[ * HOME * ] [ * UP! * ]
: a compendium of 12 prophets with smaller books of prophecies.
Hoshea Chap 1: 9 verses. Hoshea the son of Beary prophesied during the split kingdoms. God instructed him to marry a whore -- symbolizing and lamenting the fact that God's people prostituted themselves. Her first son Izrael was assigned to defeat the kingdom of Israel. His second child, a daugther was called "Lo-Ruchama" meaning: "no more pity" and no more excuse for Israel prostitution. The third child, a boy was called "Lo Ami" meaning "not my people" -- God denouncing the people of the kingdom of Israel. The people of Judea are spared.
Hoshea Chap 2: 25 verses. Description of a wife who whores around, shames herself and her family before at last realizing that life was better with her husband. After exacting his revenge the husband welcomes his wife to a beautiful matrimony. Allegory for the people of Israel who submits to the idols around before realizing that life under God was best, and after bring punished they return to be in God's good standing.
Hoshea Chap 3: 5 verses. Another sexual allegory of a woman who is bought and commanded not to have adultery and not to be with her man either. Exemplifying the worship desert of the people of Israel.
Hoshea Chap 4: 19 verses. Gut anger towards Israel shaming themselves, prostituting themselves, and plunging all around them into a life of violence, betrayal, dishonor and misguidance. You live without Truth, without Grace, and without knowing God, and you suffer the consequences!
Hoshea Chap 5: 15 verses. Prophecy of punishment to Israel for abandoning God. Israel will search among king around to no avail.
Hosea Chap 6: 11 verses dressing down Israel and Judea for turning to false sources, and shunning the true power, God of Israel. And those who supposedly ask God for help are doing it superficially hollering in bed, or putting forth sacrifice while God is only interested in grace and in knowing God. 6: כי חסד חפצתי ולא זבח ודעת אלוהים מעולות . This chapter features the fundamental notion (3):
Hoshea Chap 7: 16 verses. Another lamentation of the ignorance of God in Israel. Strangers have depleted Israel of its strength, but Israel has not yet concluded that to fight back Israel needs to turn to God of Israel. Israel has gotten old, experienced with life -- and still, this simple realization that God is the answer has not established itself in their hearts. So Israel will be pained, ridiculed and gone.
Hoshea Chap 8: 14 verses, yet another cry of sadness and lamentation: Israel ignores its God and puts its effort in false power houses, saying: if you invest in a disappearing wind, you will harvest a shocking storm. The poem begins with a gripping image: you miss the oportunity to turn back to God -- here, you could attach the Shofar to your lips, and rise like an eagle before the temple, and stop transgressing against God -- but you don't exploit this God given opportunity.
Hoshea Chap 9: 17 verses, abstruse poetry describing sinful Israel, leving God and busy with dirty whore-like worship of the idols of the neighbors.
Hoshea Chap 10: 15 verses. prophecy of doom onto the arrogant who pooh pooh God's power and trust in their own strength. Mother and her children will be butchered by the sword.
Hoshea Chap 11: 11 verses. Israel are steering of the right way, yet God is compassionate and will carry them to their right home in an impressive move.
Hoshea Chap 13: 15 cryptic verses declaring the sin of Israel, and the violent punishment thereto.
Hoshea Chap 14: 10 gut wrenching concluding verses: you have ripened up in your sinning, Israel, come return to God and bloom and shine and be peaceful, because as you (Shomron - Samaria) proceed with your mutiny against God, you bring calamity on -- babies and pregnancies butchered and stabbed. Choose Good, Israel!
Yoel warns that the day of judgment is near. A big crowd,a force of horsemen is overshadowing the land. All are fearful, but Israel has a way out -- acknowledging God Almighty who will deliver them to salvation.
The sun becomes dark, and the moon becomes blood. The ones to call God will be saved -- a small residue on mount Zion and in Jerusalem. And in these
Amos Chap 1: 15 verses. Amos declares that God is angry with the kingdom around Israel for their brutality and excess, and all will be punished. No reference to Israel.
Amos Chap 2: 15 verses. A beautiful prophecy. God had patience for three infractions, but on the forth punishment was come. The infractions of Israel include to selling of justice for avarice and money wealth, and for seducing those who tried to elevate spiritually and shutting up the mouths of those whom I blessed with the gift of divine prophecy.
