True & Beautiful Things About the Bible--Old Testamentනියැදිය

The Chronicles: Look What God Did

We can’t really understand a story until it’s over. Only then can you see how the characters and the action moved along, came to a climax, and resolved in the end.

When God’s people first read the two books of Chronicles (originally just “the Chronicles”), they were living after the captivity story ended. They were the grandchildren of Judah and Benjamin’s tribes heading home, back to the place they never lived, but where their family’s blood watered the soil. They had always heard that God had given them this land and promises to go with it, but they had no first-hand memory of it. They had no king, no stories of their own. No sense of God’s purpose or that He was still with them. But something in them wanted to be God’s people again, this time with a commitment to follow Him.

The stories in Chronicles were family stories. The readers were the children of the survivors from the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin. The other ten tribes of Israel were scattered, not even stories of their kings were told here. Instead, Chronicles focused on the kings who followed David’s example, and even better, who modeled characteristics of Jesus, the coming Messiah.

The Chronicles were written to connect them to the generations who had gone before them. It carefully captured stories from 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings, in the best season of their history and retold them from God’s perspective. Of David’s young years (without the stories of crazy king Saul.) Of David’s glory years (without the stories of Bathsheba or Absalom.) Of Solomon’s temple—gilded and glistening in the sun (without his penchant for picking and choosing which of God’s commands to obey.) And then, of course, snatches of revivals and spiritual highpoints from the final 350 years. These were the best of the best family stories.

What’s beautiful is that in every story you can see God still with His people. Still seeking them. Still loving them. Still wanting to be with them. And what’s true is that no matter how far the people got away from God, He still looked for their heart.

When the southern kingdom fell, the throne of David was destroyed, but the line of David, from which Jesus will be born, was protected—and to prove it, the first chapters of the gospels of Matthew and Luke list the unbroken chain of the generations. From Adam to Jesus. The original readers of the Chronicles would have lingered over those long lists of names in chapters 1-9, looking for their connection. And when they found them, they were reassured that this is your family, too.

Next: How things finally got back together