A Chronological Chart

Obadiah (rock fortress)

• 848-841?
• Jehoram
• Recipients: The Edomites, the descendants of Esau, the twin brother of Jacob.
• Purpose: To show Israel that her enemies would be destroyed and that her faithful remnant would be blessed with the promises made to Abraham and David.

Theme:

• God’s retributive justice on those with false security; destruction of Edom due to their wicked treatment of God’s chosen people Israel.

Theology:

• God is wrathful and full of judgment to the nations who oppose His people, bringing complete and utter destruction to all who oppress Israel.
• God is graceful to the faithful in Israel who follow Him with all their hearts following His day of retribution (Day of the Lord).

Uniqueness:

• Obadiah is unique in that it is the shortest book in the Old Testament. It’s prophecies against Edom are also found in the other prophetical books, but it does show how God’s righteousness demands the justice of overthrowing any nation that oppresses Israel. As opposed to other books in the OT Obadiah is concerned with Edom alone, but it does reinforce the promises made to Israel.

Joel (army of locusts)

• 516? or 835?
• Recipients: Two options... Judah sometime around 835 BC; the post-exilic community following Cyrus’ decree for Judah to return home.
• Purpose: A call to "Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassion-ate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity" (2:13).

Theme:

• The Great Day of the Lord and the disaster that it brings upon the earth to the disobedient and apostate.

Theology:

• God is sovereign over history in that He knows what it holds.
• God is holy in that He cannot allow disobedient apostates to expect His divine protection and blessing.
• God is compassionate in that He will show mercy to all those who repent and turn their attention and hearts to Him alone for their salvation.

Uniqueness:

• Joel is unique in that it depicts an army like that of locusts who devastate the land in a matter of hours. It is in this way that an army will destroy Judah. He shows the people of Judah that though they seek God to destroy their enemies, it is actually they that will be destroyed at the hands of their enemies due to their unrepentant hearts.

Amos (materialism)

• 755-54
• Uzziah (Judah); Jeroboam (Israel)

• Recipients: Both halves of

• Purpose: To call the prosperous upper class to repentance from disobedience and the curses that follow.

Theme:

• Social injustice and the impending judgment by God, pictured as a Warrior judging the nations that rebelled against Him (Amos 5:18-20).

Theology:

• God is sovereign over history and the events in the past, present, and future.
• God punishes the "religious" who fail to adhere to the spirit of the law.
• God is faithful to His promises to the nation Israel, but only to those who are obedient and willing to repent of disobedience.
• God’s Word is strong and powerful, causing the earth to shake (1:2).

Uniqueness:

• Unique in that it specifies that knowing God is more than just religious ritual by observing feasts and the letter of the law -- and condemns it. The way people treat others, more specifically, the way the rich treat the poor, is the true indicator of those who truly follow God.

Hosea (prostitute)

• 755-710
• Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah
• Recipients: The northern kingdom of Israel just prior to their exile in Assyria in 722 BC.
• Purpose: To announce the curses of the Mosaic Covenant in Deuteronomy 28 to Israel for her disobedience. Hosea also announced the future restoration for the remnant.

Theme:

• The sin of idolatry, the judgment that follows such, and salvation for the remnant. God’s love for His people is evident, and His judgment for the Israelites’ apostasy runs throughout the book. However, God’s love and mercy permeates the book even when they turn against Him.

Theology:

• The God of Israel loves His covenant people intensely in a way paralleled to the marriage of a husband & wife and the emotional feelings that go with it. God is loyal to her, restoring her & fulfilling His promises despite her wayward tendencies.

Uniqueness:

• Hosea was instructed to marry a harlot, something unheard of in Israel for a God-fearing prophet. His marriage to her (Gomer) was to represent Israel’s unfaithfulness as a nation to God -- in the similar manner that Gomer was unfaithful to Hosea. God would allow Israel to adulterate herself, like Gomer to Hosea, and He would buy her back to fulfill His promises to her (just like Hosea did for his wife Gomer). Hosea was able to get a peek into the character of God by looking inward at his own heartache for Gomer, for this is what God paralleled his love to with regard to wayward Israel.

Jonah (big fish)

• 793-753
• Jeroboam II
• Recipients: The inhabitants of Nineveh, the capitol city of Assyria.
• Purpose: To bring the Ninevites and their city to repentance through the preaching of the prophet. A sub-purpose would be for Jonah to come to understand the merciful way God deals with those outside of Israel if they too will obey Him.

