Chronicles Overview (Part 1)

Bible Book Overviews — Steve Gregg

Next in this series

Chronicles Overview (Part 2)

00:00

Chronicles Overview (Part 1)

Bible Book OverviewsSteve Gregg

In "Chronicles Overview (Part 1)," Steve Gregg provides an in-depth look at the Old Testament book of Chronicles. The book covers Israel's history from Adam to Cyrus's decree allowing Jews to return from exile and rebuild the temple, placing a strong focus on the southern kingdom of Judah and the importance of faithfulness to God. While often overlooked by Christians, Chronicles contains valuable information and unique narratives that supplement those found in books like Samuel and Kings. Through the lens of a priestly perspective, Gregg explores the book's themes and highlights, including the genealogies, David's lineage, the Levites, the settlement of tribes, the reign of King David, and the construction of the temple.

Transcript

All right, we're going to have tonight a survey, an introduction and a survey to the book of Chronicles. Now, there's two books of Chronicles in your Bible, just like there's two books of Samuel and two books of Kings. And when we were doing the introductions to those books I mentioned in the original Hebrew Bible, there's not two books of Samuel, two books of Kings, or two books of Chronicles.

In fact, there's one book of Samuel, which our Bibles have divided into two because of its length. There's one book of Kings, which our Bible divides into two because of length. And there's one book of Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible, which our Bible, of course, divides into two because of length.

By the way, the next two books in the Bible are Ezra and Nehemiah. In the Hebrew Bible, those are one book also, which we divide into two. So there are four books, or we should say eight books in a row in our Old Testament that really are only four books in a row, not really in a row in the Hebrew Bible because they're not all in one place in the Hebrew Bible as they are in ours.

Our Bible places the books of Chronicles toward the end of the historical books, right after 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. And that would be seemingly the most logical place to put them because they cover the same material. You might find it a little more logical to put 1 Chronicles right after the books of Samuel because it's largely parallel to them, just like we put Matthew, Mark, and Luke next to each other in the Bible because they're parallel to each other.

And you could put 2 Chronicles after the books of Kings. However, that would be treating Chronicles as if it's two books when, in fact, it's only one. So it's kind of a hard decision where to place them in connection with the other books.

What the Hebrew Bible does is it doesn't even place them in the historical narrative book section. In the Hebrew Bible, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, those are part of what they call the former prophets in the divisions of books in the Hebrew Bible. And books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and such are called the later prophets.

But Chronicles isn't included in that collection, but in the last collection in the Hebrew Bible, which includes the Psalms and the Proverbs and some other miscellaneous books, which they simply call the writings. So actually, 1 and 2 Chronicles would be at the very end of the Hebrew Bible. And they're not even at the end of the historical section of books in our Bible because they're followed with Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther in our Bible before you end up going to other kinds of books than historical.

Now, our Bible actually arranges them in a more logical way. I don't say there's any right way or wrong way to do it, but there's more logic in it because the books of Chronicles, and I'm going to alternately probably say books of Chronicles and book of Chronicles because it is one book and it is two, depending on which Bible you look at, whether it's the Hebrew Bible or English. But the book of Chronicles covers the most history, or at least the greatest span of history of any book in the Bible.

It starts with Adam at the very beginning, and it goes all the way to the time of Cyrus and the decree to allow the Jews to go back to their land after the exile and to build the temple. Now, that span of history is covered previously in the books Genesis through Kings, which is all the books we've covered previous to this in our survey of the Bible. But that whole same period of time is covered simply in the books of Chronicles, unevenly of course.

The first nine chapters of first Chronicles are simply genealogical tables, and they largely in nine chapters pass over the period of time. They don't pass over it, but they don't go into great detail into it. The time between Adam and David, the interest of the book of Chronicles begins with the reign of David, and then of Solomon, and then of the kings of Judah after Solomon, after the division of the empire.

And it goes all the way through the entire history of the kings of Judah to the exile, which is almost at the end of chapter 36 of second Chronicles. And then the last few verses skip over the exile to the time of Cyrus's decree, and that's how it ends. Now, it not only covers the longest span of history of any book of the Old Testament or the Bible, it also is one of the longest books in the Bible.

Chronicles is the third longest book. Psalms is the longest. Isaiah is the second longest.

And Chronicles comes in third. So it's amazing that Christians often do not really read Chronicles. It's a large book.

It covers more history than any other book, and certainly the Old Testament concern is very largely with history. Why would Christians not read Chronicles more than they do? Well, it's got some daunting features. As I mentioned, the first nine chapters are little else than genealogies.

Now, you run into genealogies elsewhere in the Bible, but nothing like nine chapters in a row. Some people who begin reading the Old Testament in Genesis, they get a little discouraged when they get to the fifth chapter of Genesis because it goes through ten generations of genealogies occupying the tenth chapter. You get another ten chapters, excuse me, ten generations of genealogies in the eleventh chapter, from Noah to Abraham in Genesis.

Apart from that, there's only short bits of genealogy here and there in Genesis, and you'll find them in some other books too. The book of Ruth has a genealogy at the end, but no book in the Bible except Chronicles has nine chapters of almost entirely genealogical material. I say almost because surprisingly, there are some little nuggets stuck in there, probably just to see if you're paying attention, because most people don't.

