Old Testament
The Major Prophets
The longer prophetic books · Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel
These books are long, sustained works of prophetic imagination confronting the collapse of Judah and the shock of exile.
They hold judgment and consolation together and reach forward toward messianic hope and cosmic renewal.
Period
Ministries span from the 8th c. BCE (Isaiah of Jerusalem) through the exile (Jeremiah, Ezekiel) into the Persian period. Daniel's visions are set in the 6th c. BCE; its final form is disputed.
Themes
- ·The holiness of God and the failure of the nation
- ·Exile as loss and as purification
- ·The suffering servant and the messianic hope
- ·New covenant, new heart, new spirit
- ·Apocalyptic vision and the reign to come
Authorship — traditional
Talmudic tradition (Bava Batra 15a) says Hezekiah and his court wrote Isaiah, and that Jeremiah wrote his own book plus Kings and Lamentations; Ezekiel and the Twelve were 'written' — that is, edited and canonised — by the Men of the Great Assembly, and Daniel by the same circle. Christian tradition treats each book as substantially the work of its named prophet.
Authorship — historical-critical
Critical scholarship divides Isaiah into 'First Isaiah' (Isaiah of Jerusalem, chs. 1–39, 8th c. BCE), 'Second Isaiah' (chs. 40–55, an exilic prophet, 6th c. BCE) and 'Third Isaiah' (chs. 56–66, early Persian period). Jeremiah is seen as an oracles-and-narrative collection edited by Baruch and later Deuteronomistic hands. Ezekiel is largely credited to the prophet but redacted by his disciples. Daniel is dated to the Maccabean crisis (c. 165 BCE) on the basis of its Aramaic, apocalyptic form, and detailed accuracy about the Hellenistic period.
The books
Click a book to open it in the reader at chapter 1.
- Isaiah66 ch
Isaiah of Jerusalem: 740–700 BCE. Chs. 40–66 (in critical readings) belong to the exile and early return, 6th–5th c. BCE.
The most quoted of the prophets, holding together the holiness of God, the failure of Judah, the suffering servant, and the vision of a new creation.
- Jeremiah52 ch
c. 626–586 BCE, into the aftermath of Jerusalem's fall.
The prophet who watched the city he loved be destroyed. He speaks of a new covenant written on the heart and of a God whose love outlasts wreckage.
- Lamentations5 ch
Composed shortly after Jerusalem's fall in 586 BCE.
Five acrostic poems of grief over the ruined city. It refuses to hurry through mourning and yet, in the middle, remembers: 'his mercies are new every morning.'
- Ezekiel48 ch
c. 593–571 BCE, from the exilic community in Babylon.
Visions of God's glory leaving and returning, dry bones raised to life, and a rebuilt temple. The most strange and the most hopeful of the exilic prophets.
- Daniel12 ch
Set in the 6th c. BCE Babylonian and Persian courts; in critical scholarship, given final form during the Maccabean crisis (c. 165 BCE).
Court stories of faithful exiles and apocalyptic visions of empires rising and falling before the throne of the Ancient of Days. Where Old Testament apocalyptic is born.