The Writing Prophets
Sixteen men who left books, four major, the Twelve minor, sent to Judah, to Israel, even to foreign nations. Learn each by their message and where they stand around the great exile.
the four long books
prophet to Judah
The towering prophet of Judah, called in the year King Uzziah died amid a vision of the thrice-holy LORD. He counseled kings against Assyria and saw far ahead, the virgin's son Immanuel, and the suffering servant pierced for our transgressions.
prophet to Judah
Called as a youth under Josiah, Jeremiah spent forty tearful years warning Judah that Babylon was God's rod, and was beaten, jailed, and thrown in a cistern for it. He lived to see Jerusalem burn, and promised beyond it a new covenant written on the heart.
prophet to Judah
A priest carried to Babylon with the first exiles, Ezekiel prophesied in strange visions and street-theater signs, the fiery wheels of God's glory departing the temple, and a valley of dry bones rising to live again as the promise of Israel's resurrection.
prophet to Judah
Taken young into the Babylonian court, Daniel rose by wisdom and unbending faith, refusing the king's food, reading dreams and the writing on Belshazzar's wall, and emerging unharmed from the lions' den. His later visions map the rise and fall of empires to the end.
the Twelve, shorter, not lesser
prophet to Nineveh (Assyria)
The reluctant prophet who ran from his commission and was swallowed by a great fish, only to be spat out and sent again. When wicked Nineveh actually repented, Jonah sulked, a book less about the fish than about God's mercy reaching even Israel's enemies.
prophet to Israel
A shepherd and fig-farmer from Judah, sent north to prosperous Israel to condemn how the rich crushed the poor while keeping up their religion. His demand that justice roll down like waters is the Bible's great cry for social righteousness.
prophet to Israel
Told to marry Gomer, who left him for other lovers, Hosea's aching marriage became the sermon: Israel had played the adulteress against her God, yet He would buy her back. Love and judgment bound together in one broken home.
prophet to Judah
A contemporary of Isaiah who indicted both kingdoms for corruption yet distilled true religion to a single line, do justice, love mercy, walk humbly. Seven centuries early, he named little Bethlehem as the birthplace of Israel's ruler.
prophet to Nineveh (Assyria)
Where Jonah saw Nineveh spared, Nahum, a century later, saw its sentence come due. His book is a single sustained oracle against the brutal Assyrian capital, a comfort to Judah that no empire outlasts God's justice.
prophet to Judah
A prince of Judah preaching in Josiah's day, Zephaniah pressed the theme of the Day of the LORD, a sweeping judgment on Judah and the nations, yet closed with God singing over a rescued remnant.
prophet to Judah
Habakkuk dared to ask how a holy God could use wicked Babylon to punish Judah. The answer he received, that the righteous shall live by faith, became a cornerstone of the New Testament, and his book ends in trust though the fields lie empty.
prophet to Edom
The shortest book in the Old Testament, a single chapter against Edom, the descendants of Esau, for standing by and cheering as Jerusalem was plundered. The proud eagle nesting in the cliffs would be brought down.
prophet to Judah
Reading a devastating locust plague as a foreshadow of the Day of the LORD, Joel called Judah to rend their hearts and return. His promise that God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh is the very text Peter quotes at Pentecost.
prophet to the returned exiles
When the returned exiles had paneled their own houses but left God's house in rubble, Haggai's brief, blunt oracles shamed and stirred them to finish the second temple, with a promise that its glory would one day outshine the first.
prophet to the returned exiles
Alongside Haggai, Zechariah urged the temple's rebuilding through a series of strange night visions, and looked further to the Messiah, a king coming humble on a donkey, and one they would look on whom they had pierced.
prophet to the returned exiles
The final voice of the Old Testament, rebuking a half-hearted, cynical post-exilic people for shoddy sacrifices and broken faith. He promises a messenger to prepare the LORD's way, then four centuries of silence fall until John the Baptist.
Some of the largest figures in the prophetic story wrote nothing at all. Elijah never put pen to scroll and is the prophet the New Testament mentions most. These are not lesser prophets, only unpublished ones, which is why the games above cover the sixteen who left books while the story needs all of them.
Moses' sister, who watched the basket in the reeds and later led the women in song after the sea. She is called a prophetess, and she was also struck with leprosy for a week after challenging Moses' authority.
Given to the tabernacle as a small boy after his mother's prayer, and called by name in the night. He judged Israel, anointed both Saul and David, and warned the nation plainly what a king would cost them before giving them one anyway.
Called David's seer, he advised him during the years on the run and later brought him the three-fold choice of judgment after the census.
He met Jeroboam on the road, tore a new cloak into twelve pieces, and gave him ten, announcing the division of the kingdom before it happened. Years later, blind and old, he delivered the verdict on the dynasty he had helped begin.
The prophet who confronted Ahab and Jezebel head on: three years of drought at his word, fire on the altar at Carmel, and then a collapse into despair under a broom tree. He did not die but was taken up in a whirlwind, which is why later Jewish expectation looked for his return before the day of the LORD.
The prophet Ahab hated because he never said anything good. Summoned alongside four hundred court prophets all promising victory, he mocked their message, then told the truth and was jailed on bread and water until the king should return in peace. The king did not return.
Elijah's successor, who asked for a double portion of his master's spirit and got it. His ministry runs through ordinary households as much as royal courts: a widow's oil, a borrowed axe head, a foreign general's skin, a poisoned pot of stew.
When the lost book of the law was found in the temple, the high priest and the king's officials went to her for a ruling on it. She confirmed the judgment and promised Josiah he would be spared seeing it. Jeremiah and Zephaniah were both active at the time, and the delegation went to her.
He predicted a widespread famine, which prompted the first relief collection sent from Antioch to Judea, and later took Paul's belt, bound his own hands and feet with it, and warned him what waited in Jerusalem.
A widow of many decades who never left the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. She came up as Simeon was speaking over the infant Jesus, gave thanks, and spoke about the child to everyone waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.
A prophet in camel's hair who preached repentance at the Jordan and baptized Jesus. He named himself the voice crying in the wilderness from Isaiah, and was beheaded by Herod Antipas for condemning the king's marriage.
Dating follows the conventional chronology; genuinely contested dates are flagged on the card.
