Dear listeners, welcome to talk five in our series of twelve talks. Today, we present the books in the category of Old Testament history. As noted in talk two, the collective purpose and significance of these books is to track the walk of Israel in its national covenant with God; whether it kept or broke the covenant and the consequences thereafter. These books are Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. Twelve books in total, they follow in sequence after the books of the law.

In this talk, we will cover the first 5 books from Joshua to 2 Samuel and identify the main points of each book. In the next talk, we will cover the 7 books from 1 Kings to Esther. So let us begin with the book of Joshua, which follows immediately after Deuteronomy, the last book of the law. It records the momentous change of national leadership from Moses to Joshua after Moses death. God chose Joshua to lead the nation to enter the promised land just as God commanded Israel as His holy priest to destroy the nations in Canaan as His judgment for their sins.

Israel was then to inherit the land as God's gift to them by His promise to Abraham. This would be their nation’s home among the nations of the earth. They conquered enough of all the tribes in Canaan to receive their allotment from God. But many more Canaanite tribes remained to be conquered after they settled in the land. This book closes with Joshua’s death.

The book of Judges follows after the history recorded in the book of Joshua. Judges tracks the continuing history of Israel after it settled in the promised land.

Unfortunately, the tribes of Israel slipped into disobedience and followed after the idolatry of the remaining Canaanite tribes instead of wiping them out, which was in fact God's command to them. Time and time again, the remaining Canaanite tribes dominated Israel, instead of the reverse, and Israel had to cry out to God until God raised a judge for them each time to defeat the Canaanites and regain dominance. Now this happened many times in a similar cycle. Israel would fall into sin, come under the domination of a Canaanite tribe,  They cried out to God to deliver them until God raised a judge for them. And this continued in repeated cycles, but it was a negative cycle as Israel sank more and more into sin instead of growing in obedience. Within the period of the Judges, which was a rather dark period of Israel's history, is the book of Ruth. Ruth is a real life story of how in the dark period of the Judges, a Moabite woman named Ruth followed her mother-in-law Naomi to Israel after the death of her husband. She renounced her tribal Gods and her people to join Israel and worshipped the God of Israel.

She was redeemed by Naomi’s relation Boaz, who took her as wife and provided for her and Naomi. Now to be redeemed means to say that Boaz bought back the land that used to belong to Naomi and then married Ruth to be his wife. Now, this is an Old Testament account of conversion and God’s salvation; Ruth is an example of someone in the Old Testament who was not a Israelite, but by her renouncing her other faiths and other identities came to be an Israelite and a worshipper of God. Jesus came from a line that included Ruth as an ancestor. Finally, the last judge in Israel’s history was Samuel. The book of 1 Samuel follows in historical time frame after the book of Judges, 1 Samuel continued the history after the Judges. 

Samuel was a priest, a prophet as well as a judge. But Israel asked God for a king to rule over them just like the other nations. God rebuked this request as an act of rejecting Him as their king. Yet He granted the request because He would use the king to lead the people in following Him. God first commanded Samuel to anoint Saul as their first king, but Saul failed after being king when he exalted himself instead of honoring God. God then commanded Samuel to anoint David as king after Saul.

David grew in faith through many challenges, including having to face the jealousy of Saul, who again and again sought to kill him. But God led David to survive these attempts and to rise to power. The book ends with Saul’s suicide and the death of his sons because of defeat at the hands of the Philistines. This was God's judgment. The history is continued in 2 Samuel after 1 Samuel ends and records the rise and rule of David as an exemplary king who obeyed God.

He conquered Jerusalem as his first act as Israel’s king and Jerusalem became the nation’s capital that would last through time. When David sought to build God a “house” or a temple, where God would reside God made a covenant with David to build David's house instead by making his line and his descendants to be the kingly dynastic line for the nation. So this was God's blessing on David even as David sought to honor God. This was also God's preparation for the coming of Christ as a son of David, who would rule eternally. But David later fell into adultery. For this, He lost his throne to a rebellious son for time, but because he repented of his sin, God restored him to his throne.

The book ends with a sense that David ruled out of pride, that brought God's judgment. But David repented and God ended the plague He had sent at the place where David built an altar. This place was to be the future site for the temple. With that the book of 2 Samuel ends. In our next talk. We will continue with 1 Kings until Esther, Esther being the last of the Old Testament history books.

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