The Old Testament Story

Creation, the fall, the flood, and Babel. Three rebellions rather than one, and the third explains why the rest of the Old Testament looks the way it does.

Four generations, one promise, and a family that keeps nearly wrecking it. What the covenant with Abraham actually said and how it survived down to Egypt.

It opens in a heavenly council Job never learns about, and God's answer never mentions the reason. Why the book refuses the question it seems to be asking.

The plagues were aimed at specific gods, the Passover was instituted before the deliverance, and Sinai turned a rescued mob into a nation under covenant.

The tabernacle, the golden calf, and a forty-year sentence handed down for one refusal at the border. What the wilderness years cost and what they were for.

Jericho, Ai, and the campaigns, plus the hardest question in the Old Testament. What the conquest accounts say and how the difficulty is usually handled.

A repeating cycle of collapse and rescue, deliverers who get steadily worse as the book goes on, and a closing line that diagnoses the entire era honestly.

Israel asks for a king and gets exactly what it asked for. Three reigns, one eternal covenant, and a kingdom that splits the very moment Solomon has died.

Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. Four books that argue with each other, and the canon keeps all four without resolving the tension.

One bad answer about taxes split the nation permanently. The northern kingdom, the prophets God kept sending to it, and the Assyrian deportation that ended it.