The Old Testament can be divided between history, prophets, and writings. First, it helps to know a little bit about the HISTORY behind it. Here is a quick summary to give you an “overview” of the whole thing!
The History of the Jewish People
The first 11 chapters of Genesis contain the famous stories of creation, Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel, and others. Understood together, they tell us that God made our world a good place, but humans have the free choice of being good or bad. Ever since Adam & Eve got thrown out of the Garden of Eden for eating the forbidden fruit, humans have had to wrestle with that choice and its consequences. Human beings tend to choose sin instead of obeying God, and that choice hurts our relationship with God. God wants to win us back, though. In a way, that’s what the whole Bible is about–all the ways that God is working to try to “win us back,” and let us live in a life-giving, perfect, loving relationship with God the way it was originally created to be in the Garden of Eden before people messed it up by rejecting God. Understanding these 11 chapters “sets the stage” for the rest of the Bible.
In Genesis 12, God made a special promise to Abraham that 1) he would have a lot of descendants, and 2) they would get to live in a “promised land.” So Abraham, his son Isaac, and his son Jacob became known as the fathers of the Jews. Jacob had twelve sons, including his favorite, Joseph. The descendants of each of those 12 sons became known as one of the “tribes of Israel,” so that all Jewish people can trace their lineage back to one of those twelve sons, and ultimately, back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. One of the 12 sons, Joseph, was an interpreter of dreams, and did not hesitate to tell his brothers that he was going to be the greatest of them all. They were jealous, and sold him into slavery. He ended up in prison in Egypt, but his dream-interpreting ability helped him rise to a powerful position in Egypt shortly before a terrible famine hit the region. His brothers, who thought he was dead, went to Egypt in search of food, and came face to face with Joseph. Joseph forgave them and took them and their families in, saving them from starvation and letting them settle in Egypt. As time went by, God’s promise to increase their numbers was working, and their population increased so fast it alarmed the Egyptian Pharoah, who had them treated harshly as slaves for many years to try to control them.
Exodus tells how the Jewish people finally escaped from slavery in Egypt through the parted waters of the Red Sea under the leadership of Moses. Moses was a reluctant leader, but he still led the grumpy people for 40 years in the desert in the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. As the story continues, the Jews wander in the desert, get the Ten Commandments on a mountain, and grow in numbers (like God promised). They learn how to be faithful to God, and basically get their act together as God’s people. Finally, under the military leadership of Joshua, they conquer the promised land (called “Israel,” which is good because those who lived there are called the “Israelites”). For awhile, things were going great and God’s promise was coming true: lots of Abraham’s descendants living in God’s promised land.
Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles continue the story in the promised land. At first they were ruled by “Judges” (like Samson, who really hated to get his hair cut…Judges 16:17 tells why), because they figured their only “king” was God. But eventually they wanted a king like other countries had. So Samuel was the last judge, and Saul became their first king. Saul wasn’t too faithful to God, so he was replaced by one of the great heros of Jewish history, King David. David was so great that later the Jewish people assumed that the messiah would have to be one of his direct descendants (and in fact, Jesus WAS a descendant of King David, but that’s found in the New Testament). King David wrote lots of the Psalms, and was a pretty good dancer too.
King Solomon (David’s son) took over after David died. He was known for his great wisdom and great wealth and ambitious building program, and during his 40 year reign the Jewish Kingdom continued to flourish in the Promised Land. However, Solomon had a weakness for foreign women; he had about seven hundred foreign wives including the daughter of the King of Egypt (plus another 300 concubines for good measure). So he never lacked for company, but under their influence he began to worship their idols and gods instead of Israel’s one true God. So when Solomon died, his son Rehoboam inherited the Kingdom, but soon thereafter a young man named Jeroboam revolted, leading 10 of the 12 “tribes,” along with the land they each possessed, to split away to form a northern Kingdom called “Israel,” while King Rehoboam only managed to hold on to the southern 2 of the 12 tribes, which they named “Judah.” The capital city of Jerusalem was in Judah, at least, including the Temple.