Theme:

• God is merciful and graceful towards all peoples and nations. Though He decrees punishment for the unrepentant, He relents when people heed His warnings by turning from their sins.

Theology:

• God has a sovereign, merciful will for all of mankind -- even for those who are perceived to be "outside of His will" and who are evil.
• Though God us unchanging (immutable), making decrees for punishment and rewards, He relents from bringing disaster on those who repent after having been warned of impending judgment.
• The patience of God with His stubborn servants causes them to grow spiritually in their understanding of God and His purposes.
• God is sovereign over all that men set out to do (casting lots); the seas and the beasts that live in them (stirred the storm, made the large fish); He is sovereign over all of nature (vine, wind, worm, and scorching sun), and He uses all that He is sovereign over to bring about His sovereign will.

Uniqueness:

• Jonah is unique in the sense that it is a narrative (much like the first six chapters of Daniel). But Jonah, unlike Daniel, does not contain exhaustive prophecies about the future of the human race. It is simply a story about a reluctant prophet who gets swallowed by a large fish because he ran from God’s calling. His own spiritual growth appears to be a unique lesson for himself as opposed to the other prophets of the OT. His experience is unique, but his prophecy concerning an apostate people is very common in the OT prophets. The fact that his book does not contain poetic prophecies of doom over and over does make the book unique. His preaching to Nineveh and their subsequent repentance is certainly unique in the prophets.

Isaiah (seraphim)

• 740-680
• Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah
• Recipients... Disobedient Israel and Judah; to the future exiles needing hope of God’s faithfulness to His promises.

• Purpose... To remind Israel of their relationship with God & call them to repent of their sins to avoid God’s judgment.
• Uniqueness... A vision of God and the seraphim (Is. 6); the specific depiction of the Messiah (Is. 53).

Theme:

• Judgment (1-39) and Salvation (40-66). The theme of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience in Deuteronomy 28-30 are the backdrop for Isaiah’s two themes.

Theology:

• God, the Holy One of Israel: called such 28 times, and pictured as high and lifted up, the God of Israel.
• God saves and redeems: stemming from Isaiah’s name which means "Salvation is of the Lord," the word "salvation" appears 26 times giving every aspect of the ministry of Christ [incarnation (7:14;9:6), youth (7:15;11:1; 53:2), demeanor (42:2), obedience (50:5), message (61:1,2), miracles (35:5,6), sufferings, rejection, & death (50:6; 53:1-12), exaltation (52:13)].
• The remnant: the group of God’s chosen who live through His judgments due to their obedience. It is through this group that God passes on His blessings to the remnant who must survive so God can fulfill His promises to the nation.
• Servant of the Lord: providing an image of the coming messiah it shows His humiliation/exaltation (52:13-15), His rejection (53:1-3), His suffering (53:4-6), His sacrificial death (53:7-9), His atonement and resurrection (53:10-12).
• God’s foreknowledge: God’s fulfilled prophecies concerning Assyria and the northern kingdom gave Isaiah’s prophecies more credence concerning Judah in their own disobedience.

Micah (gavel)

• 735-710
• Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah
• Recipients: Primarily with the people of Judah but also with those of the Northern Kingdom.
• Purpose: To bring the apostate Israelites to repentance & offer hope to the obedient that God would fulfill His promises through the Messiah who would bring salvation.

Theme:

• Judgment for those who are evil, living contrary to God’s laws; deliverance for the faithful remnant.

Theology:

• God judges those who sin continually, but mercifully fulfills His promises (to Abraham and David) by bringing salvation to the remnant.
• God is sovereign over the future of Israel, knowing the exact place where His salvation will be born and who will inherit the promises He made to Israel.

Uniqueness:

• Micah is unique among the OT prophets due to the fact that he tells exactly where the Messiah would be born, namely, in Bethlehem (5:2). Other prophets spoke of the Messiah, but it is from Micah’s book alone that one can determine where the Messiah was going to come from.

Nahum (judgment)

• 663-612
• Manasseh
• Recipients: Primarily to the Assyrians but also to the Jews threatened by Assyrian invasion.

• Purpose: To bring peace to the Jews who were being threatened by the Assyrians by foretelling the coming judgment of Nineveh.

Theme:

• Judgment for those who practice evil.

Theology:

• Because of God’s holiness, wrath, justice, and power His enemies will perish for their hatred of His chosen people.
• God calls all those who practice evil to account for their sins, and He judges them.
• God brings peaceful words to His people by revealing to them that their enemies will perish.

