Basics of the Old Testament - Lesson 2

In this lecture on Basics of the Old Testament, I want to walk through each of the different books of the Old Testament and kind of give you a bird's eye view of the Old Testament canon of Scripture and what's going on in those books and who are the main players, kind of some of the names that you're going to be hearing over and over again so that when you get there, you're like, oh yeah, I've heard that a little bit. Miles talked about David or Moses or Adam, things like that. And so I think it'll be helpful to do that.

There are 39 books in the Old Testament as it comes to us in the English translation of the Bible. Remember, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic. And now we translate that into English so that we can read it.

All right. Now on the chart that I'm going to show you, there's going to be two different lists. There's going to be an English Bible arrangement that you're going to be familiar with.

If you're opening your Bible, look at your table of contents, it's going to match that 100%. But there's also going to be a Hebrew Bible arrangement on the other side. And let's just not worry about that one for a minute.

We'll talk about that one later. It's slightly different. It's very significant, and we're going to use it later.

But let's just begin with what we know and what we have, the English Bible. The English Bible, I've got this slide called the Old Testament canon. Now by canon, I don't mean a large gun that shoots large balls into the air.

Okay. Canon is a Greek word that just means standard. And when I say the Old Testament canon, I mean those books that became the standard Old Testament books.

Those books that became the standard Old Testament books. So I can say the Old Testament Bible, the Old Testament corpus, but the common language in the world that we live in is the Old Testament canon or the canon of Christian scripture has both Old and New Testaments. Okay.

So if a book is canonical, that just means it's biblical. Okay. Canonical is biblical.

So it's kind of funny that the word for canon can mean the standard list, but also a big giant gun that you shoot at your enemy. We don't mean the big giant gun that you shoot at your enemy. We mean the standard list of Old Testament books.

So let's begin with walking through the Old Testament in the English Bible, which is on the left side of your handout here. The Old Testament in English has four basic divisions, four basic divisions. And there, you can see them separated here and I'll highlight them.

There is first the Pentateuch. So that's not a book of the Old Testament. That's the heading for the first division.

And in the Pentateuch, there are five books, Pentateuch book. And those books are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. That's the first division of the English Bible in the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, sometimes called the Torah or the books of Moses because Moses was the guy who wrote them.

Then in our second division, we have what are called the historical books. These are the books that recount the history of Israel, God's people in the Old Testament, in chronological order, roughly. And then you can see that they are Joshua and Judges and Ruth, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.

So Joshua takes up the story of Israel crossing into the land of Israel and occupying the so-called promised land in around 1400 BC. And he's the successor of Moses. And it ends all the way down with Esther where God's people are in exile in Persia in the mid 400s.

So about a thousand years of history are recorded in Joshua, Judges, Ruth, etc. Then we have a list of poetical books or the poetry of the Old Testament. Perhaps you're familiar with some of these, especially perhaps the book of Psalms, right? If you've ever been to a hotel and you've picked up a Bible, the so-called Gideon Bible, right? It's usually the New Testament plus like Psalms and Proverbs.

And so perhaps you've seen that. And so these books, the poetical books of the Old Testament are Job and Psalms and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs. Then we come to the prophetical books are the prophets.

And there are the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, which is a book that they think was written by Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and then 12 minor prophets. So Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, all the way through Malachi. But as you can see, I ran out of the space on my handout and could just say the 12 minor prophets.

In fact, in Hebrew, the 12 minor prophets are just a single book, the book of the 12. And so I always appreciate that memory system a whole lot more. Now you can see four divisions in the English Bible, Old Testament, and these are divisions by genre.

What do I mean by genre? Genre just means the type of literature. Is it narrative? Is it poetry? Is it wisdom? Is it prophecy? So different kinds of literature are called genre, like the type of literature something is. And so the Pentateuch would be the genre of legal books.

These are the covenantal books of the Old Testament that fundamentally teach us how God is going to relate to his people, specifically Israel, in the Old Testament. They begin with Genesis, which is the story of the creation of the world and the first man and the first woman, Adam and Eve, in Genesis chapter two. Then Adam and Eve fall into sin in Genesis chapter three, and the history of redemption begins.

So you have Adam and Eve and their children Cain and Abel that occupy Genesis one, two, three, and four. Then in Genesis six to nine, we get this famous figure Noah and the great flood of the world. And then we get Abraham.

