A brief Reminder - These posts on Clarifying the Bible are a series of posts. Start at the first one and it'll make more sense as you move along the way.
I'm going through 20 sentences that will help you have a better handle on your Bible. Stay with me.
The last post was only one sentence but it was very involved. This post will be a little less involved but it does have a lot of key information to help you as you continue to understand God's word.
With this entry I'll finish the Old Testament going through Sentences 9 - 12.
Remember...
Bible study is important.
Make it a priority.
Be disciplined.
“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”
To level set, the last post talked about the nine eras of the Old Testament storyline. Learning those helps give you a GREAT high level understanding of the entire Old Testament.
Now let's move on...
9. Concerning the Poetic Books (Wisdom Books),
- Job is about suffering (he ultimately realizes that even through his terrible circumstances, God is still in control),
- Psalms is about worship (from the depths of human emotion),
- Proverbs is about wisdom, (skill for living…chapters 1 – 9 are paragraph form, 10 - 30 are short maxims, then the last two are back to paragraph form (31 is about a Godly woman), etc.),
- Ecclesiastes is about meaning, and
- Song of Solomon is about marital romance.
Wow...one sentence to cover all of the Poetic/Wisdom Books. It's not nearly enough and certainly isn't intended to give you a full understanding of the books. Remember, what we are doing here is clarifying the Bible.
What you should now know is that if you want to learn about worship, read and study Psalms. Wisdom? Read and study Proverbs. Etc.
Moving on...
10. The first thing to realize about the Prophetic Books is that the descriptions Major and Minor refer to length and not importance, and the reference to length is inconsistent, thus the labels are unfortunate. Remember, ALL scripture is God-breathed.
It's funny, when we taught this in class at New Hope Christian Church we liked to point out that the prophets were very much NOT like professional baseball (Minor League vs Major League). In other words, the Minor Prophets aren't trying to get better so that one day they can be Major Prophets. It's predominantly about the length of the book.
Let's keep going. We're now halfway through the 20 sentences to help you better understand God's Holy Word.
11. Concerning the Prophetic Books, there are 3 major categories to keep in mind: pre-exilic, exilic, and post-exilic, though 3 of the Prophetic books do not fit into these categories.
Pre-exilic means before the Jewish people were taken into exile in Babylon.
Exilic means during the time of exile in Babylon.
Post-exilic means after the days of exile were over and the Jewish people had returned to the Promised Land.
There's a very cool explanation of how the Prophetic Books fall into these categories. My intent at some point is to add that explanation to this entry. But for now, since I want to get this out there, I'll just say it's "coming soon."
Moving on...
12. The period between the Old Testament (approximately 400 BC) and the beginning of the New Testament (approximately 4 BC) is often referred to as the silence period, though God was greatly at work behind the scenes preparing the way for his Son. A lot of providential events happened during this period.
And I do mean greatly at work.
And I do mean a lot of providential events happened.
But that's a teaser for the start of the next blog post.
For now...remember...
Bible study is important.
Make it a priority.
Be disciplined.
Note: In this series of posts, I am presenting material from Clarifying the Bible as I learned it in the Downline Institute, purposely giving credit to both Downline and Mitch Maher, the author of the study by the same name.
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