The Writers of the Bible

Betrayed husband · father of three · redeemer of Gomer · last prophet to the northern kingdom

His marriage was the sermon: God told him to love an unfaithful woman — and then to buy her back — so that Israel could watch its own story acted out in one man's home.

Hosea

Prophet of Judah · interpreter of a locust plague · herald of the Day of the LORD · promiser of the poured-out Spirit

We cannot even name his century — but when the church preached its first sermon at Pentecost, it opened with his words.

Joel

Shepherd of Tekoa · sycamore-fig farmer · unschooled prophet · champion of the trampled poor

"I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet" — God took a shepherd from the flock, sent him to the richest, most religious kingdom of the age, and out came some of the fiercest poetry in the Bible.

Amos

Unknown servant of the LORD · witness to Jerusalem's fall · prosecutor of a brother's betrayal

The shortest book in the Old Testament gives its author exactly one word of biography — his name — and spends its twenty-one verses on the oldest wound there is: betrayal by a brother.

Obadiah

Galilean prophet · patriot preacher · runaway from God · Nineveh's reluctant missionary

The only prophet who ran from his calling became the only prophet Jesus claimed as his own sign — three days in the deep, and out alive.

Jonah

Village prophet of Moresheth · defender of the evicted poor · Isaiah's country contemporary · foreteller of Bethlehem

While Isaiah walked with kings in the capital, a small-town prophet spoke for the farm families losing their land — and it was his scroll that told Herod's scholars where the Messiah would be born.

Micah

Man from a lost village · poet of the siege · comforter of the crushed

A century after Nineveh wept at Jonah's preaching, a poet named Comfort wrote the city's death sentence — and history carried it out to the letter.

Nahum

Prophet who questioned God · watchman on the tower · temple musician, perhaps · singer in the dark

Every other prophet carried God's questions to the people; Habakkuk carried the people's questions to God — and published the whole argument, answers and all.

Habakkuk

Great-great-grandson of a king · preacher against his own class · herald of the Day of the LORD

A prince of Hezekiah's line stood in Jerusalem's streets and announced that the world of the palaces — his own world — was about to end.

Zephaniah

Elder of the return · rouser of a stalled nation · prophet of four months

Four short sermons in four months — and a nation that had made excuses for eighteen years picked up its tools within twenty-three days.

Haggai

Priest and prophet · child of the exile · seer of night visions · sketcher of the coming King

The young priest who saw eight visions in a single night went on to sketch Jesus' final week five centuries early — the donkey, the thirty silver coins, the pierced one.

Zechariah

Last prophet of the Old Testament · cross-examiner of a tired faith · voice before four centuries of silence

The Old Testament's last prophet answered the complaints of a bored generation — then heaven went quiet for four hundred years, until a voice in the desert picked up his sentence.

Malachi