Reading Through the New Testament in a Year
The Sense of an Ending: What is the real terminal book of the Sometime Attestation?
(Hint: This Book's Got History, Poetry, Narrative, and Hope)
BibleProject'south mission is to show how the Bible is one unified story that leads to Jesus. Sometimes this ways that we take to tackle topics that may come up as a surprise to our audition. This week, we are addressing a question that many of you may already be clued in on, but many will non. Prepare for it? The Old Testament didn't originally conclude with the book of Malachi. (What? Say that once again?) Turn to any Bible you have right at present and look at the table of contents. The last book in the Old Testament is definitely Malachi, just I'll explain more than.
Time warp!
Okay. While this is true of your Bible, this has not always been the case, and it certainly wasn't in Jesus' time. Here'south what I mean. The Bible that Jesus was familiar with, what we now refer to every bit the Old Attestation, did non stop with Malachi. In fact, information technology wasn't even a unmarried book book. Rather, it was a drove of separate scrolls that were made to exist read every bit a unified drove, and the book designed as the concluding crown jewel was Chronicles! Your favorite books of the Bible, I'thou sure.
At present I'one thousand not saying that there was anything inherently wrong with the decision to re-lodge the books with a new name, "the Old Testament." In fact, we don't even know precisely when this change happened. Our earliest manuscripts with the order of the modern Bible are in Christian manuscripts dating to the mid-300s A.D. However, this original design shape of the Hebrew scrolls was never lost in Jewish tradition upward to this mean solar day. So it'south more than than likely that the re-ordering was done by Christians who were no longer familiar with the Bible in Hebrew, and had therefore lost touch with its original design shape.
This is too bad because when y'all read the Old Attestation in its traditional society, the storyline shows a remarkable unity that doesn't quite come through in the order virtually Christians are accustomed to. For example, permit's say yous muster up the energy to read the Bible from Genesis chapter i through the historical books. You'll eventually come to 2 Kings 25 (last volume in Kings), where ane of Judah's kings, Jehoiachin, is released from prison. And so you plough the page to 1 Chronicles ane and observe nine capacity of genealogies copied from Genesis, followed past a repeat of the stories of David and Solomon that y'all just read in Samuel and Kings. And y'all say to yourself, "Great, I've already covered all of this!" So if someone's behind on their Bible reading plan, Chronicles is the bespeak where they tin take hold of up again because, seriously, do we demand to read all that again? Simply this raises an important question: Why are Chronicles in the Erstwhile Testament at all?
The TaNaK
It may exist a surprise to notice out that the two books of Chronicles were originally one scroll, only called Chronicles. And the book was placed at the end of the traditional Hebrew catechism. The Hebrew canon refers to the collection of Hebrew (and some Aramaic) books that were recognized as Scripture in ancient Israel. The traditional society that nosotros've been talking near has been referred to equally "TaNaK." The TaNaK is an acronym for the names of the 3 big subcollections of the Hebrew Bible: Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim.
Torah, often referred to as "The Torah," "Pentateuch," or the "first five books of Moses," is directly translated every bit "police" or "didactics."
Nevi'im ways "prophets," and this section was traditionally dissever into two groups, the old prophets (Joshua, Judges, and 1 Samuel - ii Kings) and the latter prophets (Isaiah - Malachi). In Christian tradition, the former prophets are thought of as the "historical" books, and the latter prophets are categorized every bit the major and pocket-sized prophets.
Ketuvim ways "writings," and this subcollection includes the rest of the Old Testament, everything from Daniel to Esther, from Proverbs to Task, and more than. It is here, nestled at the end of the Ketuvim, that we see Chronicles wrap up the Hebrew canon.
What about Malachi?
First, let's have a look at Malachi. Why did this book somewhen get adopted as the conclusion of the Christian Sometime Testament? It actually makes a lot of sense. Through the prophet Malachi, the God of Israel exposes but how decadent the post-exilic generations accept get later on returning from Babylon. The full general film we get from the book is that the long years of Israel's exile did non fundamentally modify the hearts of the people. They're still in rebellion against God, the temple is corrupted, and the reader is left waiting for some kind of resolution. And that's exactly what Malachi announces. The Twenty-four hours of the Lord is coming to purify State of israel from all moral compromise and evil, so that a faithful remnant tin emerge out of the other side. While the tone of the book is kind of a downer, it ends with a hopeful annotation that God will come 1 day to sort everything out. And that final, hopeful note is precisely what makes Malachi a great catastrophe to the Christian Sometime Testament. But call back, it's not the original ending.
