Bible Book Order Part 2: Discovering Connections Between the Books
Listen to Bible Book Order Part 2
Listen to the complete teaching, approximately 25 minutes long.
Comparing Bible Book Orders
Previously, we talked about Bible book order. And we talked about two main orders: the Protestant and the Common Hebrew order. So we gave an overview. And in this lesson, I wanted to talk about the different themes that we get when we compare some of the books. So I was going to skip the Torah. The Torah is the first five books of the Bible.
It's also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses or the Law of Moses. And that's because Torah means law. It's the first section on the common Jewish order. So what I was gonna focus on, because we already know the Protestant order pretty well, I was gonna focus on some of the themes that we miss that are in the Jewish order (the common Jewish order).
Genesis and Exodus: A Seamless Transition
Towards the end of this talk, I will mention how the Protestant order differs from the Hebrew order, and what we can glean from that. But just right off the bat, I was like, "You know what? Let's pick some connecting themes, some ways that God connects us through the first five." So this is what I got. The first book of Genesis ends with the death of Jacob and Joseph, and I will read to you this last portion of Genesis chapter 50.
It's the very final portion of the end of the book of Genesis. It says, "Joseph stayed in Egypt along with all his father's family. He lived 110 years and saw the third generation of Ephraim's children. Also, the children of Makir, son of Manasseh, were placed at birth on Joseph's knees. Then Joseph said to his brothers, 'I'm about to die.
God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to-' To the land He promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Joseph made the Israelites swear an oath and said, "God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place." So Joseph died at the age of 110, and after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.
And it does say in Exodus that they took Joseph's bones when they left Egypt. That was the very last line. Yeah. And it says, "And after they embalmed him," meaning Joseph, "he was placed in a coffin in Egypt." So that's the end of the quote of Genesis, the last part. And then we read in the first part of Exodus, "These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.
The descendants of Jacob numbered 70 in all. Joseph was already in Egypt. Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful. They multiplied greatly, increased in numbers, and became so numerous that the land was filled with them." End quote. That was, like, the first couple lines in Exodus chapter 1.
Exodus and Leviticus: Meeting with God
Mm-hmm. And so after that it says, "And then a new Pharaoh came who knew not the ways of his forefathers, and he treated the Israelites harshly, and he put them to slave labor." God makes that connection for us there. It's a seamless transition from Genesis to Exodus. And then Exodus ends with God dwelling among His people.
You know, we get the Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20, and then there's a whole bunch of case laws, and then God tells us how to set up the tent of the meeting, also known as a tabernacle, a place where Moses would meet with God, and it was a holy place where they could go. It eventually became the Holiest of Holies, where they did the central place of worship in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, uh, in Solomon's temple.
But at that time, it was a mobile tent where they would meet with God. And so that's how the book of Exodus ends, with instructions about the tent of the meeting, and the furnishings, and the poles that they would carry the ark with, and what they should look like- Oh ... and stuff like that. It gets quite detailed.
It's pretty boring to read through unless you are, like, studying it for a great purpose, or reconstructing it. That would be kind of fun. But, uh, just to read through it, it's mostly details that we can't really apply now, so those are hard reads. But anyway, Leviticus begins with teaching them how to approach God.
So immediately you have, in Leviticus, you have these- rules for the Levite priests that God creates. And so there is a connection there from Exodus to Leviticus.
Mm-hmm.
Exodus ends with setting up the tent of the meeting, and now that you have it set up, Leviticus talks about how do we do this properly?
And if you remember, within, what is it, Leviticus 10 or 12 or something like that in the first portion, um, Aaron's sons, uh, I believe they were drunk. Whatever they were, they were doing wrong by God. They offered God unauthorized fire, like a sacrifice that God did not say to do. I think it said that fire broke out from God's presence and killed them on the spot.
Leviticus and Numbers: Worship and Organization
And so God says, "You're not supposed to enter into the Holiest of Holies like this at any time you want. You can only enter in once a year." Those are such intense things. And so God teaches in Leviticus how to have the rituals, and then after that, you have this Book of Numbers, and Book of Numbers immediately starts out with this long census.
