How to Study the Bible III - Old Testament History

All right, take a quick run through Old Testament history. Next week then, taking a look at the cultures that were in the Old Testament. So this will be just very much going through things in sequence. We're not going to go into the detail that we would in our Bible backgrounds elective. So the idea here is just a quick you know, zoom through time and then taking a look at the cultures. We will also be, you know, recommending along with that some other resources for you to work with so that you can dig further, you know, when you come to a place of study. We start off with this, you know, chronology of Old Testament books and this is kind of in one view taking a look at the whole of the Old Testament, starting with creation and ending about 430 B.C. with the book of Malachi. Now, what's the longest Old Testament book?

Psalms, right? How many Psalms are there? About 150. And one other thing about it, it took the longest to accumulate. Over how many centuries were Psalms accumulated? About a thousand years. About a thousand years. So imagine, here's Moses actually made the first contribution to it, because he wrote a psalm about crossing through the sea and all that.

So you have that, but then here's David, and he writes some, and you have others writing. So it was Israel's national hymn book that was accumulated over a long period of time. And let's ask some other questions. Did King David ever talk to Daniel? No. Centuries apart, right? This is one thing that is kind of amazing.

Scripture has about 40 authors. And the whole thing was written over about 1,500 years time. And the fact that those have a common message, and God had a plan in mind for putting the scripture together, it's really kind of amazing. So anyway, we will kind of step our way through this, but this is a good one-page summary. of the different events of Scripture.

Okay, so the basic, the real basic outline to kind of keep things in mind is you have from creation on and then Abraham is a key and pivotal person living around 2000 BC. So you can just get kind of that in your mind as a basic framework. About 2000 B.C. is Abraham, and then living about 1500 B.C. is Moses. And we're going to find two sets of 40s, three 40s, are going to work kind of as a framework. And the first one is Moses, 40, 40, 40, okay, 40 years as a prince in Egypt, right?

He murders an Egyptian, and somebody saw it. So he's out of there. So then he spends the next 40 years where? Out in the wilderness, out in the desert, watching sheep. And then that ends when? What happens that ends that time? God tells him to go back to Egypt and this is what I want you to do. And does Moses want to do that? He's kind of resistant. And then these ten plagues, right? So then he gets them out in the wilderness. And how many years has he been with the Israelites out in the wilderness?

Forty years. Can you imagine taking eighty years to get ready for what God has in mind for you to do? So that's really, God says, OK, you've got this, and then you've got that, and OK, now you've been watching sheep for 40 years, now you're ready. OK?

And so it's 40-40-40 for Moses, and then the other thing we're going to take a look at is King Saul reigned for how long? 40 years. And King David reigned for about 40 years, and King Solomon reigned for about 40 years. So twice in the Old Testament, 40-40-40 kind of helps you get a good framework for Moses and Saul and David and Solomon. Yeah, Christine? Isn't that also the number for a generation considered? Yes. Generally speaking, that will be about the right figure. So you have Abraham, Moses, 40-40-40, David, Solomon, 40-40-40, right?

And then the next thing that you have is the Jews exiled to Babylon in 586. That's another kind of key time. And then in the New Testament, which we'll get to in a couple of weeks here, the New Testament was written all in the first century. And the earliest was probably James about 45 AD, and then Revelation about 95.

Alright, so continuing on here. One of the things we want to do is match the right background to the text. If I look at the New Testament, and I'm reading about Jesus, and I'm reading about the disciples, Do I match that background with the Babylonians? It's out of sync, isn't it? Wrong time. So that's one reason for going through this history, is we want to match the right context.

And so the historical and cultural background has to fit in the right time, place, and culture. The right time, place, and culture. So those are the things we want to match up. Matching the right background to the text requires that we respect the inspiration and authority of scripture.

Take each text in its normal literal sense. Now, when we say normal literal sense, are there symbols? Are there things that are symbolic? Are there figures of speech? Yes, there are. All kinds, we've been going over that, right? But we want to look at things in the right time, place, and culture, and we want to interpret things literally, and when I say literally, that doesn't mean just wooden letterism, but it means also understanding that there are figures of speech, there are symbols that are used, and there are ways to understand that. Okay, here's something else that I didn't put in your handout, but it's to answer a question.

