This is a comprehensive and astute interpretive study of the prophetic tradition of ancient Israel. Ward interprets the whole of the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Prophets, placing the religious/theological message of these prophets into its most probable historical context. But he also deals with the socioeconomic world of Israael's prophets, so that readers are able to confront the message, the ideas, of the prophets in relation to the larger realities through which the people and the prophets were living.