Editor’s Note: We continue our series of blogs for those who are reading the Bible with us cover-to-cover this year. Interspersed with our thoughts on our daily reading, we want to provide some tips about reading the Bible in general. Today we are …
Digging Deeper on the Major Old Testament Routes
As you can see, our map for the Old Testament is not as complicated as you might imagine. Actually, these five routes (see Friday’s post) are the only major routes through the Old Testament. We will take a brief overview of these routes now in this blog. Again, let’s return to the first route of the Old Testament – this route allows us to experience the major events of the people of God as they occur historically.
Following the Original Journey of the People of God
Our first two routes are written as a diary or journal of the actual travels of the people of God in the Old Testament. They are their history books. As we travel on these two routes, we will be following the original journeys as they unfold, often as if we were participants in the actual events. Considered these two routes:
Route No. 2: Taking a walk through the history of Israel. On this route we will explore approximately 1,000 years of Israel’s history. It will include the glory days of David and Solomon and the disaster days of Civil War and captivity. It will end with a broken and weak remnant that is allowed to return to their conquered home in Israel. When we complete this route, we will have read the entire history of the Old Testament. We will look at:
- The book of Joshua, the invasion of the promised land for Israel.
- The book of Judges, the cycles of compromise and defeat in Israel.
- The book of Ruth, the loyalty of one woman in Israel and the heritage it brings.
- The book of First Samuel, the beginnings of the monarchy in Israel.
- The book of Second Samuel, the reign of King David.
- The book of First Kings, the rise and fall of the nation of Israel, leading to Civil War.
- The book of Second Kings, the invasion and captivity of Israel by Assyria.
- The book of First Chronicles, the spiritual life of David.
- The book of Second Chronicles, the spiritual evaluation of Judah’s Kings.
- The book of Ezra, though rebuilding of Israel’s worship.
- The book of Nehemiah, the rebuilding of Israel’s security.
- The book of Esther, the deliverance of Israel in captivity.
It is our hope that this background information helps a bit as you read on in the Bible. We will continue this series with our next installment on Thursday when we talk in detail about the “Moses Prepares the New Generation.”
For daily insights into the passage we are reading together each day, you can follow Dr. Smith on Twitter and on Facebook.
You can obtain more help from the FREE Bible reading schedule on our resource page. In His Image is a daily devotional that also follows our reading schedule and expresses the Biblical truth: “God Created You to Love You.” You can find this resource on the side bar of our website.