Organizing things, I went and reread it today. Thought it was a cool connection between Leviticus and Numbers. Why did God give organization about Levite priests and meeting with him, and then he organizes people? And I think it's as if to say, "If you meet with me in the way that I want you to, then I will take care of the rest.
I will organize your people for you." And that's really what he did. And it kind of reminded me of the story of us and our finances. We were getting help from AI and the different search engines and stuff and, and the World Wide Web to help organize our finances, because I had just previously spent a lot of effort putting out information to people.
When I was praying about this, I felt God was speaking to me, and he gave me the impression that because I took time out of my day and out of my life to help organize people's theology, that God was blessing me and helping me organize our family's finances. There really was a direct connection there. It really seemed like a blessing from God, and I, I know that was a blessing from God, and nobody can refute that and say it wasn't.
So I organized people's rituals with God, and God organized our family. It's kind of the same thing happened in L- Leviticus and-
Mm-hmm ...
Numbers. So that was a cool connection there. And the Book of Numbers leaves the ancient Israelites on the edge of the Promised Land, looking in. And the book of Deuteronomy gives us readers information about what type of faithfulness God's people would have to have in order to do well in the promised land.
Numbers and Deuteronomy: Preparing for the Promised Land
And then you get that book of Deuteronomy and it's a suzerain-vassal treaty style format, which there's a certain form of agreement. It might've been between two kings or whatnot, or two people groups, but you have like stipulations. If I do this, this will happen. If I don't, this will happen. You've all been witnessed here today.
It's kind of like a court case, the book of Deuteronomy. And it's really, really cool when I read about that in one of my seminary books that it follows a suzerain-vassal treaty and it was between God's people and God. And it was, you are all witnesses today that the Lord has brought you out of Egypt.
Now do this and he will let you dwell in the land and prosper. And the three times that Jesus Christ quotes scripture against the devil when he was being tempted in the wilderness for 40 days, those three passages were directly from Deuteronomy. And so it's a cool summary of everything that happened thus far.
Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges
And so Deuteronomy ends with the death of Moses and the commissioning of Joshua as the new godly leader. And once again, God makes that connection for us. The last verse of Deuteronomy is, for no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.
Uh, the first two verses in Joshua are, "After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses' aide, 'Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give them,' to the Israelites." And so you have that conquest with Joshua taking the land.
And Joshua ends with a public covenant decision, and Judges answers the question, what happens after the people who made that covenant promise with God are gone, and the new generation sort of abandons God? In Judges, we get that answer in the form of the cycle of apostasy, and you'll see that real clearly, and that's a cycle that can happen in our lives.
Joshua and Samuel: Beside Judges and Kings
What connection can we make between Joshua, Judges, and Samuel and Kings? Because here's the, here's the split in the Protestant order versus the Jewish order. The Jewish order goes The Book of Joshua, then The Book of Judges, and then it goes The Book of Samuel, which is I and II Samuel combined, and then it goes The Book of Kings, which is I and II Kings combined.
You get a progression through history, yes. In the Protestant order, you have Joshua, Judges, Ruth, then I and II Samuel, and I and II Kings. And so it is very clear to me that they put Ruth in between there because chronologically, Ruth would fit within that time period. Mm. So Ruth is the great grandma of King David.
And so she would be just a couple of generations before Saul and Saul's generation, and Samuel, and Samuel and Saul lived at that same time. Samuel was probably older than King Saul, and then King Saul was probably older than King David. And so you kind of have Ruth's generation, and then maybe you have Samuel's generation, and then maybe you have King Saul's generation, then you have King David's generation.
So the Protestant order seems to keep a chronological framework there. But not so much in the Jewish order. They have Joshua and Judges next to Samuel and Kings, and I was looking for a connection and praying for a connection, and I realized there is an interesting connection there, but it's a two-book connection.
