Old Testament

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.