Many people have a hard time understanding the Old Testament prophets. They are often written in cryptic word pictures and metaphors. It’s hard to figure out if they're talking about past events, current events, or future events. But, perhaps most of all, we don’t know where or how they fit into the context of the Old Testament.
One of my fellow lecturers says that the ‘key’ to ‘unlocking’ the books of OT prophecy is the
historical context, and that can often be found in the very
first verse. In other words, in order to understand and interpret a particular book of prophecy we need to understand how that book fits into OT history. Thus I’ve put together the following chart to help us understand just that.
Now exact dating of OT events is notoriously difficult for various reasons. Thus the dates on the chart are just one attempt to compile the best estimates from the archeological and biblical studies of various commentators. But what we’re going for is a
general sense of the context of a book, so this chart can help us succeed in that.
[Click on image for larger version]
The timeline begins on the left with the United Kingdom under King Solomon. After Solomon’s death, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin stuck with his descendants while the northern ten tribes followed Jeroboam. The yellow line follows the northern kingdom, which was called ‘Israel’. The green line follows the southern kingdom of ‘Judah’. (Occasionally two kings overlapped in a type of co-regency or power struggle.) The orange lines are the OT History books in which the above events are described.
The white colored prophets are non-writing prophets. Their messages were primarily directed to the kings. The message of the red prophets were directed primarily against other nations (Jonah and Nahum against Nineveh; Obadiah against Edom). The yellow prophets (Amos and Hosea) were directed primarily to Israel. The green prophets wrote primarily for Judah, the Jewish exiles, or the post-exilic community.
I hope this chart will be helpful for you to place the OT prophetic books in their historical context and thus understand and interpret them better.
