Understanding the Old Testament - Lesson 21

Understanding the Old Testament 
Dr. Miles Van Pelt
ot102-21 
Intro Writings 
Lesson Transcript
 

You know from our introductory lectures that the Hebrew Bible falls into three parts, the law, the prophets, and the writings. We have now reached our third section, the writings. We've talked about this section a little bit in our introductory lecture in terms of its form and function, but it's worth repeating.

By way of introduction, I'm going to read a couple of quotes from people who have talked about the nature of the writings and all the different types of books in them, and I'll counter-propose another option for us, one that I've mentioned earlier. We'll call this section the problem with the writings, the problem with the writings, this third section of the Hebrew Bible. Paul Wagner, in his book, The Journey from Text to Translations, says this. "The books in this section, that is the writings, have few links with each other. They have diverse literary forms and many cannot be dated precisely." Graham Goldsworthy, in his Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics, at one point says, "Some suggest that the inclusion of Ezra and Nehemiah in the writings is due simply to the lateness of their composition, presumably after the prophets were identified as a group, or the latter prophets specifically. There were, of course, the three post-exilic prophets in the prophetic canon, so it is possible that these narrative books were excluded from the prophets for other reasons, which we are going to agree with, other reasons." He earlier said, "The fact that narratives such as Ruth, Esther, 1 and 2 Chronicles, and Ezra and Nehemiah are placed in the writings does raise some hermeneutical questions, or questions of interpretation, particularly those about the intended effects of these accounts on the post-exilic community or the community to come back after the exile. Each of the books in this third section of the Hebrew canon has to be dealt with on its own terms. There is no specific or clear theological umbrella that qualifies the writings for that grouping other than the big picture of Israel before her God." 

Now, I think Graeme Goldsworthy is on to something there. We've entitled this section in our covenantal structure of the Bible lecture as Law, Prophets, and Writings, which are Covenant, Covenant History, and Covenant Life, and that's exactly right, life before Israel's God. Like the former prophets, you can see on the slide, there are two groups within the writings. There are those books that talk about life in the land, Psalms Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs, and then those that talk about life in exile, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. This grouping matches those of the prophets.

The former prophets, Joshua to Kings, deal with life in the land, and the latter prophets, Isaiah to the Twelve, deal with the whole issue of life in exile. So the writings have an intentional structure behind them that matches the former and the latter prophets and their divisions. It's nice to have a division of six and six, it's a nice balance, even though we understand, we'll talk about this later, that Ezra and Nehemiah are considered a single book, but in terms of its balance here, it's nice to have these books as six and six.

So the first section, Life in the Land, and the second section, Life in Exile. Many of the books in this section are poetic, Psalms, the interior of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations, but we have a lot of narrative books here, Ruth, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. So there's a mixing of genres in these particular places like no other place in the Hebrew Bible.

This collection of books came together after the first two sections of the Hebrew Bible. So first we had the books of Moses, then we had the former latter prophets. Historically speaking, the writings came last. But some of the material in this section contains material older than some of the other materials that came before it. So for example, many of the Psalms date back to David, and one Psalm, Psalm 90, goes back to Moses. As for Job, some think he may have written around the time of the Pentateuch, but that's also a debated issue. So some of the books, we don't know who wrote, some of the books we can't date them, but we do know that they're in this little corpus here that has kind of an intentional design and structure that we had talked about.

You can see here that I've highlighted four books in red on the slide, and we've talked about earlier how we have this working arrangement in the writings where we have exposition and illustration, exposition and illustration. The book of the writings, or the section of writings, begins with life in the land, and the first thing we need to know about life in covenant with Yahweh is that it's a life of worship in the book of Psalms. The number one genre in the book of Psalms that we'll see coming up is the lament, that is, living between promise and fulfillment, experiencing suffering but hoping for glory, and not knowing how to maintain kind of a balance of emotional weight during that time. And the Psalms provide constructs for our affections in that way. If the number one type of psalm in the book of Psalms is lament, it's no accident that Job follows because Job is the number one lamenter in the Hebrew Bible. He is the one who suffers for Yahweh's glory and doesn't know why.

Following that is the book of Proverbs, that is, how do you live wisely in God's world according to God's word? Proverbs terminates or ends with the acrostic poem, the wife of noble character or the wife of valor, the eshet chael. The only woman ever described as such in the whole Hebrew Bible, as we mentioned earlier, is the book of Ruth, so she is the illustration of Proverbs 31. The book of Psalms, lament, Job is the illustration. 

The book of Proverbs, the height of Hebrew wisdom, get a great wife. What's that wife look like? Proverbs 31 and Ruth. The song of songs also betrays a wife of strength, that's the woman who forsakes the temptation of harem life with Solomon and clings to her one and only beloved shepherd. And it ends with Ecclesiastes which says, if you don't want to think this way, that life in the land under God's sovereignty is worth it, consider life without God, life under the sun, and that life is vanity of vanities.

So we have that little narrative to approach those first six books. Life in exile begins with lamentations. Lamentations, as we will see, records the fall of Jerusalem and laments the fall of Jerusalem in five funeral songs called Kenometer songs or dirges, right? Following that, we have Esther and Daniel as two examples of what it looks like to live a life of faith in exile.

Both Esther and Daniel take place entirely in exile and they live lives of faith, faithful unto death. Finally, Ezra through Chronicles records the return from exile, the restoration of the temple and the city walls of Jerusalem, and the failure of that system to meet prophetic expectations, therefore the need for a second or another return from exile. So the book of Chronicles ends with God's people in exile. Think of this, Genesis chapter three ends with God's people in exile. The book of Genesis in chapter 50 ends with God's people in exile. The book of Kings, the last book of the former prophets, ends with God's people in exile, right? 2 Kings 25, and the end of the canon right before the New Testament ends with God's people in exile.

All the way, these points are punctuated by the hope of coming home from exile based on God's mercy and the New Testament is that place finally where we get to come home at least in the beginning fashion. So that's this whole theme of exile and these punctuated exile points at climactic moments means that from Genesis chapter three when Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden, all of the Old Testament is kind of recording God's people's journey home in that fashion. So we're going to look at each of these books one at a time beginning with the book of Psalms in our next lecture.