Somebody asked previously, is the whole Bible a chiasm? And I haven't found that pattern, but I have found that the first three chapters of Genesis and the last three chapters of Revelation have things that match up, they're bookends. So in Genesis, heaven and earth were created, Revelation, there's a new heavens and a new earth, right? And the sun was created in the early part of Genesis there, and then in Revelation it says, no need of the sun.

Can you imagine? Everything happens around, you know, okay, where's the sun right now? And right now, you know, if all of a sudden the sun went black, we'd be rather concerned, right? So the sun and where the sun is dictates things, right? We're here at this time and this hour because of where the sun is, right? We're not here at 3 a.m. What? No, we're not. And then we have the night as established and then no night there, right? and then in Genesis the seas created, and in Revelation no more seas.

So if you want to go on an ocean cruise in the new heaven and new earth, you're going to be out of luck. The serpent is on the earth, and then the serpent is in the lake of fire in Revelation. The curse is given, no more curse. So you have a correspondence and contrast on each of these. Death enters history, no more death. And then, driven from the tree, restored to the tree. Sorrow and pain begin, no more sorrow or pain. So you have a sharp contrast between these two books at the first three chapters and in the last three chapters.

Yeah, Stan? Do you have that in a handout? I don't have it in a handout, but I'd be glad to send it to anybody. Yeah, email? Yeah, okay. This is really neat stuff. For each item, it's not like there's a patchwork, but for each item there's a sharp contrast.

It's kind of like the epilogue of Revelations, it's kind of the epilogue of the Bible. Genesis is the introduction, and everything in the middle sort of fits those topics. And you know, it's all in the first three chapters, or the last three chapters, right?

And it matches on every point. Here's how it started, here's how it ended. Every point, it just goes right along. And Moses, who wrote the book of Genesis, and John were 1500 years apart. But everything corresponds. Okay, here is the lifetimes of the patriarchs. We have a kind of a vertical bar chart. I think I made it half page or something on your handout.

And the idea there is you see, before the flood, with the exception of Enoch, who was taken away by the Lord, kind of an early rapture, right? So Enoch was taken away by the Lord at 365. With the exception of that, what you see is a pattern, generally speaking, of about 900 years. Lamech is the one exception to that, and he also was one who was very violent. Today, after the flood, you see a tapering off. It actually fits a kind of a decay curve formula fairly well. Until the time you see Jacob living 147, and then the lifespan is continuing to decline after the flood.

So key personages here are Adam, Enoch, Noah, and Shem being the one through whom the Jews came, and then Jesus, and then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob later on in that bar chart. Going back here, so Adam was created on the sixth day of creation along with his wife. It says they were created male and female in chapter 1, and in chapter 2 it's like a zoom lens picture of how that created male and female took place. After that came the fall of Adam, Genesis 3, and all mankind with him.

When Nancy and I do pre-marriage counseling, we will go through Genesis 1, 2, and 3 with the couple, because then that establishes a number of different things, including male and female, basis for marriage, Genesis 2.24.

So anyway, and then all mankind fell with him, Romans 5.12. So the next major pivotal event was the flood that took place in the days of Noah, just after the death of Methuselah. Genesis 6-9, as we pointed out previously, chapters 6-9 are a large chiasm. Again, it's a mirror image in writing.

Men sought to build the Tower of Babel, which God confounded by introducing languages. What's interesting is, in going, for example, over to Uganda, It's very common, and this is true even in Europe, very common for people to speak three, four, five languages. As a matter of fact, my high school math teacher, he knew seven languages. I could wish one of them was English. Anyway, Tower of Babel was a location from which people spread throughout the earth. primarily and initially according to family groups.

The spread took place because God confused the language which had previously been a single language. Imagine being able to go up and talk to anybody and it's all one language. And by the way, what was that initial single language? Yeah, we don't know. According to the Jews, it was Hebrew, but I think that's kind of a little biased.

The initial path of distribution goes roughly like this. Today's modern and secular theories have human beings coming out of Africa, right? But in terms of the distribution from civilization and looking at the record, this distribution coming out of the Middle East and distributing everywhere else fits the bill. Japheth, and a lot of us have background from Japheth, went up into what is now Europe, and then Shem, Middle East and to the east farther, and then Ham into Africa. From the migration to the east and then across into the Americas is the distribution.