When you get to nine chapters of genealogies, and the names in them, frankly, you see a familiar name once in a while. I mean, Adam, Noah, Abraham, David, Saul, these are familiar names, and some of the other names are familiar, but really, probably not one name in a hundred in the genealogies is a name you'll ever hear anywhere else or ever know anything about the people except who their father and their son were, because they're in the lineage of someone. So you've got name after name after name of people that don't really matter except in the sense that someone they were related to mattered.

They were either the descendant or the ancestor of somebody important. Their names, they don't live on in fame. Once you find a name in there that somebody you recognize, you have to perk up and say, Oh, there's someone.

I recognize that person. But I have to say, I think I'm like most Christians who've read through the Bible. I've read through the Bible many times.

At least I say I've read through the Bible many times. But when it's come to chronicles, usually I kind of skim through the genealogies. I have to say the longer genealogical portions in chronicles, and there's more.

Besides the nine chapters at the beginning, there's a few other blocks of genealogies in the book. They're daunting. And after you read a chapter or two of them, you say, Really? Do I need to read these names? And I think the main thing that makes people read them if they do is I want to savor every word in the Bible, so I'm going to read every name in the Bible.

And that's a good thing because you never know if you skip at all whether you're going to miss something. You remember back in the 90s that this popular book called The Prayer of Jabez came out. I remember when everyone was talking out there, they called me on the air, What do you think about the prayer of Jabez? And I remember the first time I heard it, I thought, The what of who? Who's Jabez? I don't know a thing about him.

Well, lo and behold, I'd read through the Bible many times. I didn't remember anything about anyone named Jabez or a prayer. Well, of course, where it's found is in First Chronicles, chapter four, in the middle of a genealogical list.

Just to see if you're paying attention. And I wasn't. That's why I had read through or skimmed through these lists and had never even seen it before.

It's chapter four, verse nine and ten. And the verses before that are simply the family of Judah beginning with Judah himself and going many generations up. And and yet in the middle of this whole thing, you find verses nine and ten, which is now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers.

And his mother called his name Jabez, saying, because I bore him in pain. And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh, that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain. So God granted him what he requested.

And that's the last we hear of him. Now, that prayer of his somehow became the subject of a bestselling book, which I never read. But from what I heard from people who asked me about it, apparently it was suggesting that this prayer of Jabez is something that everyone should pray and could pray.

I wonder why we do that with his prayer, not with all the other prayers in the Bible. I mean, there's lots of prayers in the Bible by various people, some of them very insignificant. But, you know, somehow this became important to someone.

And I think that what I'm saying is that you would never even know that that little story was there if you weren't reading somewhat carefully through. And so that's how it is sometimes with these genealogies, though. They'll give a list of very, we might say, boring names in a genealogy.

But then there's this little thing thrown in that's, for some reason, given some attention. Now, certainly of the hundreds of people whose names are listed, there must have been more than just Jabez who had said a prayer on some occasion or who had said something noteworthy or done something noteworthy. And yet most of these people are skipped over without any information.

So the choice of the author in, you know, inserting this little bit of information and leaving out so much that could have been said about other people is a hard one to understand. But it does seem to me like it's just thrown in there just to see, were you paying attention or did I lose you? Did I lose you with all this list of names in the previous three chapters? And I just want to see if you're listening or reading along. Anyway, I want to talk to you about the purpose of the Book of Chronicles.

And again, by this, I mean both books of Chronicles. Just like the books of Samuel and Kings tell the story of Israel's history from the standpoint of the prophets. And the focus of those books is much more on the prophets.

There are the famous prophets mentioned in many cases, and also there's relatively unknown prophets. Whole chapters are given in the books of Kings to, you know, prophets whose names are not even mentioned. Like the famous prophet of Judah, who went up and rebuked Jeroboam for his altar and his gold calves.

And eventually himself was killed by a lion. And it's in 1 Kings 13. A whole chapter given to a prophet whose name is not even mentioned.

Then you have many prophets who are of lesser note mentioned by name and their prophecies. And Kings and Samuel, of course in Samuel, Samuel himself is a prophet. And so is later Nathan and Gad.

And you have a lot of prophets, even have schools of prophets in Samuel and the Kings. Or what they call sons of the prophets. But we don't have any of that.

We don't even have Elijah and Elisha in Chronicles. Largely because Elijah and Elisha, to whom the books of Kings give many chapters. In fact, we might even say Elijah and Elisha were like some of the main characters in the books of Kings.

They're not even, their stories are not told in Chronicles. There is one strange reference to Elijah in Chronicles. Second Chronicles 21, where a letter from Elijah is sent to King Jehoram.

And many people think that the time frame of this is too late to even be within Elijah's earthly ministry. However, I was, I've checked on that. And in fact, Elijah was still alive at the beginning of the reign of Jehoram.

And Jehoram's reign was only eight years long. And Elijah lived at least two years into Jehoram's reign. So how much longer than that, I don't know.

So receiving a letter from Elijah is not a chronological problem in Second Chronicles chapter 21. Although some people think it is. They haven't looked carefully enough.

But apart from this letter from Elijah, Elijah and Elisha are not even mentioned in Chronicles. Whereas they're extremely prominent in Kings, which is much more interested in the prophets. And Elijah and Elisha were important prophets.

Chronicles tells the story of Israel's history much more from the standpoint of priests and Levites. The author is probably a Levite himself. There are some indicators of it.

But whether he is or not, he's fascinated with Levites, priests, temple, ritual, things like that. Lots of lists of Levites. Lots of lists of priests and gatekeepers at the temple and singers and musicians at the temple.