So here it is. Joshua and Samuel have these really godly leaders, one being Joshua and the other one being King David. They make these heroic conquests. They unify Israel in godliness, lead victorious war campaigns in the Promised Land, and they prosper. Israel prospers under their leadership. They bring victory, unity, and spiritual renewal, and devotion to God.
But if you'll notice in the Book of Judges and the Book of Kings, you have this hodgepodge mess of different rebellious people. In the Book of Judges, you have really good leaders. They're like prophets that rise up and help the people return to God. In the cycle of apostasy, in the point where the people are crying out for God, God will raise up a leader.
But as soon as that leader passes away and that generation goes, it says everybody went and did what they want. There was no unity, uh, behind God, and you see them just spiral. In my mind, there's this moral downhill spiral, and same thing in the Book of Kings. It's this good leader sometimes, and then bad leader, bad leader, and good leader, and bad leader.
The people just seem to be kind of doing what they want. And the kings definitely, to me, they just do whatever the heck they want. "I'm gonna kill the king so I can become king." Mm-hmm. "I'm gonna do that, blah, blah, blah. I'm gonna go slaughter people for my own gain." It's horrendous. And so you have Book of Joshua and Samuel where you have these two good leaders and you got prosperity of Israel.
Then you have the Book of Judges and Kings, and there's this moral degradation. And I actually found that at the end of Judges, there's a civil war. At the end of, like, what? 1 Kings or maybe at the beginning of Kings, you also have a civil war. And so it's ... And near the end of Judges, the tribe of Benjamin fights against the other tribes.
There's this horrible rape and murder scene, and then after that, the Israelites, if I remember right, they're rising up against the Benjamites who did this horrible act. And it says, "And all the children of Israel rose and went up to the house of God and asked counsel of God and said, 'Which of us shall go up first to battle against the children of Benjamin?'
And the Lord said, 'Judah will go first.'" That's Judges 20 verse 18. And then a comparable national division occurs after Solomon's death. His son Rehoboam. Uh, it says that 10 tribes separate from the house of David, and Rehoboam prepares an army to reunite the kingdom by force. It was when Rehoboam said, "My thumb or pinky or something like that is thicker than my father's wrist.
He chastises you with whips and I will chastise you with scorpions." 'Cause he was having a people group in too harsh of labor and they were asking for help, and he's like, "I'm gonna torment you." And, and they're- everybody's like, "Forget this guy. We're going to our own home." And so, when Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah with the tribe of Benjamin and 180,000 chosen men, which were warriors, to fight against the house of Israel to bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam, the son of Solomon.
So that's just a passage that says the kingdom was split, and that's in 1 Kings 12:21. It says here that God prevents that immediate battle by speaking through Shemaiah, but the kingdom remains divided, the Northern Kingdom, also known as Israel, and then the Southern Kingdom, also known as Judah. And reading these books together, it lets us compare two movements, strong leadership and unity followed by moral decline, division, and conflict.
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Twelve
And it's also interesting to note in that civil war in Judges, it was against the tribe of Benjamin, and King Saul was from the tribe of Benjamin. And then you have Isaiah and Jeremiah, and if you read through those, they are so similar. They're very different in a lot of ways, but they're huge books written by a single prophet, and there's nowhere else in Scripture you get that.
And so both prophets contain some of Scripture's strongest warnings, although Jeremiah's is stronger. They both were resisted by the people at the time, and God had to protect them and protect their lives. They're long books. Isaiah is 66 chapters and Jeremiah is 52 chapters. They preach a similar message as all the prophets in that there's a warning that people should repent or else destruction will come.
And that sequence isn't always perfect in every synagogue. Uh, the Bava Batra, which is part of the Talmud, which are rabbinic writings, they say that, uh, it goes Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and then Isaiah. But either way, it's-- there's a message of impending doom unless people repent. I found a lot of connection between Isaiah and Jeremiah and then in the 12-- all 12 of those when I last read through them, they all warn of judgment that's coming because of some sort of sin, and God usually ends the book with some hope.