And this distribution, by the way, is backed up by DNA studies, which we have available. That was actually after this map was made. OK, so here's the geography of the Middle East with regards to Abraham. He started in Ur, which was a very high civilization. Ur has been excavated, actually decades back, Leonard Woolley. He excavated until his wife got tired of it. But anyway, very high civilization.

Then he moved north to Haran. was there for a time, and then came down into the land that God, as He put it in Genesis 12, the land that I will show you. So He showed him this land, and then it's like Abraham kind of overshot the target and went down into Egypt, and then came back into this land. So then we have God's covenant with Abraham, which begins in Genesis 12, verses 1-3, is the basis for the outworking of his purposes in all of human history.

Why doesn't God just say, eh, 2016, that's good enough, we'll just wind everything up and call it good. Why doesn't God just do that? And just say, alright, this is the end of the present, heaven's and earth, so why not just do that? He doesn't want any to perish. And why else? He has a plan, and obviously we don't know the full extent of the plan, and so it's going to be carried out until that plan is accomplished.

If you look at it, he made promises to Abraham, and he's going to keep it. At one point in time, God puts a hypothetical thing to Moses, and he says, hey, how about if I just have everybody, all these Israelites, just have them wiped out, and I'll just continue with you. And Moses goes, wait a minute, you promised. And so God has made promises he's going to keep. And that's why he doesn't just wrap everything up in 2016 and say that's enough. He's going to keep those promises.

And so within the time of Abraham, we begin to see more general correspondence between secular and biblical accounts of human history. It doesn't mean there's complete agreement, but the general correspondence starts with Abraham between secular and human history. Prior to that, there's quite a bit of difference between what the Bible portrays and what's the usual sequence and timing of events. So Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are a series of patriarchs who had some similarities of culture. What were some things that were unique and common about the culture of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? They were all nomadic. Yes, all nomadic. So that's one thing.

Imagine you're traveling around, this land is supposed to be promised, but is it promised to them? Is it promised to them directly? No. Morgan's shaking her head no. Why? Because it's to the descendants. It's descendants. So here you are, you're camping out in this place, right? Not paying any park fees or anything, but you're camping out in this place and just kind of hanging around for generations, but it's for your descendants. And those promises that were made to Abraham are repeated to Isaac, repeated to Jacob, but it's still descendants. Still descendants.

So then it goes from the covenant with Abraham, Genesis 12, to the founding of the nation of Israel and the tribes, Genesis 50. One of the things we did was we had eight words that we used when we went through Genesis. Creation, Fall, Flood, Nation, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. key points.

Now, as we examine scripture, we will want to understand three things very well. Language, history, and culture. Why do we need all three of those? Why do we need to understand well all three of those? Because the word was written in a language at a point in time within a culture. Within a culture, right?

And culture matters. But when I go over to Uganda, I have to be very careful about the figures of speech that I use. Because they're in a very different culture. So something that would just be obvious to us, you know, real different to them. Yeah. Well, it is.

I mean, you see it current time. that cultures are often so different, that assumptions are made between cultures that should not be, and it gets confusing. Well, why aren't you acting this way? And why are you acting this way? Just because we have been acculturated in a certain way. Yeah, that's right. Nancy? Can you repeat that? I couldn't hear. Oh, could I repeat? Oh, even today? Between cultures, there are so many assumptions that often it breaks down because, you know, I will assume, okay, why are you doing this thing? And then they will assume, well, why are you doing this thing? But it's so deeply acculturated or we're indoctrinated with a set of, like a mindset that we talk under or over each other.

And then people are offended. When I went to the Czech Republic several years back, it was very common for people to be just atheists, because of the background they had with communism. So it's very common for people to be atheists. People who believed in God were actually looked upon as like, you know, you're into UFOs and aliens or something, you know. They were looked at as kind of weird.

Yes? Well, so Kaylee and I, when we were in the Czech Republic, we started playing a game, which now that I'm thinking may not have been the best game. They don't smile. And we are from Colorado where we are very friendly, very amicable people. That's how we are enculturated. So she and I started the smile game to see who we could get to smile back at us. For the most part, people just looked at us like we were mad. Like we were just crazy people.