And chapters long of lists of these names. There's a whole chapter of the singers and musicians just listing their names. There's a whole chapter of the gatekeepers at the temple.

So, I mean, Chronicles is very interested in the temple, its personnel. And is almost certainly written by somebody who is very much connected to the worship of the temple. Probably a Levite.

We'll talk more about who the author was in a moment. So we have, in a sense, Israel's history from the prophet's perspective in Samuel and Kings. And then Israel's history from the priestly perspective more in Chronicles.

That's probably the main difference between the two histories. Of course, another main difference is that Kings follows the reigns of 19 northern kings after the split in Rehoboam's day. And 20 kings in the southern kingdom after that split.

Chronicles doesn't even cover the northern kingdom at all. You'd hardly even know it's there. You do read about the split in Chronicles.

And after that, you just don't pay any attention to the northern kingdom. They were an apostasy. They were separated from the temple.

Even the Levites in that northern kingdom left and came down to Judah and worked in the temple. So, again, the concern of Chronicles is the temple, the Levites. And, frankly, Jeroboam, when he split off and started the northern kingdom, he insulted the Levites by setting up golden calves, rejecting the sanctuary in Jerusalem, and making non-Levites priests to his calves.

And the Bible says that the Levites were offended by this, and they left. They left their Levitical cities in the northern tribes and went down to Judah and became part of the southern kingdom. Now, that being so, it's clear that the Levites looked at the northern kingdom as if it's an apostate kingdom.

Now, of course, Judah, the southern kingdom, was often apostate, too. But at least they always had the Levites there. They always had the temple there until 586 B.C. when it was destroyed by the Babylonians.

But Chronicles pays no attention to the northern kingdom. There's one place, 2 Chronicles chapter 18, that does make mention of King Ahab up in the north, and that's in a story that's also found in 1 Kings or 2 Kings chapter 22. And that story, Ahab is in it, and Ahab dies in it, too.

But that's because the southern king, Jehoshaphat, is on friendly terms with him and is interacting with him and going to battle alongside him against the Syrians. And because this is part of the story of Jehoshaphat, the king of the southern kingdom, and it connects him briefly in this story that included Ahab, we have Ahab mentioned. And Ahab's death.

But it's not because the writer of Chronicles is interested in following the history of the northern kingdom or its kings, but because it just so happened on that occasion, a southern king had significant dealings with the northern king. Most of the time, the two kingdoms were hostile to each other, sometimes at war against each other. But the northern kingdom's history receives parallel treatment in kings.

As you know from reading kings, it kind of bounds back and forth. Okay, this was happening in the northern kingdom. Meanwhile, in the southern kingdom, this is what's going on.

And you go through parallel histories of the two kingdoms in kings. In Chronicles, no. You just get the southern kingdom.

Now, also, and not all of this is explicable, Chronicles leaves out some notable scandals associated with the southern kingdom. Notably, David's sin with Bathsheba. Not only the sin with Bathsheba, but the killing of her husband and the rebellion of his sons as a result of this later, especially Absalom.

Absalom's rebellion is not included, although there's several chapters in Samuel about it. In fact, I'd say that in the book of 2 Samuel, everything after about the middle part is dominated by David's sin with Bathsheba and the consequences of it. Which is, well, I guess those consequences are found more in the beginning of 2 Samuel.

But the point is that there was some misbehavior on the part of David's sons and some danger to David. But those are kind of left out of Chronicles. Chronicles largely treats the reign of David and the reign of Solomon pretty rosy.

And even a lot of the bad stuff that Solomon did that Kings records, Chronicles does not give it much attention. So Chronicles is much more painting a rosy picture of the southern kingdom, more than the books of Kings do. Not an inaccurate picture, just leaving out things.

Every historian has to leave something out. You can't put everything in that ever happened. And so the selection material in Chronicles is much more favorable toward Judah than it might be, especially the reign of David and Solomon.

Now, later on, after Solomon, many of the kings of Judah were very bad and Chronicles doesn't whitewash that. In fact, Chronicles tells us some things that Kings, the book of Kings, doesn't like that. You know, some of these kings that weren't good, they sacrificed their children to Moloch and things like that, which you don't find that always in Kings.

How bad the bad kings were in Judah is sometimes really underscored, but they get short shrift. There's not a long and detailed history of the bad kings. They are mentioned.

Every king that Judah had is mentioned, the beginning of his reign and the end of his reign, sometimes with emphasis on how terribly they died. One of the kings, a prophet rebuked him and said, you're going to your intestines are going to come out and you're going to die in agony. And it tells you, yeah, he did have intestinal problems.

And in the last couple of years, his intestines came out and he died in agony. I mean, some horrible stuff. But Chronicles is intending to show that Judah's well-being depends a great deal on faithfulness to God.

It's clear that the book was written after the exile because it mentioned Cyrus's decree, which couldn't have been mentioned if Cyrus hadn't given it yet. And Cyrus's decree is at the end of the exile, when the Jews were going back now to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and try to start over again. Almost from scratch.

And the writer obviously is interested in recalling the history of the kingdom with the emphasis on the fact that if you're faithful to God, it'll go well with you. If you're unfaithful to God, it will not. But God's favor was what really determined the fate of the kingdom.

Now, there are a few really good kings who get a lot of special attention. And that would be Asa and certainly Hezekiah and Josiah and Joash. These kings are actually given, in some cases, several chapters treatment, especially the ones that made significant spiritual reforms in the nation.

