Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mehalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah. (1 Chronicles 1:1-3).How's that for launching right into the genealogical history of the world? No introduction, no beating around the bush. Sort of like a Billy Graham stadium event where his first words are: Won't you come?
According to Walter Brueggemann, the first three chapters of 1 Chronicles make a wondrous sweep of the past, delivering us to post-exilic times. Chronicles was likely written late in Israel's Persian period, sometime mid-sixth century BC or later.
At times over the next three weeks as we read the story of Israel (after the northern kingdom Israel fell in 722 BC, the name Israel defaulted to the southern kingdom Judah), it will seem like, Didn't I just read this? At other times, we'll read a chapter and think, That doesn't quite agree with what I read in Kings.
Again to reference Brueggemann, this is a revised version of Israel's memory. [1] Consider it like this. Joshua to 2 Kings is the Deuteronomic History. It tells exiled Israel's story looking back through time. How did we end up here? Chronicles covers the same time period (even more - it goes all the way back to Adam), but rather than looking backward, Chronicles sees those same events in the light of looking ahead. Can what we've been through teach us something as we begin a new chapter in our lives? Same events. Different perspective.
Would it do you good to look at the events of your life through different lenses?
[1] Walter Brueggemann, An Introduction to the Old Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 375.
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