H o s e a.(*):.Written
B.C.E.
740.He is the
only prophet of Israel
who has left any written prophecy.
The other prophets were prophets of
Judah.
The book is first in order among the so called 'Minor
Prophets'.
Hosea was told by the Infinite
One to take a harlot
as his woman:.Hosea
1:1-3.
***
J o e l.(*):.Like
the name 'Jesus', there was no
letter 'J' till the 17th century A.D.,
so Joel's name was actually 'yo'el'.
His name means
Yah
Vah is his Creator. Written 800
B.C.E.
He was the son of Pethuel. Joel was probably a resident in Judah, as his
commission was to that people. The Book is second of the twelve minor
prophets. He makes frequent mention of Judah and Jerusalem.
He probably flourished in
the reign of Uzziah.(about
B.C.E.
800).and
was contemporary with Amos and Isaiah.
The contents of this book
are:
1) A prophecy of a great
public calamity then impending over the land, consisting of a want of water
and an extraordinary plague of locusts.
2) The prophet then calls
on his countrymen to repent and to turn to the Creator, assuring them of
his readiness to forgive and foretelling the restoration of the land to
its accustomed fruitfulness.
3) Tells of the beginning
of the Christians to come some 800-900 years in the future:.Joel
2:28,29.
4) Then follows a Messianic
prophecy, quoted by Peter:.Acts
2:39.
5) Finally, the prophet
foretells portents
and judgments as destined to fall on the enemies of God.(chapter
3, but in the Hebrew {Masoretic}
text, it's chapter 4).
***
A m o s.(*):
means borne; a burden, one of the twelve minor
prophets. Written 787 B.C.E.
He was a native of Tekota, the modern Tekua, a town about 12 miles southeast
of Bethlehem. He was a man of humble birth, neither a prophet nor a prophet's
son but a herdman and a dresser of sycamore trees. He prophesied in the
days of Uzziah, king of Judah and was contemporary with Isaiah and Hosea,
who survived him by a few years.
Under Jeroboam II the kingdom
of Israel rose to the zenith of its prosperity but that was followed by
the prevalence of luxury and vice and idolatry. At this period Amos was
called from his obscurity to remind the people of the law of God's retributive
justice and to call them to repentance.
From the.Expositor's
Bible Commentary:."A
recent Dutch critic, whose exact scholarship is known to all readers of.Stade's
Journal of Old Testament Science.has
said of Amos and Hosea:."These
prophecies have a word of God, as for all times, so also especially for
our own. Before all it is relevant to 'the social question' of our day
to the relation of religion and morality. Often it has been hard for me
to refrain from expressly pointing out the agreement between then and today."
***
O b a d i a h.(*):
means servant of the Lord. The Book of Obadiah
was written B.C.E. 587.
One of the Obadiahs was a prophet,
of who the Book
of Obadiah in the Bible was about. Nothing at all is known about
this Obadiah's personal life.
There are thirteen Obadiahs
mentioned in the Old
Testament.
Another Obadiah was an Israelite
who was chief in the household of King Ahab:.1Kings
18:3. Amid
great spiritual degeneracy
this Obadiah maintained fidelity
to his Creator and interposed
to protect the Lord's prophets, an hundred of whom he hid at great personal
risk in a cave:.Obadiah
1:4,13. Ahab seems to have held Obadiah in great honour, although he
had no sympathy with his piety:.Obadiah
1:5-7.
The last notice of this Obadiah,
is his bringing back tidings to Ahab that Elijah,
whom Ahab had so long sought for, was at hand:.Obadiah
1:9-16. "Go, said Elijah to him, when
he met him in the way, go tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here."
***
J o n a h.(*):.Like
the name 'Jesus', there was no
letter 'J' till the 17th century A.D.,
so Jonah's name was actually 'yonah'.
His name means 'a dove',
the son of Amittai of Gath-hepher. The Book of
Jonah was written B.C.E.
862. Jonah was a native of Galilee, as also was Nahum,
a prophet of Israel and predicted the restoration of the ancient boundaries
of the kingdom. He exercised his ministry very early in the reign of Jeroboam
II and thus was contemporary
with Hosea and Amos or possibly
he preceded
them and consequently
may have been the very oldest of all the prophets whose writings we possess.
His personal history is mainly to be gathered from the book which bears
his name. Jonah had some issues
with himself that he had to deal with. Don't we all!
Jonah, in the New
Testament Greek called Jonas, was asked by God to warn those of the
ancient city of Nineveh. He didn't
want to, so he fled away:.Jonah
1:1-3. He ended up in the belly of a whale for three days:.Jonah
1:17.
***
M i c a h.(*):.Micah
prophesied under Jotham,
Ahaz
and Hezekiah,
kings of Judah, for about fifty years and near the beginning of the reign
of Jotham, to the last year of king Hezekiah B.C.E.
750-698; see ancient kings of
Judah. He was nearly contemporary
with Isaiah and has
some expressions in common with him.
The name Micah is a shortened
form of.Micaiah,
means 'who is like Yah
Vah', meaning 'who is like God'? The Book
of Micah in the.Bible.was
written B.C.E. 750 A man of Mount Ephraim, whose history so far is
introduced in Judges 17 apparently for
the purpose of leading to an account of the settlement of the tribe
of Dan in Northern Palestine and for the purpose also of illustrating
the lawlessness of the times in which he lived.
Comprised
from the American
Tract Society Bible Dictionary:.Micah
specifies Bethlehem.(a
town in the region of Gad, a little east of the Jordan, on a watercourse
leading, from near Ramoth-Gilead, southwest into that river, in the larger
area of Judah).in
Judah as the place where Emmanuel
should be born of woman:.Micah
5:2,3. The prediction was thus understood by the Jews much later in
the New
Testament.era:.Mattthew
2:4-6; John 7:41,42.
Micah was sixth in order
of the so-called minor prophets.
If we reckon from the beginning
of Jotham's reign to the end of Hezekiah's.(B.C.E.
759-698), then he ministered for about
fifty-nine years; but if we reckon from the death of Jotham to the accession
of Hezekiah.(B.C.E.
743-726), his ministry lasted only
sixteen years.
Micaiah the son of Imlah,
a faithful prophet of Samaria. Three years after the great battle with
Benhadad, Ahab proposed to
Jehoshaphat, king of Judah that they should go up against Ramoth Gilead
to do battle again with Benhadad. Jehoshaphat agreed, but suggested that
inquiry should be first made 'at the word of Yah Vah.(the
Creator). Ahab's prophets approved
of the expedition but Jehoshaphat still dissatisfied, asked if there was
no other prophet besides the four hundred that had appeared. He was informed
of this Micaiah. He was sent for from prison, where he had been confined,
probably on account of some prediction disagreeable to Ahab and he condemned
the expedition and prophesied that it would end, as it did, in disaster.
We hear nothing further of this prophet. Some have supposed that he was
the unnamed prophet referred to in the book of 1Kings.