The Major Prophets
The five longer prophetic books, written before, during, and after the fall of Jerusalem.
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Card 1 of 6
What was an Old Testament prophet?
A person called to speak God's words to his people, mostly to call them back to the covenant, and only sometimes to predict the future.
People often think of prophets as fortune-tellers, but most of what they say is about the present: idolatry, injustice to the poor, and empty religion. The predictions they do make are mostly warnings of judgment if nothing changes and promises of restoration beyond it. "Major" and "minor" refer to the length of the books, not their importance.
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Card 2 of 6
What is the book of Isaiah about?
God's judgment on Judah and the nations and the comfort and restoration that lie beyond it, including the promise of a coming king and a suffering servant.
Isaiah prophesied in Jerusalem in the 700s BC, and the book moves from warnings (chapters 1-39) to comfort for exiles (40-55) to a vision of a renewed Jerusalem and a new heaven and new earth (56-66). Chapter 53, about a servant "pierced for our transgressions", is the Old Testament passage the New Testament applies to Jesus most often. It is the most quoted prophet in the New Testament.
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Card 3 of 6
What is the book of Jeremiah about?
Forty years of warnings to Judah that Babylon would destroy Jerusalem unless the people returned to God, and the promise of a new covenant afterward.
Jeremiah is called the "weeping prophet". He was mocked, beaten, imprisoned, and thrown into a muddy cistern for saying what nobody wanted to hear, and he lived to see it happen. Yet it is Jeremiah who promises a new covenant, with God's law written on people's hearts, which Jesus claimed to bring.
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Card 4 of 6
What is the book of Lamentations about?
Five poems of grief over the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586 BC.
Four of the poems are acrostics, with each verse or group of verses beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, as if to grieve "from A to Z". The book does not hurry past the horror. In the middle of it comes the line that God's mercies are new every morning, which is where the hymn "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" comes from.
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Card 5 of 6
What is the book of Ezekiel about?
The visions and messages of a priest taken to Babylon in the exile: God's glory leaving the temple before its destruction, and the promise of its return.
Ezekiel is known for strange visions and stranger acted-out messages, such as lying on his side for over a year. His vision of God's glory departing Jerusalem explains the exile. His most famous vision is the valley of dry bones coming back to life, a picture of the nation raised from the death of exile. The book ends with a vision of a new temple with a river flowing out of it.
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Card 6 of 6
What is the book of Daniel about?
Young Jewish exiles staying faithful in the Babylonian court (chapters 1-6), and visions of a series of empires giving way to the kingdom of God (chapters 7-12).
The first half holds the well-known stories: the fiery furnace, the writing on the wall, and the lions' den. The second half is apocalyptic, full of symbolic beasts. In chapter 7 "one like a son of man" comes on the clouds and is given an everlasting kingdom, and "Son of Man" is the title Jesus used for himself more than any other.