{The purpose of this study is to establish a chronology of the Bible. Session I began in 3901 BCE, with the creation of Adam. This session, session II, will finish the Tanakh, the Old Testament.}
We resume our series with a mention of Lot, Abraham’s nephew. Lot’s two daughters were each the mothers of the Ammonites and the Moabites.
Isaac had twin sons - - Jacob and Esau, in 1793 BCE. Jacob was the patriarch of the 12 tribes of the Hebrews, and his brother, Esau, was the father of the Edomites, who settled in the hilly desert area called Edom.
Now, we move to the book of Exodus.
Jacob and his 12 sons - - 70 people, that entire family, went to live in Egypt, in the area called Giza/Goshen, where they lived for 210 years. Things started out well there, and continued so while Joseph, Jacob’s most favored son, was alive. Joseph was not chosen by God to be the ancestor of Jesus, however.
The next big challenge the Hebrew people faced was the Egyptian enslavement, which began after the death of Joseph in 1591 BCE and ended in 1447 BCE, lasting about 144 years. (They were enslaved for over half of the years they were in Egypt.) Moses was born during these years, in 1527 BCE . He survived an evil pharaoh who foreshadowed King Herod in the New Testament). Moses was 80 when he “began his ministry” and lived for about 40 more years.
The Exodus, one of the most key dates in all of Scripture, took place on March 22-23, 1447 BCE. When most Christians think of this event called the Exodus, they don’t usually believe it really applies to them. However, here are two key points:
The rabbis say that most of the Hebrew people did not leave Egypt in the Exodus. Some from each of the 12 tribes left. However, a sizable percentage did not leave. I was discussing this with an orthodox rabbi recently, and postulated that the reason they did not leave was because they could not conceive of themselves as anything other than slaves. This “slave mentality” was even present in those who DID leave. We see it in their laments in the desert, complaining to Moses as to why he did not just let them die in Egypt, as that would have been preferable to them.
The group that left contained a sizable number of Egyptians, along with the Hebrews. The Bible describes this as a “mixed multitude”. These who trusted in God by obeying His commands and who left along with the Hebrews had to learn the ways of God just as the Hebrew people did. The Torah was given to a redeemed mixed multitude. First, God redeemed them from slavery in Egypt and from certain death at the Sea of Reeds, and only then did He give them His instruction, the written Torah, at Mt. Sinai. 1/3 of the Old Testament took place during the 40 years of wilderness wanderings. So, it was a very important series of events, this Exodus and the 40 years in the desert.
During the time of Moses, while the people were at Mt. Sinai, when the Ten Commandments were given by God, the first Sanhedrin was formed, at the suggestion (divinely inspired) of his father-in-law, Jethro, priest of Midian. (Exodus 18:13-27) 70 godly leaders were selected, and Moses was the leader of the group, making 71. The Scriptures say that God took some of His spirit that He had placed on Moses, and transferred it to these 70 men. This is one such “appearance” of the Holy Spirit in the Tanakh (Old Testament). The Holy Spirit of God was NOT first seen at the Christian festival called Pentecost. He was present to empower all the heroes of the Tanakh, to carry out the will of God.
Moses wrote down the first five books of the Bible, while wandering for 40 years in the desert. He took all that oral tradition that had been passed down through the generations, and under the direction of God’s Holy Spirit, he wrote all that history down, plus the 613 commandments he received from God Himself during those years in the desert. (It is also believed that Moses recorded the story of Job, a righteous man who lived sometime before Moses’ day.)
The books of Leviticus and Numbers, written by Moses, detail the instructions Father Yahweh gave to him, concerning how people of God were to live before God and how to draw near to Him. The book of Deuteronomy recaps a lot of the history and gives Moses’ last words to Israel. The entire fifth book of the Bible was written on the day of Moses’ death, January 6th, 1406. Well, it is believed Joshua wrote the very last part of Deuteronomy, as a dead man can’t write anything....
Our journey on the Glory Road takes us next to the book of Joshua.
