Apicontent

The book of Proverbs invites people to live with wisdom and in the fear of the Lord in order to experience the good life.

Proverbs offers human words or human wisdom as a vehicle for the divine Word. The two voices we hear in Proverbs 1-9 have been fused together to help us understand that in the observations and sayings of Israel’s human elders, we will hear echoes of the divine, transcendental wisdom.

You can trust in God’s wisdom

Linked to Solomon and other wise men, the book of Proverbs includes hundreds of short, clever sayings designed to teach every person how to live and act wisely. Each saying touches on a common area of life and shows us what kind of world we live in and what it looks like to live well before God and toward others.

The wisdom in Proverbs is often described as a lady, but it’s not an impersonal force. It’s an attribute of God Himself. By fearing or respecting God and reading and obeying the wise, practical counsel found in this book, we develop the important skills and moral mindset we need to live successful, good and goodly lives in God’s world.

Job explores the difficult question of God’s relationship to human suffering, and invites us to trust God’s wisdom and character.

Set in Uz, an obscure land far from Israel, during an unknown time period, the book of Job focuses on questions about God’s justice and why good people suffer. At the same time, it also asks the question we rarely think to ask, why do good people prosper?

Can you trust God is good?

Throughout the book, Job, his wife, and his friends speculate on why he, an upright man, suffers. Job accuses God of being unjust and not operating the world according to principles of justice, and his friends believe that Job’s sin caused his suffering. Job decides to talk directly to God.

God reminds him that the world has order and beauty but is also wild and dangerous. While we do not always know why we suffer, we can bring our pain and grief to God and trust that He is wise and knows what He’s doing.

The Song of Songs is a collection of ancient Israelite love poems that celebrates the beauty and power of God’s gift of love and sexual desire.

A peculiar book in the Bible, the Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, is not technically a book. It’s a love song between two lovers! But according to ancient Hebrew writings, this song is considered the Song of Songs in the same way Jesus Christ is the King of Kings. What makes this song greater than any other love song? And what is it doing in the Bible?

A “lovely” poem

Read further to discover there’s more than meets the eye. Several themes begin to take shape within the poetry of this song, along with pearls of wisdom strung through its text about handling the fiery passions of sexual desire. Allegories of God’s love for His people are also woven through the poem’s tapestry, creating a beautiful picture of what God intended love to be since Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We can enjoy this same gift today with obedience.

God uses a faithful non-Israelite to bring restoration to his people.

The book of Ruth is a beautifully crafted look at how God’s good purpose interplays with the human decisions. It’s a tale of love, loss, faithfulness, and redemption.

The Faithful Gentile

Picking up “in the days when the judges ruled,” the book of Ruth tells the story of Naomi, the Moabite widow Ruth, and the farmer Boaz. The four chapters of the book are each designed with intentional symmetry. The first and last chapters reflect how loyalty turned this story of tragedy and death into a story of joy and birth. The inner chapters show how Naomi and Ruth make a plan, followed by an encounter between Ruth and Boaz, followed by Naomi and Ruth rejoicing.

Curiously, God is hardly mentioned in the book of Ruth. At a time when we look for God to be active through a judge or king, God instead works out his will through the everyday faithfulness of his people. This faithfulness not only benefits Naomi and her family but goes on to bless the world through the family of David, the line from which the Messiah would eventually come.

A collection of five funeral poems offered on behalf of Jerusalem after its destruction by Babylon.

The Book of Lamentations may not be the most popular book in the Bible, but it is an essential ingredient for helping humans to understand an important aspect of their relationship with God – the expression of grief and distress. This special book is a collection of five lament poems recounting the tragic fall of Jerusalem to Babylon.

Jerusalem has fallen

This catastrophic event was the direct result of Israel’s constant rebellion against God’s Covenant despite His persistent warnings through prophets to Jerusalem’s royal lineage.

Now surrounded by war, grief and suffering, the people of Israel acknowledge their sin and cry out to God for restoration and repentance in the lament poems, which are a way to process emotion and confusion at the disorder and chaos and to express themselves to God. Reading Lamentations helps us today to understand that communicating our distress to God about what’s wrong in our lives is an appropriate response to the evil in the world, rather than keeping it bottled up inside.

