Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Did it surprise you that we started another new book today? Welcome to First Chronicles. We'll be popping in and out of this book over the next month. Then we'll drop in and out of Second Chronicles for the three months after that. These two books used to be one book, but they were divided because of scroll length.
In our chronological timeline, we're currently at the time of David, which is roughly 1,000 years BC. And these two books were written at roughly 500 BC to chronicle Israel's history, like the Bible recap, but before podcast and much more condensed and on a scroll. So every time we drop into this book, we'll be getting a little bonus recap about something we just read.
The purpose of Chronicles is to remind Israel where they came from, which should also serve to give them hope for the future. In a few days, I'll tell you why it was so important for them to have this book and these genealogies specifically. The book starts us way back at the beginning. In fact, the first word of 1 Chronicles 1-1 is Adam. This is going to be such a good refresher for us, and I believe it will really help us to commit more of this to memory as well as stir up a few things in our hearts.
So don't tap out here if some of this feels repetitive. You don't want a little repetition to knock you off your game. In fact, reps are how you develop strength. Keep looking for God and for new things each day, even in the things that feel familiar or boring. But for what it's worth, Chronicles does spice things up a bit. It adds in some new stories that aren't recorded elsewhere, and it leaves a few things out as well.
Typically, Chronicles adds positive stories and subtracts negative ones. That may sound deceptive, but one thing I love about the Bible is that it doesn't let Chronicles off the hook. God has given us other books to help flesh out the story more fully. If you read a story in 2 Samuel one day and then 1 Chronicles the next day, sometimes there will be new details that jump off the page at you that weren't in the other account.
Today we had two chapters of genealogies tracing the story of the family we've been following. And I know that for most people, those aren't super fun to read, but let's see what we can find out about who God is in the midst of all these impossible-to-pronounce names. On days like this, I like to have the Bible app read to me. That's when it becomes clear to me that half the names sound like diseases and the other half sound like medications, so it all works really well together.
You probably noticed right away that the early genealogies are really compressed and some aren't even complete sentences. The scribe was probably like, "I have to write down 3,500 years worth of people, so who has time for verbs?" Nimrod may have caught your eye in 1:10 because the verse says he was the first person on earth to be a mighty man. We first read about Nimrod in Genesis 10, which mentions that he was a mighty hunter before the Lord.
Two things worth mentioning here. First, some commentators think this was an entire people group of hunter-warriors, not just one person. Second, the name Nimrod became a slang term for someone who was foolish. It was popularized by Bugs Bunny, who used it to refer to Elmer Fudd, who was a hunter. So it just makes me think that the people over at Looney Tunes are better theologians than our old friends the Renaissance painters. Some cartoonist has been reading his Bible.
Another person who caught my eye was Peleg, because 119 tells us that in his days the earth was divided. What's that about? We first met Peleg briefly back in Genesis 10.25, which was right before the Tower of Babel, the incident where God created multiple language which served to separate the people. It's likely but not certain that this is the division the text is referring us back to. However, some people think this points to continental drift theory and the way plate tectonics have impacted the globe.
The second chapter has us mostly hovering over the lineage of the tribe of Judah. That's because David comes from this tribe, so the author naturally wants to highlight his family because they're Israeli royalty. As these genealogies continue in the following chapters, some of the other tribes barely even get mentioned at all. Naphtali gets a sentence fragment. Chapter 2 verse 7 mentions Achan and refers to him as the troubler of Israel. We met him back in Joshua 7.
After the Israelites made their first raid in the Promised Land and took the city of Jericho, Achan is the one who stole some of the things devoted to God and hid them in his tent. And how did that trouble the whole nation? You may remember that their next battle was against Ai and they lost 36 men. God said it was because there was sin in the camp. Achan confessed and they stoned him. 36 men and all of Achan's family died because of his greed. Troubler indeed.
God shots are hard on genealogy days, aren't they? I won't pretend it came to me right away, but after I zoomed out on this and saw what caught my attention, I tried to look at what those things indicated to me about who God is. The things that jumped out at me were those three people we just talked about. Nimrod the mighty hunter, Peleg who lived in the days when the earth was divided, and Achan the troubler of Israel.
In this genealogy, we have someone who it seems is being praised, Nimrod the mighty hunter. Then we have someone who is identified more by the things around them than by the things they've done personally, Peleg the wallflower, maybe. And finally, we have Achan, who is known for bringing trouble and death to God's people with his idolatry.
To me, this points out how God uses every story, from the great to the terrible to the person who never does anything that history considers significant. We're all written into his story of redemption. He sees us all, one by one. And genealogies are a reminder of that. They may be boring, but he's not. He's where the joy is. ♪
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