A (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango. Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebibledepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. Welcome to the Ketuvim. This episode is designed to get you oriented for the final stretch of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is split up into three sections. The Torah, the Neviim, and the Ketuvim. Congratulations. You have made it through the Torah, you made it through the Neviim, you've made it through two thirds of the Hebrew Bible. Go you. And my job is to kind of prep you, prepare you for this final stretch, which is the Ketu Vim. Now, a long, long, long, long, long time ago, in an episode somewhere, I likened the Ketuvim to that random drawer you got at the house that's got, like, the padlock in it. It's got duct tape, man. It's got, like, old keys from your old apartment. It's got all kinds of random stuff. Everyone has this drawer in the kitchen that's just the miscellaneous drawer. It's funny, me and our director of operations will constantly go through the budget for Arma, and there's always a miscellaneous line. And as much as you want to organize everything into a category, there's always, always, always, always going to be a miscellaneous category. And so the Ketuvim feels like that miscellaneous category. It feels like that drawer. And so I'm going to try my best to help you navigate your way through the kitchen drawer with all the random stuff in it, all right? And so the ketuvim is 11 books, 10 plus 1. 11, 11 books. And the first book of the Ketuvim is the Psalms. Now, I want to remind you of Luke, okay, All the way back In Luke, chapter 24, verse 44, and chapter 24, verse 27, Jesus referred to this section of the Tanakh as the Psalms. He just says the law, the prophets, and the Psalms. So when Jesus, or when Jews, period, refer to the Psalms as the third section of the Tanakh, they're talking about the Ketuvim. They're not only talking about the Book of Psalms, but the Book of Psalms is almost like the poster child for the entire collection that we know and love as the Ketuvim. And as you begin to work through this section of the Bible, I do believe that you're going to love it. Like, the Psalms are an incredible part of the Bible. Proverbs would Be the next. So I'll just list off the 11. 10 plus 1. 10 plus 1. I'm going to list off the 11 books of the Ketuvim for you. The first is Psalms, second is Proverbs, third is Job, and also, before I continue, I don't know if I said this already, but Ketuvim is the Hebrew word for the writings. Okay, the writings. So we've got the law, which is the Torah, or instruction. It's another word for Torah. So, so we've got the law, the prophets, former and latter, and then we've got the writings. Okay, the law, the prophets, and the writings. So the writings consist of Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs. Woo. Spicy. Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, which is my wife's favorite book of the Bible. Ecclesiastes is her absolute favorite book of the Bible. Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, which in the Hebrew Bible is not two books. In your English translations, Ezra is one book and Nehemiah is another book. But in the Hebrew Bible, this is one book. And then chronicles. I got 10 fingers up. I must have missed something somewhere. Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. Okay, again, Chronicles in our Bible is 1st and 2nd Chronicles, but in the Hebrew Bible it is just Chronicles. So now let's kind of get some of this random stuff out of the drawer and kind of inspect it piece by piece. The first thing is that five of these books, five out of the 11 books, are a part of what we would call wisdom literature. Wisdom literature. Now, wisdom goes all the way back. That idea of wisdom goes all the way back to Genesis chapter one, two and three. And this is the tree that's planted in the middle of the Garden of Eden. It's not the tree of death. It's not like there's a tree of life and a tree of death. No, there's a tree of life and then there's a tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now it seems like the knowledge of good and evil is like a good thing, right? The only people who don't have knowledge of good and evil would be like serial killers and babies. They don't have a knowledge of good and evil. So it seems like the knowledge of good and evil would be an amazing thing to have. However, the story is not about whether or not God wanted to give Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil, but when he wanted to give them this knowledge of good and evil. And the wisdom Literature of the Bible is gonna pick up on this theme like crazy and begin to use tree and fruit metaphors for wisdom, which means God absolutely wants to give you and I the knowledge to discern between good and evil. He just wants us to do it his way. He doesn't want us to rebel against him and be independent of him to gain this knowledge. He wants us to trust him to study Torah in order to gain wisdom, to gain understanding. And so the books of wisdom are Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. God wants us to have his truth and his wisdom around worship, around suffering, around sex and sexuality and romance and marriage and around wealth. Isn't it crazy that money and sexual and suffering and worship, that these are the areas that God says, you need my wisdom for this stuff. You need divine wisdom in order to navigate what to worship, who to worship, how to not create idols in your