Joshua, who became Moses’ “right hand man” at age 19, right after the Exodus, succeeded Moses, led the Hebrew people into the Promised Land around 1405 BCE, where he led the successful battle of Jericho at age 60. After this decisive victory, each tribe was assigned a parcel of land over a period of Joshua’s 40+ years of leadership. MOST of the pagan peoples were conquered during those years, but not all of them, due to the Hebrews’ own “lapses into paganism”.
It is important to try to understand the context of that day. All the world, except for the Hebrews, was deeply mired in paganism. Only the Hebrews possessed God’s truth, and they were commanded to be a light unto the nations. I don’t think we can conceive of how difficult that was. Yes, the Hebrews frequently wandered off the path. However, they were called to exist in a very unfriendly environment of utter paganism.
Now, we will move to the book of Judges.
After Joshua died, the next generation of Israelites forgot their God. You can read about this apostasy in the last chapter of the book of Joshua, (ch. 24) and the first two chapters of the book of Judges. Caleb’s daughter had been given in marriage by him to a mighty and ambitious man named Othniel, the first of The Judges, in a long line of Judges who ruled over Israel from 1356 BCE to around 975 BCE, about 380 years. (Note that the period of the judges continues on into 1 Samuel.).
During this very chaotic period some of the judges were “good” (Deborah, Gideon, to name two) and others were “evil”. As a result, the people began again abandoning God’s divine laws. Toward the end of this period, even the priesthood became morally corrupted, as evidenced by the sins of Eli’s sons. (This was the time of barren Hannah, who eventually received as her firstborn son, Samuel, who grew up to become the last and one of the greatest judges.). Despite overwhelming apostasy, a righteous remnant of the priesthood was preserved by the Almighty. They had a shrine, altar and the Ark of the Covenant at Shiloh.
As far as establishing the biblical chronology goes, Joshua and Judges are very difficult books, since they are both rather “topsy-turvy”. Counting in linear time, exactly as the books are laid out, is NOT the way to go. A couple of examples, without getting too much into the weeds here....
Some of the events laid out in Joshua, also occur during the early chapters of Judges. The two books overlap. (See Joshua 15:16-17 and Judges 1:12-13.)
The well-known judge named Samson ruled for 20 years near the END of the judges period, even though his story occurs near the beginning of that book, probably due to the importance of his judgeship.
The story of Ruth and Boaz occurred sometime during the period of the Judges. Boaz’ great-granddad was leading the tribe of Judah at the beginning of the Sinai years. (Compare Numbers 2 : 3 with Ruth 4:20-22.) Jewish sages say that Boaz was 80 years old when the story of Ruth took place. Ruth and Boaz’ son was Obed, and his son was Jesse, and Jesse was the father of David Ha Melech (David the king), who was born around 1056 BCE, near the start of the rule of Saul, who began to rule in 1051 BCE.
Samuel, the last of the judges, oversaw the anointing and rule of Israel’s first king: Saul. God had warned the people through Samuel that getting a king, like the pagan peoples around them, would be a bad move for the Hebrew people. As always, history proved that God certainly knew what He was talking about, despite the fact that Samuel essentially co-ruled with Saul for the first 15 years of his reign and tried to “rein” him in!
Overall, Saul was not a great king, although he reigned for 40 years (1051-1011.) He was a son of Kish, a Benjaminite. This is a very important point to know. He was the only king of the Hebrew people and later of Judah who was NOT of the tribe of Judah. David, who WAS of the tribe of Judah, married Saul’s daughter and was dear friends with Saul’s son, Jonathan. David went on to become Israel’s greatest king in the year 1011 BCE, and a prototype of the Messiah. He reigned for 40 years and 6 months, dying in 971. King David wrote about half of the book of Psalms.
Jerusalem was not the “center of things”, the ruling city, until the time of King David. David did not begin his reign there, but it was he who established Jerusalem as the capital of the land, and moved the Ark there (from Shiloh), and was given by God the blueprints for the first “permanent” structure for the House of God, the Temple.
The Lord made another important covenant around this time, this one with King David. Essentially, He promised David that his descendants from the tribe of Judah would reign forever. In this covenant, recorded in 2 Samuel 7, 1 Chronicles 17:11-14 and also in 2 Chronicles 6:16, God made an unconditional covenant that reaffirmed the covenants He made with Abraham and Moses and Adam. Well and good.