And Abraham is kind of the father of faith. And God chooses Abraham out of all the people in the world to be the conduit of his covenant of grace with his people, to redeem them and bring them back to him. And he promises Abraham that he's going to make Abraham to have a great name, descendants more than the stars of heaven, and that Abraham's offspring will be a blessing to all the families of the earth.

And then you have Abraham's sons, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph who occupy in some sense, the rest of the book of Genesis. So the major players in the book of Genesis are Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel, their children. Then there's Noah and the great flood.

Then there's God's covenant with Abraham and his children, Isaac and Jacob, and then the 12 patriarchs of whom Joseph is one. And that's the book of Genesis. And those are the major players.

In fact, there are a lot of names in the book of Genesis to become familiar with. And there's a lot of activity in the book of Genesis. But I can tell you this, the book of Genesis will perhaps be one of your favorite books of the Old Testament because there are so many amazing things going on there.

And it's really the foundation for how God has created this world. So we have to figure out who we are and where we came from, and we figure out where we're going and how God relates to us in the book of Genesis. Then in those law books, Exodus through Deuteronomy, there's really just one major player, Moses.

Moses was chosen by God to lead God's people and to mediate what's called the Mosaic covenant or the way in which God will relate to the people of Israel through a particular covenant that Moses mediates. Moses has a brother, Aaron, who becomes the priest of Israel. And then Moses has an assistant, Joshua.

There's also a little bit there about Moses' sister, Miriam. So really the major players in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are Moses, the covenant mediator, Aaron, the priest, Moses' brother, Miriam, Moses' sister. So we're just working through this one family.

And then Joshua, who is Moses' assistant, and then will become his successor. This is where God's people become a nation. And that nation is called Israel.

God says, Israel is my son. Just as Adam was God's son in the first part of Genesis, Israel is God's second son in Exodus to Deuteronomy. And we're to fail in Exodus to Deuteronomy, and we're going to need another son.

So in Genesis, you're going to have Adam and Eve. You're going to have Noah and Abraham, and then the patriarchs. In Exodus through Deuteronomy, just by way of review, we're going to have Moses, who's the major player.

Then we're going to have Aaron, who's the priest, Miriam, also his sister. So this family's working there. Then you're going to have Joshua, Moses' assistant.

And he's going to become Moses' successor in the later book. In Exodus to Deuteronomy, here's what you have. God's people have become a great nation.

They go into Egypt to flee famine in Israel. When they're in Egypt, they become subjected to Egypt as slaves, and they serve Egypt as slaves for 400 years. When Moses is born, God raises up Moses to bring Israel out of Egypt.

Out of Egypt I have called my son, the text says. And God subdues Pharaoh with the 10 plagues. He leads Israel out of Egypt and through the Red Sea.

When God leads Israel through the Red Sea, out of Egypt, he destroys the Egyptian army in that same sea. And then Israel wanders around in the wilderness for 40 years while God institutes his covenant with them, and they learn to obey God. The wilderness period of Israel is 40 years of testing, and that first generation fails to believe in the promises of God, and so they die in the wilderness until the second generation should grow up.

And then Joshua will lead that generation into the promised land. That's the story and the people of the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy. So Genesis is part one of the Pentateuch, and Exodus through Deuteronomy is part two of the Pentateuch.

You can think of the major covenant player in Genesis is Abraham. The major covenant player in Exodus is Moses. So those are the two big mega figures.

Those are the two movie stars of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Then we move into the historical books, and there are a group of historical books there. And these historical books recount in various ways God's covenantal history with Israel.

And here's how it all goes. God is faithful. Israel is unfaithful.

God keeps his promises. Israel breaks the promises. And so because Israel breaks the promises, they are kicked out of Israel and go into exile.

Just like Adam and Eve were unfaithful to God and broke his covenant, and they were kicked out of the garden, Israel was unfaithful to God, and they're kicked out of Israel. It's the same story of Genesis a second time over. The same story of Genesis a second time over.

So in the book of Joshua, guess what? Joshua is the main player. And he is Moses' successor, and it's his job to lead Israel into the promised land and to possess the land that God promised to Abraham as a token and symbol of his inheritance in the new heavens and new earth. So the book of Joshua is all about this.

Possess the land, occupy the land, and renew the covenant in the land. Possess the land, occupy the land, renew the covenant in the land. They have to kick out all the Canaanites so they don't corrupt them.

