Minor Prophets in a Major Key

All Scripture is God-breathed, but not every portion of it is embraced by Christians with equal vigor. Tribal lists, specific sacrificial obligations, seemingly endless genealogical records, and apparently gratuitous acts of warfare are readily scanned over. But could the minor prophets be added to that list? Should they be? They certainly seem more difficult to locate for many of us than, say, the books of Moses or the Psalms. The writer is clear in his assessment from the start, positing that our relative ignorance of these twelve books, tucked away at the end of the Old Testament, impinges negatively on the Christian believer's walk.

Covering a period of around four hundred years, each book is revealed through two contextual settings: the historical and that which was personal to the individual pensmith, before a brief overview reveals the main points of that author's writing. The bulk of each chapter is concerned with the ""Major Key"" of the title. Taking a verse or two from each of the minor prophets, Chris Woodall develops a theme to bring practical application with a potentially positive impact to life as a Christian in the twenty-first century from lessons over two-and-a-half thousand years old.


Chris Woodall is former Associate Professor of Dogmatics at North-West University, South Africa. This is his fourth book for Wipf and Stock. The first three, Covenant: the Basis of God's Self-Disclosure (2011), Kingdom: the Expression of God's Rule (2012), and Atonement: God's Means of Effecting Man's Reconciliation (2015) are also available from this publisher and other outlets.