2 Dates to Remember
Before reading a book in the Bible, do you read the introduction to it in your Bible? Only recently I started to make this practice a habit. It does wonders in deepening my enjoyment of the Scriptures. For instance, the introduction to the Gospel of Matthew in the NIV states:
“Matthew’s purpose is to show that God has kept his ancient promises to Israel through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. The long-expected reign of heaven is now coming to earth, brining the Jewish story to its climax… The Messiah is shown as reliving the story of Israel - going down into the Jordan River, facing temptation in the wilderness, gathering twelve disciples as twelve new tribes, ascending a mountain to deliver a new Torah, etc. The author highlights the idea of Jesus as the new Moses by collecting his teachings into five long speeches…”
Before going into two important dates in the Old Testament, let us consider the Best Selling Publication of all time, the Bible.
It is estimated that the Bible sales are over five billion copies making the Bible the best-selling publication of all time. (The population of the world in 2022 was 7.7 billion). The Bible is currently translated into more than half of the world languages. (The number of languages in the world are 7139).
In the Bible, there are 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament. It was written by 40 writers and has one author, the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). The Bible was written over a period of almost 2000 years.
How do we approach a book with this size and magnitude? Let us use the metaphor of the forest and the trees. Imagine a forest that has 66 trees, some trees are small, and others are large and every tree contains a love letter from God to you. If each book of the Bible is like a tree in that unique forest, then the book of Isaiah is a large tree with 66 branches and the Psalms is the biggest tree with 150 branches. In contrast the Letter to the Philippians is a tree with four branches and the book of the prophet Joel has only three branches. Each and everyone of those 66 trees are unique and should be studied in depth not only as a tree, but also every branch.
Should we start with the first book in the Old Testament, the book of Genesis and keep going till we finish the first 39 books then delve into the New Testament by reading them from the Gospel of Matthew and ending in the book of Revelation? This is highly commendable. Have you ever read the whole Bible from cover to cover? If you read three chapters a day, you will finish reading the Bible in one year.
It is one thing to start at the edge of the forest and look at every tree separately with everyone of its branches and it is another thing to use a “camera on a drone” or a helicopter ride and have an overview of the whole forest.
If someone asked you the question: “Which passages would you choose if you were devising a series of Bible studies on the theme of the temple,” what would you say?
Here is a camera on a drone overview response by looking at the whole forest. “In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve did not need a temple because God’s presence was everywhere. In the new creation, heaven, once again there is no temple ‘because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple’ (Revelation 21:22). Then there was the tabernacle in the wilderness; the temple in Jerusalem; the new-temple prophecies of Ezekiel; the Lord Jesus Christ who ‘tabernacled’ among us (John 1:14); and the church ‘a holy temple in the Lord’ (Ephesians 2:21).” Wow, that is a “camera on a drone” perspective covering the Bible from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22..
Whether you are a new believer or have been a believer for many years, reading one of those two books will give you a perspective of the forest and prepare you for a deeper appreciation and understanding of each of the trees as they relate to the forest.
God’s Pic Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible. Vaughan Roberts
What’s in the Bible? A Tour of Scripture From the Dust of Creation to the Glory of Revelation. R.C. Sproul & Robert Wolgemuth
Perhaps most of you know about two very important dates in the Old Testament and reading this is just a good review. Perhaps for some others those two dates need to be memorized because of their importance.
It is amazing what knowing these two dates made in my understanding of the Bible. For the last many weeks, I have been immersed in the section of the Old Testament called the Prophets, the Major and Minor prophets. The Major Prophets include books in the Old Testament such as Isaiah and Jeremiah. While the Minor Prophets include books such as Joel, Hosea, and Amos. Knowing the two dates 722 and 586 BC help provide a historical context to what all those prophets addressed.
