Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012
Vern Peterman · Jan 29, 2012
Bible Bkgds/Church History, No. 04
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492625923868

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

And your handout should include three pages of two sheets of paper, the regular handout, and then two color handouts. So make sure you've got that. They were kind of adding that in and I was noticing that one or two of them were short. So just make sure you've got two color handouts at the back. Those are supplement. All right, so we're going through this Bible backgrounds series, and one of the things I got to thinking, boy, I'm throwing a lot of paper at these people, and other resources, and it's great stuff, but at any rate, we've got binders if people would like to hold this stuff together instead of juggling it or stacking it in a pile or whatever. So afterward, feel free to grab one. We have more if that's needed, for one, and the other thing is for as many as we need, I can print out some inserts that have the material labeled and things like that. So anyway, feel free afterwards to pick up on that. Let's go through the slides here.

Today in the fourth lesson, Old Testament History, we're going from Egyptian slavery to David. We'll finish the Old Testament history part next week, and here's the way we're doing it. We're going through just kind of the sweep of the key events and people in the Old Testament. We will go back and look at the cultures. as we continue here, the pre-flood culture, post-flood, and patriarchal cultures, that is, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Egyptian culture, and on into the other empires. I find that, of course, the history is fascinating, but the cultures are fascinating, too.

Each empire had its own philosophy of carrying out the empire. That is, here's what we do and why we do it. And they tended to have a consistency within each empire as to how they did things. For instance, the Babylonians, their philosophy of empire was to take everybody and bring them close to Babylon and have all the peripheral areas of the empire stripped of people.

Then the Persians came in and one of their key points of doctrine in their religion was you don't take people from where their homeland is. So guess what they did? They sent everybody back. Right? Not everyone, but as many people as wanted to, could go back with the Persian Empire's blessing and even some financial support. Okay, so we'll look more at the cultural aspect.

We've been looking at this timeline, and the red line up above there is that the Old Testament was written from about 1400 to about 400 B.C. That's the red dashed line. The New Testament written in the first century A.D. And you may run across the terms B.C.E. and what's that?

Yeah, and basically to keep it away from Christianity, so BCE is instead of, you know, before Christ with some other word, it's before the common era, right? So it's to secularize everything and not make it prone towards Christianity. I think it's a bunch of nonsense. And so I just call it BC and AD and if you hear otherwise, you'll understand.

Okay, so that's the timeline we're looking at. We've been working with this, which you also have on your top part of your front page there. With this timeline, it's sort of a, here's our basic framework. One of the things I've added to it is this, and we'll go over that in a minute here.

But one of the things we've said is if you can kind of keep it in your mind, Abraham lived around the year 2000 BC, okay, about 4,000 years ago, right? And then we have Moses writing after about 1500 BC. So about 500 years later, Moses is writing. And then we have David about 1000 BC. The Jews exiled in 586 to Babylon. And then the New Testament in the first century.

If we have those kind of main points, then you can figure out, okay, for everything else, where does it fit in there? Right? And so that's our kind of outline. So you have that, and again, the main addition we have today is this one, 40-40-40. We'll take a look at that. All right. So here's the last time we left off.

Jacob and his sons were in Egypt. Here is the Nile Delta here, and they resided in an area called Goshen over on the east side of the Nile. And where does the water for the Nile River come from? Pardon? Lake Victoria, right, and it pours out in Uganda and then goes and winds through. Egypt doesn't have much water to speak of, and if it didn't have that, it wouldn't have anything. So that's where the Nile Delta largely pours from.

They were made into brick-making slaves after the time of Joseph. Here's an Egyptian tomb painting from the Valley of the Nobles in Thebes, 1470 to 1445 BC, so this was the very last part of the time when the Jews were there. And the darker-skinned peoples were people from farther south in Africa called Nubians, and the lighter-skinned ones, they called them Asiatics, and that included the Jews.

And so here you see, making bricks. Well, I was just, they made, I would say thousands, but that's probably way too low. Lots and lots and lots of bricks. Bricks with mud and straw. Tom? Every one of those bricks had to have trademarks. Yes. That's the next point.

