The Bible Recap - Day 113 (1 Chronicles 1-2) - Year 6

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Did it surprise you that we started another new book today? Welcome to First Chronicles. We'll be popping in and out of this book over the next month. Then we'll drop in and out of Second Chronicles for the three months after that. These two books used to be one book, but they were divided because of scroll length. In our chronological timeline, we're currently at the time of David, which is roughly 1,000 years BC,

Starting point is 00:00:34 and these two books were written at roughly 500 BC to chronicle Israel's history, like the Bible recap but before podcast and much more condensed, and on a scroll. So every time we drop into this book, we'll be getting a little bonus recap about something we just read. The purpose of Chronicles is to remind Israel where they came from, which should also serve to give them hope for the future. In a few days, I'll tell you why it was so important for them to have this book and these genealogies specifically. The book starts us way back at the beginning. In fact, the first word of 1 Chronicles 1-1 is Adam. This is going to be such a good refresher for us and I believe it will really help us to commit more of this to memory as well as stir up a few things

Starting point is 00:01:14 in our hearts. So don't tap out here if some of this feels repetitive. You don't want a little repetition to knock you off your game. In fact, reps are how you develop strength. Keep looking for God and for new things each day, even in the things that feel familiar or boring. But for what it's worth, Chronicles does spice things up a bit. It adds in some new stories that aren't recorded elsewhere, and it leaves a few things out as well. Typically Chronicles adds positive stories and subtracts negative ones. That may sound deceptive, but one thing I love about the Bible is that it doesn't let Chronicles off the hook. God has given us other books

Starting point is 00:01:48 to help flesh out the story more fully. If you read a story in 2 Samuel one day and then 1 Chronicles the next day, sometimes there will be new details that jump off the page at you that weren't in the other account. Today we had two chapters of genealogies tracing the story of the family we've been following.

Starting point is 00:02:03 And I know that for most people, those aren't super fun to read, but let's see what we can find out about who God is in the midst of all these impossible to pronounce names. On days like this, I like to have the Bible app read to me. That's when it becomes clear to me that half the names sound like diseases and the other half sound like medications, so it all works really well together. You probably noticed right away that the early genealogies are really compressed and some aren't even complete sentences.

Starting point is 00:02:29 The scribe was probably like, I have to write down 3,500 years worth of people, so who has time for verbs? Nimrod may have caught your eye in 1 10, because the verse says he was the first person on earth to be a mighty man. We first read about Nimrod in Genesis 10, which mentions that he was a mighty hunter before the Lord.

Starting point is 00:02:48 Two things worth mentioning here. First, some commentators think this was an entire people group of hunter warriors, not just one person. Second, the name Nimrod became a slang term for someone who was foolish. It was popularized by Bugs Bunny, who used it to refer to Elmer Fudd, who was a hunter. So it just makes me think that the people over at Looney Tunes

Starting point is 00:03:10 are better theologians than our old friends, the Renaissance painters. Some cartoonist has been reading his Bible. Another person who caught my eye was Peleg, because 119 tells us that in his days, the earth was divided. What's that about? We first met Peleg briefly back in Genesis 10.25,

Starting point is 00:03:27 which was right before the Tower of Babel, the incident where God created multiple language which served to separate the people. It's likely but not certain that this is the division the text is referring us back to. However, some people think this points to continental drift theory and the way plate tectonics have impacted the globe.

Starting point is 00:03:46 The second chapter has us mostly hovering over the lineage of the tribe of Judah. That's because David comes from this tribe, so the author naturally wants to highlight his family because they're Israeli royalty. As these genealogies continue in the following chapters, some of the other tribes barely even get mentioned at all. Naphtali gets a sentence fragment.

Starting point is 00:04:05 Chapter two, verse seven mentions Achan and refers to him as the troubler of Israel. We met him back in Joshua seven. After the Israelites made their first raid in the promised land and took the city of Jericho, Achan is the one who stole some of the things devoted to God and hid them in his tent. And how did that trouble the whole nation?

Starting point is 00:04:23 You may remember that their next battle was against AI and they lost 36 men. God said it was because there was sin in the camp. Aiken confessed and they stoned him. 36 men and all of Aiken's family died because of his greed. Troubler indeed. God shots are hard on genealogy days, aren't they? I won't pretend it came to me right away.

Starting point is 00:04:46 But after I zoomed out on this and saw what caught my attention, I tried to look at what those things indicated to me about who God is. The things that jumped out at me were those three people we just talked about. Nimrod the mighty hunter, Peleg who lived in the days when the earth was divided, and Achan the troublemaker of Israel. In this genealogy, we have someone who it seems is being praised, Nimrod, the mighty hunter. Then we have someone who is identified more by the things around them than by the things

Starting point is 00:05:12 they've done personally, Peleg, the wallflower, maybe. And finally, we have Achan, who is known for bringing trouble and death to God's people with his idolatry. To me, this points out how God uses every story, from the great to the terrible to the person who never does anything that history considers significant. We're all written into his story of redemption. He sees us all one by one.

Starting point is 00:05:36 And genealogies are a reminder of that. They may be boring, but he's not. He's where the joy is. Have you ever had a group project that was just the worst because no one pulled their weight and you had to do all the work? Now, picture the opposite of that. That's our TBR team. Besides my research, writing, and recording each episode,

Starting point is 00:06:01 we've got sound engineer, Allison King, Meg Mitchell, who's our recapitin community manager, and Sarah Billings, our email champ. Lindsey Herring created our YouTube videos and runs our TikTok. Sarah Yoakam and her team manage all our other socials. Arlette Blackwell and Omar Cardenas help bring you La Synopsis de la Biblia. Olivia Lee and Laura Bouchel help with TBR operations, Brooke Stewart manages the TBR store, and Bonnie Hartwig is our TBR director. And they all have earned an A plus on this team project.

Starting point is 00:06:34 He's Where the Joy Is has become the true catchphrase of the Bible Recap family. You guys know it and love it. And if you're curious to know where this phrase comes from and how my life has changed because of it, click the link in the show notes to hear a recent interview I did on Wayfm's Mid-Days with Joy.

The Bible Recap - Day 113 (1 Chronicles 1-2) - Year 6

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