Major and Minor Prophets

The Books of Prophecy are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Hagai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

These are interesting books because there is a lot of foretelling. Some things are very strong and catastrophic but there are also some very beautiful and encouraging passages such as Malachi 4:5 & 6, Isaiah 53, Lamentations 3:24 and Habakkuk 3:16-19.

This group is usually broken down further into the the Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets. I used to be perplexed why some are considered major prophets and some minor but to my surprise, I learned the only difference is the major prophets wrote longer books! Lamentations is included in the Major Prophets because it was written by Jeremiah.

Using this additional breakdown there are 5 and 12 books in this group. So the full pattern for the Old Testament is 5, 12, 5, 5, 12.