And their reforms are given in great detail. For example, the books of Kings talk about Hezekiah's reform, give three verses to it. In 2 Kings, there's three verses talking about Hezekiah's reforms.

In Chronicles, three chapters about Hezekiah's reforms. So you can see that there are times when Chronicles fills in significant detail that's left out of the earlier history found in Samuel and Kings. It also leaves out some things.

About 50% of the material in Chronicles is said to duplicate material in Samuel and Kings. So about 50% of it's not original. But there is something like 27 unique narratives in the book of Chronicles that, you know, they fit into the history from Kings, but they're not narratives that are recorded in Kings.

So it's supplemental. Again, it's like reading, let's say, Mark and then reading Luke. You'll find that Luke probably has about, I don't know the exact figure, but probably about 50% or more of Luke is also found in Mark.

But there's big blocks of chapters in Luke that are not found in Mark, nor in Matthew. They're very unique to Luke. Now, so when you say, well, I've read Mark.

Do I need to read Luke? Well, I don't know that you need to, but you'll certainly miss out a lot if you don't. Because although there's a lot of repetition between the three synoptic gospels, each one has its own unique features as well. And that's true when it comes to studying Chronicles after you've studied Samuel and Kings.

Now, who wrote it? Well, the author is anonymous. He didn't mention who he was. He's obviously a scholar because he makes reference to at least 16 different source documents that he used in the course of writing.

He mentions, you know, the book of the prophecy of Samuel and the prophet and the book of Nathan and the book of Edo and Gad and Shemaiah. And these are different books that we don't have. They're not available anymore, but he had them.

And he obviously used them among whatever other sources he may have had. He mentions these usually when he comes to the end of the record of a king's reign. He says, and you can learn more about this by looking at the book of so and so, which would be one of the 16 sources he named.

Now, anyone who can read 16 books of history and then merge that into a narrative is a scholar. And so he was a tremendous scholar. He was apparently a Levite.

I mentioned it's not it's not essential that he was a Levite, but his fascination with Levitical things and priestly things in the temple and all that suggests strongly that he was of that particular community of the Levites. He lived and was writing after the exile was over. And we know that because he records the decree of Cyrus in the very last verses of Second Chronicles.

He records Cyrus made this decree. Cyrus made that decree at the end of the exile in 539 B.C. So it had to be written after that, but probably not much after that. Because he doesn't in Chronicles doesn't give any history beyond that doesn't even mention any Jews going back to Jerusalem, which is a pretty important part of the history.

Especially if the writer knew about the decree of Cyrus, which allowed them to go back, then certainly they're going back and they're rebuilding the temple. Rebuilding Jerusalem would be a matter of interest to him. Yet he doesn't include that in Chronicles.

However, there are books that do include that the books of Ezra Nehemiah. Traditionally, the Jews believe Ezra is the author of Chronicles and of Ezra Nehemiah. Now, I have a little bit of problem with him being the author of Nehemiah just because so much of Nehemiah is written by Nehemiah in the first person.

But Nehemiah comes after Ezra and Ezra is still around alongside Nehemiah in the book of Nehemiah. So Ezra really he's living during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and could have written both. The places where Nehemiah is represented as speaking in the first person could well be written documents that Nehemiah left, which Ezra incorporated if he wrote the history.

It does seem clear that Ezra probably wrote the book of Ezra and in the Jewish Bible, Ezra and Nehemiah were one book. Just like Chronicles was one book. Now, one thing of interest is that as the book of Chronicles ends with the decree of Cyrus, the book of Ezra opens with the decree of Cyrus.

Almost verbatim. That is the last verses of Chronicles are almost the same as the first verses of Ezra as if he's picking up the story from there. It's a little bit like how Luke picks up in the book of Acts from where he left off in the book of Luke.

It's like parts, you know, the history of Jesus is in Luke and then the history of the church after Jesus written by the same author picks up where the other one left off and we have in the book of Acts. It's there's a very good reason to, I think, accept at least by default until a better theory comes forward that the Jewish tradition that Ezra wrote Chronicles. It makes sense.

It makes sense as again because Ezra picks up where Chronicles leaves off both the works. Chronicles on the one hand and Ezra Nehemiah on the other are fascinated with the temple fascinated with the priesthood and both of them have long lists of names. Ezra has long lists of names detailed lists of who came back and who is of the Levites and who is this and who is that and it's very clear that whoever wrote Chronicles and whoever wrote Ezra.

If they weren't the same person, they certainly had the same style the same concerns and even some of the same vocabulary things. For example, there's a Persian coin called a Derek not mentioned generally speaking in the in the Old Testament except it is mentioned in Chronicles and in Ezra. And you know, of course any writer at that time could have spoken of a Persian coin because Israel was under Persia's rule at that time, but it's just an interesting thing that the same word is found in them.

Also the expression things are prescribed in the law rather than things that are say commanded in the law written in the law. The phrase prescribed in the law seems to be unique to this author and you find it in Chronicles you find it Ezra Nehemiah. So, you know, these are these are not proof positive, but we don't have another candidate available.

We don't know anyone else who lived at that time who would be a better candidate than Ezra and therefore if Ezra didn't write it then is written by somebody that will probably never know their name. But there's enough connections in style in concern in vocabulary and in. Chronology between the book of Chronicles and the books of Ezra Nehemiah that that the theory that Ezra is the author of the whole work is a very very good one.

It's a very good possibility. Now, I want to talk about the general contents. I've said some of these things already.

I'm just going through the notes now. Sometimes I get ahead of myself in my talking. Get ahead with the notes.

