Sex. Violence. Hypocrisy. Revenge. Quentin Tarantino meets A Catcher in the Rye in the Minor Prophets, a collection of twelve short books with the misfortune of having the lamest nickname in the Bible.

Prophets Unchained

The Minor Prophets open with a shocking story: God orders the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute, have a few kids and then violently abuse his whole family. The point is to symbolize Israel’s unfaithfulness and an imminent foreign invasion, but that’s not the only message this sends.

The days of milk and honey are over, saith the Lord, and things are getting crazy up in here.

What follows over the next eleven books is a divine guilt trip through two major turning points in Jewish history: the Assyrian invasion, which threw thousands of Israelites out of their homes without a Find My Lost Tribes app, and the Babylonian invasion, in which the remaining two tribes just got temporarily misplaced. And by “temporarily,” we mean about 70 years.

Here are just a few of the highlights in these decidedly not up-with-people books:

• The prophet Joel predicts that millions of bugs will swarm over the land and send all of the Israelites’ internet activity back to the NSA.
• A shepherd named Amos predicts God’s judgment upon religious leaders, the 1% and the future Fox executives who will cancel Firefly.
• God sends the Assyrians to punish Israel and a prophet named Nahum calls for the total annihilation of the invaders’ capital city for their role in carrying out God’s will.
• Meanwhile, the prophet Jonah thinks the Assyrians deserve to die and God sends a giant fish to swallow him alive.
• After a remnant of Jewish exiles return from decades of captivity in Babylon, a series of prophets blame them for their suffering.

Much Ado about Naming

About that name. Over the years the word “minor” has made people who want to say good things about these books unnecessarily defensive. Exhibit #1: a steady stream of puns about how the Minor Prophets are really major this and major that, made in the hopes of taking these guys out of AAA ball to play in the big leagues with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel.

So let’s get this out of the way: the minor in Minor Prophets didn’t originally mean what it now does in English. Back in the day “minor” was a Latin way of saying smaller, and in this case it’s a reference to length. The books in the Minor Prophets are for the most part rather short, along the order of a couple three-blog posts.

And that’s pretty much who the Minor Prophets are—twelve angry bloggers.

What gets them so mad is a situation that may sound rather familiar. A couple hundred years or so earlier, the twelve tribes of Israel had entered into an agreement, or covenant, to create one nation under God. Rather than having a bunch of subservient states ruled by the richest and most powerful city, the twelve tribes would be equal, and instead of a society dominated by the wealthy the Israelite dream was for every family to own a home, a dog and a big screen TV. Well, make that a vine and a fig tree.

That was Israel’s golden age, but according to the Minor Prophets it’s all been downhill since then. Thanks to ungodly infighting, Israel has split into two countries: Israel, the ten tribes in the north, and Judah, which is much smaller but includes Jerusalem and the temple. A broken covenant, ungodly foreign alliances, fake piety, big business out of control—Israel and Judah aren’t what they used to be, and the Minor Prophets want to make sure that they get what they deserve.

Yet their message isn’t entirely one of condemnation, and a clue to the Minor Prophets’ ultimate agenda can be found in the fact that the Hebrew scriptures don’t call them minor at all. Instead, the Jewish Bible collects all twelve of these prophets into a single book, just as the prophets themselves predict Israel and Judah would once again be unified as twelve tribes in one.

Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?

Ever feel like you were on a one-way trip in the wrong direction? If so, then the Minor Prophets are for you.

Although the incidents described in the Minor Prophets took place more than 1500 years ago, the struggles they encounter are surprisingly fresh. Horrible things that happen for no apparent reason. Political leaders who betray their core values. Hypocritical do-gooders. Wealthy people who take advantage of poor and middle class. The Minor Prophets wrestle with all these issues and more in their characteristically colorful way, and even if we may not agree with everything they say, they ask the difficult questions.

For example: Can a covenant culture grounded in a commitment to social responsibility co-exist with capitalism and self-interest? When left to their own devices, will people do the right thing? Is income inequality unavoidable?

Lots of people important people were thinking about these things through the years. Martin Luther’s reading of the prophet Habakkuk helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Harriet Beecher Stowe drew from the Minor Prophets in writing the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Martin Luther King, Jr. regularly cited the prophet Amos in advocating for his dream of racial justice. Labor activists everywhere love Amos. The book of Jonah has been an inspiration for countless attempts to understand the all too human failure to do the right thing, including the classic Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.

These are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. At a time when many people are dissatisfied with the gap between the American dream and the present reality, the Minor Prophets are ready for their next close-up.