life, how to keep your heart pure. This is what the Book of Psalms is all about. It's all about worship. And then Song of Songs, hey, you need wisdom as it relates to your sex and your sexuality and gender and sexual orientation and sexual desires. And here's the really cool thing that all the wisdom books are going to use tree and fruit analogy. So this tree's all over Song of Songs because God is saying that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is always before us. That this ability to decide between good and evil, it's always there. Adam and Eve weren't the only people who had to deal with temptation and the temptation of deciding or discerning between good and evil. And I love this, because who's naked and not ashamed? Well, children are naked and not ashamed. So the image that we should have when we read Genesis chapter three is not that God didn't want to give Adam and Eve wisdom, but that he was gonna give them wisdom when they were mature enough for that wisdom. And so what ties the wisdom literature together is that all of the wisdom books, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Proverbs, Psalms, are all centered around this idea of timing. So Song of Songs is gonna say, don't awaken love before it's time. Ecclesiastes version of saying that is, hey, there's a time for mourning and a time for dancing. There's a time for war and a time for peace. So waiting on God's wisdom, huge theme throughout the books of Wisdom. And these books are really riffing on the images that have been portrayed in the Torah. The other thing that's interesting about the Wisdom books. There's a really, really good proverb that says, don't argue with a fool because he'll think that you guys are on the same level. And then the next proverb says, argue with the fool or else he become wise in his own eyes. And so wisdom is having the discernment to know when to apply the first verse and when to apply the second verse. Which means that wisdom is always found by holding truth, intention. This can be found if you just look at proverbs and Job. The book of proverbs gives a very black and white description for life. Hey, if you follow the Torah, you're gonna be blessed. And if you don't follow the Torah, you won't be blessed. Okay? Blessed is the man who. Blank, blank, blank. Cursed is the man who. Okay, so you got this dichotomy between the blessed man and the man who's cursed, the fool and the person who's wise. Well, guess what? Job's friends show up to Job's house and it looks like he's been cursed by God because of the circumstances in his life. And his friends, Job's friends have a black and white perspective. They have a proverbs perspective. And so what the book of Job and what the book of Ecclesiastes begins to do is begins to paint some shades of gray, because that's what wisdom is good at. Wisdom can handle nuance. Anything that lives in extremes is always easy. Extremes are always easy. And we've experienced this. Like, if you live in America right now, you're living in a polarizing society and polls, extremes, they're easy. But nuance, tension, holding truth, intention, this requires wisdom. And this is very difficult. Okay, next piece of the random kitchen drawer. Okay, next thing that we need to pull out of the. Of the kitchen drawer is the historical books. There's some books that just feel like straight narrative. Okay, we got books like Ruth, we got books like Esther, we got books like Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles that just feel like random history and they're out of order. Like, why isn't Ruth back there with Samuel and Judges, like, where it belongs contextually? Well, it's not back there because the whole point of the book of Ruth is actually to show that David has Moabite blood. See, this whole last section of the Hebrew Bible, it's pro David. That's why Psalms David, being one of the main contributors for the Psalms, is kind of like the poster child for this whole section. Okay, so this section is pro David. And the way that Chronicles is going to talk about the temple is going to be very pro David. Now, there's other sections of the Hebrew Bible that are going to kind of ask some questions like, was the temple a good idea? Should David have even built the temple? Should he have required that people come to Jerusalem to worship? But the Ketuvim, like this ending, is pro David. Why is it pro David? Because it is setting God's people up to see the ultimate David, which is going to be Jesus. And so the Tanakh ends on a pro David note. And the reason that it's important that we know that David had Moabite blood running through his veins is because God has always had the Gentiles in mind. Now, the Torah is going to say that a king can't be king if they've got foreign blood running through their veins. But God has always had all of the nations in view. He's always been the God that says, I want to bless all the nations through one nation. And so Jesus having a Gentile mission, Paul bringing the gospel to the Gentiles, this is not like new. The reason that Jesus and Paul have this in their heart is because God has always had a multicultural vision that people will be worshiping him from every tribe, every tongue, every nation, and every ethnicity. So Ruth is not a dating guide. The book of Ruth is not how to find your Boaz. That's not what the book of Ruth is about. The book of Ruth is not how to get single people hooked up because Ruth and Boaz probably had premarital sex. And that will really jack you up. If you think that these books are there