Amos Chap 3: 15 verses: beautiful allegories to make the point that cause and effect are linked and united. The chapter ends with the powerful punch line: God will punish you Israel because you have sinned against GOD.
Amos Chap 4: 13 verses. Wrath over the 'fat cows' that exploit the poor people under them. All afflictions laid by God so far did not bring those 'cows' to God's garden, so now God upgrades his punishment to unspecified levels.
Amos Chap 5: 27 verses: a dark prophecy of destruction -- punishment for abandoning the effort to learn God. 4: "So did God speak to the people of Israel: seek me and live" 13" "Therefore the thinking man in that era will be silent because it is an era of evil" .
Amos, Chap 6: 14 verses: accusing Israel of over indulgence, haughtiness, arrogance, and abandonment of God's ways. God is disgusted, angry and brings about a conqueror to to oppress them.
Amos, Chap 7: 17 verses: God getting tough on Israel, King Yerovam drives Amos out from Israel to Yehuda, and Amos returns with a damning prophecy. God to Amos: many times I forgave Yaakov, arguing he is little, but no more, no leniency ahead. Amos' prophecies come to the attention of Amatzia the priest who tells Yerovam the king. Amatzia then tells Amos: go away to the land of Jehuda, there you sound your prophecies, no more here. He says: "prophet run away!". Amos replies: "I am not a prophet, neither a son of one. I am an ordinary man who God charged with prophecies". Then he delivers a damning one to the King and his family and kingdom.
Amos Chap 8: Denouncing Capitalism Challenge to God 14 well pointed verses prophesying the end of the rule of capitalism where the poor are manipulated through meager wages. The emptiness of avarice will be evident. God will impress the land with a big thirst and a colossal hunger, but not for food and materials, rather thirst and hunger to be nurtured by the words of God. And those not skilled in finding God's wisdom will pass out.
Amos Chap 9: 15 verses: a poetic gem describing committed justice to evil doers, and rejuvenating divine rewards to the faithful. The evil doers -- are described as trying to escape far and off, but the hand of justice is long enough. The faithful will have the plenty of agriculture -- the most appreciated goodies of the time.
Ovadia Chap 1: (only) 5 verses: A prophecy for the Edomites -- God is about to punish you, and there is no use for you to hide, or concentrate on the mountaintops. Doomed you are.
Yona Chap 1: (15 verses): Yona tries to escape from God's mission to propecy on the city of Ninve. He boards a ship that sails elsewhere. The sea storms, the sailors and passengers each cry to their God, except Yona. The captain prevails on him, and Yona admits that he is the cause of the storm, and bravely instructs the captain to throw him overboard. Reluctantly, decent people they are, they cast him over, and the sea pacifies instantly. The saved people on the board, sacrifice for God of Israel, realizing He is God.
Micha Chap 1: 16 verses. Description of the agony to come to Judea and Israel, destruction and humiliation to account for the wrongs, the criminality of the people. Yet, Micha cries, agonies, and laments that so much agony is necessary to be afflicted.
Micha Chap 5: 14 verses. A young Israeli will be anointed to bring together the Israeli diaspora, drained of any resurrection hopes. The idol-worshipping, the self believers will be destroyed when God assigns the deliverer to Israel.
Nachum Chap 1: 14 verses. An angry picturesque expression of God's destructive power and keen disposition towards pay back to his detractors.
Nachum Chap 2: 14 verses.God, dramatically rises to restore Israel's glory. The others fear and are overwhelmed by the commotion of the event.
Havakook Chap 1: 17 obscure verses: the prophet complains that he prays and begs for help and salvation, and God is not responsive -- the evil doer triumphs, why? Until when?
Havakook Chap 2: 20 verses full of pearls: the prophet left the mundane and took to the fortress of concentration listening intently to God's word. And God said: write down your vision, and explain it well, so the reader will follow easily. The date of visionary accomplishment is preceded by articulating the vision. The truth will never lie, it might walk ahead slowly, but arrive it will, and not too late. Remember: the righteous is powered up and lives through the strength of his faith. Those who seek accolades, will end up being beaten by their praisers. Woe to the one that disfavors his own family and tribe. A stone from its wall will decry, and a splinter of wood will have the answer (life over stony strength). How can you trust and expect salvation from the one you built yourself? The idols are speechless! The one who pretends and believes that stone and wood, material stuff is Godly -- has no spirit, not Godliness in him. God is commanding from the temple of his holiness (within you?) obey, subject yourself -- the land and all .
