Major Prophets

Isaiah 1 – From the sole of your foot to the top of your head (Like Job)

Jeremiah 1 – I am only a child

Lamentations 1 – Because of all my sins

Ezekiel 1 – The likeness of the Glory of the Lord

Daniel 1 – God gave knowledge and understanding

 

I have heard most of my life about the major and minor prophets and the other divisions within the Old Testament, but I rarely gave the sections much thought beyond “the law and the prophets” as represented by Moses and Elijah during the Christian era. I suppose the same is true for the gospels and the letters in the New Testament. I assume this flows from my belief the Bible is a single and complete revelation of the Word of God for us. Along the lines of necessary and sufficient from my days in Introduction to Logic.

Isaiah’s beginning includes the covered with sores visual that I associate with Job. It again reinforces my belief that Job was not an outlier in his suffering, just an example to get our attention. Isaiah has a wealth of passages that applied to the Jews very short term to his period of activity, but it also contains treasures that apply to Christ to come well after Isaiah, and a few carats that apply to us living today. Maybe a deeper dive into Isaiah is warranted?

Jeremiah is dominated by the lyric “was a bullfrog” and I am not sure why this is so stuck in my mind. As with Solomon when beginning his period of leadership, Jeremiah was introduced to his role at a point when he felt too young to perform. We watched a news story update that included two adults recalling their thoughts and actions from 20 or more years before. Both had life changing events occur to them as children. Both spoke about the clarity of thought they recall from a young age. Combined with the two biblical examples, I am forced to acknowledge that regardless of how young our kids are, and how much their brains still need to develop, and their experiences need to occur, they are real people with real emotions and real thoughts that need to be treated accordingly. The “take care of those who cannot take care of themselves” does not mean it is ok to treat them like slaves or less than humans, especially with God living in their hearts.

Lamentations is a hard one for me as I tend to ignore the past and move forward. Probably why I do not get better at as many things as I should. The events that are being discussed in Lamentations are due to sin. God allowed, or caused, things to happen to His people due to their sin. Bad things happen to us when we sin, whether we know it or not, whether we chose to accept it or not. Ben Franklin had a very rigorous self-assessment process that I have reviewed and rejected for myself over and over. At some point, to repent of sin, we have to acknowledge it.

Ezekiel is a super cool name looking at it now. I do not know if I ever knew an Ezekiel and it seems an awfully tough name to give a kid, but maybe my next pet. The phrase that stuck out for me was the likeness of the Glory of the Lord. Ezekiel was describing things beyond his grasp and yet when he used this phrase, I felt I could understand what he was trying to communicate. Awe. Awe for me is beyond words and surely the vision of God and His Glory must be so.

Daniel and his three friends had big roles to play and while in exile, He gave these young men knowledge and understanding to pass down through the ages. They were ten times better than the best the age could produce without God. Their stories fill us with wonder about His power and the earthly outcomes that unfold when we allow Him to work through us.

One of the dominating thoughts about prophecy in the Bible is how does it all end. I studied Revelation, I read books that people who studied it more wrote, and I have seen it in many aspects of the world around me, both at church and in the world in general. As of today, I believe the main aspect we are to learn from studying scripture is how to behave today. Yes, it will be important for Christians to be aware of some key concepts around end times, but even for those who live close to them, we still have to live day by day following God as revealed in His word, both the New Testament and the Old Testament, both from the Gospels and the letters, from the major prophets and the minor prophets, from the Wisdom literature to the historical literature. All of God’s word is beneficial for study, for now and for later.