Yates:
We’ve tried to provide an overview of a part of Scripture that we feel has been somewhat neglected and so people need to be familiarized with the book. We began with four chapters that give general background information about the minor prophets. We deal with the historical setting, the Assyrian crisis, the Babylonian crisis, the ministry of the prophets in the postexilic era. Then, in the second and third chapters, we get more into literary features of the prophets, prophetic genres, messages of judgment, salvation, poetic features, some of the rhetoric of the prophets, trying to help readers that may not have a background in Hebrew to understand some that. And then in the fourth chapter we look at the canonical message of the 12 as a whole. Not ignoring the individual messages of the books, but trying to show how they cohere together and can be read as a canonical unity. Then in the second half of the book we get into individual chapters on each one of the minor prophets. It’s not a detailed commentary or exegetical commentary, but more of a survey and overview. We deal with date and setting, the basic message of the books and the important themes. And then at the end of each of those chapters we try to show the theological significance and relevance. Part of what we’re trying to do with the book is to say, “this section of Scripture is not just a historical message from the past, but a message about God, about how he deals with his people, about his plans for salvation history that are very relevant to people today.” That’s what some of those theological applications and connections have tried to bring out and connect people with. We are hoping that this will be a tool for pastors and other people that want to teach these books in the context of the church and help to give these books more exposure.
Fuhr:
I would say that our book pays attention to the historical elements as they have bearing on the message or the content of these 12 books. That’s something that a lot of folks might not be inherently familiar with. It’s not as if we are born with that knowledge of ancient near Eastern backgrounds and history, so we try to highlight those things that are important to know when reading these books. Those literary dimensions, those things such as Hebrew word play or certain chiastic arrangements and things that might have been familiar among the literary workmen of the ancient world, but for modern readers is not something that we’re typically familiar with. And then there’s theological elements that the messaging of each of these books and how they have relevance for today – we try to highlight those things. So, in that sense, I think this book goes a little bit beyond just a popular treatment of these books, but it doesn’t get bogged down into the kind of exegetical challenges and specific issues that maybe some of the more technical commentaries would. So we try to find a balance there.
Zaspel:
We might mention for the listeners, if any of you missed our first interview, they took some time talking about their book in some detail and we went over a lot of these things. You’ll want to catch that as well.
Okay, what I’d like to do this time is walk through the Minor Prophets quickly – individually, book by book – so we can have a better understanding of what each book is about. We can’t go into detail, but what we’re after is the big picture. Let’s begin at the top of the list – Hosea. What’s Hosea’s prophecy all about?
Fuhr:
Hosea is an interesting book. A lot of folks among the 12 would be most familiar with Hosea and Jonah in the sense that there is something about the prophet that we learn there in Hosea’s prophecy, in his book. In the first three chapters we are introduced to Hosea and, of course, the situation with his wife Gomer – God actually commanding his prophet to marry a woman of adulteries. Folks are obviously intrigued by that situation and so they automatically assume that that’s what the whole book of Hosea is about, but we really see very little narrative about Hosea’s life in the book. His situation, while I would believe that it’s historical, I think the fact that Gomer’s father is mentioned by name implies that there is historicity there in the situation, but the book itself and the message of the book goes far beyond the situation that we read about there in Hosea’s life. His children and their names symbolize the situation there between God and Israel and really what we find as we read through the entire book, is that it is a book about the tension within the heart of God between his inclination to judgment and justice and his inclination or his desire for grace and mercy for his people, Israel. You really see the heart of God pulled and tugged within the book of Hosea, more so than perhaps any other book. So it gives us a theological glimpse at the heart of a suffering God, a God who is depicted as a jilted husband, or a rejected parent later on in chapter 11. The book of Hosea really speaks to the heart of the individual because we see the heart of God there and we see how our sin really distresses God. It’s not as if God is just some kind of a transcendent being that isn’t touched by our sin, and we get a real glimpse of that in the book of Hosea. One of the other things that impresses me in the book of Hosea, obviously the idea of adultery is front and center, not only in Hosea’s life but we see in chapters 4 through 14 this continuation of the metaphor that idolatry and the sin of idolatry is in the sense adultery committed against God. That metaphor is obviously the driving metaphor within the book, but the book itself displays multiple metaphors, many metaphors. And many of those metaphors actually picture this tension within the heart of God between justice and judgment, and grace and mercy. For instance, one of my favorite metaphors in the book is God depicted as a roaring lion who is ripping his prey apart. And obviously, you don’t want to mess with that lion and of course that depicts or pictures God as a judging God. But then you find in the book the metaphor is kind of flipped on its side where you find God’s roar, calling his cubs ‘whom’ or perhaps her cubs ‘whom.’ And you actually find the roar being one of judgment and justice – one where the wrath of God is put on full display, a roar to be feared by the people Israel, and yet you find God roaring or calling his cubs home in restoration and in grace and mercy. So those kinds of metaphors being flipped on their sides is something that is typical within the book of Hosea that I think really grabs the attention of the reader.
