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The prophet Nahum came from Elkosh (site unknown). He was active between the capture of Thebes (or No-Amon, see 3:8) by the Assyrians in 664/663 b.c. and the fall of Nineveh in 612. The essential content of his book is intimation of the collapse of Assyria and of future salvation for Israel (§1). These themes and the liturgical forms used are generally taken to suggest that Nahum was a Jerusalem cult prophet. The work begins with a fragmentary acrostic psalm (1:2–8) that Nahum himself, it is widely thought, did not perhaps formu…

The Book of Joel has a strong liturgical orientation. A serious plague of locusts and drought (chap. 1) ¶ signifies the threatening proximity of the day of Yahweh (2:1–11). This setting issues in a proclamation of a…

1. Amos, the first of the writing prophets, came from Tekoa in Judah. Although a herdsman and a grower of figs, not a professional prophet, Amos was a man of broad outlook who did not lack means or education. A call from God took him out of his daily round and sent him to do prophetic work in the northern kingdom. He came there about 760 b.c. and in Bethel and Samaria, perhaps also Gilgal, proclaimed the inevitable fall of Israel. Denounced and expelled, he seems to have gone back to Judah after hardly a year of activity.…

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The Book of Jonah is the only part of the Minor Prophets that consists of a prophet story in which a psalm (2:1–9) has been inserted. The work tells of the prophet’s attempt to evade a divine commission, the miraculous way in which God brought him back, his proclamation of judgment upon Nineveh, the penitence of Nineveh, which …

The Book of Obadiah opens with the phrase “The vision of Obadiah,” a superscription obviously intended to reflect the prophetic functions of Obadiah, about whom we know nothing. Although the ¶ name may have been a fictitious one attached to an originally anonymous collection of oracles against Edom, an actual individual may be behind the book, someone generally identified as a cult prophet who was active shortly after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 b.c. (see vv.…

1. Name, Author, Form “Malachi” is not the name of a prophet but simply means “my messenger” (see 3:1). We do not know, then, the name of the author. The work consists of six discussions setting out a thesis, stating the arguments against it, then establishing it and drawing out the implications. This form influenced later scribal disputations (Scribes) in early Judaism.…

1. Man and Date Micah was from Moresheth-gath in the Judean hill country. He was also active in Jerusalem. He was a younger contemporary of Isaiah, and his message is similar. He prophesied between 734 and 712 b.c. Nothing is known of his status. He has been described as a poor farmer, a worker on the land, and a village landowner or elder (H. W. Wolff). 2. Contents and Redaction The book is divided into three parts (chaps. …

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The Book of Habakkuk has a liturgical form. A complaint by the prophet in …