Lection and Liturgy

Today’s is the third of three posts looking at the so-called minor prophets. It brings to a close my whistle-stop tour of the First, or Old Testament for those who are trying to understand better what they read in their Sunday assemblies. Today’s four prophets are Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Zephaniah Zephaniah tells us that his ministry was in the reign of Josiah. Since he attacks polytheism and idolatry, and condemns priests for breaking the law, perhaps he not only prophesies before Josiah attempts his reform, but is one of those whose ministry makes that reform possible. 1 For Zephaniah, the day of the Lord will be a judgement that will purify Jerusalem, and put an end to idols. He concludes with a hopeful promise of the restoration of Jerusalem in which God himself will be king, dancing in celebration with his people as he renews them. It is this final prophecy of joy which is read in both lectionaries. 2 Haggai Haggai is one of two p...

The previous post covered the first four of the minor prophets; today I look at the middle four: Jonah, Micah, Nahum and Habakkuk. Obadiah, the last of yesterday’s selection, offered the most narrowly tribal take on God’s justice. Jonah Today, the author of Jonah gives us a very expansive view of God’s internationalism. Unlike all the other books in this twelve book collection, the writer is not interested in the content of Jonah’s message, but in telling a story about a reluctant prophet. Jonah and the Big Fish – a painting by Pieter Lastman ( via Wikimedia ) Jonah is not easily turned into lectionary material, 1 as it is a complete short story, a prophetic parable which really needs to be read as a whole. It is richly comic. God calls, and Jonah runs. God sends him to Nineveh, and he sets off in the opposite direction. God sends a storm over the boat he’s fleeing on, and the pagan sailors try hard to save him at risk to themselves, before throwing him overboard. He...

The fourth book of prophecy in the Jewish “Latter Prophets” designation (after Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) is a bit of a cheat. It’s actually twelve books, the books designated in Christian classification as Minor Prophets, and in the Jewish scheme as the Book of the Twelve. At some point these books were collected together and written in a single scroll. This is probably known by the time of Ben Sirach at the beginning of the second century BC, when he refers to “the Twelve Prophets” (Sir 49:10). There are only a small number of readings provided from the minor prophets in the Sunday lectionary – some are more significant than others. I shall take the Goldilocks option: neither treating them as one book (too long for a single blog post) nor twelve (too short for one post each). Instead I shall post three blogs each covering four of these books. That means today’s blog is on Hosea, Joel, Amos and Obadiah. Hosea Hosea is broadly a contemporary of Isaiah, but proph...

Ezekiel may be one of the longer books of the bible, but there are comparatively few readings from his prophecies which occur in the lectionary. Those that do tend to reflect the most straightforward aspects of his message. Right from the beginning, however, Ezekiel draws his listeners in to bizarre descriptions of his visions. Perhaps fortunately for readers and preachers, these are omitted from the Sunday cycle of readings. Ezekiel’s visions – a woodcut by Hans Holbein via Wikimedia Commons As a priest, he has a particular interest in the Lord’s glorious presence dwelling in the temple. The book begins with visions given to the prophet in Babylon, and part of the burden of Ezekiel’s message is that the Lord’s glory had left the temple in disgust. Much of the first half of the book, despite being set in Babylon, seems to be addressed to the residents of Jerusalem before their exile. Ezekiel puts a great deal of stress on the transcendence of the God who nonetheless ad...

 A story circulates about St Teresa of Avila in several versions. The most common is that she is making her way back to her convent in a storm when her horse slips, and deposits her in the mud. In indignant prayer she admonishes God: “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you’ve got so few of them.” Jeremiah would have agreed with the sentiment. He seems to be the prophet who both finds his calling most irresistible, and most uncomfortable and unwanted. He is therefore often miserable about his life trapped between the rock of his vocation, and the hard place of the people who reject it. Michelangelo’s portrayal of weeping Jeremiah Whereas there was no real need for the Revised Common Lectionary to include an alternative continuous track from Isaiah since there are so many related readings, it goes to town on Jeremiah. When reading through the prophets in Year C, it tried Isaiah for two brief Sundays before passing quickly to Jeremiah, where (with one a...

Of all the prophets, Isaiah is the one most often read in the lectionary. It is also the most quoted book, apart from the Psalms, in the New Testament. Isaiah provides some of the key Old Testament readings for both the Christmas and Easter lectionary cycles, and much of the libretto for Handel’s Messiah. The book as we have it falls into three main sections. Much of the first section, chapters 1-39, relate to the time when Assyria is the major power in the Middle East. Isaiah’s ministry covers the time of four kings of Judah, and by the end of his prophesying Israel, the northern kingdom has fallen, and Judah, especially the city state of Jerusalem, stands alone. One of the features which makes Isaiah stand out in his day is the miraculous deliverance of Jerusalem from an Assyrian siege. The section of 2 Kings which includes this story is also repeated as chapters 36-39 of Isaiah. Isaiah emphasises that the Lord has made his home on Mt Zion. If his people trust hi...

As we turn in this series to the prophets, we also return to some overlap between Jewish and Christian ways of grouping the books of the bible. What Christians call the prophets largely overlaps with the books grouped by Jewish tradition as the latter prophets. You will recall from the discussion of the historical books that Jewish thought groups Joshua, Judges,1 & 2 Samuel (1 scroll) and 1 & 2 Kings (1 scroll) as the former prophets. There are also four scrolls of the latter prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve. The twelve are the so-called minor prophets: those whose books are considerably shorter than the lengthy works of the first three. The Christian bible inserts Daniel between Ezekiel and the minor prophets.  The prophets’ poetry often drew on imagery from the world they knew, including agriculture There are also some differences between the faith traditions. Christians, but not Jews, include Daniel among the prophets. Christian traditio...