Uniqueness:

• Nahum is unique in that he preaches to Nineveh, like Jonah, but they fail to repent of their deeds. It’s the only prophecy that preaches to Nineveh where the inhabitants fail to repent.

Jeremiah (weeping)

• 625-580
• Josiah, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah
• Recipients: the residents of Judah & the Gentile nations.

• Purpose: Call Jews to repent & avoid judgment.

• Uniqueness: The description of the new covenant that God would make with His people is given (30-33).

Theme:

• God’s patient judgment on the Jewsfor their blatant and continual disobedience to His law.

Theology:

• God revealed Himself as "the Spirit of Living Water" (2:13), and as such was (and is) completely sovereign, willing to allow the earth to dry up due to sin and become the utter wasteland it was before the creation (4:23-26). God’s complete sovereignty gave Him dominion over all nations giving Him the right to root and uproot; to judge and reward.
• God as a loving Father to His elect expecting obedience from His children created in His image.
• God as Punisher: God’s love is evident in His patience with His chosen, but Jeremiah clearly shows that much of God’s love for His children in found in His wrath that He metes out on those who just rest in His promises without obeying what He has set forth in the Torah.
• God’s love for His covenant people is evident in His continual pleas to help them instead of just punishing them. God speaks and is patient.
• God as a Restorer: God’s instruction to Jeremiah to buy the field belonging to his cousin (32:6-15) shows that He will restore after He has disciplined; God as Comforter who does not forget His promises. Furthermore, God speaks of "the Righteous Branch of David" (23:5-6) which gives the messianic hope that deliverance will come to Israel regardless of how destitute she has become.

• 627-612
• Josiah, Jehoiakim
• Recipients: The people of Judah, the southern half of the kingdom approximately 100 years after the Northern Kingdom had gone into exile at the hands of the Assyrians.
• Purpose: To call the apostate people of Judah to repentance and give hope to those who remained obedient.

Theme:

• Judgment and doom for all living creatures; also known as the Day of the Lord. Zephaniah 1:7 says, "Be silent before the Sovereign Lord, for the day of the Lord is near."

Theology:

• God has a plan to restore His covenant people giving hope to those who are obedient to Him.
• God judges the disobedient in the "Day of the Lord."
• God is an encourager to those who are obedient to Him and gives them hope of a better day.

Uniqueness:

• Zephaniah prophesies much like Amos in his "day of the Lord," but he goes further in that the day of the Lord he speaks of will be worldwide and not just a local punishment reserved for Israel/Judah. Also, Zephaniah’s prophecy, unlike most of the others, did bring about repentance in Judah. King Josiah led the greatest revival ever in the land, and Zephaniah no doubt played a large part in that.

Habakkuk (faith in god)

• 612-606
• Jehoiakim
• Recipients: Primarily a conversation between Habakkuk and God, but the people of Judah were also recipients of this dialogue between the two.
• Purpose: God’s people can have hope in the midst of fear and can worship the God who brings calamity on them by knowing that He is all knowing and all powerful.

Theme:

• The heart of the message is found in 2:4 which says, "The righteous will live by faith." The issue of justice in a world of injustice prompts Habakkuk’s questions to God.

Theology:

• God is sovereign over His creation, His chosen people, and over those He uses to discipline these things.
• God is a faithful God, allowing calamity to take its toll, but He is in the midst of it all bringing glory to Himself through it while moving His chosen people to worship while in the midst of terrible trials and ordeals.

Uniqueness:

• All other OT prophets spoke to the people for God, but Habakkuk speaks to God about the people of Judah. While Habakkuk complained about the injustices suffered among his people God told him they would only get worse, because the very people Habakkuk feared were going to overtake the Jews due to their disobedience.

Daniel (lion)

• 606-536
• Nebuchadnezzar, Evil Marodach, Nabonidus, Belshazzar, Darius/Cyrus
• Recipients: To the post-exilic Jews.

• Purpose: To give hope for the nation Israel. (2) For all peoples of the earth to understand the events of time and their relation to God’s overall plan for Israel and His kingdom.

Theme:

• The sovereignty of God over the events of the past, present, and future; godly character.

Theology:

• Both parts of the book (narrative and apocalyptic) attest to God’s sovereignty and how evil will be overcome by God.
• God uses the evil kingdoms of the world that He causes to rise up against His people to purge His people of their sins in order to fulfill His promises to them.
• God’s reveals Himself to man for the purpose of restoring the hopes of those he disciplines.