Zaspel:
The prophet Joel is next. Tell us about his prophecy.
Yates:
I think the theme and message of Joel is about God’s response to the repentance and the prayers of his people. The book is about a terrible judgment that God has brought on Judah. There has been a locust plague that has devastated the land, the crops, food shortages, all those kinds of things which was one of the covenant curses that Moses had threatened that God would bring against the people. There’s a lot of question about the exact date and setting of the book of Joel, but in light of references to the exile in chapter 3, we placed the book in the postexilic period. So the significance of this is, the people have come back into the land, the Temple appears to be in operation, and yet God is bringing more judgment. God has brought the locust plague, and in chapter 2 there is warning that if the people do not get right with God there will be even greater, more severe judgment coming. But the call that is made in the book is that the people are to turn to God, they are to gather for sacred assembly, they are to pray, they are to cry out to God, they are to lead to him for mercy. And the situation is so severe that all of the people need to gather and do this. Even people like newlyweds, that would have been exempted from military service, are called to come to the Temple and cry out to God. I think chapter 2 verses 12 to 17 is one of the key passages about how God deals with his people and all of the book of the 12. He tells them to rend their hearts, to pray to him – perhaps God will relent and show mercy and turn away from judgment and show mercy to his people. There’s an appeal back to Exodus 34:6-7, a passage that appears in other places. So I think this is the kind of response that throughout the minor prophets, God is looking for from his people but the people don’t often respond in this way. Apparently, they do here, because there is definitely a hinge between chapter 2, verse 17 and chapter 2 verse 18, where the message becomes very favorable; God promises that he is going to bless the people. I think one of the great promises in the minor prophets that’s found in Joel is that the Lord says that he is going to reverse the effects and restore the years that the locusts have eaten. And then beyond that, there are promises of the things that God is going to do for his people in the future – the pouring out of the Spirit, the judgment of the nations, and the full restoration of Israel in the future. Joel I think is moved forward in the book of the 12 because it introduces this theme of the day of the Lord, but there’s also this idea that even in the midst of this great judgment, God is willing to show mercy to his people when they cry out to him, when they repent. And really, all throughout the ministry of the minor prophets, that’s the thing that God is looking for from his people but doesn’t often receive from them.
Zaspel:
And Amos?
Fuhr:
Amos is a fascinating book. It’s very rich in its literature, its message is very powerful. I tend to think when I see injustice in the world today, when I see corruption, I always think to myself, “what would Amos say to this?” Amos seems to be an equal opportunity offender in the sense that he doesn’t hold anything back. In a day of political correctness, I think sometimes we need someone like Amos to speak out on issues of truth and Amos does that. He is very, very powerful in that sense. He grabs the attention of the reader with very rich sarcasm and rhetoric. One of my favorite situations with Amos – and we are a bit familiar with Amos in the sense that we read a little bit about him being a prophet called from his job, perhaps as a shepherd or rancher-type, a tender of sycamore trees we read about – but in chapter 7 we read about his interaction regarding the situation of his day with Amaziah, the high priest, and Jeroboam II. Amaziah comes along and says, “Amos, your words have offended the King.” And Amos doesn’t hold anything back, he speaks the truth and he turns Amaziah and his accusations right back on his head. Amos is a book that highlights the issues of social injustice and religious ritualism and hypocrisy. If the book of Hosea highlights the issue of idolatry in the land, Amos doesn’t really speak to idolatry as much as he does to issues of social injustice and religious hypocrisy. These are obviously very applicable to today. I think when we read the book of Amos we find ourselves immersed in a world, eighth century BC, where Amos is dealing with an Israel that is politically and socially at its high point during the divided kingdom period, and yet judgment is coming a generation away and Amos warns the people, and in particular the corrupt leadership of the land. He warns them about God’s judgment to come because of these sins of social injustice and religious hypocrisy or ritualism. I think that the attentive reader is going to see quite clearly some of the connections from the ancient world to our contemporary world. Where we see things that should not be and we see that God is not ignorant of these things. He is concerned with the plight of the poor, he is concerned with injustice when leaders, and corrupt leaders in particular, take advantage of people. He is seeing hypocrisy within our religious apparatus of the day. Even though the church is not mentioned directly in the book of Amos, we see similar connections there, let’s say, and I think the book of Amos really is pressing for the church today in that sense.