This book forces us to face death and random chance, and the challenges they pose to a naive belief in God’s goodness.

The Book of Ecclesiastes is the critic’s response to Proverbs, which states we live a good life when we fear God and follow wisdom.

Can you trust God’s wisdom?

This book’s author and the teacher believe that life is hevel, that is, temporary and fleeting like smoke or vapor. We all try to build meaning and purpose in life apart from God, investing in pursuits and things that have no lasting meaning, but time marches on, we all die and bad things happen to good people.

In the end, the key to contentment comes from wisdom, accepting hevel, fearing God, keeping His commandments, and putting our trust in Him. We remain puzzled by life’s mysteries, but He will bring true justice that fuels our ability to live lives of honesty and integrity.

God providentially uses two exiled Israelites to rescue His people from certain doom, without any explicit mention of God or His activity!

A classic story of good versus evil, the Book of Esther is a unique account in the Bible. It gives us a glimpse of the Jews who remained outside their homeland after the Exile, particularly the Jews living in the Persian Empire.

God is never absent

Here we see that the author chose a fascinating literary choice – never once is God mentioned in the entire Book. This behind-the-scenes take of God at work is brilliantly displayed throughout Esther’s chapters through “coincidences” and “happen chances” that help to save the Jews from Haman’s wicked plot to destroy them.

Even today Jewish people celebrate Purim each year by reading Esther, enjoying fun traditions, and giving gifts as described in Esther Chapter 9:20-32. Christians, too, can benefit from reading Esther as it reminds us that even though it appears God is absent, He is still at work in our lives and will not abandon His promises while we are living in a murky and ambiguous world.

The story of Daniel motivates faithfulness despite exile in Babylon. His visions offer hope that God will bring all nations under his rule.

Can there ever be faith again in the midst of darkness, rebellion, and gloom? According to the Book of Daniel, yes, there can. This remarkable piece of Scripture has encouraged the faithful for centuries, giving us a glimpse of future events that already came to pass and are yet to come.

A model exile

Christians and Jews alike will appreciate the timely events that Daniel sees in his visions while giving us hope to look forward to where evil hearts and rulers will one day finally come to an end.

We also have a chance to get to know Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and see them as the model example for believers living in the midst of a dark world, which applies both to Daniel’s day and to ours in the end times. Keep an eye out for key manifestations of Jesus Christ as well, as He is often referred to descriptions of being like a “Son of Man.”

Many Israelites return to Jerusalem after the exile and face some success alongside many spiritual and moral failures.

Originally written together as a single book in the Jewish Scriptures, Ezra and Nehemiah document the fulfillment of God’s promise that Israel will return home after 70 years of exile in Babylon and restore their ruined dwellings again.

From the rubble

Zerubbabel and Nehemiah both play a part in restoring God’s Temple, while Zerubbabel takes charge over governing affairs, and Nehemiah rebuilds the Walls of Jerusalem. Ezra, a descendant of Aaron, arrives in Jerusalem later and instills God’s laws to the post-Exile Jewish generation.

Note how the people received revelation and responded after they listened to the Word of God that was being taught to them. This response is remarkably similar to Jesus’ teachings about God’s Kingdom centuries later, and His often-repeated phrase, “He who has an ear, let him hear…” The takeaway? Whether it’s ancient Israel or our worship today, we all must receive a new heart from God and listen to Him.

Chronicles retells the entire Old Testament story, highlighting the future hope of the messianic king and a restored temple.

Like the Books of Samuel and Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles was also written as the single Book of Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible. Many readers today, however, skip reading it when they find that it repeats much of the material from its previous books. But is Chronicles necessary to read? Yes, it is!

The story so far

Chronicles is the last Book in the Hebrew Bible as it summarizes the continued relationship between God and Israel through the Blessing of Abraham. The arrangement of the content in Chronicles invites the reader to explore the stories of each section and reveal interesting details about David, Solomon, God’s temple, the kings of Judah, and how they work together. Chronicles is also an excellent historical reference for those studying specific facts in the Scriptures.

Time to pull up your sleeves and embark on a treasure hunt to dig up the “gems” in God’s Word!