As far as the general contents of Chronicles and we're going to look at Chronicles much more detail than just generally, but I just want to give you an overview because it is such a large work. You've got nine chapters of genealogies, which mainly are concerned to start with Adam and end at David. In the course of that, it goes through quite a lot of other family lines.

In fact, if you look at the second page, your notes, I put this together. I had never done this before in my life. I'd never done a thorough analysis of those nine chapters and what they're really doing to me for the most part.

There's just a lot of names, but I thought, well, if I'm going to give an overview and an introduction to Chronicles here, I better. I better look at those a little closer. So in these notes, I've given you a thorough breakdown of the lines that are in these first nine chapters.

And if you just look at it briefly, chapter one is essentially from Adam to Jacob or Israel. And this chapter focuses on those lines of the family that don't end up in the chosen line. They don't end up being Jacob.

It starts with Adam and goes through all the names that you find in Genesis, chapter five, from Adam to Noah and then beyond that to Abraham. And it talks about some of Abraham's non chosen offspring. But in verses one through four of chapter one, it just gives the names from Adam to Noah and Noah's sons.

And then having reached Noah's sons, it gives separate genealogies of the family of Japheth, Ham and Shem. First, the sons of Japheth in verses five through seven, especially focusing on Gomer and Javan. Then the sons of Ham in verses eight through 16, giving emphasis on three of them, Cush, which is Ethiopia or Sudan today.

Mizraim, which is Egypt today. And Canaan, which was the Canaanites. And then, and that's in verses eight through 16.

Then it gets to the sons of Shem. Now, they're the most important because Abraham came from Shem. And these are the three sons of Noah, Japheth, Ham and Shem.

And when it gets to Shem in verses 17 through 23, it goes to the seventh generation of Shem's offspring through Joctan. Now, Joctan had a twin brother named Peleg. And actually, Peleg was more important than Joctan.

So before talking about Peleg, it goes through the sons of Shem, seven generations through Joctan, the twin brother of Peleg. Then in the next section, 24 through 28 of chapter one, the sons of Shem to Isaac and Ishmael, which is through Peleg, the twin brother of Joctan. So you really just, you get both of these twin brothers and their lines.

But it's always the case they dispense with the less important line before they go into more detail about the more important line. And so you've got all the way up to Isaac and Ishmael, the sons of Abraham, of course, in verses 24 through 28. And then in the rest of this chapter, it deals with some of the descendants of Abraham's sons who are not the favored ones, not Isaac, not Jacob.

For example, verses 29 through 31 talks about the son through Hagar, which was Ishmael and his descendants. And then in verses 32 and 33, it's the sons of Abraham that were born through Keturah, his concubine. It's mentioned in Genesis.

He had six sons by her also, and they are mentioned. But having gotten through this discussion of the descendants of Ishmael, basically, and Keturah's children, we now come to Isaac's children, which are Jacob and Esau. And true to form, it goes through Esau's children first to dispense with him before it goes into talking about Jacob.

And so in verse 34 through 37, it's the descendants of Isaac related to Esau's destiny, with the exception of the descendants of Seir. Before talking about Edom, which is Esau's offspring, there's a short treatment of the descendants of Seir to the fourth generation, verses 38 through 42. Who's Seir? Well, Seir was the tribe that owned the mountains that Esau later conquered.

The people of Seir were the people that Esau conquered and took their territory, just like the Israelites took the Canaanite land from them. And so in later history, in the Old Testament, Mount Seir is the name that was named after Seir, who was the progenitor of the people that were conquered by Esau. And Mount Seir was Esau's territory in later history.

So Esau is under consideration here. The people of Seir, who are not really related to Abraham, are mentioned first. But then the Edomite kings, that is descendants of Esau, to the eighth generation are listed in chapter 40, verses 43 through 50.

And then the Edomite chiefs, whatever they were, in distinction to the kings, are listed in 51 through 54. And that ends chapter 1. So what you've done is gotten all the way up to the time of Jacob from Adam. And in the meantime, you've dealt with the families of Shem that did not become part of the chosen line, and then followed Shem's chosen line to Abraham.

Then from Abraham, his offspring that were not part of the chosen line. And then when you get to Isaac, his children, the Edomites, which were not from the chosen line. So it's tracing the chosen line, but before it moves forward very far, it talks about the brothers of these chosen ones, the guys who are not chosen, and what happened to them.

Okay, when you get to chapter 2, now you're focused entirely on Israel. And chapter 2 gives the family of Judah, which is of course Jacob's son, one of Jacob's 12 sons, up to the time of David. And so you've got the 12 sons of Jacob named in verse 1 of chapter 2. Then in chapter 2, verses 2 through 8, you've got Judah's sons to the fourth generation through Zerah.

And then, now Zerah had a twin brother named Perez, and Zerah's the one that doesn't matter. So then you have in verses 9 through 12, Judah's sons to the 10th generation up to Jesse, which is David's father, through Perez, the twin brother of Zerah. And then you have in verses 13 through 17, Jesse's family of seven sons, including David, and two daughters, just the names of all Jesse's kids.

Now, Ezra was one of the ancestors of Jesse, and in chapter 2, verses 18 through 55, it focuses on Hezron's sons other than Ram. Now, Ram was David's ancestor, but Hezron had other sons, and so he dispensed with them in the rest of chapter 2. And in particular, one named Caleb. Not the Caleb who was contemporary with Moses and Joshua, another Caleb who was descended from the tribe of Judah, but not related to David.

