In what order do you read the Old Testament?

If you pick up a Bible, you’ll find that it’s divided into two sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Now, there are pros and cons to those labels.  They arose fairly early in church history to distinguish the part of Scripture that particularly focused on the New Covenant (later referred to as Testament), from those that came when God’s people were under the Mosaic Covenant.  Because that’s the intent, I’m fairly relaxed about the labels but they can lead to a neglect of what we see as “old” if we are not careful.

Focusing in on the first part, an English Bible will usually be structured as follows.  You begin with 5 books of the Law/Torah, then 12 history books (Joshua through to Esther), 5 books of wisdom literature, 5 major prophets (including Isaiah and Ezekiel) then 12 so called minor prophets.  There are a few challenges even with that structure.  First, calling some books “minor prophets” might result in this thinking they are less significant than the major prophets when the classification is purely to do with length. Secondly, we can presume some fairly strict divisions. We think of “The Lasw” being all about commands, regulations and rituals when much of it is narrative and we can presume that all of the poetry and song is found in Psalms/The Wisdom books when much of the prophetic literature is in fact poetry and may well have been sung.

Now, if you were to pick up a copy of those scriptures in Hebrew, you will find out something significant.  The Jews ordered scripture differently.  Rather than the distinctions and order described above, they section it off as follows:

• Torah
• Prophets
• Writings

The first five books are the same in both versions. However, instead of having a separate category for historical literature, those books are included under prophecy.  Then right at the end, you have “The Writings” which includes the wisdom books like Psalms and Proverbs but also Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther and 1 and 2 Chronicles.

Consider the impact of this.  First, if we think of books like Samuel and Kings as prophecy, it will shape our view of what prophecy is as well as what is going on in those books.  These are not mere retelling of events, they are intended to show us what God was saying and doing.  They also intended to point forward to the coming fulfilment of promise. That’s what prophecy is all about, its not just a collection of random predictions strung together.

Secondly, it helps us to engage with “the writings”, including a few books we tend to treat as history. Perhaps they are also about wisdom?  What it enables us to do is to visit those books with all that has been said in the Law and Prophets in mind and see them, again, not just as a telling or retelling of events but as reflections or meditations on those events. This is another opportunity to interepret and learn from what God has been doing and saying.

I know some of us like to do exercises where we read through the whole Bible for a year or other set period of time.  Here’s an idea for next time you do this. Why not read the Hebrew Scriptures in that earlier order?