Anyway, what I was saying, when I went to Africa, I would tell them I just came from the Czech Republic where most people are atheists and they just had this stunned look and they said, what's wrong with those people? So it's amazing that acculturation makes a huge difference. Languages, histories, and cultures of Genesis varied from beginning to end. Huge differences of culture. And which one you're in matters a lot in understanding what's the culture here. Here Joseph is made second in command, right? And so the various servants out there, you know, they call out, bow the knee! You know, you're supposed to bow the knee. Well, if you had come up to Adam and said, bow the knee! What?

He would have no idea what that's all about. It's all vast differences in culture. We also see that history matters. There are promises yet to be fulfilled and really big problems yet to be resolved. So Jacob and his sons are in Egypt, but shortly thereafter they are made into brick-making slaves. Once in a while, I'll come across like one of the leaders of Israel sometime back talked about the Jews building pyramids. No, they didn't. The pyramids were already there when Abraham was there, and all the Jews did was make bricks for centuries. Bricks and bricks and mud bricks with straw. And that's it.

They got very, very good at it, if you can say that. One of the things is the timing of where Moses came in. It fits very well with the names of the pharaohs. The Hatshepsut is probably the one who had Moses drawn out of the water. And right in the midst of that, what do you see? Almost all the pharaohs have Moses. in the name, for several in that 18th dynasty. So we're going to call this baby Moses, right? And so in the Hebrew, it means he who draws out. He was born about 1526 BC, just before the end of the reign of Amos I. And Hatshepsut ended up being a rare woman pharaoh, which would have given Moses particular standard.

Okay, so now we have the ten plagues in Egypt, and it brings us to the Exodus. One of the things we'll take a look at is those plagues were against specific gods, and we've had the primary god here listed, the death of the firstborn, as against all the gods of Egypt. And then the Exodus, so the Lord will pass through and smite the Egyptians when he sees the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts. The Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come to your houses to smite you. So that's the first Passover. And then the Jews continued, they were told every year you need to observe this Passover.

So Exodus 12, 40-41, now the time that the sons of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. That's a long time. How much is 430 years ago? That was a long time ago. Yeah, 430 years ago was a long time ago, and I'm trying to think, we're back into the 1500s, right? We had not had the first white settlers.

So the time of Israel's presence in Egypt was 430 years, all of them departing from there when Moses was 80 years old. You just started your job, Moses, at 80. So here's Moses 40, 40, 40. After 40 years in the desert east of Canaan, east of the Jordan, Israel invaded Canaan under the leadership of Joshua. After conquering the land which the Lord had told them to conquer, but not driving out all the people they were supposed to, Israel entered the period of the Judges. This lasted until the time of the first king of Israel, Saul. Joshua goes in there and they have great victories and horrible catastrophes, but they didn't go and drive out all the people they were supposed to. But that wasn't a real problem, was it? Or was it? It was a real problem, right? Because the people they were supposed to have driven out and driven off continued to plague them, like the Philistines, right? Continued to plague them.

Then you go into a cycle of the judges. Same thing again and again and again and again, going through this cycle. And this is something, in Bible terms, history is linear. It's going somewhere. When the Jews got into a cycle where they kept returning to the same kind of condition, that was because there was a problem. It was a sin problem. So here's the cycle of sin that he just kind of kept going and going and going.

So here are the various judges listed in the Book of Judges, and ending with Samson. What's interesting with all this is that, as you notice, we've gotten some information about what was the problem in what period of time and whatnot for each of the judges, but not a complete set of information.

Okay, so then we have Saul and David and Solomon, each reigning for 40 years. So again, here's Moses, 40-40-40, right? And Saul and David and Solomon, 40-40-40. We kind of get that as a framework. And David lived about 1000 B.C. So that's a good round figure to work with, right? So about 1000 B.C. So that Jesus gets called son of David. Isn't that interesting? So in the Jewish thing, we say son of, and it might be centuries earlier. We're going to see in the message here, Zacchaeus gets called a son of Abraham. So we're talking 2,000 years earlier.

He's still the son of. Under Saul, Israel had its first king, Saul. It's a one-man dynasty. One man dynasty. Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin. Who else was of the tribe of Benjamin? Paul, who was first called Saul. Okay, so you put that together. Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin and so was the Saul that became Paul, also of the tribe of Benjamin. So, Saul was of the last of his line by God's choice.

