This book is an ambitious attempt to understand anew the prophetic witness of the OT by taking seriously its canonical presentation, which also has relevance for history. The typical introduction to the prophets provides a historical presentation, arranging the prophets chronologically based on a critical reconstruction of the past. Consequently, Amos is frequently presented first and Jonah is last. This ignores the canonical presentation of the prophets, which has the major literary sequence of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, followed by the twelve Minor Prophets, which open with Hosea and close with Malachi. For Seitz, the problem with the historical critical reconstruction is that it is always dependent on new facts being discovered and is fraught with uncertainty: “Historical redescription virtually requires instability, for the past is constantly requiring fresh reconstructions of it once the Bible is seen chiefly as a source for this and not its own presentation of it” (p. 68). Moreover the reconstruction provides a fundamentally different context for the prophetic word than that of the canon. In the historical presentation, the prophets comprise a list of isolated individual voices, each with individual charisma. The canonical presentation emphasizes sacred authority as well as literary and thematic unity whose goal is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Yet the canonical presentation is equally historical as well for it presents “its own very sophisticated version of history” that is figural—a configured witness provided by the final form of the canon. Seitz cites Barth to the effect that biblical history is “a very particular history of reconciliation and revelation.” The only way to appreciate this is to have a paradigm with its own “unique presentation of time and of God’s accomplishing word within it … to allow the final form of the witness to have its say in just that form” (72). In the historical critical presentation, the prophets are “loners” who have been configured out of the biblical witness to Jesus Christ; Seitz wants to figure them back in, and it is only the canon that can do this.

Seitz essentially focuses on the twelve Minor Prophets to make his point for heuristic reasons. Most introductions to the prophets completely overlook the material form of the Minor Prophets. They constitute one book in the Hebrew Bible with Hosea at the beginning and Malachi at the end. Although it is true that the order found in the book follows general chronological sequence with the pre-exilic prophets followed by the post-exilic ones, a number of the prophets do not have historical notations to date them to a particular time, namely Joel, Obadiah, and Jonah. Historical critics generally date them to the exilic or post-exilic periods, resulting in a later treatment than would be the case if the canonical order was followed. But Seitz points out that what is gained for history is a loss for theology. Noting the work of literary critics who are studying the unity of the book of the Twelve, Seitz shows that there are important theological reasons for the placement of these particular books early in the canonical order. Hosea concludes with a call for Israel to repent while Joel gives an instance of repentance in its generation. Moreover, Joel concludes with the same quotation that initiates the book of Amos; Obadiah 1–10 is virtually a commentary on Joel 4:19 (MT); and Obadiah 15–21 expounds Amos 9:12. And while Obadiah focuses upon the judgment of a foreign nation, this is not the last word as the next text in the canonical sequence, Jonah, offers salvation to a foreign nation.

Moreover, Seitz advances additional theological reasons for a new understanding of the Minor Prophets. Hosea begins the prophetic collection to show the nature of the covenant that was made with Israel. It was a covenant of love and mercy but it is not just any mercy: Hosea is a commentary on Exod 33–34 and in particular what I term the “apostles’ creed of the Old Testament” (Exod 34:6–7). This theme of mercy and grace as well as justice is developed in the ensuing prophetic witness virtually as a leitmotif: Joel, Jonah, Micah, Nahum. Here Seitz considers the work of Raymond Van Leeuwen and others in which the juxtaposition of mercy and judgment throughout the prophets has important hermeneutical significance.

Seitz is at his best when pointing out the literary connections between books and then trying to understand their theological significance. He notes the hermeneutical impact of the psalms in Jonah (chap. 2) and Habakkuk (ch.3) that prepare the way for the Psalter to follow in the Hebrew canon. But his comments are rich with profound insight:

Both psalms tell of audacious hope amid death, in the belly of a whale and the belly of history’s dark unfolding. Jonah’s tribute to the Almighty is so unanticipated—prior to his disgorgement on safe shores—that the Gordian knot of interpretation is regularly cut and the psalm excised or moved to a “better place” (how might we even know what that is?). In its present place, however, it is both a powerful reminder that praise is a lesson best learned when all is dark and that praise even so hard-won can be tragically short-lived. (p. 243)

Seitz’s work also demonstrates that the critical reconstruction of Jonah’s place in history often leads to hermeneutical distortion. For example, Blenkinsopp’s point that the late appearance in history of Jonah with his message of love shows that by this time prophecy is exhausted and that there is a new understanding of the prophetic message that “God’s ultimate will is always and everywhere to save” (p. 23). But this is a Jonah “figured out” of the canonical presentation. However, if Jonah does not have the last word, but is “figured in” to the prophetic witness, he is heard in harmony with his close canonical neighbor, Nahum, who deals with the same historical nation—Assyria. Consequently, Blenkinsopp’s conclusion is in need of just a bit of revision. The tenor of God’s grace must be harmonized with the bass of His judgment. Thus the strengths of this book are obvious: the witness of the canon itself and not a historically uncertain reconstruction, the literary associations and thematic unity that result, the hermeneutical significance of the canonical arrangement, and the exegetical insight that Seitz provides. This is a book that will be required reading for all future studies on the prophets. Seitz is to be commended for his yeoman service in this regard.