And so you have these named individuals here. There is in chapter 2, verses 42 through 49, the descendants who are not descended from her. Now, her, I believe, is the same person who stood by Moses' side when he sat on the rock and he had his hands held up, and Aaron and her held his hands up.

Now, this her was of the tribe of Judah, and his descendants, the descendants of this man Caleb, other than her. And then Caleb's other son, her, we have his descendants for the rest of the chapter. Now, you might say, what do I care about these people? You probably don't.

That's why we're going through them so fast. We're not reading the names. I'm just telling you what these lines are and why they are there in the order they are.

It is organized. This is not just a random list of names, although the names are not the most significant characters in the Bible, but they are listed in an orderly way. Then, in chapter 3, we're coming to David's descendants.

That is, we've come to David in chapter 2. Now we want to see beyond David. And so David's descendants, he had six sons who were born to him in Hebron. That was in the first seven years of his reign over Judah alone.

Their names are given in verses 1 through 4. Then he had 13 more sons after he moved to Jerusalem and took some more wives. He had 13 more, including four of them by Bathsheba. Now, she's important not only because of the story, although Chronicles doesn't mention the story of the sin with Bathsheba, but she had four sons and one of them was named Solomon and he was kind of important.

So we have, in verses 10 through 16, a list of all the kings descended from David beginning with Solomon. So that'd be all the kings of Judah up until the captivity. Those are the kings whose reigns are going to be unpacked in detail for us later, especially in the book of 2 Chronicles.

But here's a list of their names in order all the way through the whole history in verses 10 through 16 of chapter 3. Now, the last king went into Babylon. Well, the last one was Zedekiah. But the one before that was Jeconiah.

And he went into captivity in Babylon and it gives his descendants who were born in captivity and beyond in chapter 3, verses 7 through 24. Now, he's important for a number of reasons, one of which is that Jesus, well, not Jesus, but Joseph, the husband of Mary, the adoptive father of Jesus, came through Jeconiah. And so his sons beyond the captivity are listed there.

Okay, how are we doing? Still awake? We're going to give you a break here eventually. Alright. Now, chapter 4 begins to go through the other tribes, well, each of the tribes, frankly.

There's 12 tribes. And so chapter 4 talks about the clans of Judah, who were not mentioned previously, in verses 1 through 23. And it's in that context that we have Jabez's famous prayer, made famous only in recent history.

And then verses 24 through 43, the tribe of Simeon. And it does go through a little story there in verses 42 and 43 about a war and a victory over the Amalekites that Simeon had. So we've got Judah and Simeon dealt with in chapter 4. When you get to chapter 5, there are three tribes that did not inherit land inside the promised land.

Of the 12, three of them asked Moses for permission to settle on the eastern side of the Jordan, which was not technically in the promised land. But it had good grazing land. They had a lot of sheep.

And they said, we will go over the Jordan with the other tribes. We'll help them conquer all their land. But after it's been all conquered, could we go back over into what was called Gilead? And it's the region of Moab and Ammon previously.

And they settled there. Those tribes were the tribe of Reuben, the tribe of Gad, and half of the tribe of Manasseh. Half the tribe of Manasseh settled on the east.

The other half settled on the west with the other tribes. And so in chapter 5, it talks about the tribe of Reuben in verses 1 through 10. And the 10th verse talks about a particular victory they had over the Haggarts, whoever they are.

Then verses 11 through 22, the tribe of Gad, also on the eastern side of the Jordan. And it also focuses in verses 19 through 22 on a particular victory God gave them after they prayed for it against enemies. And then the half of Manasseh that was on the east of Jordan are mentioned in verses 23 and 24.

And 25 and 26, the way chapter 5 ends, is simply to tell us what became of these tribes. They ended up getting smoked. Because they didn't go into promised land, they didn't have a natural defense against invasions from the east.

The promised land had the Jordan River as its eastern border. And therefore, since in those days it was hard for armies to cross rivers, it was at least a slowing down of invaders from the east. If they wanted to invade Israel, they'd have to cross the Jordan River, which was not the easiest thing in the world.

But they didn't have to cross the Jordan River to get to Gad and Reuben and eastern Manasseh. And so they were eventually taken into captivity before the rest of the tribes, we are told, by Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian. That's mentioned at the end of chapter 5, verses 25 and 26.

Chapter 6, we're over halfway through. We have the Levites. And this is divided into, again, groups within the Levites.

First you have the high priestly line from Kohath, one of Levi's three sons, through Aaron until the exile. So all the high priests, from Aaron on to the exile and beyond. Okay, and that's in verses 1 through 15.

Now in verses 16 through 30, you have the non-priestly descendants of Levi. See, only the Aaronic family were the priests. The other Levites were not.

But they worked at the tabernacle. They just weren't priests. And that includes Samuel.

Samuel is mentioned in verses 26 through 28 as belonging to the Kohathite line, or at least the Levite line that is not of the priest line. He wasn't actually a descendant of Aaron, but he was a Levite. And then in verses 31 through 48, the Levitical singers and musicians appointed by David.

That will come up later on for more consideration. And in verses 49 through 53, Aaron's duties and the descendants to the sons of Zadok, which were in David's time. So from Aaron to David, the duties of the priests.

And then the settlement of the Levites throughout Israel in the Levitical cities is covered in verses 54 through 81. And that comes to the end of that chapter. Chapter 7, we have still the tribes in the West to deal with.

