A Scenic Route Through the Old Testament

New Edition

Alec Motyer

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781783594849
• Print ISBN:
  9781783594191

Many of us find the Old testament daunting. It seems long and very distant. If the Old Testament is unknown territory to you, here's just the book to get you into it.Alec Motyer leads us through six key themes of the Old Testament, history, religion, worship, prophecy, wisdom and God himself. Each chapter shows with simplicity and warmth how important these themes are to the Old Testament, and how relevant they are to our lives today. At the end of each chapter the are seven short daily readings with crisp, practical comments, designed to help you explore that chapter's theme for yourself.Read through this book with your Old Testament in front of you and you will be amazed how it speaks directly to us today in our situations and our needs.The Scenic Route is a journey well worth taking.'Alec Motyer proves again his faithfulness and reliability as a guide to the world of the Old Testament. The potential for confusion, with its ancient history, curious culture and perplexing events, is enormous, but Alec's sure-footed guide takes us on the scenic route.
It is remarkable how, in such a brief and entertaining read, he can cover so much ground. Like any tour guide worth his shekels, the author highlights the most important vistas to be surveyed, while also taking us off the beaten track to some lesser-known alleyways of salvation history. The daily devotional Bible readings and notes make this useful for personal or group study and will provide readers not only with a good introduction to the Old Testament but also an opportunity to encounter the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.'
- Chris Sinkinson

1

THE VOICE OF HISTORY

A review

Between the time when the Lord called Abraham (Genesis 12) and the time of Malachi, the last of the prophets, there are about 1,500 years. Within this time-span the Old Testament tells how the Lord chose one man, gave him a family and made the family into a nation. Patiently he persevered with that nation through thick and thin, never deviating from his freely given commitment to be their God.

The table shows what the story outline looks like.

A chart can only give an impression: this is what the ‘skeleton’ of Old Testament history looks like. But put some flesh on the bare bones by following the events on the map.

One man to bless the world

God had a worldwide purpose when he called Abram from Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis 11:31 – 12:5; 15:7), and we, marvelling at the simple trust of the man who ‘went, even though he did not know where he was going’ (Hebrews 11:8), can follow him along the established trade route from Ur to Haran and on into Canaan. He went on his way trusting the promises God had made to him – that he would be a universal blessing (Genesis 12:2–3) and possess the land of Canaan (Genesis 15:7). In due course the promises passed to Isaac (Genesis 17:19–21), then to Jacob (Genesis 27:27–29; 28:13–15).

Possessing the land

Part of the promise was fulfilled when Jacob’s sons, now a large nation (Exodus 1:1–7), left Egypt under Moses and later entered and possessed Canaan under Joshua. The book of Joshua (see Joshua 1:1–5; 21:43–45) tells how the land was conquered. Judges chapter 1 sketches how individual tribes claimed their inheritance, but the main message of Judges is of the good care of the Lord in providing judge-deliverers according to the people’s need, but contrary to their deserving (Judges 2:10–19).

The kings

Then they asked for a king (1 Samuel 8:6) and, after the failure of Saul’s kingship (1 Samuel 8:1–7; 10:20–24; 13:13–14; 15:26), David united the kingdom round his new capital city, Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5:6–9). His son Solomon further cemented this unity by building in Jerusalem a temple or dwelling-place for the Lord (1 Kings 6:1, 37–38).

But Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, was the sort of person we would today call a ‘loser’. The kingdom broke into two (1 Kings 12:1–19), with Israel (also called ‘Jacob’ and ‘Ephraim’) to the north, and Judah to the south.

Exile and return

The single dynasty of David lasted in Jerusalem for 400 years, but in the north one dynasty followed another. King succeeded king by conquest and assassination until Israel was taken captive to Assyria in 722 bc. Judah, however, did not fall to Assyria’s imperial successor, Babylon, until 586 bc, and then the exile of the Lord’s people was complete. But the faithful Lord never allows his promises to lapse (Ezra 1:1). He brought them home again in 539 bc, but only to live as provincial subjects within the Persian Empire. They were never again a sovereign, independent state, and the dynasty of David was not to surface again until he came whose right it is to reign (Luke 1:29–33).

What sort of history?

There are five things we can say about Old Testament history.

Old Testament history is reliable

Specialist opinion regarding Old Testament history has undergone a wide pendulum swing. There was a time when specialists were saying that the stories should only be accepted as true if verified by evidence from outside the Old Testament. But now many are prepared to allow that the stories can be assumed to be true unless other evidence contradicts them. It is fair to say that the major tendency of outside evidence is to confirm what we read in the Bible. But we have a much surer foundation to rest on than this piece of evidence or that. Our great privilege is to look beyond specialist opinion to the Lord Jesus Christ. When he referred to stories in the Old Testament, it is plain that he accepted them as the wholly reliable Word of God, and we who follow him need have no hesitation in accepting as true whatever the Old Testament is found to affirm about events and their sequence.