for, like, you know, moral character development, they're not. They're there to show you that Ruth is the great great grandmother of David and that David has Moabite blood. That's what this book is there for. Which leads us to the last little bit of the random stuff in the drawer family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies and at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos. In your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode which leads us to Ezra. Ezra as a person. Now, what's interesting is that for most Christians, Ezra is like a B grade celebrity. Like, like, you know, not that important, right? He ain't Moses, he ain't Abraham. But when it comes to the editing of the Hebrew Bible, Ezra's massively important. And Ezra is a priest, okay? And Ezra is charged with rebuilding the temple. Remember, Nehemiah is charged with rebuilding the wall post exile. Ezra is charged with rebuilding the temple post exile. And so Ezra's gotta come back. He's gotta get a priesthood. He's gotta get the temple up and running. And so I want you to think about the entire Hebrew Bible like a quilt. Each square is its. Has its own original manufacturer, right? So like Isaiah has been created by Isaiah, Jeremiah's been written by Jeremiah. All the squares have been written by their unique authors. And a lot of scholars believe that it is Ezra who's actually piecing all these books together into a collection. Okay? So Ezra has the. Is probably the last person to have his hand on the quilt as it's getting woven together to make it feel not like a bunch of individual books, but one cohesive whole. And that's where we get into the end of the Ketuvim, which is gonna be Chronicles. Not first or second Chronicles, but Chronicles written by yours truly, Ezra. Ezra writes the book of Chronicles. Now, here's why I love the Bible department. The Arma Bible reading plan is because on a normal Bible reading plan, you would read Chronicles right after Kings and it would feel very, very repetitive. Because if you just read it, like with a naked eye, it feels like it's just saying the same thing over and over again. It's like somebody gave you history times two. But the books of first and second Kings is in the Neviim. It's in the prophetic section of the Hebrew Bible because it's written from the perspective of the prophets, whereas Chronicles is written from the perspective of the priests. And the priests are pro David because they're pro Temple, because they're pro Jerusalem. So the cool thing about Chronicles is that Chronicles is written from the perspective of the priests. And unlike Kings, it's not written with the northern king of Israel, King of Israel, and the southern king of Judah, the northern king of Israel and the southern king of Judah. Right? Kings goes back and forth north south, north, South, North, South. Israel. Judah. Israel. Judah. Israel. Judah. Chronicles just gives you the history of Judah. Because Jesus will come from the lion, will be the lion of the tribe of Judah. He will come from the line of Judah. He will be the fulfillment of the promise that God made to David, that David, you'll always have a ruler that will come from your house. And that was not about Solomon, that was about Jesus. And so the entire Old Testament, the entire Hebrew Bible, is to point us to a Messiah. But it's not just to point us to a Messiah. It's actually to point us to both the right and the left hand of God, which is the Son and the Spirit. This is how the Old Testament actually, like, sets us up to want the New Testament, which creates a loop, which means once you get done with the Tanakh, it should make you wanna read the New Testament with fresh eyes, which then should make you wanna read the Old Testament with fresh eyes, which should make you want to read the New Testament with fresh eyes. Which means that even if you make it through this reading plan this year, which you will, you shouldn't stop reading the Bible. You should actually do this every year because the Bible is designed for lifelong meditation. So I want you to think about the right hand and the left hand of God. The right hand of God being the Son and the left hand of God being the Spirit. What God says is that the people of Israel weren't unable to fulfill the law because they were human. Oh, no. They were unable to fulfill the law because they didn't have a spirit of wisdom, a spirit from God on the inside of them. And what God promises is not just that the Messiah, the ultimate King David, will rule on his throne. He also says that I'll give a new covenant and I'll put a new heart within my people and they'll actually have the spirit of wisdom and so they can walk out the truth of the Torah. So with no further ado, let's dive into the Ketuvim. We're going to dive into the Psalms. We'll be in the Psalms for a while because it is a long book, but we're going to do it together and we're going to get to the Ketuvim and we're going to get through the entire tea of the Hebrew Bible. I want to give you one last push. Like, if you made it this far, you've made it too far to give up. So as we get into the Psalms, I want you to put your seatbelt on. We got one last section of the Hebrew Bible to go and you are going to make it. So let's do it together. See you tomorrow as we dive into the Ketuvim, starting with the Psalms. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend, and subscribe so that you never missed miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebibledepartment.com we'll see you right back here tomorrow.