Like the later prophets, the Hebrew prophets were divinely authorized whistleblowers. The prophet Nathan confronted King David over his adultery and murder; Isaiah and Jeremiah confronted their kings over their alliances with foreign powers; Elijah confronted King Ahab over the murder and dispossession of his neighbor. Prophets from Amos to Jeremiah excoriate the priests of their day for making a mockery of Temple worship by attempting to bribe God with sacrifices and pious words. The prophets insist that all religious rites must serve righteousness, that moral purity comes before ritual purity. No wonder the Hebrew prophets were condemned and persecuted by priests and kings for being both heretics and traitors. The Hebrew prophets almost never attempted to exercise priestly or political power; they simply attempted to veto the abuses of priests and kings in the name of God. The Hebrew prophets, like our later prophets, were more than merely critics; they were also visionaries of peace and social justice.

Promises of Israel's restoration appear throughout the Latter Prophets. This chapter argues that modern interpreters have overlooked the surprising amount of attention specifically paid to the fate of the northern tribes of Israel throughout the Latter Prophets, even in books by prophets who lived long after the destruction of the northern kingdom.Whereas many have suggested a narrowing in the scope of Israel such that prophecies such as those of Second Isaiah refer to the restoration of Judah, this chapter argues that the prophets consistently take a more expansive view of Israel and that Second Temple period readers would have—and in fact did—read these prophecies as referring not only to those from Judah exiled by the Babylonians but also to the northern tribes scattered by the Assyrians in the eighth century BCE. The prophets' promises therefore remained unfulfilled so long as the northern tribes had not returned.