They have to renew the covenant, and then they have to begin life in God's land. That's Joshua. The book of Judges immediately follows, and it follows in this way.

It says twice in the beginning of the book of Judges, then Joshua died, and the days of the Judges began. Okay, so the book of Judges occurs right after the book of Joshua, both in the Scriptures, but also historically. It's historically in order.

And in the book of Judges, the book goes like this. There are two introductions to the book and two conclusions to the book. Then there are 12 Judges, six major Judges and six minor Judges.

And the six major Judges really form the bulk. The minor Judges are just in there to get to the number 12, because the 12 Judges match the 12 tribes of Israel, which match the 12 patriarchs, which match the 12 disciples. The number 12 is kind of how God works in His discipleship community.

Okay, and here's the message of the story, okay, over and over again. Israel did that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord. So the Lord sold them into the hand of their enemies to subject them and to cause them to repent.

And when Israel repented because they were groaning under the weight of their enemies, God raised up a judge to deliver them. The judge delivered them and secured the rest of the land for as long as the judge would live. Then the judge would die.

And then God's people would enter in again to idolatry. And that cycle repeated itself six times in the book of Judges. Okay, first under Othniel, then Ehud, then Deborah Barak.

It's kind of a double judge, Deborah and Barak. Then there's Gideon and Jephthah, and most famously, Samson. You've probably all heard of Samson, perhaps none of the other judges.

I don't think many people know Jephthah or Barak or Gideon, perhaps you do, or Othniel. But there are two introductions, two conclusions, six major judges, six minor judges, and the whole book is about those six major judges. And they go this way, Othniel, Ehud, Deborah Barak, then there's Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson.

And those six judges show us that God is always faithful to deliver His people if they repent from their sins. And God's people, once they are delivered, they have this proclivity to fall back into sin, and then God saves them again and again and again. One of the wonderful things about the message of the book of Judges is that you can't outrun God's grace in light of repentance.

If you repent, He will come and get you. If you repent, He will come and get you. After the book of Judges, there is this book called Ruth.

Ruth happened or occurs in the days of the judges. It says at the beginning of the book of Ruth, these things happened in the days of the judges, and therefore it's put right after the book of Judges in the English Bible. And Ruth is a story of a woman, Naomi, who has a husband and two sons, and during a famine, they go into Moab, into exile, in order to get food.

While Naomi and her two sons are in exile in Moab, the two sons marry, and then Naomi's husband and the two sons die. And all that's left is Naomi and her two daughters. One of those daughters is Ruth, and another daughter just stays back in Moab, but Ruth comes back with Naomi into Israel and marries a guy named Boaz, and Ruth and Boaz become one of the ancestors of King David, who will come later.

So it's a story of God's faithfulness to redeem the tragedy of sin and brokenness and loss in the life of His people. In fact, Ruth is such a prominent figure that in the Hebrew Bible, she is the wife of virtue or strength that the book of Proverbs talks about, because of her heroic activities and decisions and faith to become a member of the people of God. So it's no accident that the hero of the story in the book of Ruth is Ruth.

And so it's easy enough to say, here we have Naomi, the mother-in-law, and Boaz. So Naomi and Ruth and Boaz are the major players there. Boy, then we get to 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings.

And here we have, you can think about this way, the history of Israel's monarchy. One of the things that God promised to Abraham back in Genesis 12 to 25 was that through Abraham, he would cause kings to arise and rule over his people. So a monarchy.

And in 1 and 2 Samuel, we have the history of Israel's kingship or monarchy. And it goes something like this. The major players in 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings begin with a prophet named Samuel, who's raised up by the Lord through a miraculous birth to anoint the first king of Israel.

That first king of Israel is Saul. Saul from Benjamin of Gibeah, which if you read the end Book of Judges, is a very bad tribe in a very bad location. They're basically Canaanite people by this time.

That is, some of the Israelites had become Canaanites by assimilation. And God's people wanted a king like all the other nations. And so God said, you asked for it, you got it.

Here comes Saul. In fact, the name Saul in Hebrew means what was asked for, a king like all the nations. So he was tall like Goliath.

He was a warrior like Goliath, but he wasn't a man after God's own heart or God's own choosing. He was what the people wanted. And so that first king of Israel kind of was a train wreck or catastrophe.