Okay, you're started. Forty years. Okay, you're done. And then, David. His second king was the first of his line, but of a line that would never end. So a sharp contrast between Saul and David. With Saul, you're king for 40 years, and then you're done. With David, you're king for 40 years, but he's got a promise from God. Your line will never end. And probably the big difference is how they were picked. Ah, and tell us about that.

Well, the people picked Saul. People picked Saul, popularity thing. They were tired of the theocracy, so they wanted a king. So they picked Saul because he was taller than everybody else, which is a good criteria. Second of all, God picked David. Man picked the other brothers first. They thought they would be good kings and nobody liked David. But God said he'd make a good king. So here's David who's kind of a little runt.

We don't even count him because he's out watching the sheets. So there's a promise, 2 Samuel 7, 12 and 13, "...I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." Alright, so under Solomon, Israel's third king, was the one who saw the building of the temple. Why didn't David get that privilege? Because he was a man of bloodshed. Yeah, he was a man of bloodshed. Solomon was the one who was given to build it. So this was the first temple. The problem, both David and Solomon, though they were worn, had multiple wives and concubines. Nancy and I were talking about, can you imagine having a thousand women? And wives and concubines.

What's your name? A real intimate relationship there. Didn't we last talk about three years ago? That kind of thing. So the kingdom was split in two after them. So then we have the split here. So this kind of maps out the split. You had a split to the north.

And that was called Israel. And by the way, it was also called, and this is something as we're studying the Bible, it was also called by its most prominent tribe, Ephraim. So sometimes you'll see just Ephraim in there as its most prominent tribe. How about the southern kingdom, what was it called? Judah, because that was its most prominent tribe. So you have the prominent tribal name, is also used for each.

So then you have the Southern Kingdom, which initially included just Judah and Benjamin, but then as the North went through terrible and rough times, because they had 20 kings and they were all bad, and a lot of them ending their dynasty by being murdered, So the people up north would say, I'm getting out of here, this place is crazy. And so you end up having representatives from all the tribes in the southern kingdom, because people were escaping the insanity of living in the northern kingdom. So here's this divide here, and one of the things that you'll see is how Israel ended as a nation.

Assyria comes in. Actually, we have 722, and that's a good date, but the reality is they came in in waves. The Assyrians would come in and they would haul off people. And what was the Assyrian approach to things? They haul them off and did what? They'd scramble them, put them somewhere else, and then they'd bring other people and put them in where they took. So they spent a lot of their effort, once they conquered, just moving people around. Just scrambling. And what was that supposed to do?

It undid their personal history and culture. Yeah, I've lost my identity because I'm mixed up with these other people. It would be much harder if you just dispersed people. for them to solidify and conquer. Because you have a language barrier, you have a culture barrier.

So it was very calculated. And it's demoralizing. Yeah, it's demoralizing. I'm mixed up. I move right next door to people. I can't speak to them. We don't speak the same language. We don't have the same assumptions. They eat the wrong food. And they wouldn't know the lay of the land. Ah, yeah, completely for it, right? You don't know what's where, what's nearby, you're completely disoriented. Geographically disoriented, communication wise disoriented, culture different, yes.

Isn't that similar to what God did at the Tower of Babel? Yes, and there is a similarity, what's different? Well, when God scattered from the Tower of Babel, there were at least people groups that went out and were dispersed in different places. So there was still some cohesion, even though the language had changed. People did go out by groups, right? Okay, so here's a summary of the divided kingdom.

What you have here in the Northern Kingdom, duration 209 years, there were the 10 tribes and then the capital was at one point Bethel and another point Shechem. At one point in time you had the capital of the Northern Kingdom just 12 miles to the north of Jerusalem, the capital of the Southern Kingdom. Can you imagine that? Just 12 miles to the north. That was kind of amazing.

In the Southern Kingdom, you had Judah and Benjamin to start, but eventually, because things were so crazy in the North, and especially, you know, here comes the Assyrians, I'm getting out of here, right? And you could go to the Southern Kingdom and at least have some semblance of sanity. So ultimately, the Southern Kingdom ended up getting more and more people, and all 12 tribes were represented. Ever hear of the Lost Tribes? They're not lost. All 12 tribes were still represented in the southern kingdom, and we know where the Assyrians moved people to, and people could move back.

So you had all awful kings, nine dynasties, and the dynasties were ended by murder. Somebody would murder the king, and then you'd get another person in place, and then he'd get murdered, and you'd start another one. The one dynasty in the southern kingdom, David, with God telling him, your kingdom, your line, will never end. Your line will never end.