Zaspel:
What about Obadiah? Not the biggest book of the 12.
Yates:
Right. And might tend to be a book that we would overlook because of its size, or I think especially just the idea that we have a judgment speech here against an ancient nation, the Edomites, so what relevance could it have for us today? But I think these oracles against the nations that are familiar to anyone that’s read the prophets outside the book of the 12 as well there in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, I think it does have a message for us today. Israel and Edom were bitter rivals. The Edomites were the descendants of Esau, so this goes all the way back to the rivalry between Jacob and Esau. There was a great deal of bitterness, violence, hatred on both sides. There is even a story in the historical books of one of the kings of Judah capturing thousands of Edomite prisoners of war and throwing them over a cliff. So there’s been a great deal of hostility and bitterness. The climax to all of that is that the Edomites were involved in the assault on Jerusalem led by the Babylonians in the sixth century. So the message of Obadiah is that God has seen what they have done; God is going to judge them for this: and ultimately God is going to vindicate his people. The theme of the day of the Lord that is introduced back in the book of Joel and is carried forward in the book of Amos – both of those books are warning about the day of the Lord that’s coming against Israel – but here there is the day of the Lord that is coming against Edom. They have mocked Israel and laughed at Israel’s misfortune, but there is a day of judgment that’s coming for them that will involve their destruction while God restores Israel. I think the larger significance of these books is that the ways that God judged nations like Edom in the past become a model and a paradigm for how God is going to judge nations in the future. One of the things that I’ve noticed reading the prophetic literature as a whole, is that often when the prophets speak about eschatological judgment, whether it’s Isaiah 34, 35; Ezekiel 34, 35; Isaiah 63, Edom is often presented as the target. Not because those people are necessarily going to be around in the final judgment, but because they embody the enemies of God and God is ultimately going to judge all nations – the great ones like Assyria and Babylon, but also the small ones like the Edomites. The last thing I want to bring out about books like Obadiah is that sometimes we might look at this and say that God hates all the other nations and loves Israel, but there are also a number of passages in the minor prophets that bring out the idea that the salvation that God extends to Israel will ultimately be extended to the nations. I think that we need to balance the message of judgment against the nations in books like Obadiah and Nahum, that Al will talk about later, with the promises of salvation that are there as well.
Zaspel:
Jonah is one whose story is a little better known. Tell us about him.