And even while Saul was still king, God anointed and raised up another king to succeed him, the man of his own choosing. And that king's name was David. And David becomes the main player and figure in Samuel and Kings.

All kings after David are measured by him. If they're a good king, they're like David. If they're a bad king, they're not like David.

And God makes a covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7 that David's line will produce the the greatest king ever. And so you have Samuel raised up to anoint a king. You have Saul, the first king of Israel, who's a bad king.

Then you have David, the king that the Lord wants. And then you have David's son, Solomon, who you might expect to be the fulfillment of the 2 Samuel 7 covenant, but he's not. In fact, he becomes the anti-fulfillment.

Solomon becomes the wisest, richest, most powerful man in the world. And he builds the temple that God wants him to build. And the kingdom of Israel reaches its zenith in 1 Kings chapter 8. But by 1 Kings chapter 11, three chapters later, it's hit the skids and everything is falling apart.

And it says this, that Solomon, because of his polygamy, he had a gigantic harem of a thousand wives. Those wives led his heart astray from the Lord. He became an idolater, did that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord, 1 Kings 11, and the Lord's anger burned against him.

And the Lord began to dismantle the monarchy. And from Saul's reign at the end in 931 BC, you have a split between the northern Israel and the southern Israel. Like you can think about the Revolutionary War.

You can think about the Civil War in the United States, the north and the south. So at this point in Israel's history, we have the split between the north and the south. And from 931 to 722, the northern kingdom lives.

And in 722 BC, the northern kingdom gets destroyed by the Assyrians and goes into exile. Just a little bit after that in 586 BC, the southern kingdom gets destroyed by the Babylonians and go into exile. And the entire monarchy and people of God's life in the promised land is entirely over because of their sin.

So Joshua judges Samuel and Kings is the history of God's faithfulness to keep his covenant. Now, he's got to be faithful in two ways. He's faithful in this way, to keep all of his promises, to bless his people, to lead them into the land, to give them the land and to restore them if they repent, but also to send them into exile if they don't repent.

And it became time when Israel was not repentant and overwhelmed by their idolatry, that God was forced by his faithfulness to send them into exile. So when you're thinking about Samuel and Kings, you're thinking about the kings of Israel, Saul, David, Solomon, and then all of the kings of the north and south, Rehoboam, Jeroboam. Perhaps you've heard about these guys, Hezekiah, Zedekiah.

These are the kings that you'll know and find out there. So it's all about the kings. There are northern kings and southern kings.

All of the northern kings are unfaithful to God. And in the south, some of the kings are faithful and some of the kings are not. But by the end, they're all unfaithful and God sends them into exile.

The book of Chronicles follows. And the book of Chronicles is an amazing book. And it actually you'll see it's the last book of the Hebrew Bible.

The book of Chronicles is a remarkable, it's the first history of the world ever written. It's the first history of the world ever written. It catalogs from Adam, the first man ever created, all the way to the people of God in roughly 400 BC.

So however long that is, whatever creation was in your mind, I don't know exactly. The earliest date we know about in the Bible with certainty is 2100 BC when God calls Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees. The time before that, we don't know.

But we're looking at some, you know, 1600 years of history plus whatever's before that. The chronicler, that's what we call the guy who wrote Chronicles, the chronicler, records the entire history of the world from Adam all the way down to 400 BC with an emphasis or a highlight on David and Solomon, kind of the one who brought God's covenant of the king, David, and who built God's temple house, the temple Solomon. And then the people of God go into exile and it's left at the end of Chronicles where it says this particular line, and God's people can go home.

And God's people can go home. But at the end, then it's just, it's silent after that because God's people have no place to go. God's no place to go.

And in fact, Ezra and Nehemiah recount the history of God's people going home, rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and rebuilding the temple and dedicating the temple. But guess what? God never returns to the temple. God never returns to the temple in Ezra and Nehemiah.

So that return from exile that's recorded in Ezra and Nehemiah is a failure because you don't have this one most important thing. Remember this, when God told Moses to build a house called a tabernacle in the midst of Israel, God dwelled in it physically, right? Smoke and fire, what we call the theophanic or glorious presence of God in the house there set Israel apart from all other nations. When God had Solomon build the temple, the climax of it in first Kings eight was God filled the temple with his presence and therefore no one else could go in, right? And then when God, when God sent God, when God sent his people into exile, God left the temple, God left the temple and his presence was prophetically left going to the east.