Because what they would do is they would have them, you know, use mud and then and they'd stomp straw into it, like you see, and then every one of them had the pharaoh's mark stamped on them, and they would use them to build various kinds of buildings and things of that sort. So the Jews got really, really good at making bricks with the pharaoh's mark every one, right? So this was typical. As a matter of fact, the straw that was used was even a point there that shows up early in Exodus, Exodus 5.

They made lots of bricks. They did not make the pyramids. The pyramids were there when Abraham was there, and the pyramids were made out of stone, not mud bricks. How was it that Moses was found and brought into Pharaoh's household? Anybody tell me that account? Pharaoh decreed, kill all the baby boys.

As a matter of fact, that's what they would do from time to time with slave populations. So it wasn't just the Bible that says that. They would just do that from time to time. Now, the one thing was there wasn't absolute enforcement of it, but at times if they thought a slave population was getting a little overpowering for them, they'd just go and set out an order. Kill the baby boys. And that's how they would control the population and keep them within range. They needed slaves, but just not too many of them and not so that they get too powerful. And so that was the key.

And so what happened is Moses' mother, having that, said, I'll put Moses in this basket, right? And float him out on the Nile. Well, it turns out that the Pharaoh's daughter, saw this baby and adopted the baby and sought out a Hebrew nurse to nurse the baby. And you wonder, okay, how come all this?

Here's what's interesting. This little girl here is quite possibly, not absolutely certain, but quite possibly Hatshepsut, one who eventually became the Pharaoh. one of the few women who actually rose to that role. And the name Hatshepsut is well known in Egyptian history. A monument to Hatshepsut is still present there in Egypt, and one you can go visit. Very likely Hatshepsut. She was at this point probably about six years old, but one who at that young age was known for being very vocal and insisting on her own way. So, she got that taken care of.

Here's another interesting thing, it's not in your handout, but during that time, here's Hatshepsut here, during that time, notice the names of the pharaohs. The name Moses seems like a natural, right? Right in the middle of that time of the pharaohs and not before and not afterwards. Very interesting.

The Egyptian word Mose is Egyptian for child. So, but in Moses in Hebrew means he who draws out, that is to draw him out of the water, right? So his name fits how he was how it was taken out of the water, and it also fits the pattern of the Egyptian rulers at the time. It also fits drawing the Jews out of Egypt.

Yep. Yep. Okay, another interesting thing, Associates for Biblical Research, Dr. Bryant Wood, who by the way about a decade ago spoke in this room. Dr. Bryant Wood has identified this particular place, which has been partially excavated, as the place where Moses Wood had been raised and had gone back to appeal to Pharaoh. So it was a place he was familiar with. And though he hadn't been there for 40 years, a few people would recognize it. So here's Moses at what happens He does what?

What ends up terminating his princely role? What happens? He kills an Egyptian. Why? Because he sees an Egyptian beating the Jewish slave. And by the way, I showed you the picture of the tomb paintings. We also have tomb paintings of the Egyptians beating slaves. So that was just the normal thing to do. Only Moses, being a Hebrew, didn't like that, and so he killed the Egyptian. And so then while he tried to get away, the Egyptians caught him and said, Nope, you're out of here. Exile. Which for a lot of the guys ended up meaning death.

So he goes out and watches sheep. That's his training, appointed by God. If you watch sheep for 40 years, that's good training for you leading Israelites out of Egypt, right? You will find out what a large flock is like out in the desert. So that gets interrupted after another 40 years. After another 40 years, here is the burning bush. And by the way, that's going to show up in this morning's main service. What does God say out of the burning bush? Take off your shoes. Yeah, that's one thing. Take off your shoes that are on holy ground and don't get too close.

Right? Yes. He also gives his name. Yes, what his name is what? Yeah, I am. I am who I am. And it gets carried across in the Greek Old Testament, as we'll mention in the main services, ego eimi, which is a claim to be deity. Shows up numerous times in the Gospels when Jesus speaks to people, and sometimes people didn't like hearing it. Here are the Jewish leaders. Are you the Christ? I am, ego eimi. I am the Christ and in fact I'm deity. Which of course impressed them, right? They just love to hear that. Okay, so we'll see that. Moses and his brother Aaron would appear before their own people and before Pharaoh's court.

