Survey of Old Testament History Books

The Scope of Old Testament History

We are in week three of Survey of the Old Testament and tonight we are going to be doing a survey of the history books. In our first lecture we discussed the differences between the Hebrew and the English list of the Old Testament books.

Notice we noted that the Hebrew is arranged in chronological order, more chronological, and the English or Protestant canon is organized in categorical fashion. Therefore we look at the English Bible and we see the Pentateuch and then we see the history books and then we see the poetry books and then we see the major prophets and then we see the minor prophets.

Whereas if you look at the Hebrew ordering of the books it would be different and much more chronological. And I bring that up because last week we looked at the Pentateuch and the Pentateuch covered basically, well if you don't count from creation to Moses, if you think about the time it was written, it was written over about a 40 year period of time.

Certainly it covered many hundreds of, you know, if not a few thousand years from creation to the time of Moses, but a lot of that time was sort of in giant leaps. Well tonight we're going to be looking at the historical books and the historical books cover about 1 ,000 years of human history.

And that is from the 1400s approximately to about the 400s approximately. Now if you have a copy of this book, which is the Rose Publishing Bible Overview, then you have the color copy of the Bible history timeline that we handed out.

I handed this out in black and white, but this book has the nice color copy. Now you have the paperback version, Johnny, and that is bigger, which is nicer because it's almost a third bigger than this one.

So you get a nice big copy. Now we have had, Miss Kathy has been generous and that she has provided some copies in full color, but there's limited amount here. But she says anybody who would like to take one is welcome to, but this is the same thing that's in that book, but a little bit bigger and in color format.

So we may get a break tonight. We may not. It's going to depend how fast I'm able to talk and get through 1 ,000 years of history. But even if we don't get the break at the end of class, if you'd like to come and take one of these, she was generous and we thank you, Miss Kathy, for being generous with that.

So that's the history that we're going to be looking at tonight. And I want to, I sort of want to begin with a caveat. If you remember the first night I told you the story about when I was in seminary and the president of the seminary was teaching the class and he told me to go to a book in the Bible and I went the wrong way.

And I was utterly embarrassed because it just showed how little I knew when I was in seminary, how little I had learned, even though I'd been a Sunday school student and even though I'd been in the church for a long time, how little I'd really retained, how little I'd had learned.

Well, I want to share another one of those embarrassing moments with you tonight because we're going to be looking at 1 ,000 years of history. And anytime we go to the narrative books in the Bible, I get a little nervous because as good as my memory is, there's a lot of stories.

And there may be some things that you may ask me a question and I go, I don't remember. Years and years ago, I was teaching Sunday school. Now we're talking almost 20 years ago. And a lady, she said something about the she bears.

I see some of you know exactly what I'm talking about and some of you gave me a weird look. Well, the she bears is the story of Elijah when they were calling him the bald head, bald head, and the bears came out and attacked the young men and killed them.

Well, I didn't recall that story when she mentioned it. I'd never heard it called the story of the she bears. It just didn't register in my mind. And I said, I don't know what you're talking about. And she said, I don't want to be in a Sunday school class with a teacher who doesn't know that story.

I mean, she was very offended and now I was very hurt. And my point is simply to say this. We're here to learn and none of us have arrived. And I'm sure there are some stories that I've either forgotten or have, you know, there's just so much information in these narratives.

So if you raise your hand and ask a question and I say, I don't know, don't be ashamed of me. I won't be ashamed of you. Okay, because there's a lot here and we're going to be doing a lot in the next hour and a half.

But again, the major focus of what we're trying to do in this lesson is look at a broad scope of history, break it down into its sections so that when we are studying Judges or when we are studying 2 Chronicles for whatever reason, that we're able to put it in its historic context.

And that way, we're able to better understand what the author is intending in his writing. Everybody good with that? All right. Well, we're going to break down the historical period into three eras. We have a thousand years to break down.

And so we want to break this down into three eras. And the first era we're going to identify as the theocratic period, the theocratic period. And this we would identify from about 1405 to about 1043. And this would be, obviously, would be B .C.

When we do these dates, now, if you're unfamiliar, modern textbooks, even some modern textbooks that are written for Christians, no longer use the phrase B .C. because B .C. stands for Before Christ. And A .D. stands for Anno Domini, which is the Latin for In the Year of Our Lord.

And because of a push, especially in the academy and scholasticism in general, to avoid all things Christian in nature, they have moved to, instead of B .C., it's B .C .E. And B .C .E. stands for Before the Common Era.

