Short and Bitter

in this morning’s Bible Seminar, and again tomorrow afternoon, we shall do a quick survey of the Minor Prophets. Meeting twelve disgruntled and disagreeable old men in a seventy-minute session is ambitious, but these folks can do it. Though that they asked to do so surprised me, and that they wanted to do so is beyond me. 

These twelve old grouches are called “minor” not because they are unimportant in the Old Testament, but because they were not as longwinded as the major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and I suppose you could include Daniel, each with his own scroll. All short, none sweet, the minor prophets are short enough that supposedly the lot of them fit on a single scroll: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, the singularly sour, negative and ill-tempered Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. And we will be reading from some of them during Advent, so the choice actually is timely. 

My choice for Bible study after finishing Mark might have been the Gospel according to Luke, because we move into that new gospel for the Sundays of Advent that begin with the new lectionary year on December 2, 2012. However, we can do that in December if the study groups wish; besides, the minor prophets also are a thoughty choice. Notwithstanding their temperament, most of them have some really beautiful language, some of which we’ll read this morning and tomorrow as part of the groups’ choosing which prophets to dig into a bit deeper this month.

TW+