PREAMBLE TO THE TWELVE HISTORICAL BOOKS.
INTRODUCTION
The following twelve of the thirty-nine Old Testament books of Israel’s history describe the consequences of Adam’s fall when beguiled by a woman to reject the tree of eternal life for the short term benefit of super-spiritual knowledge.
The twelve books from Joshua to Esther highlight the progressive decadence of the human race despite being given a second chance in Noah’s day. Though Cain’s descendants perished in the flood, God gave the race a new start under Noah because of the preserved line of Seth. Yet man’s endemic and incurable, but hidden, heart disease soon surfaced again to rapidly gnaw at the very fabric of mankind’s existence.
But the historical books also reveal how God’s grace can ransom a select handful ‘plucking them as brands from the burning’ fire of iniquity, self-righteousness, and the masquerade of religious profession. Abel, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abram, Moses, Caleb, and Joshua are the early examples of the remnant reached by the pre-incarnate Christ of the triune godhead: together responsible for creating the first man.
(“There are three that bear record in heaven: The Father, the Word, and the Spirit)
[1 John 5.7].
Each of them men had found grace and faith in spite of their incurable heart disease. They were each a rarity in their generation. Each had a different spirit and wholeheartedly sought the Lord God Almighty and discovered the mystery of the atoning blood that covered sin and forgave the inner enmity that had separated them from their Creator.
Abram was visited by God in Ur of the Chaldees and later by Christ (Melchizedek) who blessed Abram returning home to Hebron after his rescue of Lot [Genesis 14]. Melchizedek’s blessing and its grace soon thereafter generated Abram’s faith in God’s promise, and he was justified by faith [Genesis: 15] becoming a child of God who possessed the Holy Spirit within. [Genesis Chapters 11-12; 14-15; & 17]
These twelve books of sacred biblical canon come after the first five books of Moses and extend over the period from Joshua’s entry into the Promised Land to the exile of rebel Israel’s ten tribes of Samaria. Judah also went into captivity one hundred and twenty years afterward. Later we read of their release by Cyrus the Great allowing them to return to Jerusalem after seventy years in Babylon.
The salient memorable events in the time span, from Joshua to Esther, cover the following phases in approximate chronological sequence:-
Covered in the period of the Books of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.
1) Israel ends its 40 years of desert wandering and enters Palestine;
2) Canaan is conquered by Joshua, but not fully possessed by Israel;
3) Israel loses sight of its uniqueness and intermarries with the Canaanites it was meant to expel. It turns to their heathen idols becoming wayward.
4) A repeating cycle of God’s chastisement sets in:
a. Affliction by a foreign country,
b. The nation cries for help and a deliverer,
c. A judge, prophet or king delivers the Jews from tyranny,
d. After respite a rapid return to idolatry
This habitual waywardness becomes a permanent feature of Jewish hypocrisy despite faithful men or women whom God sends to them as messengers.
5)
In spite of God’s miraculous loving-kindness and merciful atoning umbrella, and intermittent times of revival the Jews remain apostate except for the faithful remnant.
Covered in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.
6)
The life of Prophet Samuel in the reign of Saul & David.
7)
David gives his temple plans to Solomon for its construction.
8)
Solomon builds David’s temple which replaces the tented tabernacle.
9)
Solomon’s early godly reign is later clouded by his idolatrous wives and he falls away from Jehovah his God t their heathenism.
10)
Solomon’s son Rehoboam reigns in Jerusalem but sees the kingdom of Solomon divided and loses ten tribes to rebel state of Israel which boycotted Jerusalem becoming Judah’s enemy in the north in a region known as Samaria. Later the city of Samaria was established and first used by King Ahab.
11)
While Judah worships God in Jerusalem, Israel’s ten tribes worship Jeroboam’s golden calf in Dan to the north and Bethel in the south.
12)
Civil wars between the two kingdoms weaken and progressively destroy many cities of Judah and also suburban Jerusalem. Respite comes only when the Assyrian army besieges Samaria and takes away the bulk of Israel’s populace into captivity to its own cities including Babylon, on the Euphrates, occupied by Nineveh’s garrison.
13)
Israel’s ten rebel tribes were thus deported and replaced by Assyria’s imported, Stalin-styled, forced migration of Assyrians to repopulate rebel Israel’s territory.
14)
Much of this devastating judgment on alien Israel in the north occurred during the reign of Jerusalem’s King ‘Ahaz‘when the prophet Isaiah ministered.
15)
A hundred & twenty years later Judah too was judged for its idolatry, homicide, infanticide, and abhorrent human sacrifices to the gods of the sun, moon, and stars. ‘Nebuchadnezzar‘, the Chaldean king of Babylon (the golden city of the East) was sent by God to destroy Jerusalem and deport its prisoners of war to Babylon leaving behind ‘Jeremiah‘ the prophet in Judah’s gutted and deserted wasteland.
Covered in the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.
16)
The Chaldean Empire had superseded the Assyrian Empire for a short period until the Medo-Persians superseded it capturing Babylon and its prisoners of war.
17)
After seven decades Jews were released by King Darius acting for Cyrus the Great, the Persian emperor.
18)
Cyrus allows the first return to Jerusalem’s ruins.
19)
The Persian emperors, of this era, included ‘Cyrus the Great’, ‘Darius the Great‘, and others were often known as only ‘Artaxerxes’ (or ‘Xerxes‘), a common royal title. The Medo-Persian ‘King Darius‘ took Babylon without a fight, for ‘Cyrus‘, though the Prophet ‘Daniel‘ informs us ‘Belshazzar‘ the Chaldean king was slain that night.
As Babylon’s puppet king ‘Darius‘ served ‘Cyrus’ autonomously. This ‘Darius‘was, not the later ‘Darius the Great‘, the emperor who reigned (like some others) from Shushan’s palace nearly 200 miles away east in the hinterland of the Persian Gulf.
20)
This last period of the twelve historical books is covered by books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther in which there are two distinct returns of the Jewish Diaspora destined for Jerusalem and its abandoned Judean cities.
21)
The ancient city Babylon resting on both sides of the Euphrates was finally destroyed by the conquering Greek Empire’s Alexander the Great, also described by the Prophet Daniel in his book.
22)
Though the ensuing five Poetic Books after Esther interrupt the train of Jewish history the sixteen books of the Prophets thereafter continue the historic vein of the Jews from differing perspectives in time. While some reiterate pre-captivity scenarios of Jewish decadence, others write as Babylonian captives to Jews within Babylon and abroad in Jerusalem awaiting the imminent final siege of the Chaldeans.
23)
Only the book of the Prophet Daniel speaks clearly of the Greek empire that succeeded the Persian one. Alexander the Great left Babylon in a heap of rubble, some fifty miles from Baghdad. This fulfilled the prophecies of both Isaiah and Jeremiah, his successor. This empire still had a great influence on Palestine in Christ’s day, having been overtaken by the Roman Empire over two centuries earlier.