01/07/2026
The Twelve Minor Prophets, or The Book of Twelve, is a collection of prophetic writings, written between the 8th and 4th centuries before Christ, which are found both in the Jewish Tanakh and our Christian Old Testament.
In the Tanakh, they appear as a single book, "The Twelve." In the Bible, the collection appears as twelve individual books, one for each of the prophets:
The book of Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
The name "minor prophets" goes back to Augustine Hippo, who distinguished them as minor due to their brevity in comparison to the four longer books of the prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. In the Bible, "testament" means a covenant, a solemn promise or agreement between God and His people, signifying a relationship rather than just a legal will or blessing.
The Old Testament focuses on the covenants made by God with Israel, culminating in the law given through Moses, a covenant of works. The New Testament describes the new covenant promised in the Old Testament and fulfilled by Jesus, a covenant of grace and forgiveness through faith in Him.
We easily find four key covenants in the Old Testament: the Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosiac, and Davidic, and then the covenant of promise, which is the New Testament.
Over the next few months on Wednesday evenings, we will examine such themes as:
Repentance and Return
Justice and Mercy
Judgement and The Day of the Lord
Restoration and Hope and
God's Holiness and Sovereignty
all from the twelve minor prophets.
We will study key words like "Hessed" and "Ahar" as well as key verses like Micah 6:8 and Malachi 3:8-10. We will see funny things like Amos calling his readers "Cows of Bashaan," terrible things like the doom of the faithless, and beautiful things like God's unrelenting love to the faithful.
Come along on this journey, and I promise you will see things you have never seen before.
Wednesday Night Bible Study - Adults ages 20+ at 7:00pm in the sanctuary