How many generations were there between Abraham and David? 14
But, look what happened after this....
Other than Nathan and King Solomon, who succeeded David in 971 BCE after several bloody coups by his brothers, David’s sons were unmitigated disasters. It was Solomon, son of Bathsheba, who reigned for 14 years, and began to build the first Temple in his 4th year, 967 BCE, fulfilling God’s Word that one of David’s sons would be the builder of the Temple. Solomon was a man of the written word, as was his father. He wrote the books of Proverbs, Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. And, despite his immense wisdom in other areas, Solomon had a severe problem with his libido, which wreaked a great amount of havoc. Note that Mary’s ancestor (the tribe of Judah) was one of David’s other sons, one of the more godly ones, a quiet figure named Nathan.
In the generation following Solomon, 956 BCE and following, God allowed an absolute tyrant (Solomon’s son, Rehoboam) to become the king of the Jewish people in 931 BCE. Because he treated the people so badly, the family tribal territories of the 10 most northern tribes more or less “seceded from the union”. They broke off, established their own seat of government (Samaria), crowned their own king (Jeroboam), established their own “temple” and places of worship. In effect, they left God’s plan for His people, in a drastic way.
Remaining in Judah were the tribes of Judah, Levi (the priestly tribe) and Benjamin.
Jonah, Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Micah, Nahum, and Zephaniah were written during this period of the northern and the southern kingdoms.
I know you must be thinking, “Well, this certainly seems to have ‘gone to Hell in a handbasket!” What about that Davidic covenant? Essentially, God’s promise was that Messiah Jesus would come from David’s ancestral line, from his descendants. The prophecy and promise did NOT say that there would be an unbroken reign of David’s descendants, sitting on an actual earthly throne until the coming of the Messiah. I felt the need to clarify that, before moving on, because things are going to go from bad to worse!
God’s promises are sure, and they are eternal. But, often, we humans with our limited scope, bound by Time, make the mistake of believing that God will fulfill His promises on OUR timeline!
As the now two separate kingdoms (called Israel and Judah) continued on their way, the succeeding kings were sometimes awesome and sometimes awful. There were some attempts to reunite the two kingdoms (King Jehoshaphat, through marriage to one of King Ahab’s daughters, for example), though these were unsuccessful. Like two rebellious sons, each kingdom seemed determined to out-do his brother in rebellion against God.
Elijah and Elisha, though they wrote no books of the Bible, were key prophets during the period of the kings. The books of 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles give details about the rules of the Hebrew kings. These four books do not follow each other chronologically, although they are listed that way in Bibles. There’s a good bit of overlap between these four books, in that they often record the same events listed elsewhere. Incidentally, the prophet Elijah was another one who did not die an earthly death. He and Enoch, the son of Seth, were in a very exclusive club. Both were taken up to Heaven by God, without seeing death.
The period of the Hebrew kings is another chronology nightmare. As been mentioned in the last teaching session, the chroniclers of Israel counted the reigns of their kings differently than did the chroniclers of Judah. The best chronology we have was worked out by two dudes named Edwin R. Thiele, and his “successor”, Leslie McFall. The Theile-McFall system is the system biblical historians go by today. (Again, another severe diversion beckons, but we will resist it.)
Eventually, the northern kingdom, called Israel, wandered so far off the path into abject paganism, despite the warnings of several prophets of God, such as Amos and Jonah, who served and wrote during this period. He gave them up to be conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. At this point, the 10 northern tribes were scattered across that part of the world as the Assyrians took many of them away into captivity further north. Some of them intermarried with Assyrians and stayed in the land, etc. This is where the Samaritans of Jesus’ time came from. It was a mess.
The prophets Habakkuk, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel were writing during this period. The book, Lamentations, was written by Jeremiah during this period.
The kingdom of Judah was not a lot better, at least initially. The Assyrians tried to conquer Judah also, but God stopped them. However, about 200 years later, Judah had become so spiritually corrupted that God allowed them to be besieged by Nebuchadnezzar around 600 BCE. He hauled the Judeans off to Babylon in three waves, for a Babylonian captivity which lasted 70 years, (the exact number of years Jeremiah had prophesied the captivity would last.) The Temple of Solomon was burned and destroyed in 586 BCE, on July 11th, the 9th of Av, which is a day of fasting for observant Jews to this day, a day of great sorrow.
