The books of the prophets consist of 17 books of the Jewish Bible. The earliest passages contained in these books date to the late 8th century BCE. The latest books like Daniel date from Hellenistic times. Some, like Isaiah, were reworked and added to several times in different centuries. The Book of Isaiah is actually the result of several different authors.
It’s hard to know how many of the 17 prophets may have been real people, and how many wholly fictional. While Jonah and Daniel are clearly fictional, even a prophet like Isaiah may also have been. His name literally means ‘God saves’, a very convenient name for a biblical prophet. The same goes for Malachi (‘My messenger’), Micah (‘Who is like Yahweh?’), and Obadiah (‘One who worships Yahweh’).
The books of the prophets were scoured by the gospel writers in the first century CE to help create their narrative. Stories about Jesus were fabricated to correlate with Jewish prophecy, but originally the books of the prophets referred to contemporaneous events.
The main theme of the prophets is the Jews’ exile in Babylon, and how this was brought about by Israel and Judah’s continual sinning against Yahweh by worshipping other gods. It’s a theme that recurs consistently in the Old Testament, and was the Bible writers’ attempt to explain how the chosen kingdoms of Yahweh had been defeated and humiliated by the heathen Babylonians.
The earliest parts of some of the books date to the kingdom of Judah, but these were later edited and added to. The later books like Daniel were often set centuries before they were written, so they could predict and prophecy about events that they were actually written after. The Book of Ezekiel states,
‘“Therefore the lord Yahweh says, since you have been more ungrateful than the nations around you and have not conformed to my statutes and kept my laws or even the laws of the nations around you. Therefore, says the lord Yahweh, I myself will be against you. I will inflict punishment on you for the nations to see. Because of your abominable practices I will inflict such punishments as I have never executed before nor ever will again. Therefore Jerusalem, parents will eat their children and children their parents in your midst. I will execute punishments on you, and scatter any survivors to the four winds. As I live, says the lord Yahweh, because you have defiled my holy place with all your vile idols and abominable rights, I in turn will consume you without pity. I in my turn will not spare you.’ (Ezekiel 5.7-11)
The book of Isaiah opens with,
‘For Yahweh has spoken:
I have reared and brought up children,
but they have rebelled against me.’ (Isaiah 1.2-3)
And,
‘Oh sinful nation, people laden with iniquity,
race of evildoers, corrupt children
who have forsaken Yahweh.’ (Isaiah 1.4)
The book of Jeremiah similarly states,
‘When you ask, “Why has Yahweh our god done all this to us?” I shall answer, “As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your own land, so you will serve foreigners in a land that isn’t yours.’ (Jeremiah 5.19)
And,
‘Why has the land been ruined and laid waste like a desert no one can cross? Yahweh said, “It is because they have forsaken my law which I set before them; they have not obeyed me or followed my law. They have followed their own stubborn hearts, they followed the Baals as their forefathers taught them.” Therefore these are the words of Yahweh of the armies, the god of Israel: I will feed these people with wormwood and make them drink bitter poison. I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their forefathers have known; I will harry them with the sword until I have made an end to them.”’ (Jeremiah 9.12-16)
This passage makes it clear that the Judahites’ and Israelites’ descendants had worshipped Baal, often called a ‘foreign’ god elsewhere in the Jewish Bible. These damning indictments of the Jews was later jumped upon by Christians who viewed the Jews as always having been disobedient to their god, culminating in the murder of his son.
The Book of Isaiah even makes the bizarre claim that the Assyrian assault on Judah under Sennacherib in 701 BCE was the work of Yahweh,
‘The Assyrian is the rod that I wield in my anger,
and the staff of my wrath is in his hand.
I send him against a godless nation,
I ordered him to attack a people who roused my wrath,
to spoil and plunder at will
and trample them down like dirt in the streets.’ (Isaiah 10.5-6)
Later on it makes the even more bizarre and ridiculous claim that ‘the angel of Yahweh’ killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers to protect Jerusalem (Isaiah 37.36). The truth is that Hezekiah paid Sennacherib tribute to lift the siege on Jerusalem. In the Assyrian annals, Sennacherib stated of Hezekiah, ‘Him I shut up in Jerusalem like a caged bird.’