And so when, when they rebuilt the temple in Ezra and Nehemiah, and they dedicated it, all the people there ran out to the east gate to see if God would return. And the story is this, he did not return. He did not return.

The next time that God would ever be in that temple was when Jesus showed up and walked into the temple where he would return to that temple and to begin to make all things new. All right. So that's the temple that we're looking for.

And that's why Jesus has this line, destroy this temple in three days. I'll, I'll raise it up because he is the true and better temple according to the book of Hebrews. So it's a great theology, right? In some sense, it's the absence of God in Ezra and Nehemiah that provokes hope for something better to come because in the prophets, which we'll talk about in a minute, they prophesy that the house of God that comes after the one that Solomon built will be greater than the one that Solomon built, much more glorious.

Okay. So that's the history of Israel. It's a history of Israel's failure to keep the covenant.

And therefore they got kicked out of the land, even though God was faithful to them over and over and over again. So God keeps his promises. Israel breaks their promises.

And so God sends them into exile. The major players are Joshua, the judges, Samuel, and the Kings, Joshua judges, Samuel and the Kings. Finally, the historical books come to an end with another book called Esther.

And let me just comment. One of the things I love about the Hebrew Bible is that it's one of the, it's not one of the, it's the only canon of literature in the ancient world that has books where there are females who are the heroes of the story. Ruth, Esther, Song of Songs.

Think about Miriam or people like, there are people like Rahab and Hannah and Jael, other figures you'll come across in the Bible. The Bible is filled with female figures that are heroic and virtuous and play a significant role in the people of God. And you have books in the historical books like Ruth and Esther that focus on the virtuous lives of these women in such a way that they bring radical change and life to the people of God.

Think about Ruth's faithfulness to the people of God is one of the ways in which God brings King David to be, right? Esther is the story of God's people in exile in Persia, and they're about to be exterminated because there's a guy named Haman in the book that hates the Jewish people and wants to have them completely exterminated because of his hate for Mordecai, who's Esther's uncle. And so in the book of Esther, you really have King Ahashverosh, or like just to Xerxes, it's another name. And you have Esther who becomes his queen, Mordecai, Esther's uncle, and then Haman, who's kind of like the villain of the story.

Haman is one of the king's advisors, and he's like Jafar in Aladdin, right? He's the evil advisor, and he's trying to get Prince Ali destroyed. And that's what's happening here, but it's the entire Jewish people. And so Esther is a story of how God in his providence delivers his people through the faithfulness of a woman.

I love it. I love it. So Esther is a beautiful young Jewish girl.

She arises to prominence by becoming the queen of Persia in the harem of Ahashverosh, or Xerxes. Using her power and authority at the risk of her life, she saves her people from execution and destruction. And Mordecai, her uncle, helps her to do this.

And at the very end, it says this, and Mordecai spoke shalom to his people, or peace to his people. Now that's what it says in the English Bible, but it's really, and Mordecai spoke shalom, or peace, to his seed. The very last word in the book is his seed, or his offspring.

And the reason that's important is because the word seed or offspring plays a significant role in the theology of the Old Testament. Because God promises Abraham a seed or offspring that'll bless the entire world. And so this seed theology runs throughout.

And so we know that the seed of Abraham is going to produce a king through one of his sons, Judah. Then we know that one of those sons from Judah is going to be David, and that's the seed. And then David has Solomon, and that's who the seed's going to come through.

And then everyone's trying to exterminate the seed. And then Haman and Esther is trying to wipe out the entire seed, or offspring of Abraham. And at the very end, God delivers Israel through Esther, and Mordecai is able to speak shalom to his seed, which means God is always preserving his people, even in the midst of the risk of extinction.

And so the book ends on, and this is where we get the Feast of Purim in the Old Testament, which is a celebration of God's deliverance of Israel during the Persian period. And the Feast of Purim still goes on today. It's one of the Jewish festivals.

And what's interesting is the Feast of Purim is the only Jewish festival in the Old Testament that's non-Mosaic, right? And it's instituted by Esther. And so Esther's authority is in some sense on par with Moses, because she's able to institute this festival in Israel that still exists today. So it's a remarkable story.

And so the historical books, even though there's this fact that they end in exile, that they're in exile, but there's hope in the midst of exile, that God is faithful, even in the midst of his exile, to restore and save his people.