PROPHETS DIDN’T GET TO BE PROPHETS by being rays of sunshine. It is almost mandatory for prophets to be harbingers of doom. They sound dyspeptic, act morosely, and are generally irritable and cranky.
In the case of the biblical prophets, the context and nature of the doom that drove them to prophesy varies. Sometimes it is threats from outside Israel, sometimes internal dissention, and almost always a failure of holiness. The cause of the doom, however, never varies. It is always due to God’s wrath falling on sin and sinner alike.
Joel, Obadiah, and Malachi are three concise examples of the prophetic genre. Judgment drips like blood from the pages of these three books. God’s wrath challenges Israelites in almost every paragraph. None of these books is long, but they make up for their terseness with their pointed accusations and warnings.
We should not equate shortness with simplicity, however. It does not take much reading of this material to see that the judgment being communicated is a complicated affair. Each of the elements of the orders peccatore—sin leads to judgment leads to repentance leads to restoration—needs to be nuanced in order to have practical meaning. Joel, Obadiah, and Malachi are all about judgment, but three different settings for that judgment emerge. It is helpful to have David Baker deal with all three of these books in the NIV Application Commentary, because a great deal of understanding about prophecy and judgment comes from comparing and contrasting these three words from God.
Consider, for example, just one simple question: On whom does God’s judgment fall? On Israel? On Israel’s enemies? On us all? Joel likens God’s judgment to an army of locusts that descends on us all. Like a winged AIDS infestation they destroy everything in their path. It is clear that for Joel, the locust invasion is a metaphor for what will happen on the Day of the Lord, when all righteousness accounts will be settled. To describe this judgment we are driven to metaphors of nature, the economy, or foreign armies, but Joel’s point is that the scope of God’s judgment exceeds them all. The scope is so wide that it drives us either to despair at ever measuring up or to submission to God’s power.
Yet the second book of the trio, Obadiah, drives home the message that Israel’s mortal enemy, Edom, will be brought low by God’s consuming fire. God’s judgment, it becomes clear, inevitably falls on any and all of Israel’s enemies. “The day of the LORD is near for all nations. As you have done, it will be done to you; your deeds will return upon your head” (v. 15). Obadiah’s prediction that God will punish Edom for standing by as her kinsmen in Judah were overrun by Babylon could lead to a kind of nationalistic triumphalism (“We’re number one and God will protect us”) or to a humble recognition that God must not be trifled with.
The final book, Malachi, builds on this humble recognition theme because God’s wrath is turned on Israel herself at a time when they have neglected the worship of God and failed to live according to God’s will. Malachi pulls no punches. He calls the negligent priesthood to account, and he chastises the callous commoners who are ignoring their families.
The recognition that God’s judgment falls on us all—on our enemies and on us—is a primary message of these three books taken together. Such a recognition helps us handle the more difficult questions those of us in the twenty-first century have about the ticklish questions of judgment:
• Can a loving God at the same time be a judge? The obvious answer for Joel, Obadiah, and Malachi is yes.
• Are we God’s instruments of judgment? Only in the most indirect sense. Since we ourselves are often judged, we cannot really claim the authority of being God’s judges. The collective effect of Joel’s, Obadiah’s, and Malachi’s messages is to anticipate Matthew 7:1: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” The most we can do is call attention to the fact that God hates sin and will judge sinners. The Day of the Lord will come. But we know neither the time nor the place—only imperfectly the method.
• How clearly can we identify and differentiate between God’s wrath and Satan’s evil? Not clearly at all. In biblical times it took God’s specially anointed prophets to make those calls. Today we must recognize that we are equally ignorant of God’s righteous ways and terribly short on true prophets (and not nearly short enough on prophet pretenders).
Joel, Obadiah, and Malachi tell us that God does judge righteousness. They tell us that God chooses the time, place, and method of judgment, but doesn’t usually let us in on what he decides. And Joel, Obadiah, and Malachi do one more important thing. While discharging their messages of doom and destruction, they leave us all with a feeling not of hopelessness but of hopefulness. Joel does it with his promise of the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit on all people. “Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity” (Joel 2:12–13).
Obadiah does it by describing restoration in concrete material terms: “But on Mount Zion will be deliverance; it will be holy and the house of Jacob will possess its inheritance” (v. 17).
Malachi does it in a way fitting for the last book of the Old Testament. He predicts the coming of a Messiah who will lead the people to the realization of all their dreams and hopes, a Messiah who would be announced by a prophet (who turned out to be John the Baptist).
Judgment for judgment’s sake is not judgment but revenge. That is not what Joel, Obadiah, and Malachi are about. Theirs is a hard message, but it is a message that has repentance and restoration as its goal.
Terry C. Muck