The Prophets, Psalms, Job, and Proverbs
And so there's all these great themes. Again, we already see these themes in the Protestant order. The 12 minor prophets are all together, uh, in the Jewish and the Protestant orders. The prophets close with a call to remember the instruction of God. And then the writings, the Ketuvim, begin by showing a person who meditates on that instruction, which is Psalm 1:1–2, "Blessed is the man or woman who walks not in the way of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of mockers, but delights in the law of the Lord."
And so there's a connection there between the 12 and the Psalms, and then after the Psalms you have Job. And a connection there is that the Psalms contain many prayers from many voices of people who are distressed, persecuted, and confused by injustice. Sometimes it's not their fault, it seems. And, and it will flat out say, "I did no wrong.
Vindicate me, O God, according to your righteousness, but I'm suffering anyway." And then Job also echoes that in his long, lengthy speeches about losing his children, health, and property. Proverbs is next to Job, and it teaches us Job is what happens when you do right and you get bad things happening to you.
Mm-hmm. Why do bad things happen to good people? That's the answer to that question. And then Proverbs is right next to it to show it, here's what happens when you do right and you get right. Sometimes when you do right, bad things happen to you still. Sometimes when you do good things, good things happen to you.
In general, good things happen to you when you do good in the world. But there's a contrast there that we can glean and say, "That's not always the case." Why is this happening to me, God? And I have a quote here in Proverbs. It says, "There shall no evil happen to the just, but the wicked shall be filled with mischief."
But then you get in Job and you're like, "Well, that's not true." That's because Proverbs are generalities. In Job 1:1 it says, "There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright and one that feared God and eschewed evil." So you can tell that was from the King James Version.
It says that Job teaches that righteous people sometimes suffer for reasons they cannot see. Reading them together protects us from two opposite errors. Disregarding wisdom's real consequences is one error, and assuming that every sufferer must have done something wrong is another error. Or you could almost say that assuming that you will always get good things back to you when you give good things to others- Mm
that's an error. But also assuming that if you, if you do bad things that good things are gonna happen to you, that's another error that you wanna avoid. In general, you wanna do right, and God did restore Job, so. Lamentations and Ecclesiastes are similar, and they're next to each other in the Hebrew order.
Proverbs, Ruth, and Song of Songs
When I read through those, the similarities I found between them. We end Proverbs, and I think we go next into the book of Ruth, and there's a very interesting connection we found there. The end of Proverbs, you have the tale about a noble woman, is a woman of character or also a woman of wisdom, you know, the wise wife.
And then in Ruth 3:11, it uses the same Hebrew phrase, eshet chayil, when Boaz tells Ruth that her character is known in Bethlehem. Right. And I have the quote here. Ruth 3:11 says, this is Boaz speaking with Ruth as she laid down at his feet on the threshing floor, "And now, my daughter, don't be afraid. I will do for you all that you ask.
All the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character," an eshet chayil, a woman of wisdom. And so there's a connection there between Proverbs and Ruth. And then from Ruth, you have Song of Songs, or also known as Song of Solomon. The connection there is that the story of Ruth is the Romeo and Juliet of the Bible.
It is the great love story of the Bible. And then you have Song of Songs, which just talks about now that you're married, you get to enjoy God's good pleasure of life, pl- the pleasures of being married, and there's a cool connection there. And so from there, you have Ecclesiastes, and one idea is that, yes, enjoy pleasure of life and of marriage, um, but also know pleasure's place, because Ecclesiastes is about the seriousness of, of life.
Ecclesiastes and Lamentations
Eat, drink, and be merry. Enjoy life, but know that God will bring you into judgment for all things that you do. And there's also a connection between Ecclesiastes and Lamentations. Its order, again, is not universal, but a lot of orders put Lamentations and Ecclesiastes together. Lamentations teaches God's people how to grieve the ruins left by sin and judgment without abandoning hope, and Ecclesiastes strips away our illusions of control and permanence.
