Summaries of Israel’s History, Part 1
Summaries of Israel’s History, Part 1
Introduction and Historical Books
(avg. read time: 6–11 mins.)
I cannot remember what the roots of my interest in this topic were, but for some time now I have been drawn to texts that serve to summarize the history of Israel up to a certain point. It is interesting to see what events they highlight, what purpose they have in referencing the events they do, and why the parameters are established as they are. This four-part series I am starting today is my first proper analysis of these passages.
Because there are a number of texts that could be included here, I want to begin by establishing some parameters. I will not be looking at book-length treatments of Israel’s history in the Bible, nor will I be looking at large-scale retellings of Israel’s history or the relevant portions thereof. This means I will not be looking at the entirety of works like Jubilees, Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews, and so on. In order to qualify as what I call a “summary of Israel’s history,” a text needs to supply a past narrative focus that disrupts the narration of the “narrative” present or future, whether of an actual narrative or a description of the author’s present or future. This means that I will not be reviewing here the visions of Daniel, for even though they provide summaries of events, those summaries are part of the narrative future, not the narrative past. The same also applies to the survey of history in the visions of 1 En. 85–90, as most of that history is the future from Enoch’s perspective and some is still future from the author’s perspective (cf. Testament of Moses). The summary may or may not lead directly up to the “narrative” present, and so the purpose of the cutoff point is a factor worth considering. But what is necessary is that the summary must refer to multiple people, places, and/or events; singular references will not count. There must also be some sort of sequential relationship—whether temporal or causal—between the multiple entities referenced; they cannot simply be listed. With those parameters established, this first part will examine the summaries that appear in historical books from the Torah to Nehemiah.
The first summary appears in Deuteronomy, a book that devotes a significant portion to recapitulating the story of Israel since the exodus. The relevant text of Deut 6:20–25 provides a summary that is meant to be recited again and again in response to the recurrent question of why the Israelites obey the commands of God. As such, the last event mentioned in the summary is God giving the statutes. It begins with the constitutive event whereby God established Israel as his covenantal people. They were once slaves in Egypt, but God brought them out. To do this, he performed signs and wonders before the Egyptians. And he brought them out to give them the land promised to the ancestors. The promise thus serves as a background to the constitutive event, even as the fact of their being slaves supplies the background problem that needed to be resolved by what God has done. While it makes sense in the context of Deuteronomy for the summary to end where it does, it also serves the function of delineating the foundation of Israel’s identity in the recitation of this history.
Similarly, Deut 8:11–18 functions to remind the Israelites of where they come from and of whose they are, lest they forget God and his commandments in times of prosperity. The foundation of the ethical exhortation is once again the theological indicative of what God has done. This list of what God has done starts with the act of bringing Israel out of Egypt. It then reminds them of how God led them through the wilderness and provided for them, including specific cases of drawing water from rock and feeding them with manna. This summary of how God provided for them in the wilderness is a reminder of how they got to where they are, and it is a reminder that all such provision comes from God. It derives its force both from the dependence shown in this summary and from the foundational character of the narrative being evoked here.
Deuteronomy 11:1–7 is especially poignant for the audience to which it is addressed, as it specifically singles out the generation that is set to enter the promised land. They are told that it is their responsibility to love the Lord by keeping his commands, and the basis for doing so is once again the theological indicatives of what the Lord has done, which they are called upon to acknowledge. The starting point is once again God bringing Israel out of Egypt by his signs and deeds. Added to this are references to the Lord destroying the Egyptian pursuers in the Sea of Reeds, what he has done to them in the wilderness, and what he did specifically to the rebellious Dathan and Abiram when they sought to undermine God’s chosen leaders. The closing verse emphasizes that their eyes, specifically, have seen all these things. Since they have seen what happens to those who resist God’s commands/will, their own history warns them well of what happens when they choose a path other than loving the Lord their God.
The last such summary in Deuteronomy in 29:2–9 updates the recap even more. Once Moses summons Israel and prior to exhorting them once more, he reviews what God has done for them as the basis for obedience. Yet again, the summary begins with God bringing Israel out of Egypt and what he did to bring that exodus about. They are reminded that Moses has led them this whole time and that God’s provision has extended to his sustaining their clothes and sandals, as well as the food and drink that have been reviewed previously. And now they are reminded of the most recent events yet to be recapped in the victory God gave over Sihon of Heshbon and Og of Bashan, so that Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh have already received their share of the inheritance on the other side of the Jordan. This recency provides extra forcefulness to the point of how God’s faithful love has been shown to this day, and hence to Moses’s exhortation of what to do “today” (29:10–15).