And then C .E. stands for the Common Era. So, but it's the same thing, whether you want to admit that we're judging history on the birth of Jesus Christ or not, that's what it is. And so when we look at 1400 to 1043, we're looking at the theocratic period.

And this is, again, a thousand years before the birth of Jesus. The next period that we're going to look at is the monarchial period. The monarchial period is from 1043 to 586 B .C. Oh, not B .B., B .C.

Sometimes I write faster than I think. So the monarchial period lasts from about 1043 to about 586. Let me ask this question. And if you know, please raise your hand. Why is 586 a significant number in history?

Yes. Yes. That is actually the beginning of the exile of the southern kingdom. 722 was the exile of the northern kingdom to Assyria. 586 is the exile of the southern kingdom to Babylonia or Babylon, depending on how you want to pronounce it.

So you have the theocratic period. You have the monarchial period, which ends with the exile. Then you have what is known as the restoration period. And I'm going to run out of board here, so I'll have to write a little smaller.

The restoration period doesn't begin in 586 because, remember, there is a exile. So we could say the restoration period starts around 536 and goes to about 420 B .C. So we have now the three periods of time that we are going to address tonight.

And this takes us through a thousand year period of biblical history. Now, it is important to remember that when we talk about history from a biblical perspective, the Bible does not present an exhaustive history.

The Bible presents the history that God wants recorded and remembered. And a way that you can think about this, and I know it may be a little a little hokey, but it is still true. History is his story.

And so when we read the biblical history, we're reading the accounts that God has seen fit to give to us. And so it's not going to tell us everything. The Bible doesn't tell us about Alexander the Great.

The Bible doesn't tell us about Genghis Khan. You understand there are certain major events in history. It doesn't talk about any of the Chinese dynasties. You understand there's a lot of things in history that the Bible does not address.

And that's okay because the Bible is not intending to address those things. The Bible is intending to address the things in which God is personally active and working through his chosen people, his chosen vessel.

And his chosen vessel in the Old Covenant was the nation of Israel, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And so some take issue with the fact that the Bible is not written like a modern history textbook.

But this history is intended not only to inform, but to instruct. I'll give you a verse to consider. Romans chapter 15 verse 4 says this. For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.

So this tells us that the history books that were written were not just written to inform us about what happened to David or Solomon or anyone else. But it was written to instruct us. Think about what 2 Timothy 3 .16 says about the Word of God.

All scripture is given by inspiration or is breathed out by God and is profitable for what? For reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. All scripture, even those stories that we don't always remember, all scripture is to instruct us.

And remember when Timothy was given that letter by Paul, the only Bible they had was the Old Testament. Paul was still in the middle of writing portions of the New Testament had not yet been collected.

It was not yet recognized completely and fully as as scripture. But the Old Testament was. So just remember that this is written for our instruction. We see this also in 1 Corinthians 10 verse 11. It says these things happen to them.

Speaking of those things that happened to the Israelites as an example, but they were written down for our instruction. On whom the end of the ages has come. This is what the Old Testament is. It's an instruction for the people of God.

The Theocratic Period: Joshua, Judges, and Ruth

And so within the three categories and I love categories, but I love them even more when they're equal because we have three categories and each category gets three books in that wonderful. That's just that to me.

That's enough. That's that's joy for me is when I have some semblance of of of symmetry. So within the theocratic period, we have three books and the three books are the books of Joshua, the books of judges.

And I'll let you guess what the third one is. Ruth. Yes. OK. Yeah, they're in order. So it's not not as if they're going to we're going to fool you. So the three books that we would categorize within the theocratic period.

And by the way, before we go any further, maybe we should define words. What does the what is a theocracy? Yes, theocratic refers to a God ruled government. Democracy means to be ruled by the majority.

Right. Representative republic means that there are those who represent the people and they are the ones who make the decisions on behalf. They represent the people. And that's what we have in the United States.

We have a democratic republic. We we vote and choose our leaders and our leaders are meant to represent us in their decision making. Well, a theocracy means God ruled, not ruled by the people and not ruled by a representative, but ruled by God.

Some people get very offended today because they believe that Christians want to enforce a theocracy on the United States. And they say we should know we should be a democracy, not a theocracy. But in all in all honesty, that that that is not something that has ever been pushed by Christians in the United States.

