Dr. Keith Essex · The Master's Seminary · 94 minutes
Lecture by Dr. Keith Essex, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
This session covers four books of the Twelve in one sweep. Dr. Essex reads Joel's locusts as covenant warning and the army of chapter 2 as a future invader, watches Amos circle the nations before landing on Israel, hears Obadiah make Edom the representative of every gloating nation, and then lingers over Jonah, where the runaway prophet's own words reveal why he fled. Listen for how each book hands its ending to the next, and for the question Jonah answers: is God's compassion for Israel only?
Hosea closed with two images, the marriage and the legal brief: God's case against his spiritually adulterous people, covenant curses coming through a foreign invader, yet with restoration promised for a repentant Israel wooed back as a righteous bride, and a closing word for the wise to walk in the Lord's right ways. Joel picks up exactly there, addressing the wise: hear this, O elders, and tell your sons, and let their sons tell the next generation. His generation's event is a locust plague.
The plague is not random: Deuteronomy 28:38 lists locusts among the covenant curses God sends before the terminal judgment, along with disease, famine, and local defeat, warnings to drive the people to repent before it is too late. So Joel calls a sacred assembly, a consecrated fast, the elders crying out; and he interprets the plague: alas for the day, for the day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty (1:15). The locust plague is not the day of the Lord, but its portent: if there is no repentance, worse is coming. Internal evidence, the constant emphasis on temple, Zion, and Jerusalem, points to a southern audience, though the book names neither date nor audience.
In chapter 1 the locusts are like a nation, an organized army no weapon can shoot (1:6); in chapter 2, on Essex's reading, the figure reverses: an army like locusts, a literal future invasion, with the noise of chariots, leaping on the mountaintops, a great and mighty people such as never was, and, most tellingly, the Lord utters his voice before his army, Yahweh himself leading the day-of-the-Lord host. The clincher for a human army is 2:20: God promises to remove the northern one far away, its vanguard into the eastern sea, its rear guard into the western; but locusts invade the land from the south and southwest, never the north. The alternative reading, that everything through 2:27 is the locusts of Joel's own day with only 2:28's after this turning eschatological, is held by Allen and, with hesitation, Hubbard.
Essex, in company with the MacArthur Study Bible, breaks the book at 2:17 and 18: the future invasion (2:1 to 11), the call to repent (2:12 to 17), and then everything from 2:18 to 3:21 as God's threefold response to Israel's future repentance, not a chronological sequence but three things God will do: restore agricultural blessing, reversing what the locusts pictured; pour out his Spirit on all flesh before the great and awesome day, so that the repentant endure it; and in chapter 3 judge the gathered nations in the day of the Lord, delivering Israel to be head of the nations as only in David's day. Peter's use of Joel 2 in Acts 2 is its own issue for another course, but hold the logic: if the Spirit is poured out, the day of the Lord is near, and if the day is near, repent.
No date is stated, so positions multiply: the traditional evangelical position places Joel early, during the boy-king Joash's minority, which would explain the absence of any king, and Essex has always leaned there, though the MacArthur Study Bible is now its main advocate; the EBC says broadly eighth century, Garrett seventh; and the majority of liberals, with a growing number of evangelicals, date it after the second temple of 515 BC, citing Aramaic terms and the missing king. Essex declines dogmatism: nothing in the book tells you the date. And a pastoral aside: Joel is almost never preached; congregations meet it only when Acts 2 is preached, and then know too little of Joel to follow. Commit somewhere to preaching the Twelve, and you will have to wrestle with Joel.
Joel ends with the Lord roaring from Zion; Amos begins there. Sent to Bethel, the false worship center of the north, Amos delivers oracles of judgment that circle the compass: Damascus, Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, each introduced with for three transgressions and for four I will not revoke punishment, you have crossed the line. One can almost hear Bethel cheering as every hostile neighbor falls under the word, then Judah, and then 2:6: thus says the Lord, for three transgressions of Israel. The judging God who holds the nations accountable holds Israel accountable too. And the basis shifts: the Gentile nations are condemned for their inhumanity, brutalizing and exploiting other peoples, essentially failing to do to others as they would be done by; Judah and Israel are condemned for rejecting the law of the Lord, selling the righteous for money and the needy for a pair of sandals. Torah is never invoked against the Gentiles; it is invoked against those who have it.
Three oracles open hear this word (3:1, 4:1, 5:1): Israel's irresponsibility against her calling, her idolatry, her moral decay; and each turns on therefore: an enemy will surround the land and loot the citadels (3:11); prepare to meet your God, O Israel (4:12), which, Essex notes, is no evangelistic invitation but a summons to judgment, exactly like Joel 3's summons of the nations; and there is wailing in all the plazas, for I will pass through your midst (5:16). Into this falls the day-of-the-Lord correction of 5:18 to 20: alas, you who long for the day of the Lord; why would you? It is darkness and not light, as when a man flees a lion and a bear meets him, or leans on the wall at home and a snake bites him. Israel assumed the day meant deliverance for Israel; for sinners it means judgment on Israel as much as the nations.