There were how many generations between David and the Babylonian exile? 14
The people returned from Babylon, in 3 waves, just as they had left. Similar to the Exodus from Egypt, not all of them returned, by any stretch. Many decided they liked life in Babylon and stayed. (Remember the 3 Wise Men from “the Orient”? Some theologians believe they were Babylonian Jews; others believe they practiced the religion called Zoroastrianism. We will study them more deeply in the next session.) Jerusalem and Babylon were the two biggest centers of Judaism in that part of the world for several hundred years. Egypt also began to have a growing population, because in the conquering of Judah by the Babylonians, at the end of that time, a large group of Jerusalemites left Jerusalem and went to live in Egypt. The prophet Jeremiah was an old man by then. He was taken with them as a captive, sadly, and died there.
The Babylonian Empire lasted until it was conquered by Darius and Cyrus and the rest of the Persians. During the rule of the Medo-Persian Empire, the largest empire in that part of the world to date (stretching from Egypt to India), the story of Esther took place, and afterwards the book of Esther was written down. The prophets Haggai and Zechariah and Malachi also wrote their books during this era. Although called “minor prophets”, these 12 books of the Old Testament (Tanakh) were only called “minor” because they were short in length. Fun fact: the shortest book in the Tanakh is Obadiah.
Concerning the remnant that returned from Babylon to Jerusalem during the time of the Persians, the Jews (Judeans) rebuilt the city under the direction of Ezra and Nehemiah. The Temple that Solomon had built was rebuilt, and the people, who had wandered severely from the commandments and holy festivals of God, began to follow Torah and celebrate His holy feasts again. The Sanhedrin, the Great Council, began to function again. The priesthood was reinstated. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah were written.
The prophet, Daniel, lived a long time. He was a teenager when he was taken away as a captive to Babylon. And, he was still alive at the beginning of the Persian Empire. It was during his latter years that he was given the visions concerning the end of the Earth age. The book of Daniel and the New Testament book of Revelation are companion books. We will revisit them in a later teaching.
But, after the prophet Malachi, there was a period of 400 years where the people of Judah had no prophet, no word from God. They were led and governed by the Sanhedrin during this period and up and through the time of Jesus, until the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem as a whole in 70 C.E.
During this period, the Sanhedrin devised much material concerning how the Jewish people should live out the 613 commandments given to them by God at Sinai, although their opinions were not formally written down until the second century CE. The Sanhedrin was not perfect. Later, we will study this body more deeply, as we study the earthly life of Messiah. The four gospels do not give a lot of complete information about the religious rulers of Jesus’ day, because the writers had no idea their accounts would endure for 2000 years. And, they assumed their Jewish readers would understand a lot of the backstory and culture, which we have disregarded today.
Also during this period, around 300 BCE, the Greeks were ruling the land of Judah and Israel. The Jews, of necessity, began to learn to speak Greek, as this was the language of the civil government. Accordingly, the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) was translated into Greek by the best 70-72 Hebrew scholars available in that day. This represented the first significant effort to translate a major religious text from one language to another. NT authors felt comfortable using it, quoting from it, in their writings. It was the most commonly used translation of the Hebrew texts in Jesus’ day too, although the common language of Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries was Aramaic. Today, we know this translation of the Old Testament into Greek as the Septuagint.
How many generations from the Babylonian Exile to the birth of the Savior? 14
“In all, then, there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.” Matthew 1:17
And this concludes our study of the Signposts on the Glory Road for the Tanakh, the Old Testament.
We have passed over many instructive, compelling stories along the way, stories which teach many valuable lessons about drawing near to God and His redemptive plan for mankind. There are also many, many Tanakh prophecies of the coming Messiah. These prophecies fall into two categories:
The Suffering Servant (also known as Messiah Ben Yosef – Messiah son of Joseph) It was these prophecies Jesus fulfilled with his first coming to Earth as a baby.