This same pattern of theological indicatives upholding ethical imperatives also continues in Joshua, where the last chapter contains a summary of Israel’s history as part of a ceremony of renewed commitment to the covenant in 24:2–15. This summary goes back further to Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor, then proceeds to track that history to the narrative present. This summary illustrates how God has been faithful to the Israelites and their ancestors for generation upon generation. Although the exodus is no longer the initial event, it does receive the most attention of anything else referenced (vv. 5–7). The rest of the history then concerns the opposition that arose as the Israelites approached the promised land and within the promised land, all of whom fled or fell before the Lord. By this, God kept his promise that he had established with Abraham and his descendants. With the awareness of this history, Joshua then calls upon the people to worship and serve the Lord who has done all of these things, and to put away any foreign gods, as Abraham had to do, and as had to be done when they left Egypt. It is only appropriate that this record of faithfulness should receive faithful service in response.
The next summary comes from the mouth of Jephthah in response to the king of the Ammonites in Judg 11:14–27. Both the Ammonite king and Jephthah make reference to Israel coming out of Egypt as the assumed starting point of pertinence. Jephthah then summarizes what happened after Israel arrived at Kadesh and started seeking entrance into the promised land. This establishes how Israel came into possession of the land that the Ammonites sought to claim, and so Israel’s dealings and victory in battle by God on the eastern side of the Jordan occupy most of the summary. He then brings the summary up to date by saying that the king (or, more literally, the Ammonites) had done nothing in the 300 years since that time.
In Samuel’s testimony before Israel after Saul’s confirmation as king, he recites God’s saving deeds that he has done for the Israelites and their ancestors in 1 Sam 12:6–17. This review begins by setting the scene for why Israel was in Egypt, so it goes back to referencing when Jacob came to Egypt. While Israel was in Egypt, they were oppressed, they cried out to God, and God sent Moses and Aaron to be his deliverers. The wilderness wandering is glided over, as is the time of Joshua, because the purpose of this list is clearly driven by showing times when Israel was oppressed, and God then provided deliverance. As such, the next event mentioned is Israel going astray after they came into the promised land and forgot the Lord their God, and so they were handed over to such enemies as Sisera, the Philistines, and the Moabites. When the people cried out to God, as they had in Egypt, God sent them Jerubbaal/Gideon, Barak, Jephthah, Samson, and others to be deliverers (of course, as one who arose at the end of the time of the judges, Samuel could have included himself here as well). But when they encountered King Nahash of the Ammonites (1 Sam 10:27–11:11), their tune changed and they sought for a king to reign over them, for which purpose God sent Saul. Of course, according to the preceding chapters, this telescopes events, as the initial call for a king came after Samuel got old and his sons proved to be unworthy leaders, but Saul was not confirmed as king until he defeated Nahash. The events are thus telescoped because this fits the motif of Israel crying out and God providing a deliverer, even if it is now in the form of a king, rather than a prophet, priest, or judge. This history then serves, as we have seen multiple times already, as the collection of theological indicatives that provide the basis for the ethical imperatives of listening to God and following his commands.
Unlike the last few examples, the summary of 2 Kgs 17:7–22 is from the narrator, rather than any speaker in the story. The explicit purpose of this summary is to explain why the Northern Kingdom fell. Naturally, it is framed from the beginning in terms of disloyalty to the God who had constituted Israel as a people by bringing them up out of Egypt from under Pharaoh’s power. Yet, for all of this, they worshiped the gods of the people the Lord drove out before Israel. The narrator then outlines the ways in which they engaged in this idolatry. God sends prophets to both Israel and Judah to warn them to turn back to the Lord, but they continued in their idolatrous ways, becoming more and more like the nations that surrounded them. Idolatry had initially torn Israel apart, with God giving most of the kingdom to Jeroboam. But he too, like the Israelites after they came out of Egypt and into the promised land, became idolatrous, and there was never a sufficient course correction in the history of the Northern Kingdom to avoid the end of exile. And so, as the narrator says, they were exiled to Assyria “until this day.”
Finally, in Neh 9:6–37 Ezra leads a national confession that involves a summary of Israel’s history that begins with Abram/Abraham and continues to the narrative present. Indeed, it begins at the start of the biblical story of Abraham and then proceeds to reference the covenant God made with him. The narration then jumps to Israel in Egypt, and how God performed signs and wonders there to bring the people out, including parting the sea for the Israelites to walk through on dry land. He guided them through the wilderness as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and he brought them to Sinai, where he gave them the covenant. He even provided food and drink for them with manna from heaven and water from rock. But already the Israelites became stubborn in refusing to obey God’s commands. While God punished them, he never abandoned them in the wilderness, he never stopped leading them, and he never stopped providing for them. Even their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell. He gave them victory of Sihon and Og, then he brought them into the land and gave them victory to possess it. But they were disobedient and rebelled. Thus, the familiar cycle first seen in the Book of Judges began. But through it all, even in exile, God never forsook Israel, even as he did not forsake them in the wilderness. It is on this basis, where God keeps covenant and faithful love even when Israel acts wickedly, that Ezra appeals to God to have regard for the hardships that have come upon Israel since the Assyrian exile. Such is the purpose of this summary, to confess who God is and what God has done, to confess how Israel has done wrong, and to call upon what is confessed about God as the basis for mercy in the present time when Israel is once again in distress as they dedicate themselves to renewed faithfulness to God’s commands (cf. 9:1–5; 9:38–10:39).