Violent deaths, about half of the kings of the northern kingdom had violent deaths. Four in Judah. so there was more continuity, and even then, the line of David is what helped. The character of the kings in the Northern Kingdom, none of them are godly. And then in the Southern Kingdom, 8 of them godly, 12 ungodly. Can you think of some of the godly kings of the Southern Kingdom? Any names come to mind? Asa would be one, okay? Hezekiah? And we say jumping Jehoshaphat, right? So Jehoshaphat's another one that's a good one. Hezekiah? What is the J one? J-O, Josiah. Thank you. Josiah? Josiah was another one, okay?

So you did have eight good kings. It's not that they didn't have issues, but here's what's interesting, and Nancy and I were also talking about that this last week. The passing along to the next generation is something that's a repeated failure. As you look at this, passing it along to the next generation.

Here's Hezekiah, who had Isaiah as his court prophet. His son Manasseh had guys go out and hunt Isaiah down. He was hiding in a log and they just cut the log in half. So Hezekiah didn't pass it along. So it's a very interesting observation that sometimes people be really good and do good things, but not take the effort to pass that along as a heritage.

And so this is a key thought here with these kings. You would have eight of them be good, but they didn't seem to have a way to know how to pass that along. Yes? That's interesting with Paul passing it along to Timothy, because it seems like he got that message. It's noteworthy because the beginning of the giving of the law, it talks about you will basically talk about these things to your children, like coming up and down, so it was there, the knowledge at some point was there on how to transfer it generation to generation.

So here's Assyria, conquers Israel, a great many people from the Northern Kingdom then escape to the Southern Kingdom. At 586, however, Babylon conquers Judah. They actually came in in waves, and then 586 they finally hauled them off, and then Under the Persians, the Jews, not all of them, but a number of them come back. They rebuild the temple at 515.

They get done with that. And then 430 BC is the close of the Old Testament with the writing of the book of Malachi. That's also the end of the line of the prophets. The end of the line of the Old Testament prophets. And so then they had the Old Testament complete by that time.

So here's Moses writing the first five books. And who wrote Joshua? Moses was dead. So who wrote Joshua? Huh? Did Joshua write Joshua? Yeah, Joshua wrote Joshua, right? Now, having said that, having said that, what you'll find is that the death of each of these guys is recorded, right? And so somebody else has to have written about that. Probably Joshua wrote about the death of Moses, right?

And then Joshua would write Joshua, and then somebody else would say, okay, here's the end of the account. If you come to the last Old Testament book, then, the line of the prophets has ended. God's done inspiring Old Testament scripture. And the Jews will refer to what we call the Old Testament as the Bible. To them, that's it. They don't acknowledge the New Testament.

Now I want to switch over to something else. It's a one-pager. It looks like this. It should be on the last page of what you have in your handout. I want to point out, this kind of goes back. This is a poetic pattern in 2 Corinthians 12, 1-6. I wanted to revisit it. I just ran into this this last week. It has both the poetic patterns we talked about and Hebrew poetry patterns. So it goes like this, Boasting is necessary, though it is not profitable, but I will go through visions and revelations of the Lord.

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago, and then that I know such a man is repeated down below there, and such a man was caught up to the third heaven, then was caught up into paradise. Now, what's the third heaven and what's paradise? By paralleling those two, that tells you this is the same thing. And repeating, whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And then he writes below that, whether in the body or apart from the body, I do not know, God knows. So, repeating that pattern, But was caught up in the third heaven, was caught up in the paradise, that's a Hebrew poetry pattern, he's restating the same thing. And it tells you that they're the same thing, not something else.

And then we have, on behalf of such a man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast. So those are parallel. And then, except in regards to my weaknesses, and then he goes into the eyes, for if I do wish to boast, I will not be foolish, for I will be speaking the truth, but I refrain from this, so that no one will credit me with more than he sees in me or hears from me."

So you find both a Hebrew, there's a restatement or repetition pattern in here, as well as the poetic pattern, all in the same passage. And it also helps us by looking at it in this way, to see that paradise is the same as the third heaven. Paradise, by the way, is only used three times in the whole Bible. What's the first time?

