Welcome dear listeners to our second talk in our series on the Old Testament Survey. As we move forward in this study, please refer or re-listen to the previous talks to give you continuity and see progressively what makes up the Old Testament of the Bible. Our first talk in particular should be revisited from time to time to help you understand the key concepts that underpin the Bible. The terms: scripture, revelation, canon, history and theology were identified and defined in that talk.

Above all, it lays out the crucial position of Jesus Christ as the foundation and centre of the Bible. These fundamentals would enable you to understand both the Old and New Testament of the Bible and the as a whole. Now the Bible is organized so that the Old Testament comes before the New Testament. This is a historical order in that the revelation of the Old Testament were received before the revelation of the New Testament. The revelations from God were received and recorded as books. Hence the books of the Old Testament come before the books of the New Testament in sequence.

If you get a copy of the Bible today and look at the table of contents, the books will be organized in the sequence that I will be presenting to you in this series. This time, we will be identifying the books and structure of the Old Testament. The books of the Old Testament are grouped into different categories , which you could also classify as law, history, wisdom, and prophecy.

Let me now lay out each category for us. First of all, law. The category of law consists of the first five books of the Old Testament. These five books are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These books are called law because they record how God revealed Himself to humankind and showing to those who respond to Him how all humankind is to worship Him and walk with Him. He made a covenant with Israel as a nation, that He would in turn use, to bless all the nations of the earth. This is the category of law.

The second category is the category of history, as recorded in the books of history. These are the next twelve books after the law. So they are positioned in the sixth to the seventeenth books of the Old Testament. They are called history, because they record the history of how Israel as God's covenant people obeyed or disobeyed Him and the consequences that followed. The books in this category are Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. Now the contents of these books are linked in chronological order. And together, they give us a continuous view of how God's people of Israel walked with Him, whether they obeyed or disobeyed, and whether they received His blessings or His judgment. That is the category of history.

The books in the third category in the Old Testament, are the books of wisdom; these are the next five books that are arranged after the history. So by position, they are the eighteenth to the twenty-second books of the Old Testament. They collect together the insights of the wise men among God's people who received guidance and wisdom from the spirit of God. They share with us how to understand life and how to live life on earth, so that we uphold God's law and please Him. So these books are namely Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. We will later on, expand on each of this categories of books. But the highlight of wisdom is that they collect for us the lessons on how to apply God's law to life and how to live a life that agrees with His commandments and thereby receive His grace and blessing.

The final category in the Old Testament, which is the fourth category, is prophecy. Now the books of prophecy are positioned after wisdom. So they consist of the next seventeen books, the twenty-third to the thirty-ninth book, and prophecy itself as a category is subdivided into two major sections. You have the major prophets, which consists of five books, the twenty third to the twenty seventh, and you have the minor prophets, which consists of twelve books, the twenty-eighth to the thirty-ninth. Now the five books of the major prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel and Daniel.

And they are called major prophets simply because these books are generally longer than the minor prophets and they are traditionally grouped in front. And so they are called the major prophets.

The twelve books of the minor prophets are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament. Now, the minor prophets are not called minor because they are less important, but simply because on the whole these books are shorter and traditionally they are positioned after the major prophets. And therefore collectively, they are called the minor prophets.

So you have therefore, the four categories that make up the Old Testament; law, history, wisdom and prophecy. It begins from the book of Genesis in the category of the law, and it ends with the book of Malachi as the last prophetic book and the last book of the Old Testament. In our subsequent talks, we will explain each of these categories and what the books in each category tell us of God. This study will go in the sequence as presented, beginning with law in the next talk.

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