Yet this book is not without its weaknesses. Seitz is laudably trying to find a middle way between the extremes of faith and history with his canonical presentation. On the one hand there is the pious understanding of the prophets, which are understood for their dogmatic and religious value. On the other is the historicist view, which lays bare the historical background of the prophets focusing on their historical context while ignoring their moral and religious authority. Both views of course are wrong, for Scripture is neither disembodied faith nor can it be reduced to embodied history. “[This] faith-history dichotomy would suggest only two basic options but my judgment is that a canonical reading of the prophets averts such a cleavage” (p. 81n12). While I deeply sympathize with Seitz’s efforts, I can’t help but think that there is too large a gap between his “canonical history” and “ordinary history.” This was a problem that his mentor, Brevard Childs, in my judgment never completely overcame. Can there be a canonical meaning independent of historical meaning? I think there can be, if there is no historical claim in the “canonical” text. But what if the canon makes a historical claim? It seems to me that prophecy has at its heart historical claims. Historical verification was one of the criteria for biblical prophecy (Deut 18:15ff.). If Ahab came back alive from Ramoth-Gilead, then Micaiah was no prophet. All the people were witnesses (1 Kgs 22:28). I realize that a “theological history” and a “secular history” have different perspectives, but they must deal with the same unfolding of chronological reality; otherwise one of them must be the stuff of “fairy tales.” The theological maximum must have a historical minimum. The prophetic claim has for its raison d’être transcendence. This shows that ordinary history is not ordinary history but is also shaped by the God of the prophets, who is the God of all time. It is because He is the Lord of History (not now divided into secular and sacred) that prophecy can be prophecy.

Many of the prophetic headings and many of the details in their speeches show the importance of a common history to which everyone has access, which locates the prophetic words in a particular time and place. They were part and parcel of the same historical process that included everyone. But among other things what made them different was their ability to see the future, not in some clairvoyant sense but in a profound theological sense. Thus, the heading at the beginning of Amos (the words of Amos “two years before the earthquake” [Amos 1:1b]) not only resonates with the mention of the earthquake in the last days in Zech 14:5, but it points to something that Amos predicted would happen in ordinary history and gives his words instant credibility. If the canonical prophets were not actual prophets speaking their words in flesh and blood, their words would be timeless gnostic sayings. If they could be reduced to their historical times, they were not prophets. Their words are incarnational, transcendent, historically particularized expressions of the divine will.

This is a difficult problem and it will just not go away by asserting the importance of the canonical form and a specialized sophisticated version of history. On the one hand how can Sacred Scripture be treated as such by the believer and on the other hand as any other document when the believer uses the historical critical method? The biblical-theology movement of the 1950s and 1960s failed to do this because the historically critical minimum and the theological maximum were too often at odds with one another. The problem with the historical critical method is the anti-supernatural bias of its premises: for one it is based on assumptions that treat the canon like any other document. It is interesting that Paul’s understanding of the resurrection of Christ has no place for such a discrepancy between a sophisticated special version of history and ordinary history. In 1 Cor 15, he argues that the resurrection is the bedrock belief of Christianity without which it makes an empty claim. His understanding is based on sacred documents (according to the Scriptures) but also on historical “fact” (personal experience and eye-witnesses). As is often pointed out, people in the first century were not more naïve and credulous than people today (although our contemporary culture is rife with examples that prove the opposite). Yet Paul was sensitive to history, and if these historical “facts” had not happened, there would be a colossal problem for him. It seems to me that a critical historical method has to be worked out that can be the ally of Scripture, not its enemy, a tool that is not methodologically atheistic but that is open to theism. At any rate this is a tall order, but I think it is a necessary one to help us move forward to be able to treat the Bible truly as the canon.

While I think the historical problem is the main weakness of Seitz’s presentation, there are a few others. In a work that is laying the foundation for an introduction to the prophets that has Jesus Christ as its ultimate hermeneutical goal, it would have been nice to see a few more examples of figural interpretation in the light of the great Figure himself. If Christ himself embodies the nation of Israel, then it would have been interesting to see how this embodiment fulfilled the words of the prophets with their focus on the Son of Man (Ezekiel), the suffering servant (Isaiah), the new David (Hosea), the ruler from of old (Micah), the Davidic booth (Amos), the experience of Jonah, etc. The ease with which Jesus saw his life and ministry combining and fulfilling these images of the future assumes the collective witness of the prophetic material. It would have been fascinating to see how Exod 34:6–7 with its dialectic of mercy and justice works its ways through the prophets to reach its culmination in the death of the God-man. In this regard, I am not only thinking of individual texts but also of larger complexes. For example a number of scholars have argued that the juxtaposition of judgment and salvation oracles in the prophets contributes to a pattern stressing the death and resurrection of Israel. The fact that the death of Jerusalem and its resurrection occurs at the midpoint of the Twelve can hardly be coincidental as Seitz points out. But it seems to me the redemptive historical significance of this fact in light of the NT would have been worth pondering. I am sure that that the author, master exegete that he is, could have added a stimulating chapter in which he sketched out just how the Prophets part of the Law and Prophets pointed to Christ. Perhaps another edition of this book could include such a chapter.

Thirdly, I was expecting some connection of the Prophets with their counterparts in the Hebrew Bible: the Former Prophets—Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. As Seitz points out, the purpose of the historical superscriptions of many of the prophets is to relate them to the narratives in 1-2 Kings. But also as Freedman has shown, the pairing of four books of prophetic oracles with four “historical” books in the Hebrew canon is hardly coincidental. Moreover the strange silence of the Latter Prophets in the Former Prophets (Kings) is probably intentional. Although there are many theories as to why the narrative histories are included with the Prophets, it would be helpful to have a discussion of this particularly in a book that is dealing with the Prophets and the canon. As scholars have argued, the evidence of “canonical binding” between the beginning of the Former Prophets and the end of the Latter Prophets further argues for the integrity of this canonical division.

The above criticisms are not intended to derogate an extremely stimulating and thoughtful work, but are meant in the spirit of helping to lay a solid foundation for the study of the Prophetic Books in the future. I think that this book points the way forward to help us understand the prophets in their canonical form.

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