Christians have always pushed for a separation between church and state. You see, that's not something that the unbelievers came up with. That was something that the Christians came up with because Christians understood that God has ordained the church for a purpose and God has ordained the state for a purpose and the state ought not to try to influence the church and the church ought not try to demand from the state.

The state has its purpose. Now we can call the state to account when it comes to things like immorality and things like that. But as far as trying to mix the two, that was the problem with the Roman Empire was that you had the state and the church were one.

And when you have the state in the church as one, there ends up being a power struggle. And that's what we see in much of the Middle Ages and even leading into the Reformation. So a theocracy is God ruled.

How was God ruling? God was ruling through his appointed leaders, first with Joshua, then down through the various judges that we see. And we're going to go through these books one at a time in just a little while.

But just for now, just sort of looking at how is God ruling now? Ruth falls into this category because Ruth happens in the midst of that theocratic governing rule. Ruth doesn't really have anything to do with theocracy, but Ruth is the events are occurring in that time period.

And therefore, she would be under the theocratic period. Now, why is Ruth important? We'll talk more about her later, but why does she come in to the scene at all? Why do we care who Ruth was? Say, because her relationship to the king, her relationship to David and that.

So it's the Ruth who leads us to this part, which is the monarchial period. What's monarch? Monarch is single ruler, a king, a monarchy. They have a form of monarchy over in England. And we as Americans have always said, we don't want that, we don't want a king, we don't want a queen, we want representative government, but we don't want anyone who has sovereignty and rule in there simply by by nature of their birth.

In fact, one of the things that we don't have here in the United States, we do not have titles like knight or duke or sir. Those titles are not given in the United States because the founding fathers saw that as a as a holdover of a system they did not want to impart upon us.

They didn't want there to be a distinction between nobility and those who were not part of the nobility. They wanted the people who were representing an authority to be seen as representatives of the people and not receiving their power by birth or by some other form of monarchial fiat.

So we have the monarchy. This is a king. And so what books fall under the monarchy? Now, this is going to kind of be tricky now because I'm going to give you three books. But in our Bible, it'd be six books because it's first and second Samuel.

But remember, there's only really one book of Samuel. If you especially look in the Hebrew Bible, it would only be one. So you have Samuel, which we, of course, would would know is first and second Samuel.

And then you have Kings, which, again, we know would be first and second Kings. And then we have Chronicles. Your favorite book is first and second Chronicles? Okay, I say that would be a first. I mean, there are some passages that people tend to like in the Chronicles.

I think some that are misused. And yes, the prayer of Jabez. But ultimately, usually people's life first doesn't come from Second Chronicles. I mean, not, you know, but it's still the word of God. Right.

And it's the history of the people of God. And what's interesting, I remember hearing something years ago. I'm going to talk more about this later. But again, I'm just as things come to my mind, I want to mention them.

I remember hearing years ago something I'd never thought about before. And it was Dr. James White. And he was talking about the fact that, you know, when we talk about authorial power or authorial intent, some of the books, we don't know who wrote them.

And a good example is Chronicles. We don't know who the chronicler was. Now, we can make some guesses, and we're going to talk about that later when we get there. But I remember just hearing James White say, we don't know who the chronicler was.

And I was like, wow, I never thought about that. Because I know who wrote Romans. Right. I know Paul wrote Romans. I know about when he wrote it. But the fact that I don't know who wrote Chronicles, I don't know who wrote Hebrews either, by the way.

That doesn't make it any less the word of God. But it's important to recognize that not all of the authority vested in these books comes from who wrote them. And we have to be able to admit that and acknowledge that.

One of the things people often say, well, the reason why I believe the New Testament is because all the books were written by the apostles. No, they weren't. When was Luke ever made an apostle? Mark was not an apostle.

So the first four books, you throw the concept right out of the author himself giving the book authorial power. Or, you know, it's not that. So keep that in mind. We don't know who the chronicler was.

We can make some educated guesses, and we will. But we don't know for sure. Doesn't make it any less the word of God. So we have Joshua, Joseph, and Ruth. This is the theocratic period. This is prior to the monarchy.

We have Samuel, 1 Samuel, 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles. And then we have the restoration period with Ezra, Nehemiah, and Queen Esther. So that takes us to the end. And consider when I say the end of Old Testament history.

Because next week we're going to go into poetry books. And then the week after that we're going to go into the prophets. And most of those prophets prophesy in this time period. So tonight is taking us all the way to the end.

Because what comes after the restoration period? Jesus. 400 years after the time of Malachi. Which would have been right around here. 400 years there is not a prophet in Israel who speaks. And then one comes as he who cries in the wilderness.

