Ten-Minute Studies In History: What Is The Value Of Jewish History? From Abraham To The Fall Of Jerusalem, 587 BC. Part One, Lecture 4.

“And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing.” (Genesis 12:2).

There has never been a dull moment in Jewish history, (A good book recommendation is Paul Johnson’s, “The History Of The Jews.”). The Jew cannot escape the fact that he is always somewhere in the foreground or background of world history. Jewish history is a story worth every second of learning, understanding, and remembering. History is a connection to the people and civilization involved. The Jews have a very long history of being a people and surviving when all other ancient peoples and civilizations have vanished into distant memory. The Jews started out from the faith and obedience of one man to God’s call to follow Him to a land that was promised to his descendants forever. It began with Abraham. It continued from Isaac-Jacob-Joseph and the great law giver and leader of the Jews from Egypt by Moses from their bondage and the creation of Passover; and four thousand years later it’s still being practiced by the Children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The year of the wandering and the thirty-nine years of sitting and letting the grumbling Jews die off and allowing the next generation to inherit the promised land; only two of the original Jews, Joshua, Caleb, entered the promised land as they were faithful. The story continues with the conquest of the land under the leadership of Joshua; story of the fall of Jericho and the day that the sun stood still for Joshua. The story of the four hundred years of the period of the Judges begins with the death of Joshua; the up and down story of God’s dealing with His people and their constant need of Him after walking away from Him. It was a long and troubling and testing of faith of His people; the story of Ruth takes place in the latter half of the days of the Judges. Then came the Judge, Eli and his encounter with Hannah, and her son, Samuel who would become the last Judge. Samuel would be the bridge between the time of the Judges to the moment he anointed their first king, King Saul, much against Samuel’s idea of it being a good idea which it wasn’t. So began the years of a united Israel under King’s Saul, David, and Solomon. Israel was a united and growing great kingdom under the three kings of Israel; their lives a great influence to the history of the Jews. Then came the moment of the divided kingdom which started under King Rehoboam, ruling the Kingdom of Judah, and King Jeroboam who would rule the Kingdom of Israel; the result of the civil war that shattered the united Kingdom of Israel. So began the history of the divided Jews under their respective kings of both kingdoms, (Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah to name a few good kings of Judah), and there were none who did good in the Kingdom of Israel. The Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrian Empire in 720 BC. and the Kingdom of Judah fell to Babylon and King Nechuchadnezzar II in 587 BC and he destroyed Jerusalem and sent the Jews into exile into Babylon.

The above is a very brief looking at the history of the Jews from their beginning to the fall of their beloved City of David, Jerusalem. The history of those centuries is the foundation of why and where and how the Jews became the people, culture, and heritage that has lasted for centuries. The Jewish history begins Abraham. It can’t begin anywhere else but with this man of faith who left the Land Of Ur and traveled to the land promised to him by God and to his future children of Israel. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph is the story of human courage and frailty, of honor and dishonor, of life and death. Moses the Great Lawgiver chosen by God from the Burning Bush to rescue and free His people from their bondage in Egypt for four hundred years of their early history. It’s the story of Moses and the Pharaoh and the creation of Passover at the end of the battle of wills; the God of Israel against the gods of Egypt. The history of the leadership and miracles of the years of Moses into the leadership of Joshua into the Promised Land into the long four hundred years of the time of the Judges/Ruth. The years of the Judges is the story of rebellion, salvation, and God keeping His people under His wing of protection. The story of a people continues from Samuel, the last Judge, and into the reign of the kingship of Saul, David, and Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel that followed. They are stories of obedience and disobedience, of loyalty and disloyalty, of friendship and treason, of honor and dishonor, of love and hate, of family and friendship, and basically stories of human nature at it’s best, worse, and sinful. There stories of prophets and kings, of empires coming and falling upon Judah and Israel such as Babylon and Assyria and Persia; the destruction of the first Temple built under King Solomon. And the exile of the Jews from their promised land. This is the story of the first two thousand years of a people with a history, heritage, a long story to tell and a faith that has endured for all that time and despite all the failures and falling into pagan worship and their return to their one true God and their land as their Babylonian Captivity came to an end under the Persian Empire and Cyrus the Great. And then came Alexander the Great and Greek culture and the Jews and their history where influenced good and bad by it and it made them more a single people than any other event up to that point? Yes, yes it did. Better or worse it made them a people, culture, heritage, and history that survived the next 2,500 years of history.