The Bible In A Year
1 Samuel – 2 Kings
Week 7 of 8
Readings for the Week
October 29-November 3, 2018
Theme of the week: This week we are reading a portion of Isaiah in which the southern kingdom is being admonished not to look to Assyria for help, but to keep faithful to Yahweh.
- Monday Isaiah chapters 13, 14, 15 & 16
- Tuesday Isaiah chapters 17, 18, 19, 20 & 21, Psalm 129
- Wednesday Isaiah chapters 22, 23 & 24, Psalm 64 & 80
- Thursday Isaiah chapters 25, 26, 27 & 28
- Friday Isaiah chapters 29, 30 & 31, Psalm 142
- Saturday Isaiah chapters 32, 33, 34 & 35
The Bible In A Year
1 Samuel – 2 Kings
Week 7 of 8
A Framework for Understanding
Prophets
In modern times, the use of the word “prophet” is often associated with predicting the future. However, in the Bible, a prophet is one who speaks for God. The prophet’s words of coming events were usually more an explanation of the consequences of the actions of an individual or nation, rather than predicting some obscure & distant future. A very familiar pattern, lasting a sentence or several pages, will be seen in most prophetic writings:
the first part will be the actions
“Because you/they ____(fill in the sin here)___ , “
followed by the consequences of those actions
“I will ____(fill in the consequences, often stated as a punishment)_____”
During the lifetime of any prophet there were other prophets with different/opposite messages. Many people, then and now, claim to speak for God. How did the people know which “prophets” to listen to? This is still a question we struggle with. On any issue we face in life we can find “prophets” claiming to have the “real truth” from God on every side of the issue! There is a saying, “History is written by the winners.” In the Bible, history is written by the survivors. Over and over again the people of Israel and Judah listened to the wrong prophets, and were crushed. So the voices of the prophets that are recorded in our Bible are the prophets which spoke of what ultimately happened.
The prophetic books are spoken of in terms of “major” and “minor” prophets. This distinction is associated with the length of the books. Also, most of the work of the major prophets is concerned with the “southern kingdom” or Judah, while most of the minor prophets are speaking to concerns of the “northern kingdom” or Israel.