Why Chronicles?
Contrast Malachi with Chronicles, which is placed at the end of the Hebrew canon. This volume, which is mostly narrative with genealogy and poetry mixed in, leaves a different impression. Chronicles opens with introductory genealogies that recap the entire biblical storyline from Adam all the way to the mail service-exile generation. The emphasis of Chronicles is to foster hope in God's hope to David for a new king and a new Jerusalem, which volition become a habitation identify for the divine celebrity along with a new, restored Israel. From hither, the volume moves on to recount the story of the kings of Jerusalem. Once again, the focus is on David and God'southward covenant promise of the seed that would come up through his line. This promised king would build a new temple and reign over Israel and the nations. As y'all read nearly every descendant of David, all of them fail, just there are a handful of brilliant-spot characters (Hezekiah and Josiah, for example) who succeed more than than they neglect. For the Chronicler, these narratives about the past kings from David's line serve as a prophetic pointer to what the time to come promised rex will exist like, only ameliorate!
When yous read the last portion of the scroll of Chronicles (2 Chronicles 36), you'll notice a bit of a fourth dimension warp, to the tune of seventy years! 2 Chronicles 36:21 says,
"This fulfilled the word of the Lord through Jeremiah, and the state enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation until lxx years were fulfilled."
2 Chronicles 36:21
This is referring to the exile by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar (the reference is to Jeremiah 25). Bound to the adjacent verse (and skip 70 years) in 2 Chronicles 36:22, "In the first yr of Rex Cyrus of Persia…" It'south here where we read that the Western farsi Rex Cyrus is letting the Israelites return home. By skipping the catamenia of the exile, the Chronicler highlights that the exile was 70 years long. This raises the question: does this number agree significance? Could it possibly exist related to why the people were in exile to begin with?
It'due south All About the Sevens
God's original desire for his people and their land was for their lives to revolve around rest. Over the form of the time, from David up until the exile, the country the Lord gave as an inheritance to his people should have received a total of seventy Sabbath years (you can read all nearly this in Leviticus 25). Why seventy? The Jewish agenda was set up in sequences of sevens. Every seven days, there was to be residue in the land. Every seven years, in that location was to exist a year of release, where a mini-restoration took place. After vii of these seven-year cycles occurred, there was to be a year of Jubilee, the major release year when all sold land was restored to the original owners, when slaves were freed, and celebrations abounded! These cycles were symbolic festivals that retold the exodus story and commemorated how the Lord brought his people out of captivity equally slaves and introduced joy back into their lives. Even so, if you recall from reading Chronicles, the kings of State of israel and Judah did non observe any of these Sabbath celebrations, rendering the land in dire need of remainder, the way the Lord intended. The author wants us to view the lxx years of Babylonian exile as a repayment for all of the ignored Jubilee years throughout Israel'due south history. If you can exercise the math, 70 times seven years of ignored Sabbath-Jubilees equals 490 years! And if y'all go back and advisedly rails the chronology of Chronicles from the reign of David to the exile, gauge what? It adds up to 490 years!
So, in the Chronicler's listen, those lost Sabbath-Jubilee years, 70 in total, were being made upwardly for all at one time through the exile. Let's follow that logic. If Israel's negligence and failure lasted 490 years, resulting in 70 years of exile, so surely Israel's restoration would be matched past something of equal or greater proportions, a whole new wheel of Sabbath-Jubilee celebration! Go on reading in 2 Chronicles 36:22. The expectation of this new cycle has to be connected with the main themes from the rest of the book, the hope for a promised king reigning over the new Jerusalem. And, lo and behold, what do nosotros read nigh in the final judgement of 2 Chronicles? The Persian king Cyrus ordered that someone go to Jerusalem, someone "whose God is with him," and so that this person can rebuild the new temple, "and allow him go upward… ."
seventy x 7
If you're reading 2 Chronicles in Hebrew (which well-nigh of us aren't, so it helps to have someone tell us what's going on!), it's crystal clear that Cyrus' decree ends with an incomplete sentence: "and let him get up… ." It's not incomplete in English language, but it is in Hebrew, which raises the question: Was this a mistake? No mode.