You have the 10 plagues. Those, I believe, are on your handout, page 1. These are 10 plagues. I have listed the Egyptian god defeated. This is the main god. Actually, the Egyptians had 700 gods, and there were other secondary gods who were also defeated by each one of the plagues. So every single one of them, it's not just a, you know, hey, I think I'll do this bad thing. It is specifically an attack on the Egyptians' gods.

And the Bible says so. Yes? So does that mean then that like frogs and mice and flies were thought of as cattle are in the Indian age? No, not exactly because of the reincarnation aspect which is prominent in Hinduism. That wasn't quite the same thing here. Nonetheless, they looked at these various animals in the river and things like that as being under the control of the gods.

So when this thing gets out of control, then that is an assault upon, an insult to the pagan deity. So does this, for example, like the frogs, does this have anything to do with that passage in Revelation where it talks about the frogs coming out of the mouth? Here's what's interesting is that a number of the plagues that are spelled out in Revelation, not all of them but a number of them, kind of are rhyming with the Egyptian plagues. A number of them are, including the hail, right? And that's an interesting thing. When you go through there, it's like, okay, here is a second attack on the deities of the Egyptians. Yeah. So there is that. Yeah?

And finally, the death of the firstborn is against all the gods. Ultimately, here's the way it worked out. Pharaoh absolutely must get his resurrection into the new life. And so everybody's going to focus on that. And all the gods are directed towards that. And what this did was say, no, you're not getting that. As a matter of fact, this firstborn son for whom you've made no preparations, he won't get there.

And they gave the firstborn son all the rights and privileges, and those are the ones who died, the Egyptians. The Passover then was instituted, and of course the Jews were told in the verse right after this, to do this annually, which is why it was carried on in the time of Christ even, well over a millennia later, and well over a millennium later, and was even carried on by Jews today, Passover. What did they do? They marked the top and the sides, which marks a cross, of the door entry area as a marking so that the angel of death would pass over those households. And so the Jews were saved, but the Egyptians not. The Egyptians lost their first floor.

So now, the time that the sons of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of 430 years, to the very day, so that's an interesting thing. It doesn't always say in the Bible, you know, this was so many years and that was so many years. This says 430 years to the day, so we have an exact marking. To the day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.

Tom? When you note that it says to the very day, Okay, by flood intervals, okay. Let's take a look here. Here is the big picture and it doesn't include some of the complications, but it is the general route looking at a photo from space. I'm sure the Jews would have liked to have had some kind of photo from space to follow, but nonetheless it gives you an idea of the path they went. Some of the complications are not included in the lines drawn. It does show them coming from the land of Goshen there and then going down the Sinai Peninsula. There are a couple of other places that have been suggested as being, you know, here's where the the law was given and the Mount Sinai and all that.

In my examination of it, I'm not convinced. So anyway, this is the traditional route and I believe it's the most likely one. Okay, so the time of Israel's presence in Egypt was 430 years, all of them departing from there when Moses was 80 years old. So here's the 40, 40 years as a prince, 40 years out as a shepherd, and then 40 years leading the Israelites out of Israel. So 40-40-40. That's the reason for the 40-40-40 on the chart.

Tom? Prince, pastor, patriarch. Yes. Prince, pastor, patriarch. Here's the map, and this is one that was added to your It's set there in the handout. I like this one particularly. It's not necessarily all that technical, but it has these little thumbnail images of what happened at the different locations, and I think that's somewhat helpful. It does also give some of the wandering detail in here, just circling around, not particularly getting anywhere. written description as well. Anyway, I think it's helpful. And so you can take a look at that.

Moses was given the law at Mount Sinai. One of the things we haven't included here, but we included it in our Law and Grace series, was the interesting parallel between the time frames of the Exodus out to the time of the of the giving of the law and the parallels between that and the time of Christ and the giving of the Passover and the observance of the Passover on to the time of the giving of the Holy Spirit. There are parallels there. Anyway, we touched on that in our Law and Grace series, the main service. So the law was given on Mount Sinai. All 613 laws were ultimately given.

The ones that were made special mention of here are what's called the Ten, the Ten Commandments, but they're not just God's top ten. The Ten Commandments were given by the finger of God, but ultimately all the commandments were given by God to the Jews, 613 of them. 365 of them that said, don't do this, don't do that. Negative commands, right? And the rest of them positive.

