The Old Testament consists of 46 books containing 1075 chapters, of which seven books were removed by the Protestants. The books of the Old Testament are divided into four sections:
A – The Books of Law: It includes the five books of Moses, which are called the Torah, and they are from Genesis to Deuteronomy.
B – Historical Books: It includes the book of Joshua up to Esther, then Tobit, Judith, and the two books of the Maccabees.
C – The Poetic or Educational Books: These include the book of Job until the Song of Solomon, as well as the two books of Wisdom and Sirach.
E – The Prophetic Books: It includes the prophets, i.e. from the book of Isaiah to the book of Malachi, in addition to the book of Baruch.
This division is not limited to the meaning in certain books, but the main goal of these books is for example the law or history, but there is law in the rest of the books and not only in the books of law, and there is also history in the other books in addition to the historical books…
The Story of the Bible:
We will briefly mention the historical events of the entire Bible, from Genesis to the birth of Christ, to link the meanings and events together.
The Garden of Eden: God wanted the creation of humans , so He created a perfect world for man in six days, then created him on the sixth day, and gave him complete authority over creation and gave him a commandment, but he broke it, so he was expelled from Paradise in which he enjoyed the company of God, and God promised him salvation before letting him out.
The Era of the Patriarchs: Sin spread in the world, so God destroyed it with a flood and renewed creation with Noah, the first of the patriarchs (patriarch = father of fathers), then Abraham, the father of God’s people and his descendants, Isaac, then Jacob and his twelve children, and Joseph, who raised them and delivered them to Egypt to escape famine. The most important features of this period are the altar and the tent, which symbolize Christ the Saviour and the estrangement of the world.
The Law: After humiliating the Children of Israel for about 400 years in Egypt, Moses was born, who led the people of God and brought them out of Egypt with the ten plagues and crossed the Red Sea with them, and God supported them in the wilderness of Sinai and led them and gave them the Commandments and the law and lived among them in the tent of meeting for 40 years in the wilderness, at the end of which Moses died.
The Promised Land: Joshua led the people of God after Moses, dried the Jordan River before them, defeated the wicked inhabitants of the land, exterminated them, and divided the land among the tribes.
Judges: The people were negligent in the Promised Land and did not finish letting the wicked out and were forsaking God’s commandments, so the wicked inhabitants of the land enslaved them and humiliated them. When they cried to God, He sent them a leader who is a judge who guided them to God’s commandments and judged between them, and lead them in a war against the wicked, and won and set them free, but they returned again to complacency, so they were taken over by other people, so God sent them another judge, and so on until the last judge, Samuel the Prophet.
The Kingdom that is United: The people asked the prophet Samuel to anoint a king, so they were sad because they were not satisfied with God. He established for them Saul, then David, and his son Solomon the Wise, who built the Temple.
Division of the Kingdom: Ten tribes of the Children of Israel rebelled against Rehoboam, son of Solomon, under the leadership of Jeroboam, son of Nabat. They formed the Northern kingdom of the Jews, which is called Israel, and its capital is Samaria, and it remained with Rehoboam, the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, who formed the southern kingdom, which is called Judah, and its capital is Jerusalem, and it contains the Temple. The sequence of kings from Rehoboam by reproduction, and some of them were pious, like Hezekiah and Josiah, who cared about worshiping God and removing idols, and some of them were evil, like Ahaz and Manasseh, who set up idols and spread idolatry.
As for the kingdom of Israel, Jeroboam set up two statues in it for the people to worship them instead of worshiping God in Jerusalem, so all its kings were evil, and the most evil of them was Ahab. God sent many prophets to call the people to repentance in the two kingdoms, the most famous of them being Elijah and Elisha.
The Captivity: As a result of the evils of the Jews, God allowed them to be taken captive by the Kingdom of Assyria, which occupied the Northern Kingdom and tried to seize Jerusalem, but failed. Then the Kingdom of Babylon arose, which occupied the Southern Kingdom and destroyed the Temple. The captivity lasted seventy years for all the Jews who dispersed them in the countries of the world and kept the weak among them in Palestine. During this period, prophets also called them to repent, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah.
Return From Captivity: The kingdom of Medes and Persia arose, which allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, rebuild it, and pray in the Temple. The return was in three stages, led by Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah, in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. They built the Temple and the walls of Jerusalem and restored worship and implementation of the law with the encouragement of the prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.
The Maccabees: The Jews lived as one people after returning from captivity, and their leader is the High Priest. In the fourth century B.C., the Greek Empire arose, Judea and Jerusalem were destroyed, and they were forced to worship idols, so the Maccabees revolution arose, which defeated the armies of the Greek empire and restored worship in Jerusalem in the second century B.C. Many were martyred, then conditions were stable, and after that the Maccabean state weakened in the early first century B.C. During the era of the Roman Empire, Palestine became a Roman state ruled by a governor, Herod, in whose days Christ was born.