The Book of Jeremiah makes the same claim of Yahweh fighting against Judah in the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem over a century later in 587 BCE,
‘Tell Zedekiah [the king of Judah], these are the words of Yahweh the god of Israel, “I will turn against you your own weapons with which you are fighting the king of Babylon and the Babylonians outside the city wall besieging you. And I will bring them into the middle of this city. I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and a great arm with burning rage and great fury. I will strike down the inhabitants of this city, men and cattle alike; they shall die of a terrible pestilence.”’ (Jeremiah 21.3-7)
Ezekiel similarly claims that Yahweh was responsible for the desecration of his own temple by the Babylonians (Ezekiel 24.21). In a story reminiscent of the passover myth, Ezekiel even has Yahweh tell someone to go through Jerusalem marking the faithful on the forehead. He then orders men to go through Jerusalem murdering anyone who doesn’t have the mark,
‘“Follow him through the city and kill, without showing pity or compassion. Slaughter the old men, the young men and women, the mothers and little children, but do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary.” So they began with the old men who were in front of the temple. Then he said to them, “Defile the temple and fill the courtyards with corpses. Go!” So they went out and began killing throughout the city.’ (Ezekiel 9.5-7)
One salient feature of the writings of the prophets the belief in a Day of Judgement, often referred to as the Day of the Wrath (or Fury or Vengeance) of Yahweh. On this day Yahweh would judge all the other nations, find them wanting and brutally punish them. In particular Yahweh will punish idolatry, with that peculiarly intense hatred we find towards it throughout the Bible. Isaiah states,
‘On that day people will throw away
their idols of silver and idols of gold,
which they made to worship,
to the dung beetles and the bats.
They will creep into clefts in the rocks
and crannies in the cliffs
for fear of Yahweh and the splendour of his majesty,
when he rises to shake the land.’ (Isaiah 2.20-21)
Isaiah often describes this day of Yahweh’s vengeance in blood curdling language,
‘Yahweh’s anger is turned against all the nations
his wrath is on all their armies:
he will give them over to slaughter and destruction.
Their slain shall be thrown out,
the stench shall rise from their corpses,
and the mountains will stream with their blood.’ (Isaiah 34.2-3)
This apocalyptic ‘Day of Yahweh’ was a clear influence on the writer of the book of Revelation and the origin of later Christian eschatological thought. Much of the imagery used in the books of the prophets was later copied by the writer of Revelation. Isaiah describes this day with,
‘The Day of Yahweh is coming, that cruel day of wrath and fury,
to make the land desolate and exterminate its wicked people.
The stars of heaven in their constellations shall give no light,
the Sun shall be darkened at its rising, and the moon refuse to shine.’ (Isaiah 13.9-10)
The book of Jeremiah likewise describes this day of Yahweh with,
‘This is the day of the lord, Yahweh of hosts,
a day of vengeance, vengeance on his enemies.
The sword will devour until sated,
drunk with their blood.’ (Jeremiah 46.10)
Amos also gives it a less than cheery description,
‘Woe to you who long for the Day of Yahweh!
What will the day of Yahweh mean to you?
That day will be darkness not light.
It will be as when a man flees from a lion, only to meet a bear,
or goes into a house and leans his hand on the wall,
only to have a snake bite him.
The Day of Yahweh shall be darkness, not light,
pitch black without a ray of brightness.’ (Amos 5.18-20)
Zephaniah describes it with,
‘I will sweep the earth clean of all that is on it, says Yahweh.
I will sweep away both man and beast,
I will sweep away the birds from the sky and the fish from the sea,
I will…destroy all mankind on the face of the earth.
So says Yahweh.’ (Zephaniah 1.2-3)
Jeremiah goes on at length to castigate all of Judah’s Near Eastern neighbours, prophesying how they will be punished and destroyed by Yahweh (Jeremiah 46 – 51). We find exactly the same thing in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 25 – 39) and Amos (Amos 1-2).
Just like later Christian writers, some of the writers of the books of the prophets clearly believed this apocalypse was imminent. The Book of Joel states, ‘Alas for that day! The day of Yahweh is near. It will come like a mighty destruction from the almighty’ (Joel 1.15). Zephaniah likewise states, ‘Silence before the lord Yahweh! For the day of Yahweh is near’ (Zephaniah 1.7). and, ‘The great day of Yahweh is near, it comes quickly’ (Zephaniah 1.14).
Isaiah in particular was used by the gospel writers to shape their narrative, and was seen by early Christians as a major source of ‘prophecy’ about Jesus. However, the book itself names king Cyrus of Persia as the anointed of Yahweh,
‘Thus says Yahweh to Cyrus his anointed,
Cyrus who he has taken by the hand
to subdue nations before him.’ (Isaiah 45.1)
Cyrus conquered the neo-Babylonian empire in 539 BCE, which facilitated the Jews’ return to the lands of Israel and Judah from their exile in Babylon. The same thing happened to other peoples who had been conquered and exiled by the Babylonians. Cyrus also returned the statues of gods back to their original cities and temples. The Babylonians had taken these statues to Babylon, where they were placed in the Esagila temple of Marduk, to show their subservience to the chief god. The Cyrus cylinder is a clay cylinder that describes Cyrus’ actions after conquering Babylon,
‘From Babylon I sent back to their places, to the sanctuaries across the river Tigris whose shrines had earlier become dilapidated, the [statues of the] gods who lived therein. To Assur, Susa, Akkad, Esnunna, Zamban, Meturan, Der, as far as the border of Gutium. I made permanent sanctuaries for them. I collected together all of their people and returned them to their settlements.’
Much as the Bible describes Cyrus as the anointed of Yahweh, the Cyrus cylinder depicts him as the chosen of Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, described as ‘king of the gods’.
The Bible and Mythology 