With king Rehoboam, son of Solomon, son of David, the united Jewish kingdom under Kings David and Solomon was split in two, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. The Northern Kingdom appears in the Bible under different names: Israel, Ephraim, Samaria with its capital the city of Samaria. While the Southern Kingdom in the Old Testament is referred to as Judah with it’s capital Jerusalem.
In 722 BC, an Assyrian army came from what today we call Iraq and rather than marching east straight to Israel and Judah the army marched northwest by the Euphrates’ River. It could not have marched straight east because of the large desert which exists in what we call today Iraq and Jordan. When the Assyrian army reached the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea in what we call today northwest Syria, it marched south and devastated countries and cities in its path. Upon reaching Samaria/Ephraim/Israel, it practiced what is called an ethnic cleansing by removing the prominent Jews from the northern kingdom/Israel/Samaria and taking them as captives to its capital in Nineveh. In their place they brought in Assyrians who could bring about an influence on the remaining population both theologically and culturally.
After its conquest of the Northern kingdom/Israel, the Assyrian army continued its advance south to the southern kingdom/Judea and surrounded its capital Jerusalem. At that time during the Assyrian invasion in 722 BC, the prophet Isaiah was in Jerusalem, and he proclaimed a message of hope in the midst of fear and despair. After a long siege, the Assyrian army had to retreat after receiving the news that probably a coups d’état was going to take place in the Assyrian capital Nineveh in what we call today, Iraq. The Jews in Jerusalem rejoiced over the miraculous deliverance by the Lord that the prophet Isaiah prophesied it would happen.
Before the Assyrian invasion of 722 BC several prophets spoke out about the coming invasion as a punishment from the Lord like the prophets: Joel, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah. Then around 630 BC after the Assyrian invasion of 722 BC, the prophet Nahum prophesied that the Assyrians would be defeated by the Babylonians, and it happened resulting in the fall of Nineveh and the emergence of the Babylonian kingdom.
In 587/586 BC, the Babylonian army marched northwest from what today we call Iraq by the Euphrates’ River, the same route that the Assyrian army took. It invaded the northern kingdom/Samaria/Israel and kept its advance into the southern kingdom/Judah and surrounded Jerusalem. After a long siege the city of Jerusalem fell. Its wall was broken, and the temple was burnt. The prominent Jews in the city were taken as slaves to Babylon, in what we call today Iraq. Before the fall of Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah prophesied that city will be destroyed, and that Jews from Jerusalem will be taken as captives to Babylon for seventy years.
The prophets who lived in between the two invasions were Nahum, Zephaniah and Habakkuk.
During the captivity in Babylon the prophets who ministered to God’s people were Jeremiah, Daniel, Obadiah, and Ezekiel.
The prophets of the return to Jerusalem were Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
I have printed this table that provides dates, names and Bible references and placed it in my Bible so that I can look at it and remember the historical setting while reading the books of the prophets in the Old Testament.
In the book of Habakkuk, there is an interesting relevant message to almost every generation. The prophet Habakkuk lived in the southern kingdom/Judah before the Babylonian invasion of 586 BC.
He asked God why he allowed the evil leaders in Judea to prosper. God told him that he will bring the Babylonians to punish Judah. Habakkuk became more concerned! How could God use the Babylonians, who were more wicked than the wicked Jews, to bring judgment on God’s people?! God’s answer was that God’s people will live by faith trusting in his sovereignty in spite of the difficult time that they will face. In due time the Babylonians will be punished for their wickedness.
What is Habakkuk’s message for us today?
The Prophets, like Habakkuk, were not “reasonable” people, accommodating themselves to what makes sense to people living according to secular realities. These prophets did not sound “politically correct.” They were not diplomatic, tactfully negotiating an agreement that allows us a “say” in the outcome. They plunged God’s people into the sacred reality, a mystery, immense and staggering. Basically, the prophets did two things:
· They prepared people to accept the worst as God’s judgment.
· They prepared people who were beaten down to open themselves up to hope in God’s future.
Habakkuk concluded his book with these words in 3:16-19: “I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us.
Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.”