*** SHOW NOTES (not a transcript) ***

Lead:

Chronicles repeats a bunch of Samuel and Kings. Or does it?

Intro:

The books of 1 & 2 Chronicles were originally one book. So were Samuel and Kings. And it won’t take too long before you start asking, “Haven’t we heard these stories before?” In a way you have, and in a way you haven’t.

1 Chronicles begins with nine (nine!) chapters of genealogies. And if you’re a follower of The Bible Project reading plan like we are here, you know sometimes they expect you to skim…and if we didn’t today, it’d take four days of reading at our regular pace to get through ‘em. Genealogies, you’ll remember, are always there for a purpose, and in part they set up a story. In this case, they set up one of the differences between Chronicles and previous books.

In traditional Hebrew reading, Chronicles closes out the Hebrew Bible — what we have as the Old Testament. It not only reviews history, but it recasts history by what it focuses on, and the story focuses less on the utter failure of Israel’s leaders and focuses more on the promise of the line of David from whom the promised Messiah will come. And as it does so, it picks up in chapter 10 with the beginning of David’s story which mirrors what we read in 2 Samuel.

Today I’m going to skim over chapters 1-9, highlighting a few things along the way, mostly the stuff that has an interestingness or curiosity factor for me rather than as a Bible teacher saying, “This is the important stuff to know.” And just remember — if God ordained that our Bibles should repeat many stories — and He did — it’s for a reason. I don’t know about you, but my memory isn’t what it used to be, and that makes me a lot like a rather forgetful nation of Israel in the Old Testament!

IMPORTANT NOTE: In the podcast I mention that I’m going to refer to a bunch of notes from the ESV Study Bible, and that was a mistake. I failed to realize I was looking at the notes from the Holman Bible Handbook, a fave resource of mine.(1)

Sponsor:

Bible segment (read along with The Bible Project):

Passage: 1 Chronicles 1-10
Translation: ESV (English Standard Version)
Verses: 421
Words: ~8278

Thinking/reflection segment:

Wisdom segment:

Passage:
Translation:
Verses:
Words:

Love you!

-R

Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.

Sources and resources:

(1) David S. Dockery, ed., Holman Bible Handbook (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 1992), 269–271.

#845: 1 Chronicles 1-10 (sort of, with some good extras)