Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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New essay: AI Engines Have Learning Abilities and Disabilities (5 min)
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(Today’s Reading)
YHWH in the Old Testament
(Essay Installment 8)
YHWH and Israel in Old Testament History
The focus of Old Testament history and prophecy is YHWH’s covenant relationship with Israel – including what that covenant had to do with that history.
Genesis begins with the story of how YHWH created the heavens and the earth. For a few chapters thereafter, it covers some selected primeval events (including Noah’s Flood and the Tower of Babel). By Genesis 12, however, the book settles in on reporting YHWH’s interactions with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (including how Jacob received the name Israel, which would ultimately become the national name of the descendants of these three generations). Genesis is filled out with accounts of Jacob’s twelve sons, the most notable of which was Joseph. Because of Joseph, the extended family, which had become roughly seventy in number, migrated to Egypt.
Exodus opens with Jacob’s family multiplying greatly over the centuries that followed. Concurrent with that growth, their status shifted from being guests of Egypt to being slaves of Egypt, because of the threat they posed to Egyptian sovereignty. Then comes the story of Moses, the burning bush, the Exodus, and thus YHWH’s founding of the nation of Israel from a bunch of slaves. Thereafter, the story is about how YHWH gets His nation into the promised land and how they dealt with the nations already residing there.
After Moses, God raised up similar leaders (though none with the stature of Moses) including Joshua and men called judges. God used the last of these – a priest and prophet named Samuel – to anoint a king for the nation. The first of these was Saul. Then David. Then Solomon. After that, the kingdom became divided between north and south, each with its own succession of kings.
The northern kingdom was conquered and its people were scattered abroad by Assyria in 722 BC. The southern kingdom (also called Judah), because it was of the lineage of David, and therefore stronger, lasted longer. It was conquered in 586 BC by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, who burned Jerusalem – most notably its temple.
Nebuchadnezzar dispersed the Israelites (who had come to also be called Jews by this time) but hauled the best and brightest to serve him in Babylon. After seventy years, King Cyrus of Persia had conquered Babylon and authorized the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem, including its temple – a project completed in 516 BC – that is, after 70 years of being in captivity to the Babylonians. Yet the nation was never the same after this history…until Messiah came in the 1st century AD.
Using rounded numbers, here’s a rough approximation of the historical timeline, in 500-year segments, starting with Moses (all dates BC):
- 1500 (Moses) to 1000 (David)
- 1000 (David) to 500 (the rebuilding of the temple)
- 500 (the building of the temple) to Christ
Old Testament history stops shortly after the temple’s reconstruction, leaving a 400-500 year period of biblical silence before Jesus came on the scene. From Moses’ time forward, Old Testament history records the ups and downs of Israel’s history as a function of its faithfulness, or lack thereof, to the nation’s covenant with YHWH. Modern histories tend say that nations rise and fall on military, economic, social, and other such factors. But Old Testament history considers moral factors the most determinative. Given this point of view, you can see why Israel was so broken after Nebuchadnezzar burned down the temple that David had planned and Solomon had built. In the wake of this devastation and humiliation, Israel’s covenant relationship with YHWH was shaken to its core.
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