The words ‘found to affirm’ are important. Old Testament history is not problem-free. It is not easy, for example, to ‘fit together’ the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah from dates and chronologies supplied by the books of Kings; neither is it certain who is referred to as ‘Darius the Mede’ in Daniel 5:31. On the other hand, it is clear from archaeology that the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph accurately reflect life and customs in the period 2000–1500 bc. Details (like the very existence of Belshazzar, Daniel 5) formerly disputed are now well established. We need to work at the stories until we are sure what it is the Old Testament is saying and claiming.

Old Testament history is selective

In this it is no different from every attempt to write history. Not even the longest history book, inside or outside the Bible, contains all that happened in its chosen period. H. A. L. Fisher wrote his History of Europe without making any reference to my grandmother. The same is true of R. F. Foster in his book Modern Ireland 1600–1972, even though the old lady lived in Ireland well within this period. Were I to write of the years 1850–1939, Grandma would figure very largely indeed. It is all a matter of what a writer thinks important.

Even historians who cannot discern any purpose in the flow of history still have to decide what to include and what to leave out. This is just as true of the Old Testament, not because it contains a peculiar sort of history, or because its writers were ignorant or biased, but because selection is the only way to write history.

Take Manasseh as an example. He reigned for many years over Judah (690–640 bc), and economically, politically and militarily he was an astute ruler, but 2 Kings tells us nothing of all this. Only eighteen verses are allotted to his fifty-five years (2 Kings 21:1–18), and they say, in effect, only one thing about Manasseh: ‘He did evil in the eyes of the Lord’ (verse 2).

Fifty-five years and only one fact! It would be easy to dismiss such history writing as not history at all. How very different it is from modern histories with their social, economic, political and military detail. But notice verse 17:

As for the other events of Manasseh’s reign, and all he did . . . are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?

In other words, the Old Testament historian had all the facts available, but he simply did not think them important for his purpose. Rather, this was his concern:

Nevertheless, the Lord did not turn away from the heat of his fierce anger . . . against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done . . . So the Lord said, ‘I will remove Judah . . . I will reject Jerusalem . . .’

(2 Kings 23:26–27)

The point is that it was Manasseh’s moral and spiritual failure that subsequently caused the ruin of Judah and Jerusalem. In 2 Kings 23:26, notice the word ‘nevertheless’. Manasseh was succeeded by Josiah (2 Kings 22 – 23). Unlike his father, Josiah was devoted to the Lord. Indeed, of all the kings of Judah he came nearest to the ideal, the ‘golden boy’ David. Think of it this way: Manasseh dropped a huge brick into the pond; Josiah, by his godliness and his reforms, fetched the brick out again, but nothing could stop the ripples that Manasseh had set in motion.

Why then should we need to know of Manasseh’s domestic and foreign policies? It was not on them that history turned, for it is righteousness, not astuteness, that exalts a nation (Proverbs 14:34). All Old Testament history is selectively written to demonstrate this single principle. The fortunes of nations are settled not by economic, political, military or diplomatic factors, but by their standing before God.

Old Testament history is God-centred

The Hebrew Bible – the ‘Old Testament’ – consists of three sections. They are arranged differently from our English versions (which follow the order given in the ‘Septuagint’, the Greek translation of the Old Testament), and are grouped as shown here.

This is the Bible as Jesus knew it. In the Upper Room on the first Easter Day he spoke to his disciples about how ‘everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms’ (Luke 24:44). It is pretty marvellous to realize that we have the same Bible the Lord Jesus knew and loved.

But the particular point to notice is that the early editors, who organized the Bible books into the three-section order of the Hebrew Bible, described the history books of Samuel and Kings as ‘prophets’. How can this be? What does it mean?

When we speak of ‘prophets’, we often mean ‘predictors’ or ‘forecasters’, but this is only one of the things a prophet did. Acts 2:11 and 17 will help us here. As the crowd listened to the apostles speaking on the Day of Pentecost, Peter reminded them that Joel had predicted that ‘your sons and daughters will prophesy’. However, what the listeners heard them saying was not prediction, but ‘the wonders of God’. This is how the Old Testament history books are ‘prophecy’: they are written in order to tell us about God and the way he runs the world; they are a record of his wonderful works.

Listen to Amos:

Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt,

the Philistines from Caphtor

and the Arameans from Kir?

(Amos 9:7)

This must have been a shock to Amos’s listeners. They had been brought up to believe that their God’s ‘wonderful works’ in bringing them out from Egyptian slavery were unique to them. This was right as far as it went. Sadly, however, they had come to think of the exodus simply as a date on the calendar, and of themselves as right with God simply because that date had passed. It was like the song that still does the rounds at Christmas time: ‘Man shall live forevermore because of Christmas Day.’ In one sense nothing could be more true, for Jesus came to save, and does save, all who trust him. But in another sense nothing could be more false or misleading, because the mere fact of Christmas as a date on the calendar saves no-one.

So Amos was challenging a deadly spiritual complacency which said, ‘We must be right with God because the exodus happened’, irrespective of personal trust or obedience or holiness. He challenged it head-on: ‘As far as the exodus is concerned, why, you are no different from anyone else! Who do you think masterminded the ...

Table of contents

• PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
• PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
• INTRODUCTION
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• APPENDIX
• NOTES