In the Old Testament | The Old testament God

The Old Testament can be intimidating grandpa Christians. it's a bit of a haze of stories and histories and it isn't always chronological. you've probably heard of David slaying Goliath Joseph being sold by his brothers because of his awesome cool jacket .Daniel getting thrown into the Lions Den.

Noah building an ark and Jonah getting swallowed by a giant fish ,but do you know in which order they happened. if Old Testament history is rusty we have a problem because in order to truly understand everything that Jesus does we have to understand what his people have been through and the history of the culture that he stepped into.

It's also essential for our understanding of the context of many Old Testament stories. In  this post we're going to walk through a zoomed out overview of the entire Old Testament so that when we pick up the Bible and turn to Isaiah or Exodus or Nehemiah. you'll at least have a big picture understanding of where the story fits in with the grand scheme of things.

we're gonna tag all the major players along the road but we're gonna be moving pretty fast .it all begins with creation and the Garden of Eden with Adam God creates Adam and Eve and places them into authority over all creation and deceived by Satan Adam and Eve's sin and they're kicked out of the garden. they have a few sons most famously Cain and Abel ,over the next few generations great corruption fills the earth and we make Noah. Noah his family build an ark and they alone the animals on board survive the great flood which destroys pretty much everything else .somewhere during this time is when scholars believe that the story of Jobe takes place now.

We aren't exactly sure about the timing but we do know that the lessons are universal and so the timing isn't really that important. ten generations after Noah Abraham tenza, Abraham and his wife Sarah I promise that they will have a great nation as the sentence that they will receive land and then they will receive God's blessing.

Abraham and Sarah have Isaac even though they're ridiculously old and then Isaac marries Rebecca and they have Jacob and EsauJakub well he has a crush on Rachel but he gets tricked into marrying her sister Lea he ends up marrying both of them anyway and then having a whole bunch of kids and somewhere in the midst of all this God renamed him Israel and then in a simplified way his kids become what we know of is the 12 tribes of Israel.

Joseph is the favourite of these children. the other kids they won't serve funded this favouritism and they sell Joseph to slave traders in Egypt .well eventually the whole family migrates the Egypt to survive the great famine that's happening in Palestine .the Israelites begin to grow in number and Egypt and becoming a threat to the Pharoah. he enslaves all of them that's when Moses turns up the ten plagues happen and the Israelites escape across the Red Sea.

Now they head to Mount Sinai which is where they received the law including the ten commandments but they sin against God and they end up wandering the desert for forty years. during this time comes the books of Leviticus numbers and Deuteronomy .Moses dies and Joshua picks up the reins and he leads the Israelites back into the Promised Land the land is divided up according to the twelve tribes.

 Next comes the period known as the judges God appoints a series of leaders to help guide his people and lead them against the enemies that opposed them. the most well known judges Deborah, Gideon and Samson but there were actually many others Ruth also appears during this time but she wasn't a judge or even Jewish. The people of Israel say that all the other nations have a king and they plead with God to give them a king so that they can be like everyone else .well God allows it and soul becomes the first king of Israel.

Israelis pleased and so leads them reasonably well at least until they come up against the Philistines and of course Goliath in comes David who slays Goliath and wins the war on his grounds behalf. David ends up becoming the next king and he wrote many of the Psalms. David was followed by his son Solomon who wrote proverbs ecclesiastes and probably also the Song of Solomon.

When Solomon dies things get complicated the kingdom splits in two for the next few centuries there's two kingdoms that play a part of the story. there's the northern kingdom known as Israel comprised of 10 of the original tribes which is led by Jeroboam who is one of Sullivan's commanders in the army, then there's the southern kingdom known as Judah comprised of two of the original tribes which is led by REO boom who is Solomon's son. it was complicated this is the period of time when the books that we know of as the prophets begin during the divided Kingdom era .we have Isaiah, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah and Nahum who prophesy to the southern kingdom Judah and then we have Jonah Hosea and Amos who prophesied of the Northern Kingdom Israel.

The prophets are sent to God God's people and deliver his messages to the people they give a whole lot of warnings from seeing imminent destruction unless the people repent and follow God.well the people don't repent.

In 722 BC Assyria conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel all the way around the surrounding areas down to Egypt leaving only Judah. they exiled all of the people of Israel and scattered them throughout the entire kingdom replacing them with exile from other areas of their expanding kingdom. the ten northern tribes well they were completely wiped from history the southern kingdom of Judah will they put up a good fight and they survived the Assyrians but they failed to serve God fully. the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar rose up and wiped out the Assyrian Empire and over the course of about 20years conquered and deported all of the Jews from the southern kingdom of Judah back to Babylon the prophets Daniel Ezekiel Jeremiah who also wrote the book of lamentations and probably also Obadiah, they all prophesied around this time.

For about 50 years the Jews stayed in Babylon under Babylonian exile. Then in came Persia the Persians conquered the Babylonians and all of their land and in 538 BC King Cyrus made a decree that all of the Jews could go back home. In three waves led by a zerubabbel, Ezra and Nehemiah respectively the Jews went back into Israel rebuilt Jerusalem and the temple. Haggai  Zechariah and probably Joel prophesied during this time now .we know that some of the Jews didn't return home because the story of Esther takes place in Persia after the three waves of returning exiles. The last we hear about Israel in the Old Testament is from Malachi probably 450 years BC.

Malachicalls God's people to return to come an dental faithfulness and await for his president coming. during the 450 ish years between the old and new testament power changes hands a number of times. poser remains in power up until 330 BC when Alexander the Great also known as the Greek Empire takes over the whole known world in seven years.

Well he died young and the Empire crumbles in certain areas and while the Greek influence remains strong. the area of Palestine is ruled intermittently by Syria and Egypt . Under the Maccabees the Jews established on Webley independence in the land for about a century and in 63 BC Jerusalem fell to the Roman Empire. Which pretty much conquered everything Jesus was born during the rule of the Roman Empire and in comes the new testament so they have an overview of the entire Old Testament .now hopefully when you read through the Old Testament you'll have at least a decent handle on where you find yourself in the grand scheme of God's narrative.

Read "The New Testament"