We've talked about Judah and Simeon back in chapter 4. And then we talked about the three tribes on the east. And we've talked about the Levites. So we've got six of the tribes covered.

There's six more to consider. And these were all on the west of the Jordan. So in chapter 7, we've got the tribe of Issachar in verses 1 through 5. Tribe of Benjamin in verses 6 through 12.

The tribe of Naphtali in verse 13, one verse. The tribe of West Manasseh, the part that was not on the eastern side, verses 14 through 19. And the tribe of Ephraim in verses 20 through 29.

Now this Ephraim is broken down. It talks about the death of Ephraim's first son by the Philistines of Gath in verses 20 through 22. Then there's more sons born to Nun, who is the father of Joshua.

Joshua was of the Ephraimite tribe. And that's in verses 23 through 27. And then it talks about the land holdings in verses 20 through 29.

Then finally, the tribe of Asher is in verses 30 through 40. And it talks about their 26,000 men of valor. This one tribe had 26,000 specially superior soldiers.

Now, a couple more chapters to deal with in these genealogies. Chapter 8 then looks at the line of Benjamin. Why? We already had the line of Benjamin back in chapter 7, verses 6 through 12.

Why do we have him again here? Because Saul came from Benjamin. And this whole genealogical section is leading us up to Saul and David. Saul and David were contemporaries, of course, and not friendly with each other eventually.

The storyline, once the genealogies are done, in chapter 10, it's going to tell us about the death of Saul. Which, of course, paves the way for the reign of David. So Saul is going to be someone who needs special attention.

So we have the, in chapter 8, we have the line of Benjamin up to and beyond King Saul. And Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin. Just like Saul in the New Testament, who became Paul, was of the tribe of Benjamin.

Another Saul. In verses 1 through 28, we have the heads of the Benjamin families. And then in 29 through 40, we have the genealogy of Saul and his family.

And after him, too. Now what's interesting is we're going to get Saul's family lineage again in the last verses of chapter 9 as well. Chapter 9, verses 35 through 34 is also going to go through Saul's lineage, just in case you didn't get it the first time.

Now chapter 9, then, is just lists the people who actually lived in Jerusalem. Remember, Jerusalem was the capital city, but most people didn't live there. Just like most people in California don't live in Sacramento.

But some did live in the capital city, and it was more important than just living in Sacramento would be for us. Or living in Washington, D.C. would be. Because the capital was also the center of worship.

That's where the temple was. Those who lived in Jerusalem were sometimes the royal families that lived there. And the priests who worked in the temple.

And anyone else who wanted to be close to the center of Israelite life and religion. And so we have in chapter 9 a summary and conclusion of the previous chapters in the first two verses. But then the remainder, almost the remainder of the chapter, verses 3 through 34, talk about people who lived in the capital city.

It lists non-Levitical families, families that were not Levites, in verses 3 through 9. Then the priests who actually lived in the town, in verses 10 through 13. And the Levites that lived in the town, in verses 14 through 16. Then there's the gatekeepers.

These would be the gatekeepers of the temple. Verses 17 through 32. You wouldn't think you'd need that many gatekeepers.

And then the singers in verse 33. Now there are a lot of those, but only one verse is given to them. And then the summary of all this is in verse 34.

And as I said, the last few verses of chapter 9 go back over Saul's lineage again, just to run up the ramp to chapter 10, which tells about Saul's death in battle. So that's what these genealogies are. And aren't you glad you have it written down instead of trying to remember all that? That's why I did that.

No one's ever done that for me. In my 50 years of ministry, I've never seen an analysis of this. I'm sure they're out there somewhere, but I thought I'd do it myself.

I like to do this kind of thing. Back to the first page of your notes just a little bit more. And then we're going to take a break.

So 1 Chronicles, after the first nine chapters of genealogies, covers the reign of David from Saul's death in chapter 10 to David's death at the end of the book. And is therefore roughly parallel to the material in 2 Samuel. 2 Chronicles, which of course picks up where 1 Chronicles left off, covers the remaining history of the Judean kingdom from Solomon, David's son, to the exile, which is the end of the line of David's kings, until Jesus came.

That's approximately 430 years. So it's roughly parallel to the books of Kings. So Chronicles doesn't go into any detail that you'd find in 1 Samuel really.

Not much, except at the end of 1 Samuel, you do have the death of Saul, and that's where 1 Chronicles picks up the story in chapter 10. But mostly, 1 Chronicles parallels 2 Samuel, which is the reign of David. And then 2 Chronicles covers both books of Kings, which is from Solomon to the exile of the Jews.

So that's kind of how those books are populated with material. I've already mentioned some of the things in your notes, so I'm not going to mention them again. Backside of the first page of your notes.

In telling the history of the southern kingdom, it focuses especially on the few godly kings, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Hezekiah, and Josiah. About five good kings out of 20. And it also leaves out David's sin with Bathsheba, which is really interesting to leave out.

Because there are some very important developments in David's family, including the rebellion of Absalom, and the death of Absalom, and some other rebellions against David. That were the direct result of David's sin with Bathsheba, but all that's in Samuel, but not in Chronicles. While 2 Kings devotes three verses to Hezekiah's reforms, I said this earlier, Chronicles devotes three whole chapters to them.

Which shows something of its concern for that kind of subject matter. And of course, there's much greater focus on the priestly stuff. Now, on the back of page one of your notes, there's a very brief outline of the two books of Chronicles.