But both books are relatively short. Lamentations is only five chapters, and Song of Solomon is only eight chapters long. And both slow us down. They're somber, and they're sincere, and they're very serious. And then we move down to Daniel and Esther, and those two are back to back, and I found strong connections there, but I'll just read through this quickly here.
Daniel and Esther: Life Under Foreign Rule
Daniel and Esther appear beside one another in major Jewish ordering traditions, although their orders are sometimes reversed. Um, both describe Jewish people living under foreign rule. Both books feature faithful people serving within a royal court. Both include laws that threaten Jewish lives. In Daniel 3:10-11, there was a decree saying to bow down and worship me or die, I believe by King Nebuchadnezzar.
They wanted people to worship his statue, and the king agreed to that rule, which threatened the Jews' lives. And in Esther 3:5, Haman sought to kill the Jews, and he plotted against them by getting the king to sign a decree. So those are very similar situations. They're both rather short books, you know, under 20 chapters.
Both describe evil officials or satraps who manipulate their king. Esther's is Haman, and Daniel's are the satraps. Both describe rulers who eventually commission laws to protect the Jews once the kings realize that they were wrong and they see God's power. Or in, uh, Xerxes' case, he realized that he was about to kill his wife. And he saw that that was wrong.
And so both of the kings repent for their foolishness and put in laws that protect the Jews. Both of them also feature rags to riches stories. As- Esther was probably relatively poor, but she became queen of the richest nation in the Middle East. That's pretty rich. And then many times in Daniel was... He was poor, he was a captive, he was a prisoner, but he's became the king's right-hand man, and they gave him riches and social status even when he said, "No, thanks.
I don't want it." And Ezra and Nehemiah are often one book in the Hebrew order. They both quote King Cyrus's decree to rebuild the Second Temple. Ezra and Nehemiah are next to Chronicles, which Chronicles is at the end of the Tanakh in a lot of orders. They both cite Cyrus's decree. Chronicles makes a meaningful conclusion to the Tanakh.
Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles: Return and Restoration
It begins with Adam, and it retells the central events of Israel's history, emphasizes David's worship and the temple, and carries the story through Jerusalem's destruction and exile. Then it ends with Cyrus permitting God's people to return and rebuild. "Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me, and he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
Who is there among you of all his people? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up." That's 2 Chronicles 36:23, King James Version. The final words, "Let him go up," point towards restoration. It's a beautiful summary of God's Word. Interestingly enough, in the Protestant orders, there's Chronicles, and then after Chronicles, you have Ezra.
Looking for Connections in God’s Word
In Chronicles, it ends by reading Cyrus's decree, and Ezra opens by reading Cyrus's decree. So you can see some mimicking of the Jewish order in the Protestant order. We miss those themes when we read it only in the Protestant order. When we read books back to back, we ask ourselves, "God, what are you asking me to do with these books?"
There really is merit to the different themes we can pull out from studying different books back to back. That's the end of my Bible book order, and I wanted to inspire people to be passionate about God's Word and to look for those themes and connections where they normally wouldn't. Because they are there for those who are thirsty and want to learn more about God's Word.
Dig in. Go for it. Ask God, "What am I supposed to be learning today?" And of course, it doesn't matter so much the book order. What matters is that people read God's Word at all. Amen.
Corrections and Additional Scripture Notes
1. God’s promise to Joseph’s family (01:51)
God had “promised on oath” to give the land to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Genesis 50:24, NIV). An oath is a solemn promise. Joseph trusted that God would keep His word and bring His people out of Egypt, even though Joseph would not live to see it happen.
2. Rehoboam’s army: 180,000 men (13:55)
1 Kings 12:21, KJV gives the number as “an hundred and fourscore thousand.” A score means twenty, so this is 180,000 men. These were the troops Rehoboam gathered from Judah and Benjamin to try to bring the northern tribes back under his rule.
