Theology · Updated August 15, 2026
The designation 'major prophets' refers to the four longest prophetic books in the Hebrew Bible: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. The term is a Christian categorization based on length, not importance — the Jewish canon organizes the same books as part of the Nevi'im (Prophets) without distinguishing major from minor. In the Hebrew arrangement, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel appear alongside the twelve shorter prophetic books collectively called the Twelve; Daniel is placed not among the prophets but in the Ketuvim (Writings), between Esther and Ezra-Nehemiah.
The four prophets span roughly two centuries of Israelite history — from the Assyrian period through the Babylonian Exile — and overlap in time and theme. Isaiah son of Amoz prophesied in Jerusalem during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (c. 740-700 BC), a period dominated by the threat of Assyria. The Assyrian empire under Tiglath-Pileser III and then Sennacherib conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC and besieged Jerusalem in 701 BC. Isaiah's oracles address this period directly: the threat of Assyria (chapters 1-39) and, in the traditional view, the anticipated Babylonian Exile and restoration (chapters 40-66).
Jeremiah son of Hilkiah prophesied from 627 BC — during Josiah's reform — through and past the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. He witnessed all three Babylonian deportations and was taken to Egypt against his will by a group of survivors after Gedaliah's assassination (Jeremiah 43). He is the only major prophet who remained in the land of Israel rather than going to Babylon. His oracles are distinguished by their personal candor — the confessions in chapters 11-20 include his cursing of the day he was born — and by his politically unpopular insistence that resistance to Babylon was futile because the exile was God's judgment.
Ezekiel son of Buzi was deported in 597 BC with Jehoiachin and conducted his entire ministry in Babylon, at the Chebar canal settlement of Tel Abib. His book is organized chronologically by dated visions, the latest of which is 571 BC. He never returned to the land. His oracles divide sharply: chapters 1-24 are judgment, chapters 25-32 are oracles against foreign nations, and chapters 33-48 are restoration and hope, including the Valley of Dry Bones, the Gog and Magog prophecy, and the detailed Temple vision of chapters 40-48.
Daniel differs from the other three in that he was not primarily a preaching prophet but a court official who received private visions. Deported in 605 BC — the first deportation — he served in both the Babylonian and Persian royal courts, achieving positions of considerable authority. The book's first half (chapters 1-6) contains court narratives; the second half (chapters 7-12) contains Daniel's personal visions, which share the apocalyptic genre with the book of Revelation and 1 Enoch.
The four major prophets span from the Assyrian threat (Isaiah, c. 740 BC) through the late Babylonian exile (Ezekiel, 571 BC), covering the period in which Israel lost its land, its monarchy, and its Temple — and developing the theological framework that sustained Judaism through all subsequent dispersions.
The four major prophets carry the largest share of the OT's messianic content, and debates about what that content means directly affect Jewish-Christian dialogue and Christian intra-theological debate.
Isaiah's messianic passages fall into three categories. Chapters 7-12 contain the Emmanuel prophecy (7:14), the Prince of Peace passage (9:6), and the Branch of Jesse oracle (11:1-10). Isaiah 40-55 contains the four Servant Songs (42:1-9, 49:1-13, 50:4-11, 52:13-53:12), of which the fourth is the most directly applied to Jesus in the NT, cited in Matthew 8:17, Luke 22:37, Acts 8:32-33, Romans 10:16, and 1 Peter 2:22-25. The NT applies the Servant Songs to Jesus as their primary fulfillment; Jewish tradition generally reads the Servant as Israel, or as an idealized righteous sufferer, or as a future Messiah who is not identified with Jesus.
Jeremiah's theological stakes center on the New Covenant passage (31:31-34), which the author of Hebrews quotes as the scriptural justification for the superiority of Christ's covenant. The stakes of that passage are whether 'New Covenant' means a genuinely new arrangement (the NT reading) or a renewed form of the Sinai covenant (the Jewish reading). Jeremiah's placement of the New Covenant amid Israel's national restoration, with the preceding chapters (30-31, the Book of Consolation) promising physical return to the land, complicates Christian readings that spiritualize the promise entirely.
Ezekiel's theological stakes are concentrated in three areas. The temple vision of chapters 40-48 describes a Temple more elaborate than Solomon's, never built by any Jewish community. Premillennial readers expect a literal millennial Temple; amillennial readers treat the vision as a symbolic portrayal of the church or the new
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Upgrade to ScholarDaniel's stakes are primarily eschatological. The four beasts, the little horn, the seventy weeks, and the resurrection promise of 12:2, 'many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt,' are the OT's clearest assertions of individual bodily resurrection and final judgment. Whether this resurrection language is metaphorical (describing national restoration) or literal (describing personal resurrection after death) is a question the text itself does not resolve definitively, but the NT reads it literally and builds its resurrection theology partly on this foundation.
The Major Prophets also carry the weight of the authorship debates that shape modern theological authority claims. The single-authorship of Isaiah determines whether predictive prophecy is possible. The sixth-century date of Daniel determines whether its four-kingdom schema is prophecy or historical retrojection. These are not merely academic questions: they determine whether the Bible contains specific divine foreknowledge of history, and thus bear directly on claims about its authority and inspiration.
The major prophets together constitute the primary OT witness to the fall of Israel and Judah, the theology of exile, and the expectation of restoration. The NT cites them more than any other section of the OT — Isaiah alone is quoted or alluded to over 400 times.
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