I'm going to go over this rapidly. We're going to take a break, and then we're going to come back. I'm going to go through a survey of chapter by chapter of the whole thing.

Not with great detail, because we've been through Samuel and Kings. Don't have to repeat all that. But on this outline of the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles, we have... I don't know why it says chapters 1 through 4. That's a typo.

Chapters 1 through 9 is the first division of 1 Chronicles. There's three divisions of unequal length of 1 Chronicles. Divides it into three main parts.

The first is the first nine chapters, which we've already talked about. That's the genealogies, especially from Adam to Saul, and from Adam to David, as it were. The next section is much shorter, but it's still a major section.

And that's the rise of David to be king. With the death of Saul, it's chapters 10, 11, and 12. We see the end of Saul's reign in chapter 10.

We see David's anointing and conquest of Jerusalem in chapter 11. And then there's a long list in chapters 11 and 12 of David's mighty men. A list that's also found in the books of Kings.

Excuse me, Samuel. 2 Samuel. The third division of 1 Chronicles is David's actual reign.

So we've had the genealogies prior to David. Then we have the ascent of David with the death of Saul and the rise of David to power. Then we have details of his reign, but not anywhere near as many details of his reign as we have in 2 Samuel, which is all about that.

You've got the bringing of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, an important thing in David's mind and apparently the historians of Kings and Chronicles. You've got God making the Davidic covenant. 1 Chronicles chapter 17.

One of the most important things in David's life, maybe one of the most important things in the Old Testament is the Davidic covenant. It's found in 2 Samuel chapter 7. It's also found in 1 Chronicles chapter 17. And this is where God promised David that he would establish his family line as the royal line in Israel forever and that he'd raise up a son of his to be the king forever.

And of course, the Jews correctly understood this to point to the coming Messiah. And the New Testament agrees. It does.

That the Messiah would be the son of David. Jesus himself was often referred to as son of David, which was a messianic title based on the covenant that God made with David that the Messiah would be descended from. So insofar as we see Jesus, the Messiah, as the center point of biblical concern, then this promise made to David about the Messiah coming through his line seems to be a pivot in the entire Old Testament.

And it gives it's given plenty of attention in 2 Samuel 7 and in 1 Chronicles 17. Then in 1 Chronicles 18 through 21, we have sort of a military history of David, including chapter 21, which gives that census story that's so perplexing. David took a census.

It was the wrong thing to do. It's never said quite why it was the wrong thing to do, but it was really wrong and end up with the three day plague coming on the nation and thousands of people die. And in the end of that story, David actually purchased a threshing floor belonging to a man named Arana as Samuel calls him.

And I believe Chronicles calls him Ornan. And this threshing floor that David purchased is where the plague stopped. It's also where the temple later stood when Solomon built the temple a generation later.

He built it on the spot that David purchased on this occasion in chapter 21 of Chronicles. First Chronicles 22 through 2920. In other words, almost to the end of the book are various preparations David made for the temple.

Now, that's a lot of chapters there. We're talking about what, seven chapters or so. And it's pretty thick waiting in this part of Chronicles because it's not about David, you know, collecting the money and making the plans and just a lot of details about making sure that when he died, Solomon would have everything in place to just go right ahead and build the temple.

And those preparations that David made are from chapter 22, one through 2920. And there's only, you know, 10 more verses after that in First Chronicles. And those speak about David essentially officially handing the kingdom over to Solomon and Solomon reigning in his place.

So First Chronicles ends with Solomon being ascending to the throne and David dies. And so we've got the beginning of David's reign in the chapter 10 and following and the end of David's reign and the beginning of Solomon's at the end of the book. Now, again, the author did not break up the book like this.

It just went right on to talk about Solomon's reign. But since the book has been broken into two, this is a reasonable break off point. And now we have Second Chronicles.

And it too has three segments of unequal length, very unequal length. The first segment is, again, nine chapters, as in First Chronicles. The first segment was nine chapters.

Second Chronicles, the first segment is nine chapters, but it's nine chapters of the reign of Solomon. And chapter one is his coronation. Chapters two through seven, six chapters are about his building of the temple.

And then chapters eight and nine are about his wealth and achievements and his death. Now, there's nine chapters about Solomon. Six of them are dominated by the temple, again, showing the concern of the author for things temple, because in Kings, there's, of course, discussion of the temple.

But Solomon's reign is talked about in other respects more there. But here, the main concern with Solomon in Chronicles is that he built the temple. Now, the second section of Second Chronicles is chapter 10 through almost to the end, chapter 36, verse 21, which leaves only two verses out of this section.

This section is largely just the history of the kings of Judah. And it goes through all of them. Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, Ahaziah, Athaliah.

Athaliah was a usurping queen. Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Ammon, Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah. So all their reigns are covered in chapters 10 through 36 up to almost the end of 36.

Now, 36 is the last chapter. But the last two verses make up the third segment of this book. And that is it skips over the 70-year captivity to the time of Cyrus.

And the last two verses in Chronicles give a Cyrus decrees allowing the Jews to go back and build their temple. So really, 2 Chronicles begins with Solomon building the first temple and ends with the decree of Cyrus to build the second temple. So again, bracketing all these chapters of Judah's history is the temple at the beginning and the temple that's going to be rebuilt at the end.

And so again, strong focus on temple and Levitical concerns. Now, we're going to take a break here, say 10 minutes, bathroom break, coffee break, whatever you want. And those of you who wish to stay, we're going to go through a rapid survey of the chapters in these two books.