In 7:1 to 9:10 Amos receives five visions: locusts and fire, after each of which the prophet intercedes and the Lord relents, it shall not be; then the plumb line, measuring Israel's sanctuaries with no further relenting; then, in a historical interlude, Amaziah the high priest of Bethel attacks Amos, and the prophet answers that Amaziah's own family will fall and Israel will surely go into exile, the assault itself proving God right; then the basket of summer fruit, Israel ripe and rotting; and finally the Lord standing by the altar to bring the last calamity. The section ends at 9:10: all the sinners of my people will die by the sword, those who say calamity will not overtake us.
Only then, after unrelenting judgment, comes Amos's single word of restoration (9:11 to 15): in that day I will raise up the fallen booth of David, wall up its breaches, rebuild it as in the days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name; Israel planted in the land, war no more, the nations joined to Israel's blessing. Acts 15 quotes the passage, an issue reserved for that book; among the interpretations, some read the booth as the church (a position found in the EBC), Dumbrell's covenantal work The Faith of Israel sees the New Jerusalem, but the majority of commentators of every stripe, even the neo-orthodox Freedman, read the Messiah in the kingdom, Essex's own position, with the kingdom understood from Revelation 20 as the millennium. Amos ends in hope: when judgment is fully spent, the Davidic King restores the house and its rule, from Israel to the nations.
The one-chapter vision of Obadiah carries three themes. Edom's sin is double: pride, verse 3, dwelling in the clefts of the rock and believing no nation could reach her; and the failure of brotherly concern, verses 10 to 14: when Jerusalem fell, Edom did not come to Jacob's aid but stood aloof, gloated in the day of disaster, looted the wealth, and cut down the fugitives. Verse 15 then widens the lens: for the day of the Lord draws near on all the nations; as you have done, it will be done to you, Amos's standard again; and as Edom drank on God's holy mountain, all the nations will drink and swallow and become as if they had never existed. Edom stands representative of every nation's attitude toward Jerusalem. Restoration follows (verses 17 to 21): on Mount Zion there will be those who escape, and it will be holy; the house of Jacob will possess their possessions, Edom included, the territories from the Negev to Zarephath restored, and deliverers will ascend Mount Zion to judge the mountain of Esau, and the kingdom will be the Lord's.
First, which plundering of Jerusalem does Obadiah describe? Chronicles records assaults under Jehoram (2 Chronicles 21) and Ahaz (2 Chronicles 28), though neither mentions Edom's gloating and slaughter of fugitives; the majority position reads 586 BC; Feinberg alone reads the passage prophetically, Edom's future conduct foreseen, which conveniently leaves the book's own date undetermined. Second, Obadiah 1 to 9 and Jeremiah 49 overlap extensively: who used whom? A late Obadiah borrowing Jeremiah suits liberal source-critics and none of the recommended commentators; probably Jeremiah used Obadiah, or, the majority view, both drew on a common source; and Feinberg says candidly that we do not know, and that in the end it makes little difference, since later prophets demonstrably take up earlier prophets' language, as Jeremiah does Isaiah's.
Amos and Obadiah end in Israel's restoration, and a reader might conclude God has a compassion for Israel that he lacks for the nations. Jonah answers with a resounding no. The book's first theme is sovereignty: the Lord hurled a great wind, appointed a great fish, commanded the fish to vomit Jonah out, appointed a plant, appointed a scorching wind; everything in the book is appointed, beginning with the word of the Lord itself: arise, go to Nineveh. And Jonah, told to go northeast, buys passage as far west as he knows: Tarshish, fleeing the presence of the very Lord he confesses as God of heaven, sea, and dry land.
Commentators speculate that Jonah feared Assyrian brutality or lacked courage or faith; Jonah's own explanation in 4:2 removes the mystery: I fled to Tarshish because I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, one who relents concerning calamity, quoting Yahweh's self-revelation of Exodus 34:6, which Jonah was happy to have applied to idolatrous Israel in the wilderness. Forty days' warning meant forty days to repent, and Jonah knew that if Nineveh repented, God would relent; he wanted Nineveh judged, and refused to be the vehicle of her possible repentance. His problem is not with God's sovereignty; it is with God's compassion.
