Little Known Bible Characters: Iddo

By Elizabeth Prata

When I read the Bible and someone is named that I am not too familiar with, it makes me curious. I’ll never get tired of studying Paul or Peter or John or Stephen or Lydia…but then someone is mentioned and I go “Another person to get to know! Who was h/she?” Like, Tychicus, Eutychus (the guy who fell out the window during Paul’s long sermon), Chloe, Rufus, and so many others.

These were real people. They were fellow believers and part of the body. We will meet them in heaven. So let’s take a look in this new series, at some names of folks we don’t know much about.

While there may not be a huge amount the Bible says about these folks, studying what we do know we will learn there is more than we think.

PROPHETS

The Old Testament is divided into Law, Wisdom, History, and Prophets. Of the Prophets, there are whole books dedicated to these men and the words God used their mouths to utter. The Major Prophets, so called because their books were longer, not because they were more important than any other book, were Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel. There were the Minor Prophets, so called because their books were shorter, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.

But those were not ALL the prophets operating in the Old Testament (or the New). There were others named and many others in the School of Prophets who were not named.

Of the named Prophets who do not have a book about them or written by them, there is one called Iddo.

He is listed in a verse along with Nathan the Prophet, and Iddo is named as a seer. There are many definitions and suppositions about the seers and their differences in operation to the Prophets, which I won’t get into. Except to paste what The Lexham Bible Dictionary has to say,

Generally synonymous with the role of the prophet (e.g., 2 Sam 24:11; 1 Chr 21:9; Amos 7:12). However, at times, it is used as a distinct term from that of prophet (2 Kgs 17:13). Seer, by connotation of the Hebrew word affiliated with it being connected to the idea of receiving a vision (חֹזֶה, chozeh), may be more connected to the idea of visions than the prophetic word, although this is not necessarily the case in all usages.

An additional term used for “seer” does not necessarily evoke the connotation of one who receives a vision but does evoke the idea of seeing (רֹאֶה, ro’eh; e.g., Isa 30:10). Nonetheless, even this term is used synonymously with “prophet”; this point is explicitly made in an aside in 1 Sam 9:9: “Formerly in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he would say: ‘Come, let us go up to the seer.’ For the prophet of today was formerly called a seer” (compare 1 Sam 9:19). A “Chronicle of the Seers” is also mentioned in 2 Chr 33:19.

Source Barry, J. D. (2016). Seer. In The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Lexham Press.

Cleared that right up, didn’t it? Not so much.

Iddo the name means lovely, his beloved, or His love. Iddo was was contemporary to Solomon and Rehoboam. We read this specific Iddo (for there are others named Iddo in the Old Testament), three times in the OT:

Now the rest of the acts of Abijah, and his ways and his words are written in the treatise of the prophet Iddo. (2 Chronicles 13:22)

The Death of Solomon
Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, from first to last, are they not written in the chronicles of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer concerning Jeroboam the son of Nebat? (2 Chronicles 9:29)

Now the acts of Rehoboam, from first to last, are they not written in the records of Shemaiah the prophet and of Iddo the seer, according to genealogical record? Now there were wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days. (2 Chronicles 12:15).

Iddo prophesied against Jeroboam. He also seems to have written stories about the lives of the Kings and events in Israel and Judah, but
those stories have not been included in the canon.

Some claim these writings of Iddo were “lost,” but Yahweh never loses anything and has perfectly preserved His word through centuries. His Spirit has inspired men to include exactly what God wanted included in the canon. If it’s not in the canon, it isn’t meant for us, as God considered it unnecessary for our edification. The Bible is all-sufficient.

Iddo may also be the grandfather of the minor prophet Zechariah (see Zechariah 1:1,7) but there is much discussion as to whether this is the same Iddo.

Hard tellin’ not knowin’, as the saying goes.

And that is all I could find out about Iddo! Blessings, and thank you for reading.

Further Reading

Understanding the Prophets (including seers) from Ligonier

What was a seer in the Bible? from GotQuestions