Years passed, and many other kings came and went in each of the two kingdoms. The prophets (who were like preachers) were very active during this period of Jewish history, standing up to kings who did not do God’s will, and warning them and the people against allowing injustice in their land. Eventually in 821 B.C., the northern Kingdom of Israel was invaded and conquered by the mean old Assyrians. Some of the prophets warned that the same thing could happen to the southern kingdom of Judah, but many of the people living there didn’t take the warning seriously because God’s “house,” the Temple, was located in Judah, so they didn’t think God would allow any foreign invaders to ever take over their part of the Promised Land. However, years later, in 586 BC, the Babylonians just clobbered the south, including the key city of Jerusalem, and destroyed the sacred Temple, the “home” of God and the center of Jewish worship. The Jewish people who survived the massacre were forced to leave the Promised Land as exiles and live as slaves of the conquerors.
That would be the end of the Jewish story, and of God’s promise to the Jewish people, but the prophets began to talk about hope after that time (see Isaiah 40 and beyond, for example). Finally, after many years of hoping and praying for the chance to “go home” and start over again, the heroes Ezra and Nehemiah helped the people return to the Promised Land, and rebuild the Temple. Therefore, God’s promise did continue, and that’s the “happily ever after” ending of the Old Testament story! By the time Jesus was born centuries later, the Jewish people still lived in the Promised Land. In fact, the “story” of the Jewish people continues to this day, and helps explain the strong feelings in the Middle East about who gets to live in Israel and the surrounding land, and the long history of animosity between the Jewish people and the Arab people (who feel they have their own ancient historic religious claims on the same land).
The Prophets
The PROPHETS were like preachers who spoke, but many of their “sermons” are written in the Bible. They were a lot like preachers. They told people what God wanted them to do. Sometimes people listened to them, but sometimes they had to learn the hard way. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are called “major prophets” because their books are long, and we have a little more biographical information about them as well. All three of them lived both before, during, and after the terrible Babylonian defeat of the southern Kingdom of Judah, including the destruction of the Temple and the “Babylonian Exile” in 586 BC. The other prophets are sometimes called the “minor prophets” because their books are shorter, but not any less profound. They are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Jonah is written in the form of a story, but that book is still considered one of the minor prophets because its core message is seeking to get the Jewish people to change their ways.
Some people think that prophecy is written to “predict the future.” However, it is not meant to be understood quite like that. Imagine if you are going outside on a cold day without a coat on, and your mother says, “You are going to catch cold and have to stay home sick.” That doesn’t mean she is predicting the future. Instead, she is painting a picture of the consequences of your actions, hoping that you will change your actions and avoid the consequences. The prophets are much more like a mother in that way than they are like a fortune teller. They were saying what they did because they were optimistic enough to hope that people could change, and the way they tried to bring about change was to warn people what would happen if they didn’t change. Make sense?
The Writings
The WRITINGS represent a wide variety of books which are written by the people who lived at the time. For example, Psalms are poetic words and songs the Jews used in their worship. Proverbs are like the “bumper stickers” of the Bible, and if you read them you can gain a lot of wisdom that has been gathered by many wise people over thousands of years. Lamentations are a special type of poetry (a “lament” is like crying) usually attributed to the prophet Jeremiah after the Jewish people were thrown out of the promised land (which is why they occur right after the book of Jeremiah, and why he is sometimes nicknamed “the Weeping Prophet.” The writer of Ecclesiastes sounds really depressed, and wonders aloud about the meaning of life…but since many faithful people feel that way at times, it is included in the Bible too. The book of Job explores the problem of bad things happening to good people.
Daniel is an example of specialized “apocalyptic” writing–Revelation is also an example of this type of writing in the New Testament. Apocalyptic writing was originally intended for people who are being persecuted for their faith, and it is meant to encourage them to remain faithful in spite of the threat of doing so. The need for secrecy helps explains the reason for the heavy symbolism (for example, the “seven lamps” in Revelation are a symbol for the churches, since churches are the light for the world). Cruel kings or other leaders who persecute God’s people are often symbolized as powerful monsters. This type of writing conveys the stark contrasts in the battle between good and evil, painting in graphic detail the destruction of evil and the glorious reward of those who persevere to the end, thus motivating people not to abandon their faith even when under the threat of death. Again, people who don’t understand the purpose for this type of writing can completely misinterpret it and say that it “proves” the coming end of the world based on how they apply these cryptic ancient symbols to modern day events. But again, the purpose was not to “fortune tell” the future, but to encourage people who were living in an unspeakably difficult present time.
Jeffrey Rasche 