Minor Prophets
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50 free Minor Prophets trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Minor Prophets are the closing run of the Old Testament, from Hosea through Malachi. Jewish tradition gathers them into one book, Trei Asar, and their words turn up everywhere from the Gospels to Christmas carols and civil rights speeches. This quiz moves through the whole collection. You will meet Jonah on his ship, Amos and his visions, Hosea's troubled marriage and Micah's promises, with a good share of questions on Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah. A few look at how Jews and Christians have read and used these books since. It is written for Sunday school classes, Bible study groups and anyone reading through the prophets. Most questions are simple enough for beginners, a handful will stretch a seasoned reader, and every answer comes with a brief explanation tied to the text. Print it for a class or play it as a game.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the Book of Jonah, what does the repentant king order every person and even every animal to wear?
Sackcloth
Sackcloth covered the herds and flocks as well as the people, and the royal decree made the animals fast alongside their owners.
Q 02Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech quotes Amos on justice rolling down like what?
Waters
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.
Q 03Which town did Micah name as the birthplace of a future ruler, a verse later quoted to King Herod?
Bethlehem
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.
Q 04A commentary on Habakkuk was among the first seven of which manuscripts, found near Qumran in 1947?
Dead Sea Scrolls
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.
Q 05Zechariah pictures Jerusalem's coming king as victorious yet lowly, riding on which animal?
A donkey
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.
Q 06Jonah is the only Minor Prophet named in which scripture, where the tenth chapter is titled Yunus?
The Quran
The Quran names its tenth surah after him and elsewhere calls him Dhul-Nun, 'the one of the fish'.
Q 07How does the prophet Jonah react when God spares the city he had warned of destruction?
He is angry
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.
Q 08The Book of Joel opens with Judah's crops stripped bare by wave after wave of which insects?
Locusts
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.
Q 09The label 'minor' in Minor Prophets, traced to Augustine, describes what about the books?
Their length
Their length is the only thing minor about them: Augustine was contrasting these brief books with bulky ones such as Isaiah and Ezekiel.
Q 10Told to preach in Assyria, Jonah instead boards a ship at Joppa bound for which distant port?
Tarshish
Tarshish meant sailing west across the Mediterranean, away from his mission inland, and the text notes that he paid the fare himself.
Q 11In Zechariah, a shepherd is paid off with how many pieces of silver, the sum Judas later took?
Thirty
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.
Q 12Malachi ends by promising that which earlier prophet will return before the day of the Lord?
Elijah
Elijah's promised return is why priests in John's Gospel ask John the Baptist whether he is that prophet come back.
Q 13In the Book of Jonah, what is the prophet doing below deck when the captain finds him mid-storm?
Sleeping
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.
Q 21In the prophet Hosea's proverb about Israel's idols, those who sow the wind will reap what?
The whirlwind
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.
Q 22The combative Jonah has a Hebrew name, Yonah, that is ironically the word for which gentle bird?
Dove
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.
Q 23The prophet Malachi tells the whole nation that holding back what amounts to robbing God?
Their tithes
Their tithes were to be brought into the storehouse as a test, with God promising to open the windows of heaven in return.
Q 14What does God send to kill the leafy plant that had sprung up overnight to shade the prophet Jonah?
A worm
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.
Q 15Matthew's Gospel applies to Jesus Hosea's line about God calling his son out of which land?
Egypt
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.
Q 16Habakkuk says the just shall live by what, a line Paul and Martin Luther turned into a rallying text?
Faith
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.
Q 17Nahum gloats over the coming fall of which great city, spared earlier in the Book of Jonah?
Nineveh
Nineveh fell to its enemies in 612 BC, and Nahum's last line pictures everyone who hears the news clapping their hands.
Q 18Micah 6:8 says the Lord requires people to do justly, love mercy and walk in what manner with God?
Humbly
Humbly is the last of three plain demands that Micah sets against lavish sacrifices of thousands of rams and rivers of oil.
Q 19In Jewish tradition the Minor Prophets form one book called Trei Asar, an Aramaic name meaning what?
The Twelve
The Twelve were copied together on one roll in antiquity, which is why the Hebrew Bible counts them as a single book.
Q 20At which feast in Acts does Peter quote Joel's promise that sons and daughters will prophesy?
Pentecost
Pentecost had drawn a crowd that took the disciples for drunks, and Peter answers the jibe with Joel's prophecy.
Q 24On which hill east of Jerusalem does Zechariah picture the Lord standing as it splits in two?
Mount of Olives
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.
Q 25On the afternoon of which Jewish holy day is the whole Book of Jonah read aloud in synagogues?
Yom Kippur
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.
Q 26Which Christmas carol borrows a title for Christ from Malachi's last chapter?
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
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'.
Q 27Which woman did God tell Hosea to marry, making her unfaithfulness a picture of Israel's?
Gomer
Gomer bore three children, and Hosea gave each one a name that carried a warning for the northern kingdom.
Q 28Joel reverses a famous peace prophecy by telling the nations to beat their plowshares into what?
Swords
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.
Q 29What was Amos's trade in Tekoa before he was called to prophesy against the northern kingdom?
A herdsman
A herdsman who also tended sycamore trees, Amos told the priest who tried to silence him that he was no prophet by trade.
Q 30In Amos's vision, what builder's tool does the Lord hold by a wall to show Israel is out of true?
A plumbline
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.