Reading the Old Testament

I was just wondering -- When people are reading the OT, do you actually read through all the lineage accounts and the accounts where land is being parceled out to the various tribes? If so, how do you keep it all straight and what do you use it for?

Thanks!

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George Somsel

I was just wondering -- When people are reading the OT, do you actually read through all the lineage accounts and the accounts where land is being parceled out to the various tribes? If so, how do you keep it all straight and what do you use it for?

Thanks!

Occasionally—rarely. I once preached a sermon on the genealogies of Gen 5. That was something of a challenge ! You will note, however that the lectionary, which takes you fairly systematically through the bible, avoids such passages.

Fred Chapman

I was just wondering -- When people are reading the OT, do you actually read through all the lineage accounts and the accounts where land is being parceled out to the various tribes? If so, how do you keep it all straight and what do you use it for?

Thanks!

Like George I do not really read through them. I do however scan them to see if the writer added any additional information about a person. For example I once preached a sermon on Enoch. It got my attention because of the extra information that is written about him in chapter 5.

James Chandler

I do, but generally for my Bible reading.

Jack Caviness

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/605656#Comment_605656

I once preached a sermon on the genealogies of Gen 5

I titled the sermon on that text "Walking Through an Ancient Graveyard." It is sometimes interesting to walk through a graveyard and read the comments on the tombstones, especially the very old ones. All the stones in Genesis 5, except one, have a common comment: "And he died." That one exception becomes the focus of the message.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/605730#Comment_605730

Depends on my purpose in reading. I keep threatening to request a genealogy be read at my funeral - there are often interesting anomalies embedded in them. If I am reading a book straight through, I read it straight through to get a complete sense of it. If I am studying pericopes, its rare that I include them.

Allen Browne

I was just wondering -- When people are reading the OT, do you actually read through all the lineage accounts and the accounts where land is being parceled out to the various tribes? If so, how do you keep it all straight and what do you use it for?

It's okay to skim over these if you currently see no purpose for them in your current studies. But whatever you do, do read the Bible as the narrative of the God who acts with real time in real places in history, not simply as some kind of spiritual guidebook. You lose too much if you don't read Jesus as a first-century Jew, for example.

There will be times when you will want to make better sense of them. For example, sketching yourself a map of tribes (from Bible Facts in Logos) may cement their locations in your locations in your mind. It matters for some of the later stories, e.g. that Simeon (and much of Levi) lived within the large but arid Judah, that the northern tribes stretched from Bethel (in Ephraim) to Dan (far north), and that little Benjamin was sandwiched between the northern and southern kingdoms. You need to have a picture of who the 2.5 trans-jordan tribes were. And it really helps to see why the northern tribes could be called "Joseph" at times, how Shiloh and Bethel were spiritual centers before Jerusalem, and so on. It also helps you understand how different things were after the exile, e.g. Chronicles doesn't report any returnees from Naphtali, and Ezekiel completely redraws the tribes as stripes across the map.

The genealogies serve different functions in different texts. For example, in Genesis, they actually mark off the different stories contained in the book (along with a key word for that story from the key character), whereas in Chronicles they help the people define who they are after Judah returns from exile and the majority of the northern tribes are assimilated into other nations (though there's enough of the northern tribes left for the Chronicler to hold onto hope for what he calls "all Israel" - a hope reflected but perhaps redefined in Matt 19:28; Acts 26:7; Rev 7:4-8 and maybe Gal:6:16 and Rom 11:26).

Comparing genealogies can be confusing (e.g. Mt 1 and Luke 3), as many of your commentaries will point out. For those of us who are not Jewish by decent but have been grafted into Abraham's family because we have been placed into Christ (and therefore into the Abrahamic family as defined by faith rather than by ethnicity), you don't want to spend to much time disputing over genealogies (Titus 3:9).

Hope that at least helps you see how the relevance of these things, and leaves you free to skip over them for now if they don't have immediate relevance for you.

MikeG53

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/605766#Comment_605766

Thanks for the input everyone - I like the skimming idea with the potential to maybe dig into a specific aspect of at a later point it's helpful! That way I pick up the general idea of what's going on.

mab

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/606006#Comment_606006

I've been working with one such passage today. The names are usually not the substance, but within the overall passage they are very much structured to tell us that God absolutely knows everything. It's actually a great comfort to read this as a reminder that He never forgets who He has called. I might forget what I read in an instant, but He never forgets me for an instant.