John the Baptist. The last of the Old Testament prophets. And he comes like an Old Testament prophet. Dressed a little weird. Eats a little weird. I mean, you might not like me saying it that way. But it is, you know, he's meant to be peculiar.

To stand out. To not be like everyone else. To represent the one who makes straight the path of the Lord. To remind everyone that the axe is laid at the root of the tree. The time has come. Repent for the kingdom of God.

You know, this is John the Baptist. For 400 years there's not going to be a prophetic voice after the restoration period. So that is the way we're going to break these down. And now we're going to begin to look at these books a little bit more closely.

Joshua: Claiming the Promise

So let's look first at the book of Joshua. Now, I'm sorry. Yes, Joshua. The bridge between the books of Moses and the history of Israel in the land of Canaan. Is the writing of the book of Joshua. Now, who wrote Joshua?

We don't know. But tradition says that it was Joshua. And I personally believe that Joshua also was the one who wrote the last chapters of Deuteronomy. Because the last chapters of Deuteronomy had the death of Moses.

And unless Moses was prophesying his own death, there's not really another way that he could have written about his own death. And so, it could have been... And I want you to consider something about Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy is basically five sermons. And so, Deuteronomy could have been sermons preached by Moses written down by Joshua all the way to the end. And Joshua functioning as an ancient amanuensis or like a secretary.

One who writes down what someone else is saying. So, if Moses is proclaiming to the next generation this truth and Joshua writes. And then, of course, as Moses goes, sees the promised land, dies. And Joshua finishes that book.

And now we have what's known as the Pentateuch or the Torah or the books of Moses. And now Joshua goes in and begins to write his book. His revelation from God. What is the theme of Joshua? The theme of Joshua is claiming the promise.

Claiming the promise. Conquest is at the heart of the book of Joshua. What are some of the key events from this book? What do you remember from Joshua? And I do want you to interact with me tonight if you remember.

What are some things that you remember from the book of Joshua B .J.? Crossing the Jordan, right? Which a lot of people forget that. We know all about crossing the Red Sea. But then another miracle happens.

And that's one thing people often forget. The miracle of the parting of the Jordan. This is something that people, they forget that that was another very similar. And real quick, I'll get to you. But think about this.

People think about the feeding of the 5 ,000 Jesus did. Very few people remember the feeding of the 4 ,000. That he repeats a miracle. That it's almost the exact same miracle. Just something to remember.

That's something we see in Joshua. Very good. Mark? Yeah. Now there's a miracle. Don't know. I don't know what happened. Well, that's a good question. But it's one of those events that is breathtaking.

To even consider how it would have happened. And what exactly happened. And by the way, just because you mentioned that, I'm going to mention something from an apologetic standpoint. There are some people who believe that our calendars and our dating methods are missing several hours because of that event.

And they've tried to argue for that. But there is really no evidence for that. I think that's more like a sort of a Christian wish list. You know, wouldn't it be nice? Sort of like the whole Adam had his rib removed and that's why men have one less rib.

No, they don't. Men do not have one less rib. But it sounds good. And so people use arguments like that because it sounds good. But yes, we don't know how it happened. We don't know what the miracle was.

But we know how it appeared to them. As if time stood still. Yes, sir. Yep. Yes. Well, yeah. For those of you who were not in that class, in the ethics class, I gave everyone different topics upon which to write.

And I said if you were a police officer who had to go undercover and therefore you had to lie to falsify your identity, falsify who you were for your job, would that still be wrong in the eyes of God?

If that's something that is ultimately for the greater good of catching a thief or catching a murderer or something like that. And we talk about Rahab as a good example of the question of the greater good.

Right? Because we know she lied. But the Bible puts her in the hall of faith. Right? She ends up in Hebrews 11 as for her faith. And there are a lot of people who would say, well, you know, she's not put in there because she lied.

She put in there because she believed. I agree. But it does. It's a good ethical dilemma that is important for us to deal with. You know, what is it that is there ever a time where there's a greater good?

You know, was it was it OK when Corrie ten Boom lied when she had Jews stashed away in her cellar when the Nazis came in and they said, do you have any Jews? And she said no. And she ended up taking their place and going to the concentration camps and being tortured rather than them.

You know, I think she was a hero, you know, so that so there is a ethical question that comes up in the story of Rahab. Very good. And then you brought up the fall of Jericho or one of you did mentioned about the whole city being destroyed.

