50 Fun Facts About Minor Prophets

In the Book of Jonah, what does the repentant king order every person and even every animal to wear?

Sackcloth covered the herds and flocks as well as the people, and the royal decree made the animals fast alongside their owners.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech quotes Amos on justice rolling down like what?

Waters is the image in Amos 5:24, where the prophet scorns Israel's feast days and songs and demands judgment and righteousness in their place.

Which town did Micah name as the birthplace of a future ruler, a verse later quoted to King Herod?

Bethlehem was too small to count among Judah's clans, Micah says, yet the priests Herod consults quote him to say where the Messiah will be born.

A commentary on Habakkuk was among the first seven of which manuscripts, found near Qumran in 1947?

The Dead Sea Scrolls commentary reads Habakkuk line by line as a forecast of its own sect's troubles, and it deliberately leaves out the book's third chapter.

Zechariah pictures Jerusalem's coming king as victorious yet lowly, riding on which animal?

A donkey carries the king while war horses and chariots are swept away in the next verse, and Matthew and John quote the line for Palm Sunday.

Jonah is the only Minor Prophet named in which scripture, where the tenth chapter is titled Yunus?

The Quran names its tenth surah after him and elsewhere calls him Dhul-Nun, 'the one of the fish'.

How does the prophet Jonah react when God spares the city he had warned of destruction?

He is angry enough to ask to die, complaining that he ran away in the first place because he knew God was merciful and would relent.

The Book of Joel opens with Judah's crops stripped bare by wave after wave of which insects?

Locusts devour in relays in Joel, each wave eating what the last one left, and the prophet turns the disaster into a call to fast and pray.

The label 'minor' in Minor Prophets, traced to Augustine, describes what about the books?

Their length is the only thing minor about them: Augustine was contrasting these brief books with bulky ones such as Isaiah and Ezekiel.

Told to preach in Assyria, Jonah instead boards a ship at Joppa bound for which distant port?

Tarshish meant sailing west across the Mediterranean, away from his mission inland, and the text notes that he paid the fare himself.

In Zechariah, a shepherd is paid off with how many pieces of silver, the sum Judas later took?

Thirty pieces of silver was also what the law of Moses made an owner pay for a slave gored by an ox, so the shepherd treats the wage as an insult.

Malachi ends by promising that which earlier prophet will return before the day of the Lord?

Elijah's promised return is why priests in John's Gospel ask John the Baptist whether he is that prophet come back.

In the Book of Jonah, what is the prophet doing below deck when the captain finds him mid-storm?

Sleeping soundly while the crew threw cargo overboard and each man cried to his own god, Jonah had to be woken and told to pray too.

What does God send to kill the leafy plant that had sprung up overnight to shade the prophet Jonah?

A worm did it at dawn, and God uses Jonah's pity for the withered plant to ask why he should not pity a city of more than 120,000 people.

Matthew's Gospel applies to Jesus Hosea's line about God calling his son out of which land?

Egypt in Hosea's verse looks back to the Exodus, with Israel as the son; Matthew reuses it for the holy family's return after Herod's death.

Habakkuk says the just shall live by what, a line Paul and Martin Luther turned into a rallying text?

Faith is the word Paul lifts from Habakkuk in both Romans and Galatians, and Luther read the same verse as teaching his doctrine of faith alone.

Nahum gloats over the coming fall of which great city, spared earlier in the Book of Jonah?

Nineveh fell to its enemies in 612 BC, and Nahum's last line pictures everyone who hears the news clapping their hands.

Micah 6:8 says the Lord requires people to do justly, love mercy and walk in what manner with God?

Humbly is the last of three plain demands that Micah sets against lavish sacrifices of thousands of rams and rivers of oil.

In Jewish tradition the Minor Prophets form one book called Trei Asar, an Aramaic name meaning what?

The Twelve were copied together on one roll in antiquity, which is why the Hebrew Bible counts them as a single book.

At which feast in Acts does Peter quote Joel's promise that sons and daughters will prophesy?

Pentecost had drawn a crowd that took the disciples for drunks, and Peter answers the jibe with Joel's prophecy.

In the prophet Hosea's proverb about Israel's idols, those who sow the wind will reap what?

The whirlwind line has outlived its setting: Hosea was mocking the calf idol of Samaria, which he says a workman made and so is no god.

The combative Jonah has a Hebrew name, Yonah, that is ironically the word for which gentle bird?

Dove is what Yonah means, a bird ancient Israel tied to peace, which sits oddly on a prophet who runs from his mission and argues with God.

The prophet Malachi tells the whole nation that holding back what amounts to robbing God?

Their tithes were to be brought into the storehouse as a test, with God promising to open the windows of heaven in return.

On which hill east of Jerusalem does Zechariah picture the Lord standing as it splits in two?

The Mount of Olives splits east to west in the vision, opening a great valley; the Gospels later set Jesus's arrest in a garden on its slope.

On the afternoon of which Jewish holy day is the whole Book of Jonah read aloud in synagogues?

Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, and Jonah's story of a whole city forgiven after it repents fits the theme of the day.

