Overview of the Old Testament - Part Two

The living Sovereign LORD God’s story of salvation continues with the books of Samuel, which describes Israel (Jacob) rejecting Him as King and establishing Saul as Israel’s first king. Saul proved to be an unfaithful king, so the Sovereign LORD God rejected Saul as king and chose His faithful servant David from the tribe of Judah as king to reign in Jerusalem (Zion), followed by his son Solomon as king of Israel. David’s son Solomon built the Jerusalem Temple that transformed Jerusalem into the divine residence of the Sovereign LORD God. However, Israel’s united kingdom under David and Solomon became divided into two kingdoms after Solomon’s death because of Solomon’s unfaithfulness to the Sovereign LORD God. The divided kingdom existed from 930 to 586 BC with ten tribes of Israel living in northern Israel and two tribes living in southern Israel, now known as Judah. Evil leaders ruled Israel’s ten northern tribes; however, Judah in the south had some good leaders who followed David’s faithfulness to the Sovereign LORD God, such as Hezekiah and Josiah. However, Israel and Judah walked increasingly in rebellion and evil toward the living Sovereign LORD God and His covenant given at Mount Sinai (Horeb). The Sovereign LORD God empowered many holy prophets (messengers) such as Elijah, Elisha, and Jeremiah to call Israel and Judah to wholeheartedly turn from their evildoing and rebellion and return to Him with love, faithfulness, and obedience. Because of their continual sinfulness, the Sovereign LORD God used the Assyrians to destroy and scatter Israel and their ten tribes in 722 BC, and then He used Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians to destroy Judah and Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BC, leading to the 70-year Exile of God’s people from the Promised Land of Israel-Palestine. After 586 BC, the people of God were no longer ruled by a king but by foreign powers, including the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. However, the Sovereign LORD God, full of mercy and grace, used Cyrus of Persia to defeat the Babylonians in 539 BC. The Persians allowed God’s people, now known as Jews, to return to their homeland in Israel-Palestine to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple (Second Temple) in 516/515 BC and the Jerusalem wall in 444 BC under the leadership of Zerubbabel, Haggai, Zechariah, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Despite Israel and Judah’s destruction, the holy prophets of God began to comfort God’s people with a message of restoration and hope with the coming of a Righteous Servant-Branch from King David’s family line that would be King of Israel and lead Israel and all nations as Savior and Ruler. This hope of a new King came with Christ Jesus as the Messiah-King. Thus, the grand story of God’s salvation moves from the Garden of Eden with the original sin, the story of Abraham and his sons, Isaac and Jacob, David and Solomon, into the New Testament. God’s salvation story, handwritten on scrolls, was written in Hebrew and Aramaic and later translated into Greek with the Septuagint (Greek version of the Old Testament Scriptures) and confirmed by the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947.