Right. So we have that. And then we have the in Joshua, the distribution of the land. Once it's conquered, there's distributing the land to the people or to the to the tribes. Is there anything else anybody want to mention?

Again, we're I'm just trying to strum up drum up in your mind because many of you, again, have read this. But it's so easy to have these things go into our mind and back out. That's in Judges. Yeah. So we're going to get there in a minute.

We're still in Joshua. That's OK, though. That's OK. Yes. Amen. Yes. And and and I think that it's a very important statement. Joshua was making a statement about the willingness to stand and even in the midst of those who would not.

What about the story of Akin? Was that you? Yeah. I'm going to tell you a real bad way to remember it. Because you know what happened to Akin, right? Akin stole what was not his. It caused the people of God to lose a battle because God's favor was lifted.

And then Akin was ultimately destroyed by fire. So if you think of it this way, he was taking Akin. Then he was shaking Akin when he got caught. And then he was baking Akin. And I know that's a horrible way to remember it.

But you will never forget it now. That's a three part sermon. You'll never forget the story now. So, yes. OK. So that takes us into Joshua. And at the end of Joshua, we move into the time of the judges.

But remember what we said. We want to have a sentence or a thought from the book that we sort of try to keep in our mind. What is this book about? And again, the book of Joshua is about claiming the promise.

It's about claiming the promise. The promise had been made to Abram. The promise had been fulfilled in Abram's sons. And then, of course, they were taken to Egypt. They were put into slavery. And now God has redeemed them out.

He has brought them in to the promised land. And they've yet to receive it. Moses dies seeing it, but not receiving it. And Joshua is the one to usher the new generation into the promise. So it's claiming the promise of God.

Judges: The Struggle of Sin and Grace

OK. Now on to judges. And if you want a sentence for judges, it's simple. The struggle of sin and grace. Judges is the struggle of sin and grace. And by the way, important little thought here. And let me see if I have a different color.

Because I want to write this down. The word judge in Hebrew doesn't mean what it means for us. We think of a judge as somebody with a gavel who pounds a gavel and makes a decision. A judge in Hebrew means deliverer.

So the judges were essentially saviors. They had a purpose in the economy of God to bring about a salvation from some form of oppression or some form of problem that they are dealing with. And this is the cycle, by the way.

And everybody has their handouts for tonight? Pull out page 101. If you have this book, it's page 101. But we did give you handouts. And you'll notice here the cycle. This is the cyclical action throughout the book of Judges.

And you see in the bottom down there, it gives you the judge or the deliverer. You have Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Tola, Jayar. You have all the way down the list. And you see a little description of who they were, how long they judged.

And you see at the top there's disobedience, which leads to oppression, which leads to Israel crying out for God to save them. Then you see God raising up a savior or a deliverer. By the way, every one of them in a way represents the Lord Jesus Christ, the ultimate one who would come and save His people from their sins.

So there is a picture there of the coming of Jesus. Israel is saved or delivered. Israel is at peace. And what happens once they're at peace? Right back into disobedience. And the cycle begins again. You know what?

There's a lot of people whose lives are marked by something kind of like this. Yeah. Disobedience to failure and oppression. I heard years ago a good point that was made. How did it go? It said that warriors fight so that they can give birth to farmers.

Farmers farms, they give birth to poets. And poets often have to give birth to warriors again. Because once the warriors go away, there's no one left to fight the wars, and that's when the war begins again.

Now that's not exactly perfect. Do you understand what I mean by that? You have a generation that, think of our generation, the greatest generation, that generation that fought World War II, fought off Hitler, fought the Nazis, fought specific evil in the world.

And they gave birth to my generation, who was really good at making iPhones and stuff, but never saw a war. Not a real one. I mean, we saw Desert Storm, but we were so far away from it. We saw it on television.

Now, you weren't, Gary. I mean, you were there. But what I mean is so many of us, when I was 13 years old, and they said we were going to war, it didn't feel like Vietnam or Korea. You know? And then 9 -11 happens.

And now we realize where it were, what it means to be. And now things change, and things begin again, and the cycle changes. Well, this is the cycle of Israel, the judges. Disobedience leads to oppression, leads to crying out for a deliverer.

God hears the cries of His people. He does not ignore them. They're delivered. They get to be at peace, and what do they do? They disobey again. All right, so this is a really good overview of judges, and because of time I don't want to belabor it, but does anybody have any questions or something from judges they want to mention?