To empathize what's happening with the incomplete sentence at the terminate of the TaNaK, let's jump to Daniel 9. In Daniel nine, Daniel is sitting in Babylon reading the curl of Jeremiah, which announced the seventy-year exile. From where Daniel sat, those seventy years were nearly at their cease, and he ponders when Israel volition be restored. While he is praying, an angel appears to him (Daniel 9:21) and tells him that Israel's sin, even after 70 years, hasn't been fairly dealt with. So just equally the Israelites took 490 years to intermission the covenant, there volition exist a respective lxx times seven years to restore the covenant. The exile'south punishment is not over; another 490 years are necessary before the messianic kingdom of God volition come.
Now dorsum to two Chronicles 36. The question remains as to why Chronicles—and the Hebrew canon—ends with the incomplete prescript from Cyrus. When the formation of the catechism took place, the compiler placed Cyrus' decree at the cease of Chronicles to remind u.s.a. that the promise to David of the messianic king was not fulfilled when many Israelites returned after seventy years (the story's told in Ezra-Nehemiah. Rather, there will be some other seventy sevens, that is, another super-Jubilee cycle. The unfinished sentence of Cyrus' decree functions as a hyperlink that says, "become read Daniel ix," and when we make the connection, it'south clear that Israel still has another round of exile alee of them before the existent kingdom of God comes.
Is your head spinning yet? Have a deep breath considering the numbers game is about to become real. If you put together all of these numbers we've been because, you get the following: 490 years of Israel'south defiance, seventy years of exile in Babylon, and now another 490 years of a new kind of "exile," that is, Israel suffering under an oppressive strange rule. The fulfillment of the real Jubilee volition come after the second installment of the exile. But why must there be another circular of seventy times seven? Permit'south remember Daniel ix. It's because Israel'south sin is all the same ongoing. There was still covenant unfaithfulness in the postal service-exilic customs, further affirming the need for their Messiah! Exile did not purify the hearts of the people as Malachi promised. They needed a rescuing from a problem deeper than outward exile. The Chronicler lives amongst this "nevertheless-in-exile" community, and he composed this book to help God's people understand their truthful state of affairs. Through these ancient texts, he was able to paint a picture of the futurity hope for which they were waiting and had not yet seen.
Exile Didn't Finish in Babylon
So the render from exile under the leadership of Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah didn't solve the people'southward problems. The decree from Cyrus is incomplete because the authors of the TaNaK were still waiting for a real return from exile and the coming of the Messianic kingdom of God. God's people need a deliverer from a deeper kind of exile than simply being ruled by Babylon. In Chronicles, the literal exile has get an image of Israel's ongoing "spiritual" exile, their slavery to evil and sin and their disability to obey the Torah. This is all representative of the human condition: abode and yet not domicile until the kingdom of God comes. The Chronicler, and the people, are anxiously awaiting this day.
Jesus & Chronicles
This is the package deal we get when our Former Testament concludes with Chronicles! Hope, render, surprise, longing, and anticipation. We terminate Chronicles with reassuring anticipation for a king from the line of David to bring nigh the true return from exile. He's the one who will build the new dwelling place for his people and deal with humanity's sin. The end of Chronicles and all that comes with it is however another way that Christians can run across how the Onetime Testament points forward to Jesus, what he said, and what he did. In John 5:39, Jesus says,
"You pore over the Scriptures because you recollect you have eternal life in them, and still they testify about me."
John 5:39
Jesus knew he was the fulfillment of Chronicles. What's even more than beautiful is that when Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah 61 in Luke 4:17-21, He reads,
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim adept news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the bullheaded, to set the oppressed free; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
Luke 4:17-21
Jesus is tuned into all of these core themes in the TaNaK! He identifies that he is the one to bring about the new Jubilee. Chronicles presents the hope of a promised king from the line of David (always wonder why Matthew opens with a genealogy? Hint: it's a continuation of one Chronicles chs. 1-ix). He is to bring well-nigh the true freedom from exile, and in the New Attestation, we see that the male monarch and redeemer nosotros were waiting for is Jesus! The Scriptures are near him; he was steeped in them, and he came to fulfill them (Matthew v:17). Nosotros hope this reinvigorates your desire to take a renewed look at Chronicles because it isn't just a weird rehashing of everything that came before; it'southward a beautiful motion-picture show of everything that was yet to come, earlier the inflow of the Messiah, Jesus.
Source: https://bibleproject.com/blog/sense-ending-real-last-book-old-testament/
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