Old Testament: Part 5
Wisdom & Poetry: Psalms - Ecclesiastes
Psalms
The book of Psalms has been designed to be the prayer book of God's people as they wait for the Messiah and his coming kingdom. Written to join the Hebrew Torah, or the first five books of the Old Testament, the Book of Psalms is a remarkable collection of poems from David, Moses, and other Jewish writers.
Proverbs
The book of Proverbs invites people to live with wisdom and in the fear of the Lord in order to experience the good life. Proverbs offers human words or human wisdom as a vehicle for the divine Word. The two voices we hear in Proverbs 1-9 have been fused together to help us understand that in the observations and sayings of Israel’s human elders, we will hear echoes of the divine, transcendental wisdom.
Job
Job explores the difficult question of God's relationship to human suffering, and invites us to trust God's wisdom and character. Set in Uz, an obscure land far from Israel, during an unknown time period, the book of Job focuses on questions about God's justice and why good people suffer. At the same time, it also asks the question we rarely think to ask, why do good people prosper?
Song of Songs (Solomon)
The Song of Songs is a collection of ancient Israelite love poems that celebrates the beauty and power of God's gift of love and sexual desire. A peculiar book in the Bible, the Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, is not technically a book. It's a love song between two lovers! But according to ancient Hebrew writings, this song is considered the Song of Songs in the same way Jesus Christ is the King of Kings. What makes this song greater than any other love song? And what is it doing in the Bible?
Lamentations
A collection of five funeral poems offered on behalf of Jerusalem after its destruction by Babylon. The Book of Lamentations may not be the most popular book in the Bible, but it is an essential ingredient for helping humans to understand an important aspect of their relationship with God – the expression of grief and distress. This special book is a collection of five lament poems recounting the tragic fall of Jerusalem to Babylon.