Yeah? Was that the one where the hilt got caught in his fat? I can relate. That's a little weird. Well, no, no, I mean what I'm saying from her perspective. That's a little weird. One of the most commonly known stories from the book of Judges is, of course, the story of Samson and Delilah.

Samson, his entire scenario, the entire situation is one of seemingly failure after failure after failure, but yet he was God's chosen deliverer. These are not perfect people is my point. God did not choose perfect deliverers.

Now, he had a perfect deliverer that would come, and that was Jesus, but these people don't represent Christ in perfection. They represent Christ in God sending them to the people to be the salvation that they needed at the time.

They needed Samson as foolish as he may have been to vindicate them and to redeem them. All right. Now we move to the book of Ruth. The book of Ruth. Again, if Judges is... Oh, by the way, before we go away from Judges, the author of Judges is not stated in Scripture.

Tradition, however, is all we have, and tradition says it was Samuel who would have written the history of the Judges. We don't know that for certain, but if you want to make a note of that. I have no reason to question that.

Again, I wasn't there, but also from a historical perspective, we know Samuel did write, and so it makes sense if he was the one who chronicled the history of the Judges. And it's likely, too, though, if you think about it, that the chronicling of history would have been happening along as these events are happening and narratives are passed down and, of course, codified and written.

Ruth: The Remnant of Grace

Ruth is about the remnant of grace. The remnant of grace. God demonstrates providential care and redemption through the kinsman-redeemer known as Boaz. And I could ask Brother Mark to come up and give a rousing explanation of Ruth because you just preached through it recently.

What were some of the things that you gleaned in your preaching? I'm not going to ask you to come up here, but if you would share. Not of the nation. In fact, that was the point I was going to mention, was the fact that we see in the genealogy of Jesus.

Rahab, Gentile prostitute. Ruth, another Gentile. This is amazing. A Moabite. Yes, a Moabite. So, the key events in Ruth, the famine that got them to move, the death of the husbands and Naomi and Ruth's relationship, and then, of course, Ruth and Boaz's relationship.

It's only four chapters, isn't that right? Yeah. But the important key people in the story is more than just Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz, but it's also Jesse and David. Because who is Jesse? Jesse is the ancestor of David.

David, of course, is the king. And so, the reason for the history of Ruth is that it's paving the way for the monarchy. It's paving the way for this kingdom which will be based in God's chosen king who is David.

And that takes us through the end of the theocratic period. The book of Ruth ends the theocratic period and moves us into the beginning of the monarchy which is with Samuel. Now, again. Oh, and by the way, thank you for sharing.

That was very good. I appreciate it. So we have Samuel, kings, and chronicles. Samuel, kings, and chronicles. Each of which, of course, takes up two books in our Bibles, but ultimately is one book each.

And the monarchical period beginning with the book of Samuel. Who was Samuel? Samuel was probably the author of Ruth, by the way. I mentioned Samuel being the author of Judges. He was probably the author of Ruth as well.

Who was Samuel? He was a prophet. His mother was who? Hannah. So Samuel was not only a prophet, but he was also a child who was a blessing to his mother who had promised to devote her child if God would give her a child.

Many a mother, or rather, let me say that again, many a woman who has had difficulty conceiving has looked to Hannah as a great amount of encouragement because of her prayer to God and God answering her prayer.

And so we see Samuel as the main figure of the first portion of the book, but it quickly becomes a book about the kingdom itself and the monarchy. So what could we call, what could we say if we were going to try to sum up Samuel as first and second Samuel?

Well, there's really too much to sum up in one sentence, but if you wanted to try and be just as vague as you could be, you could say Samuel marks the beginning of the kingdom. Samuel marks the beginning of the kingdom.

Because you're going to move from the time of the judges to the time of the kings. And the theme is who has the right to rule? Is it God or is it man? Because under the theocratic government, the theo in theocratic is God.

But what did the people cry out for? We want a king. The other nations have a king. And we want a king. We want what the other nations have. And I've often thought a lot about the choosing of Saul as king because if you read the narrative, it's quite clear that God is involved in choosing Saul, but it is also as clear that Saul was the people's choice.

The scripture says he was heads above all the rest. And that doesn't mean necessarily that he was seven foot tall, but what it meant was that he was a man of stature and he was a man that looked like a king.

He was a man that had all the qualities that people would admire. He was the people's king. And yet, Saul would not reign without failure. Saul's reign would be marked by failure almost from the beginning.