The garden. No, it would have been Paul, right? In the New Testament, Jesus is on the cross, and what does it say to the thief on the cross? Today you'll be with me in paradise. That's the first time. It's a Persian word that means pleasure garden. So that's the first time. This is the second time right here.

Third time is in the book of Revelation. So only those places. So here we have this word paradise, but this also helps us understand that paradise is the place where God dwells, and that's where Jesus is going, and so is this man who's on the cross that day. And then we see at the bottom part of this the explanation, why did he say third heaven? It's because in the Hebrew way of speech, there's not seventh heaven, right?

There are three. There are three. By the way, seventh heaven, that's Islamic. Yeah, that's Islamic, because the Hebrews had three. So here is the first heaven is what? It's the atmospheric heaven. They would speak in that way. And we have an example, then God said, let the birds fly above the open expanse of the heavens. So the birds don't fly out at the stars, right? They fly in the atmospheric heaven. So that's the first heaven in the Hebrew understanding of things. Then the next one is outside the atmosphere into the solar system and on into the stars.

So the farthest part, that's the second heaven. And then the place where God dwells is the third heaven. So the second heaven, I will greatly bless you and will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens. Second heaven. So here in the third heaven, such a man was caught up to the third heaven dot dot dot paradise. Third heaven, paradise.

So in the Hebrew mindset, three heavens, not seven. Like I say, that's Islamic. But the Bible is consistent from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible is consistent. Three heavens is atmospheric heaven, stellar heaven, astronomical heaven, And then heaven, the third heaven, paradise, the place where God dwells. And the Bible is consistent from Genesis to Revelation with that.

Just as we're examining, I just wanted to revisit this because I came across this and this kind of pulls together some of the things we've been talking about. I hope I'm not getting pinnitus. OK, so things you'd like to discuss, questions, comments. Observation, so in the Jewish mindset, it seems like basically just counting how many is, they don't name things as we do in a Greek mindset.

Yes. Because you were talking about there's seven days, so the first day is day one. Yeah. And then here we have one, two, three heavens, so is that appropriate to think? Well, and that's something that is very important, that the Jews were far more into numbering things than giving things a special name? How do we do the days of the week? They're based off of Greek. We actually have pagan deities who do Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and they didn't do that. How do they call Sunday? It's the first day of the week, right? So here's the first day of the week and the second day of the week and so they just number them.

And the sequence matters, doesn't it? So the sequence matters. And then when it came to the first and the second and the third heaven, they didn't have some special names for that. Having a special name for those things It was more of a Greek or some other culture, but not theirs. And so numbering things in sequence was big. And that also tells you something else, as you read through Genesis 1, as you read through the book of Revelation, when things are given in a sequence, that's following the Hebrew pattern, things are sequential, it's the first and the second and the third, and scrambling them, that's not the Jewish culture.

Because people will come up with the ideas, oh this seal here fits with this one, and they'll start moving things around, or I've got these creation sequence, and nope. The Hebrew culture is you go through them numerically and sequentially, and you don't mess with it.

So yeah, that's a good point. Other thoughts, questions? Yeah, Stan? It's so sequential that they actually could come up with a method of study called numerology that actually picked the things that they did, different numbers, meaning different things. Yeah, you bring up a good point and that is that we have an alphabet, right?

And we've got numbers. There are two different things. In other languages, and Hebrew is one of them, the alphabet is also used for the numbers. So that ends up, it's a little different from our thinking. So when the translators come up to something, they have to figure out what's a number and what's a word. So there's significance when they say this is the first born because they are so counting and number, you know, like counting oriented. Yes. And that's really, that's really important to understand. Yeah.

Numerical sequence and OK, this and so that because their letters and numbers were the same off the same symbols, just that, you know, impacted how they thought. And also, as we look at things, in other words, names and numbers go together, right? As opposed to... I think there's potential for deeper meaning when they are writing out scripture. Yeah. And I think it's possible for people to get a little too carried away with it, but looking at, okay, what number matches this name, right?

And so that's why Revelation will talk about 666, The names match with the numbers, right? Other thoughts? Okay, let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we look at the broad sweep of history and we've covered many centuries here in a short period of time. We thank you that you have purpose in it all. Rather than leaving us in some sort of random and meaningless situation, you have purpose for each one of us. And you have purpose in our understanding these things because you dearly love us and you care for us so much. And we just pray in Jesus' name. Amen.