Which Christmas carol borrows a title for Christ from Malachi's last chapter?

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing borrows the title for the newborn Christ, and Charles Wesley's line is often misprinted with 'Son' in place of 'Sun'.

Which woman did God tell Hosea to marry, making her unfaithfulness a picture of Israel's?

Gomer bore three children, and Hosea gave each one a name that carried a warning for the northern kingdom.

Joel reverses a famous peace prophecy by telling the nations to beat their plowshares into what?

Swords from plowshares is the call to war in Joel 3; Isaiah and Micah give the better-known version, where the weapons become farm tools.

What was Amos's trade in Tekoa before he was called to prophesy against the northern kingdom?

A herdsman who also tended sycamore trees, Amos told the priest who tried to silence him that he was no prophet by trade.

In Amos's vision, what builder's tool does the Lord hold by a wall to show Israel is out of true?

A plumbline is the third vision: Amos had pleaded Israel's way out of the first two disasters, but this time God says he will not relent.

Amos dates his preaching to two years before which disaster, still recalled in Zechariah's time?

An earthquake in King Uzziah's reign was violent enough that Zechariah, centuries later, could still tell people they would flee as their ancestors had.

The shortest book in the Hebrew Bible targets which nation, descended from Jacob's twin Esau?

Edom is condemned for standing by and gloating while Jerusalem fell, a betrayal the book treats as worse because the two peoples were brothers.

Which prophet's book, a single chapter of 21 verses, is the shortest in the Hebrew Bible?

Obadiah fills barely a page, and counted by verses only the letters 2 John and 3 John are shorter in the whole Christian Bible.

Elders saved which later prophet from death by citing Micah's warning that Zion would be plowed?

Jeremiah was on trial for predicting the temple's ruin, and the elders argued that King Hezekiah had heeded Micah's warning, not killed him.

Micah pictures lasting peace as everyone sitting unafraid under a vine and which other fruit tree?

Fig and vine were already shorthand for good times: 1 Kings uses the same pairing for the safe, prosperous years under Solomon.

Nahum taunts the Assyrian capital as the empty den of which animals, hunted by its kings?

Lions were quarry reserved for Assyrian royalty and fill the palace reliefs now in the British Museum, so the empty den turns hunters into the hunted.

In the Book of Habakkuk, God shocks the prophet by raising up which ruthless people to punish Judah?

The Chaldeans, the rulers of Babylon, were more wicked than the Judah they were sent to punish, and Habakkuk demands to know why God stays silent.

In the tale Bel and the Dragon, Habakkuk is carried by his hair to Babylon to feed which prisoner?

Daniel gets a bowl of stew that Habakkuk had cooked for reapers in Judea, and the prophet is returned to his own place straight afterwards.

Zephaniah prophesied in the days of which king of Judah, a reformer crowned at eight years old?

Josiah later purged the idols Zephaniah attacks, and the prophet may have been royalty himself: his family tree runs back to a Hezekiah.

Zephaniah's day of the Lord inspired which medieval Latin hymn, long sung at Requiem Masses?

Dies Irae means 'day of wrath', the phrase that opens Zephaniah 1:15 in the Latin Vulgate, and both Mozart and Verdi wrote famous settings of it.

Zephaniah dooms Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod and Ekron, cities of which coastal enemies of Judah?

The Philistines' coast, Zephaniah says, will become pasture dotted with shepherds' huts and sheepfolds, handed over to the survivors of Judah.

Which prophet shames returned exiles for living in paneled houses while the temple lies in ruins?

Haggai blames their thin harvests on the neglect, and within weeks of his first sermon the people are back at work on the temple.

Zechariah's 'not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit' is addressed to which governor of Judah?

Zerubbabel, a descendant of King David, had laid the temple's foundation, and the same vision promises that his hands will finish it.

In Zechariah's vision, which high priest stands in filthy clothes as Satan waits to accuse him?

Joshua has his rags swapped for fine robes and a clean turban, a sign that his guilt has been taken away.

The name Malachi, which some scholars take for an unnamed prophet's title, means what in Hebrew?

My messenger is also how the book's best-known promise begins, with God saying he will send one ahead to prepare the way.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Minor Prophets close which division, which also holds Isaiah and Ezekiel?

Nevi'im simply means 'Prophets', yet the division opens with history books such as Judges, Samuel and Kings.

What name did the prophet Hosea give his firstborn son, after the site of King Jehu's bloody coup?

Jezreel was a threat in a name: God says he will punish Jehu's house for the blood shed there and end the northern kingdom.

The prophet Amos calls the pampered rich women of Samaria the cows of which lush grazing region?

Bashan was known for the cattle of its rich pastures, and Amos says these women crush the poor while calling for another drink.

Nahum asks if the Assyrian capital is any better than which great Nile city, sacked in 663 BC?

Thebes had been looted by Assyria's own army, so Nahum throws the empire's own conquest back at it as a preview of its fate.

How do the sailors in the Book of Jonah work out which man aboard has brought the storm on them?

They cast lots and the lot falls on Jonah, yet the crew still row hard for land before agreeing to throw him overboard.