Wrapping up the Prophets

Nahum: God Judges the Empire

Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims! The crack of whips, the clatter of wheels, galloping horses and jolting chariots! Charging cavalry, flashing swords, and glittering spears! Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses-

“I am against you,” declares the LORD Almighty.

- 3:1-5

Habakkuk: God Judges the Next Empire

“Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime! Has not the LORD Almighty determined that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.”

- 2:12-14

Zephaniah: Universal Destruction and Universal Salvation?

“Therefore wait for me,” declares the LORD, “for the day I will stand up to testify. I have decided to assemble the nations, to gather the kingdoms and to pour out my wrath on them—all my fierce anger. The whole world will be consumed by the fire of my jealous anger.

“Then will I purify the lips of the peoples, that all of them may call on the name of the LORD and serve him shoulder to shoulder.”

- 3:8-9

Haggai: Once More

“This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the LORD Almighty.”

- 2:6-7

Malachi: Sudden Judgment

“So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, those who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD almighty.

- 3:5

Now that I’m done reading the prophets, there are three huge swathes of the Bible left that I’ve never intentionally read all the way through: 1) the history of Israel from Leviticus through Esther, 3) the wisdom literature – Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and 4) the epistles of Paul, Peter, James, and whoever the heck wrote Hebrews. I’m gonna start with the epistles, because I miss the New Testament.

Still haven’t started reading the Qur’an. But it’s coming down the pipe.