Read chapter 2 carefully: the prayer from the fish is desperate thanksgiving, salvation belongs to the Lord, with vows to sacrifice where Yahweh is worshiped, but it contains no word of repentance; and when the word comes a second time, Jonah goes, having no wish for three more days of accommodation in the fish, outwardly compliant and inwardly unmoved. Chapter 4 proves it: his last words are, I have good reason to be angry, even to death. The structure sharpens the indictment: the Gentile sailors of chapter 1 fear Yahweh, sacrifice, and vow, everything Jonah will not do; the Ninevites of chapter 3 repent at the word, the very thing Jonah never does; and the book ends with Yahweh's unanswered question, you had compassion on the plant; should I not have compassion on Nineveh?, leaving the reader never told what became of the prophet. Essex adds the sober note from 2 Kings 14: Jonah of Gath-hepher spoke Yahweh's word about Jeroboam II's expanding borders, with no recorded word against Jeroboam's sin; whether he was an unfaithful prophet of Yahweh (the majority view), a merely nationalistic prophet (Allen), or worse, Feinberg's summary stands: Jonah is the only directly disobedient prophet among the latter prophets, still angry when his book ends.
Because a fish swallowing a man is the great miracle of the book, some, Allen among conservatives, call Jonah allegory or parable; Alexander offers the middle category didactic history, a real Jonah and a historical foundation with the emphasis on teaching rather than every detail. Essex takes it as historical narrative: the psalm of chapter 2 is introduced narratively, he prayed and said, a prayer prayed in the fish, and Matthew 12:40's use fits history best. As for purpose: the call to repentance (position A) is present but too narrow; the unfulfilled-40-days theory has no conservative defenders; the debate lies between correcting Israel's attitude toward the Gentiles and Alexander's theodicy of divine justice and mercy. Essex, reading Jonah within the Twelve, sharpens it: while Israel was the stiff-necked, ineffective servant under impending judgment, the sovereign Yahweh brought salvation to repentant Gentiles, and did it through the word carried by that ineffective prophet, he did not bypass Israel. The God of justice is the God of compassion, for any generation that repents; Nineveh's reprieve came about two generations before God used Assyria as the rod against Israel, and Nahum will record the later generation's judgment when the repentance was forgotten, moving the Twelve from Assyria toward Babylon and Habakkuk.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Tap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all twenty-three are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. What does the locust plague signify in Joel?
2. What internal evidence points to Joel's southern audience?
3. Why does Essex take the invader of Joel 2 as a literal human army?
4. On Essex's structure, what are God's three responses to Israel's future repentance in Joel 2:18 to 3:21?
5. What logic should be held in mind for Peter's use of Joel in Acts 2?
6. Which dating of Joel has Essex always leaned toward?
7. What rhetorical effect do Amos's circling oracles achieve?
8. On what different bases are the Gentiles and Israel condemned in Amos 1 and 2?
9. What does Essex say about the summons prepare to meet your God in Amos 4:12?
10. How does Amos 5 correct those longing for the day of the Lord?
11. After which vision does God cease to relent in Amos?
12. What does the Amaziah interlude demonstrate?
13. How do the majority of commentators, across theological stripes, read the fallen booth of David?
14. What double sin does Obadiah charge against Edom?
15. How does Obadiah widen Edom's judgment to the nations?
16. What is the majority position on the date of Edom's actions in Obadiah 10 to 14?
17. How does Feinberg handle the overlap between Obadiah and Jeremiah 49?
18. What question does Jonah's placement in the Twelve answer?
19. By Jonah's own testimony, why did he flee to Tarshish?
20. What is notably absent from Jonah's prayer in chapter 2?
21. Who in the book stands as Jonah's opposites?
22. How does Essex classify the genre of Jonah?
23. What is Essex's account of Jonah's purpose within the Twelve?
All twenty-three correct. Lecture 17 is complete.
Joel reads a natural disaster as a covenant summons to repent. Without turning every hardship into a verdict, how can a believer rightly hear God's warnings in events, and what guards against misreading them?
Amos let Bethel cheer the judgment of every neighbor before the word landed on Israel. Where do you most enjoy hearing judgment aimed at others, and what would it take for the word to land on you?
Israel longed for the day of the Lord assuming it meant light for them. What present-day assumptions about being on God's side does Amos 5 unsettle?
Jonah's theology was flawless, he could quote Exodus 34:6 from memory, and his heart resented the very grace he confessed. Where might accurate doctrine be coexisting with resentment of God's mercy in you?
The book of Jonah ends with God's question unanswered and the prophet's fate untold. Why might Scripture leave the ending open, and how would you answer the question about compassion if it were addressed to you?
Jonah 4:2
Read Joel straight through in one sitting, marking where you think the locusts end and the army begins, then Amos 1 and 2 aloud to feel the circling oracles land. Read Obadiah beside Jeremiah 49:7 to 22, and finish with Jonah whole, watching for any word of repentance from the prophet. Next session: Micah, the centerpiece of the Twelve, and the ruler from Bethlehem.