Uniqueness:

• First, specific prophecies about Christ his execution (Dan. 9:24-27). Second, specific detail of events in Syria, Egypt, Israel, possibly Russia, & Africa with a detailed prophecy about the end of time and the antichrist (Dan. 11). Third, Daniel is half narrative & half prophecy (most of which has already occurred). Finally, Daniel records decrees from two pagan kings (Nebuchadnezzar and Darius the Mede) proclaiming Yahweh the Most High God with all worship due only to Him.

• 592-570
• Nebuchadnezzar
• Recipients: Captive Jews exiled by King Nebuchadnezzar.
• Purpose: To call to repentance & clarify individual responsibilities for obedience & disobedience.

Theme:

• Though Israel has sinned for centuries and been taken into captivity for her disobedience, the future restoration of the land and the people to it are inevitable.

Theology:

• God is Holy: God is never described as being seen by Ezekiel, rather, Ezekiel is given God’s message through angels. God is too holy to be seen by man, and Ezekiel describes that holiness by using "the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD" (1:28). Because God is a holy God, He will not tolerate sin (this is consistent throughout the Bible) as it is an affront to Him.
• God is Merciful: Though God’s wrath is evident throughout the book, His mercy is clearly portrayed as a God who promises to bring a remnant through the exile, inherit His promises made to Abraham and David, and be restored to the Promised Land of Israel.
• God is Sovereign: God is everywhere for every reason, and as such was not just the God of Israel who lived in the temple of the Jews. God rules the nations (Ez. 25-32) with a purpose.

• Uniqueness: Ezekiel is unique in that his messages often took the form of drama rather than just straight-forward teaching. Second, he was a prophet DURING the exile of Judah, the only one of his kind. Third, Ezekiel is the only prophet to name other biblical characters known to the reader (Daniel, Job, and Noah).

Haggai (priorities)

• 520
• Post-exilic
• Recipients: The remnant who had returned from exile (Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the chosen remnant. Purpose: To encourage the leaders of Judah and the post-exilic peoples to rise up from their spiritual doldrums and rebuild the temple of God.

Theme:

• A call to complete the unfinished temple of God in Jerusalem.

Theology:

• God’s blessings to His people are based upon the priorities of the people who call on His name.
• God in glorified and blesses His people when He is given priority in all things.
• God judges those who do not call on His name and thwarts their plans and schemes.

Uniqueness:

• Haggai is only one of two prophets, Zechariah the other, who received God’s message to encourage the rebuilding of the temple. He was the first to do so, and his efforts were successful. There is only one small section that contains future judgment, but Haggai, unlike the other OT prophets, is predominately a message of encouragement to the people.

Zechariah (messiah)

• 520-518
• Post exilic
• Recipients: The post-exilic people of Judah who had returned from the Babylonian exile.
• Purpose: To exhort the remnant to repent of their sins & rebuild the temple of God.

Theme:

• Encouragement to rebuild God’s temple w/the hope that the glory of the messiah would inhabit it.

Theology:

• God is sovereign over history, knowing the future as clearly as He knows the past.
• God saves His people who obey Him and destroys those whose hearts are not with Him.
• God’s love for His people comes in the form of a messiah who is His servant, shepherd, and priest-king.
• God relates to man not in the mere outward acts of "religion" but through a personal relationship with Him based on obedience.
• God hates the oppression of the poor, the widow, the stranger, and the orphan but loves justice, kindness, compassion, and truth.

Uniqueness:

• Zechariah is unique in that he is the most quoted prophet in chapters 9-14 in the narratives of the Gospels than any other OT prophet. He is also one of only two prophets whose purpose was to encourage the rebuilding of the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem.

Malachi ()

• 420-15
• Post-exilic
• Recipients: Malachi spoke to the people of Judah after the exile who were discouraged and spiritually depleted.
• Purpose: To encourage stagnate Jews to action and return to their obedience to God.

Theme:

• The Lord’s love for His people despite their sinful tendencies.

Theology:

• God blesses those who obey Him and curses those who are disobedient.
• God loves those who are disobedient and downtrodden by giving them a chance to repent through the preaching of His prophets.

Uniqueness:

• Aside from the fact that Malachi is the last prophetical voice found in the OT, the last two chapters of Malachi contain prophecies of the coming Messiah and of John the Baptist. The New Testament shows Malachi’s prophecy of one coming to prepare the way of the Lord to be unique when John the Baptist does in fact appear to prepare the way for Jesus.