When people think of the prophets of the Bible, they immediately think of those to whom God gave a vision of the future. Of course, there is a lot of truth to that understanding, but it does not exhaust the meaning of prophecy, nor the mission of the prophets.

In the first place, the prophets are God’s messengers. The prophets communicate their messenger role by often starting their report of God’s speech with “thus says the Lord” (hundreds of times in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) or “decree of Yahweh” (also hundreds of times). God, after all, tells the prophets what to say to his people, and they, sometimes reluctantly, carry his message to the people. When the prophet spoke, people heard the voice of God. They were like the ambassadors of a king, in this case the divine king.

But God commissioned his prophets for a special type of message and for special times. God used prophets to warn his people when they were breaking his covenant law. They were the ones who warned the people that if they kept breaking the law God would bring the punishment anticipated by the curses of the covenant on them (see, for instance, Deuteronomy 27–28). In this sense they were like lawyers of the covenant who brought charges against the people and threatened them with divine punishments.

While the prophets were often sent to the whole people of God, they also had a special relationship with the king. In essence they served as the conscience of the king. For this role, see the relationship between Samuel and Saul, Nathan and David, and Elijah and Ahab. Also note how a prophet like Jeremiah will often specifically address the king in their prophetic speeches.

It is in their function as covenant lawyers and as the conscience of the king that they speak about the future. God tells the prophets to announce to his people that if they continue in their sin then they will suffer the consequences. Much prophecy is, therefore, conditional. Judgment will come unless the people repent. But sometimes, particularly after the people clearly reject the prophet’s message, God gives them a definite and unchangeable picture of the future (unconditional prophecy). God can tell them about the future because only God, not the false gods, knows the future with certainty (Isaiah 48).

But there is another very important task for which the prophets were responsible. They were to pray for the people. They were to pray that God would change their hearts and repent. Think of Moses who prayed to God to continue with the people of Israel who had rebelled against him by worshipping the Golden Calf (Exodus 32–33).

They were to pray for the people. They were to pray that God would change their hearts and repent.

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Abraham was the first named prophet. He did not talk about the future; he rather prayed for the Philistine king (Gen. 20:7). Moses was the model prophet from whom all later prophets derive (Deuteronomy 18:14–22). We have stories about some prophets (Samuel, Elijah, etc.), while other prophets wrote down their words (the writing prophets). Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are among the second type.

Since God commissioned the prophets to warn his people about God’s coming judgment, prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel came at times of great crisis. We will describe these crises below as we present below the distinctive messages of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. These three are often called major prophets to distinguish them from minor prophets (see How to Read Prophecy: The Minor Prophets) simply because they are considerably longer than the minor prophets. But first we need to recognize certain basic and important principles to keep in mind as we read the major prophets.