3. Where to find the account of Aaron’s sons (05:02)
Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu “offered unauthorized fire before the LORD” (Leviticus 10:1–2, NIV). They approached God in a way He had not commanded, and they died. Later, God told Aaron that “he is not to come whenever he chooses” into the Most Holy Place (Leviticus 16:1–2, NIV). These are the two passages connected in this part of the teaching.
4. Had Aaron’s sons been drinking? (05:02)
God told Aaron, “You and your sons are not to drink wine or other fermented drink” when entering the tent of meeting (Leviticus 10:9, NIV). Because this warning follows the deaths of Nadab and Abihu, drinking may help explain what happened. The chapter does not directly say they were drunk, so this remains a possible explanation. God’s instruction calls His servants to clear judgment and reverence as they worship and teach.
5. The Psalm about delighting in God’s Word (16:14)
Psalm 1 describes the blessed person as one “whose delight is in the law of the LORD” (Psalm 1:2, NIV). The reference for this part of the teaching is Psalm 1:1–2: verse 1 describes turning away from wicked influences, and verse 2 describes taking pleasure in God’s instruction and thinking about it day and night.
6. Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Song of Solomon (20:59)
The books being compared here are Ecclesiastes and Lamentations. Ecclesiastes has twelve chapters, and Lamentations has five. Song of Solomon has eight chapters, but it was mentioned by mistake during this comparison. You can read the endings for yourself in Ecclesiastes 12 and Lamentations 5.
7. Two different stories in Daniel (21:21)
Under Nebuchadnezzar, anyone refusing to worship the golden image would be “thrown into a blazing furnace” (Daniel 3:6, NIV). Under Darius, anyone praying to someone other than the king would be “thrown into the lions’ den” (Daniel 6:7, NIV). These are separate events, but both show faithful people facing pressure to put a king’s command above their loyalty to God.
8. Haman’s anger and his plot (21:47)
Haman “looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people” (Esther 3:6, NIV). Esther 3:5 describes his anger when Mordecai would not bow to him; verse 6 explains how that anger grew into a plan to destroy the Jewish people. Read both verses together for the full picture.
9. Cyrus’s invitation to return to Jerusalem (22:59)
Cyrus announced, “Any of his people among you may go up” (2 Chronicles 36:23, NIV). Chronicles ends with this invitation for God’s people to return and rebuild, and Ezra 1:1–4 begins with the same decree. Ezra and Nehemiah form one book in the Hebrew arrangement; the decree appears at the beginning of Ezra, rather than at the beginning of each separate book.
10. Rehoboam’s boast (13:24)
The words are “My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist” (1 Kings 12:10, NIV) and “My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions” (1 Kings 12:11, NIV). These are excerpts from Rehoboam’s harsh answer. He was boasting that he would treat the people even more severely than his father had.
11. Moses’s call to choose life (08:03)
“Now choose life, so that you and your children may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19, NIV). This part of the teaching brings together several ideas from Deuteronomy: God rescued Israel from Egypt, brought the people into a covenant with Him, and called them to love and obey Him in the land He was giving them. For the wider setting, read Deuteronomy 29:2–15 and 30:15–20.
12. The Pharaoh who did not honor Joseph (03:13)
Exodus introduces a new king “to whom Joseph meant nothing” (Exodus 1:8, NIV). The point is specifically about Joseph, rather than a general statement that Pharaoh knew nothing about his ancestors. Joseph had helped preserve Egypt, but this new king treated the growing Israelite population as a threat and forced them into harsh labor. Read Exodus 1:8–14 for that transition.
13. The Proverbs quotation (17:40)
“There shall no evil happen to the just: but the wicked shall be filled with mischief” (Proverbs 12:21, KJV). “The just” means the righteous—those who seek to live rightly before God. This wisdom saying contrasts their path with the trouble wickedness brings. Reading Proverbs alongside Job helps us remember that righteous people can still suffer; hardship alone does not prove someone has done wrong.
NIV Scripture excerpts are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.