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• Classic-Fiction

Malachi’s prophecies of a “messenger” who will prepare the way are connected to the coming of the Messiah, who Christians believe is Jesus.

• Obadiah

For the day of the Lord is near

against all the nations.

As you have done, it shall be done

to you;

your deeds shall return on your

own head. (Obad. 1:15)

The shortest book of the Hebrew scriptures, Obadiah consists of only one chapter of twenty-one verses. While it is generally agreed that the book was written after the Exile, several verses specifically refer to the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. But nothing else is known of this prophet whose name means “servant of the Lord.”

The first part of Obadiah foretells the fall of Judah’s traditional enemy, Edom, because the Edomites assisted the Babylonians in the destruction of Jerusalem. The remainder of the book forecasts a “day of the Lord,” at which time Edom and other neighboring nations will be punished for their behavior toward Israel. Afterward, Israel will possess all of its former territory, a prophecy that modern Zionists point to in the establishment of the modern state of Israel.

• Joel

Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. (Joel 2:28)

Other than the name of his otherwise obscure father (Pethuel), and that his own name means “Yahweh is God,” nothing is known of Joel. That makes it difficult to precisely place him and his work, although most scholars agree that Joel belongs to the post-Exile period and was written around 350 BCE. Joel is first concerned with a terrible plague of locusts sweeping the land, and it is not known if this was a reference to an actual event or a prophetic metaphor for the troubles Israel had experienced. Joel summons the people to a solemn fast and they are urged to pray for deliverance. Interpreting the plague as an omen of the coming day of judgement, Joel warns the people that only heartfelt repentance can save them. If they repent, the Lord will restore the land to its former fruitfulness.

In the book’s second part, Joel looks to an age of deliverance, in which God will gather all the nations for a final judgement. In a stark contradiction to the hopeful predictions of a coming day of peace voiced by some prophets, Joel foresees a coming holy war. In a reversal of the famous pacifist vision of Isaiah and Micah about weapons being converted into farming tools, Joel instead says:

Prepare war,

stir up the warriors.

Let all the soldiers draw near,

let them come up.

Beat your plowshares into swords

and your pruning hooks into

spears;

let the weakling say, “I am a

warrior.” (Joel 3:9-10)

Christian theologians have also found considerable significance in Joel. The apostle Peter believed that a passage in Joel about God’s Spirit being poured out was a prophecy concerning the descent of the Holy Spirit, and he cited the following passage on the day of Pentecost.

BIBLICAL VOICES

Then afterward

will pour out my spirit on

all flesh;

your sons and daughters shall

prophesy,

your old men shall dream

dreams,

and your young men shall

see visions.

Even on the male and female

slaves,

in those days, I will pour out

my spirit. (Joel 2:28-29)

• Jonah

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. (Jonah 1:17)

What happened to Jonah’s whale?

First of all, there was no whale. Perhaps one of the most popularly known stories of the Bible, the tale of Jonah is another familiar legend that has been vastly oversimplified in retelling over the centuries. Most people still don’t know what Jonah was doing in that fish’s belly in the first place.

Although this book describes events in the time of Jeroboam II (786-746 BCE), when the Assyrians based in Nineveh threatened Israel, the book was written much later. Rather than a depiction of events that happened to the actual Jonah, a prophet who lived around 750 BCE, the book is regarded by most scholars as a parable that was written around 320-350 BCE. The style of the Hebrew used by the writer and his familiarity with later biblical books