It’s a bald-faced fact that if you understand the Bible, reading it is a LOT more fun.
When it comes to the Old Testament, it really helps if you combine your Bible reading with a little bit of history. You don’t have to go all in on history-nerd territory. A healthy dose of curiosity will suffice.
There are a few framework ideas that will stand you in good stead…
- If you understand the unified kingdom and the divided kingdom (including the territories associated with each regime), you’ll have a huge step up on a big section of the history books (Samuel, Kings, Chronicles). This is where my book Give Us A King! builds foundational understanding.
- If you understand the sequence of the world powers, that will give you a really good idea of the movers and shakers in the region that you’re reading about. Roughly speaking that would be something like David/Saul, Syria, Assyria, Babylon, Medio-Persian Empire, Alexander the Great, Rome. Frankly, Wikipedia would be a great starter resource here.
- If you have a good idea of the story of God’s People in the Old Testament, that’s another great anchor point: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Egypt (Joseph), Moses, Joshua (Promised Land). Each one of them moves the story forward in his own way.Reading Genesis, Exodus & Joshua would get you all the main stories.
I could keep going on, but if you’re just starting out, that’s three big structures that make a real difference.
Once you start to understand how all the pieces fit together, that’s a real breakthrough that will unlock a whole new level of understanding.
Here’s an example that just crushed me the other day.
I was reading my bible (getting caught up on my annual reading plan) and I came across 2 Kings 14:25. Generally a pretty unremarkable verse about where borders were located. But it references a statement that the prophet Jonah made.
This Jonah reference set off a whole chain of “Ahah!” moments for me.
I’ll spare you the gory details (but I still think it’s cool). Basically, this verse clued me in that the prophet Jonah (he of the big fish fame), lived during the reign of king Jeroboam II. That was much earlier in the biblical timeline than I previously thought.
With this earlier timeline, I realized that when Jonah refused to go to Nineveh, the Assyrians hadn’t started threatening Israel yet – the Syrians out of Damascus were still the bully to the North. But Jonah could see that it was only a matter of time before Assyria became an existential threat to the northern Kingdom. So he wanted God to just kill them all, and not allow them to repent.
One verse opened my eyes to see that Jonah was looking into the future when he objected to preaching in Nineveh. He could see what was coming, even though they hadn’t started interacting with Israel yet.
And he was right. 60-odd years later, Assyria did conquer Israel.
All of a sudden, the book of Jonah went from being “a story in the very back of the Old Testament” to a story that connected into the timeline of the kings of Israel and what was going on in the world at that time.
I love to see how the Bible is a real story. Not a bunch of tales, but real people, living in a real political situation, facing real threats and challenges.
It means that the Old Testament isn’t a bunch of idealized theories and concepts. It’s real instruction, real (dis)obedience, real consequences, real judgment, real pain and suffering.
And as I study, that makes all the more poignant and powerful for me.
Granted, I’ve developed my sense of the Bible over decades. I’ve built my understanding of people, places and events.
But even so, I’ve read that verse many times (every year for the last 4 or so years at least) – and this is the first time I picked up that little detail.
You might not be at this level of understanding (yet). But if you spend time in your Bible, and pay attention to what it says, you’ll start to build your own knowledge. What you read will become more real and more helpful.
It all comes down to reading your Bible and putting in some extra work to build an understanding of what’s going on.
I think that’s something that has fallen out of vogue. It’s not so cool to have a well-built view of what the Bible says.
But if you want to buck that trend, you just need to pick up your Bible and start to read. Ask questions, then spend some time to see if you can find the answers.
Before you know it, the pieces will start to fall into place and your understanding will soar.
Until next time,
Dennis