Yates:
The challenge in writing about that book is how do you write something unique about a book that people are so familiar with? But one of the things that we’ve tried to bring out here is that there is much more to this book then simply a fish story. I think this is a place where paying attention to the structure of a book, which we try to highlight a good bit in our work, these books do not necessarily always read in the consecutive way that we are used to reading books. Here in Jonah, chapters 1 and 2, you have God rescuing a rebellious prophet that deserves death. As a result of that, in chapter 2, Jonah praises the Lord, he thanks God for his deliverance, he extols God and says, “salvation is of the Lord.” But what you have in chapters 3 and 4 is that God delivers the city of Nineveh when they repent and respond to God. God delivers them from the death that they deserve and Jonah is not quite as joyful and thankful about that. In fact, he questions God, he is angry at God, he says that he wants to die. So I think the paradox in the book is that Jonah rejoices in his undeserved salvation, first half of the book, but does not have the same perspective when the same thing happens for the Ninevites in chapters 3 and 4. So here again, right after the book of Obadiah, is a message that God’s mercy is not just for the people of Israel, it’s for other people, it’s for the nations, it’s even for the Assyrians who were some of the most brutal and violent people in the ancient near East. And the existence of the Ninevites would present all kinds of problems for the Israelites because they would be the ones that ultimately would take the northern kingdom into captivity. I think one other idea is that the book is trying to bring out and I think this is something maybe that we miss – the book is trying to bring out the whole issue of response to the prophetic word. The Ninevites respond to a five-word sermon from Jonah and maybe one of the worst sermons in all of Scripture. They respond to that and they repent. In fact, the description of their repentance is very similar to what we read God wanting from Israel back in Joel chapter 2. On the other hand, Israel has dozens of prophets that come to them. They have prophets like Jeremiah and others that preach for years and years and years and there’s no response. So I think the book is raising the issue that if the Ninevites could respond to the terrible preaching of Jonah and God spares them, what kind of mercy would God have shown to Israel if they had simply responded to the prophets even remotely like what the Assyrians did.
Zaspel:
We’ll finish this up with the final six next time, but before we sign off, tell us about the Prophet Micah.
Yates:
The prophet Micah is a contemporary of Isaiah’s. As you think about historical background, we might be a little bit more familiar with the book of Isaiah. Both Isaiah and Micah are prophesying during the Assyrian crisis. They are warning the people of Judah that the judgment that came against the north is now about to be sent against Jerusalem, and you see Jerusalem almost as though there is a bull’s-eye on Jerusalem. Micah even pictures, with a series of word plays, the Assyrian army marching on Jerusalem and capturing all of these different cities in Judah – even his own hometown, Moresheth-Gath. There’s going to be a judgment of Jerusalem because the people in Judah, who may have viewed themselves as being superior to the people of Israel in the north because they were not apostate in the same ways, they’ve committed many of the same sins. In chapter 2 ( I think Al would agree with this) the description of the leaders of Judah as being sort of cannibals who have pealed the bones and the skin off of the people and boiled them in a pot, is one of the most powerful images of how they have mistreated the people, abused them, and those things are going on in Judah just as much as they were in Israel. Micah comes to a place where he says that Jerusalem is going to be leveled, it is going to be reduced to a hill of rubble. Even the Temple that was viewed as the place where God dwelled is going to become nothing more than a heap of stones. So there’s the judgment message. What happens in the book as well, though, is that there’s this promise that God is ultimately going to restore Jerusalem. It is leveled in chapter 3, but it is exalted as the highest of the mountains in chapter 4. Part of what the future of Zion and this blessing and kingdom and glory is going to entail, chapter 5 verse 2, there’s going to be a new David that will come out of Bethlehem. And he will be the one that delivers the people and rules over them, and the future is going to be very different from what the present is. I think one of my favorite passages in Micah is Micah chapter 6, which highlights this issue of justice that is there throughout the prophets. Micah asks the people, what does God expect of you and what does God really require of you? And then he goes through this list of very elaborate, expensive sacrifices even culminating in parents offering their children as sacrifice – is that what God wants from you? And he says, no, God doesn’t want that from you. He simply wants you to act justly, to practice faithfulness, to walk humbly before your God. And if the people will do that, God will bless them. And in spite of their covenant unfaithfulness, the book closes with the promise, again from Exodus 34, that God will restore them; God will forgive them; God is actually going to declare war on their sins and trample them and cast them into the sea – that’s the faithfulness of God in contrast to the unfaithfulness of the people.
Zaspel:
You cited Micah 6:8, I believe, right?
Yates:
Yes. I think even if people know very little about the minor prophets, they at least know that verse and are familiar with it.
Zaspel:
That’s right. When I was a young teenager, my grandfather gave me that verse to memorize. He told me to memorize it and live by it, and it’s always been my favorite of Micah since.
This is a helpful overview, and we’ll finish it up next time.
We’re talking to Alan Fuhr and Gary Yates about their new book, The Message of the Twelve: Hearing the Voice of the Minor Prophets. It’s a valuable resource that will help acquaint you with these prophetic books.
Al and Gary, thanks for talking to us about it again today.
Yates & Fuhr:
Thank you.