This is John from the Bible Project and today on the podcast we're going to talk about how to read the prophets.

The prophets are a large portion of the Hebrew scriptures.

There's Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Isaiah, all large books in their own right,

and then there's 12 more minor prophets making for 15 books that we call the prophetic books.

And these books are hard to read.

There's not a linear narrative like a storyline.

The way that they communicate is hard to follow.

They're written mainly in ancient Hebrew poetry,

and they talk about ancient civilizations and ancient kings,

and they expect that you are very familiar with the story of the Bible so far.

And so perhaps you've avoided reading the prophets. I know I do.

In fact, their contemporaries didn't really want to listen to them either.

These books were composed as a representation of the message of a minority voice in Israel before the exile.

These figures were for the most part not listened to.

It was precisely after all of their warnings came true that the interests surged in what these figures were and what they wrote and said.

The prophets were right. They knew what was going to happen to Israel.

And this leads us to a common misconception of the role of the prophets that the prophets are merely future predictors.

That's a part of what they do.

However, that is not what the word prophecy means in the Bible.

Nor does that the primary role of the prophets in the Bible.

Future prediction is something that some prophets do sometimes,

but it is not near the heart of the core of biblical definition of the prophecy.

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