Havakook Chap 3: 19 convoluted verses, thoroughly mixed metaphors, expressing a sense of profound confusion, which is being resolved by a sense of rapturous joy in Gold Almighty -- the joy that gives me the power to escape from my confusion to run like an impala.
Tsefanya Chap 1: 18 verses. A raging poetry describing God's striking his detractors -- dark days of horror, and no escape, no reprieve. The chapter has two remarkable phrases: verse 12: "And at that time I shall search for Jerusalem with candles, and I shall call upon the people who are frozen in their rationalization, and say: God is not consequential -- He does neither good to people, nor harm".. And also verse 18:"Neither their money, nor their gold will save them the day God becomes angry". .
Tsefanya Chap 2: 15 verses. A call to Israel to seek God's justice with humility, since God Almighty is about to afflict great ruin and pain on the various gentile nations around.
Tsefanya Chap 3: 20 verses. a breath taking prophecy about a time to be waited for: the city will be dove like, purity will banish the cruelty and damnation, the haughtiness, and the hubris. Beaten, pained by my punishment, says God, the remnants will be humble, and grateful for their living on. Among these, my people, I will rise, and my force with be shown. And, I, God, will assemble the nations of the world, give them a lesson of my power, my anger, eating away to the rot. And then my message will be spoken with utmost clarity for all the nations to hear, overwhelming the people to worship God in unison. And you, Israel, will be rescued from your timidity and shame, and I will gather your communities from the corners of the earth, to re institute yourself in Israel for lasting glory.
Zecharya Chap 1: 17 verses: A vision of red horses comes to the prophet, possibly after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babelonians. God is angry at Israel for not attending to him, and for which they were punished, but now God is angry at the gentiles who have overdone that punishment, and a promise is prophersized for the resurrection of Jerusalem.
Zecharya Chap 2: 17 verses. Same motif. God plans to revive Israel in Jerusalem. A man in the prophet's dream walks around with a measuring tape, planning to measure the city, presumably for reconstruction. God's spirit will once more reside in Zion.
Zecharya Chap 3: 9 verses: a vision regardingg Yehoshua the Cohen who apears dressed in defiled clothes, and is being cleaned, an expectations for the priest to clean his measures.
Zecharya Chap 4: 14 verses. The prophet is awakened to a vision of a gold plated fire holder, with elaboratae decorations. The prophet asks the meaning of all these, and is being told, but not very clearly except the powerful epitaph: Tell Zerubavel, the divine message: move onward not with force and might but with spirit and right. So pronounced the God of all Armies.
Zecharya Chap 5: 11 verses. Stranger obscure scenes shown to the prophet by an angle. A flying parchment, throwing away cruelty.
Zecharia Chap 6: 15 verses: glorious showy vision of four carriages carried by different color horses each, emerging from copper mountains, spreading in all directions in the land as a means to impress Israel that a designated King is God's wish. The instinct of grandeur.
Zecharya Chap 8: A most glorious uplifting prophecy of the resurrection of Jerusalem and the status of Jews world wide.
23 verses: description of lively Jerusalem, a city where the elderly sit around, and the children burst in play. Zecharya encourages his contemporaries: let your arms be strong, this vision is about to happen. God will let the residue of God's great anger to be blessed with fertile ground. As much as God was angry and punished Israel for its conduct, so now the reverse is true. Worry not. What you need to do (the essence of what God wants of you) is: speak the truth one to the other, administer justice; don't design ill on your friend, and don't swear in vain. In short: truth and justice. Zecharya sees the day when nations all over will come to Jerusalem to seek wisdom and to worship God, and in these days to come 10 people will hold on to one Jew (named as Yehoodie), and strive to follow him, since God is with the Jews.
21 verses. A remarkable description of an earthquake like upheaval mountains break up, flood, light. Jerusalem will be restored. But Judea will fight Israel, so it says. The gentiles will be punished if they don't celebrate Jewish holidays -- mysterious. A plague within domestic animals is also proclaimed. Prophecy given with great excitement.
Malachi chap 1: 14 verses. Rage onto Israel that while abiding by the Biblical rituals, they do so with negligence and disrespect. By contrast, the gentiles express reverence to God.
Malachi (3 chapters)