The prophet Isaiah was considered “the greatest Old Testament prophet,” says my NIV study Bible, and he’s quoted “at least 50 times in the New Testament.” Isaiah was a prophet under five kings, and he talked about both the northern kingdom (Israel) and southern kingdom (Judah), while the other major prophets are predicting the fall of … [Read more…]
Moses is the central figure — besides God, of course — in the the four books of the Pentateuch following Genesis. And those four books have two strands: the historical narrative of Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt and to the Promised Land, and the laws given to Moses by God during that time … [Read more…]
In one of our church’s weekly “small group” meetings, we recently discussed Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, John 4:1-42. It occurred to me that this might be the first non-Jewish convert. My NIV study Bible has a table that puts all four Gospels in single chronological order, and that seems to … [Read more…]
As I noted elsewhere, these are the two post-Moses/pre-monarchical history books, and so it makes some sense to consider them together. What’s more, I think that together they address an important question, namely how Israel would and should deal with the non-Israelites in the Promised Land, and considering them together helps illuminate that matter. Joshua … [Read more…]
Overview I suspect that there are many who, like me, find daunting the twelve books that stretch from Joshua to Esther, between the Pentateuch and the Wisdom books. And no wonder: They cover more or less sequentially a thousand years of Jewish history, from about 1400 B.C. to about 400 B.C. So perhaps an overview of … [Read more…]
Overview David’s reign as king of Israel is recounted in II Samuel and I Chronicles chapters 10-19 (there is a fair amount of duplication between the two books). David’s life before he becomes king is found in I Samuel chapters 16-31, where it is very much intertwined with Saul’s. And David continues to have a … [Read more…]
In this post I’ll be writing about I Chronicles chapters 1-10 and I Samuel. But, despite the title to this post, these texts do not correspond exactly to Saul’s biography, for a couple of reasons. First, once David is introduced in I Samuel chapter 16, his story and Saul’s are intertwined until Saul’s death in … [Read more…]
Solomon’s reign is recounted in I Kings chapters1-11 and II Chronicles chapters 1-9 (tradition holds that the author of the latter was Ezra, by the way). The accounts overlap substantially but not completely, and where they describe the same events they do so in ways that are consistent but not identical — even, disconcertingly, in … [Read more…]
At the beginning of the reign of Rehoboam, Solomon’s son and successor, the northern tribes (that is, all but Judah itself and the small tribe of Benjamin) rebelled (I Kings 12:24) because of the new king’s highhandedness, and from then through the Babylonian exile there was never again a united kingdom. The account of this … [Read more…]
I suppose the first thing to say about this book is that it is, in a sense, the last book of the Old Testament. That is, while it does not come last in the Bible, it does cover the latest historical period prior to New Testament. The book is written mostly in the first person … [Read more…]