The Conquering King (also known as Messiah Ben David – Messiah son of David) It is these prophecies He will fulfill when He returns at the end of the current Earth age.
All of these prophecies are important, in part because they validate the truth of Scripture, the reliability of this “book.” They are also important because they show that God can be trusted. These prophecies align with the religious festivals that are prescribed for followers of God in the five books of Moses commonly called The Torah. Likewise, these festivals are important to study. However, again, the purpose of this teaching series is to establish biblical chronology. A comprehensive study of the biblical festivals is another study for another day.
Before we part ways today, though, I do want to mention to you a historical event from the period between the books of Malachi and Matthew. And, the reason I’m bringing this up is two-fold:
Although the historical books of 1 and 2 Maccabees are not part of the biblical canon of either Jews or Protestants, knowledge of these events is important in the chronology because the prophet Daniel foretold these events in Daniel chapter 11. I don’t have time this morning to get into a deep study of this, although it would make a fascinating one.
The second reason we are touching on these events is because it was the Maccabean revolt in the 2nd century BCE which led to the establishment of the festival of Hanukkah, a celebration that Jesus/Yeshua took part in, as mentioned in John 10:22.
Chronologically and prophetically these events are quite important. So, we will give them “a lick and a promise”, as my mother is fond of saying. (The Catholic Bible does include these books, by the way.)
If you go and read the apocryphal book of 1 Maccabees, it is an amazing history lesson. This book was not seemingly written with the idea of providing theological instruction. The crux of the story is this:
When the book of Malachi closes, the Persians are still ruling in the Promised Land. The next empire to take power in that part of the world was the Greek Empire. After the 323 BCE death of Alexander the Great, that amazing young man who led the Greeks to topple the Persian Empire, the future of the Greek “kingdom” was in peril. Why? Because Alexander left no heir. He died at age 32, mysteriously. His conquered territory was then divided up between four of his most accomplished and powerful generals. The land of Judea was assigned to a man of Seleucid heritage named Antiochus IV “Epiphanes”, in 175 BCE, a very evil dude who the prophet Daniel foresaw. The Greeks set out on a campaign to get the Jews in their territory to abandon worship of Father Yahweh and to bow down instead before the Greeks’ pagan idols. Many Jews became “hellenized”, which means that they abandoned the Torah walk, to adopt Greek customs, ways of living, etc., in order to curry economic and political favor. The Matthias Chashman family refused to do this and instead began to lead a revolt against the Greeks, in 167. Over a period of over 40 years, Father Yahweh showed tremendous favor to these courageous Jewish rebels, eventually allowing them to re-take the Temple, cleanse it and re-establish the rightful Levitical priesthood. The surname, Chashman, morphed into Hasmonean in the Greek parlance. But, a nickname for this family was The Maccabees, taken from the Jewish word for “hammer”. In other words, this family brought the hammer down to smash the Greeks. The five Maccabean sons of Matthias were greatly used by Father Yahweh as both high priests and military leaders, to throw off the oppressive yoke of the Greeks. They eventually brought about Jewish independence from the Greeks over much of the Promised Land, reclaiming almost as much land as King Solomon had possessed. The last of the five sons of Matthias was Simon, whose son was John Hyrcanus. The book of 1 Maccabees ends with his exploits. However, the later Maccabean sons saw the Romans as more benevolent and sought to make a political alliance with them for peace in the region. The Hasmonean dynasty lasted until 63 BCE. One of the more famous Hasmoneans and one mentioned in the New Covenant Scriptures was Herod the Great. Although Herod was an Edomite, also known as an Idumean, that is, a descendant of Esau, he married a Hasmonean princess, to make himself appear more legitimate in the eyes of the Jews. This political deal-making and pandering was a serious miscalculation, however, as the Roman Empire grew in power. And, by the time of Yeshua, the Romans had shown themselves to be 10 times the tyrants the Greeks had been.
So, in our next session, we will start in the year 7 BCE and begin to study the chronology of the New Covenant Scriptures, the New Testament. We will discover much from the Tanakh there, as 2/3 of the Newer Testament is taken from the Older.
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