Okay, the law is given specifically to Israel, 613 laws total, 365 just like the number of days in the typical year. But what, not this one, right? And the law involves sacrifices and temple practices, public health, diet, crime, and both life and death.

And some things of huge import and some things you say, oh, I wonder why that was included. Like the one, what is it, it's law number 114, I think. Don't eat an apple with a worm in it. Or don't eat fruit with a worm in it. That's one of them, okay? It involved all sorts of details, some of which may, to us, just be, wow, that's puzzling, you know? But those are all 613 laws.

Here's Psalm 147, 19 and 20. He declares his words to Jacob. Remember, Jacob, like many of the people you find in the Bible, had more than one name. What was Jacob's other name? Israel, right? So Jacob is another name for Israel. His statutes and his ordinance to Israel.

He has not dealt thus with any nation. So does everybody get the law? No. It was specifically given to Israel. and specifically denied that it was given to others. And as for his ordinances, they have not known them, praise the Lord. It was specifically given to Israel and not for everybody.

There are some things, without the nation of Israel, you just can't do it. How many of you are a Jewish priest? We've got nobody. Yeah, you're not Jewish, you're not going to do that. And even if you're Jewish, it doesn't work if you're not of the right tribe, right? Okay.

Now, so here's Moses 40, 40, 40. Forty years as a prince in Egypt. And like I say, none of the Jews built the pyramids. Those were already built before Abraham was there and built of stone. The Jews made bricks out of mud and straw, right? So 40 years, then 40 years out in the desert tending sheep, and then 40 years leading the Israelites. So 40-40-40. It's nice it's not some odd number combination. So 40-40-40 for Moses.

After 40 years in the desert east of Canaan, east of the Jordan, Israel invaded Canaan under the leadership of Joshua. and that at the beginning, about the beginning of where the Bible begins to be written. So you've got Genesis, where we talked about previously, where Moses, it appears, is compiling earlier documents, probably clay tablets, right? And then Moses then wrote the majority of the contents of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, except for the very end where it says that Moses died, right? I don't think he wrote that. and then Joshua, which records the first part of Israel's invasion of the land of Canaan. And when they went into Canaan, they went into Jericho. And here is the site of Old Testament Jericho. Here is an aerial view looking south. And one of the things you'll notice, here's Jericho, which has sort of an oblong characteristic.

What are some of the things you notice around here, for example, and over here, and places in here? Trenches, right? So archaeologists have gone into Old Testament Jericho and have made trenches into certain internal portions, and some of the first guys that study it actually went and cleaned up around the outside because that was this stone wall that was all around the outside. And so much of that, almost all of it, has been exposed around the outside. And then there are some trenches in the interior and a few more where they've put small trenches along the sides here and there, but a very large one in here. So they trenched down, why did they trench down into Jericho like this? They had a lot of sediment. They had a lot of sediment and why did they have lots of sediment?

Because ultimately, what you'll have is, here's an old civilization, and that will be wiped out, and they'll go, okay, let's build something on top of that. And so the tendency is to build in layers like that, and as you go around ancient Israel, today, there are a number of tells, they call them, where you have a hill built, not naturally, but by accumulations of, okay, the old city was wiped out, and now we're going to build another one, and now another one, and now another one. And so Jericho has these layers built up, so you have this, you can see that it is above the surrounding terrain. Now, here's what's interesting. is that it was first excavated many decades ago by John Garstang, then Kathleen Kenyon excavated it about the time I was born.

Other excavations have taken place as well. Here is the lower retaining wall. Remember I said how the outside, a lot of that's been cleaned up? That lower retaining wall, that's a place where it's been cleaned up. And it's all in pretty good shape. Why was it in good shape?

Because the Bible says that the wall that was outside, it was made of mud brick. Remember how the Egyptians made the Jews make mud brick? They had a wall made of mud brick and the Bible says that wall fell out. And so what did that do? It formed a ramp for the Jews to run up and capture the city. So it fell out, and what's interesting is it all fell out, and no other archaeological site in the Middle East has that configuration. It miraculously fell out and made a ramp for the Jews, who otherwise had nothing to attack a big walled city with. They had nothing to do that with.

Now, not only was there this configuration, and when they cleaned it up, they had to take away all the mud brick wall that had fallen on the outside, and as you recall, this was in Joshua 6.24, they were told, and this was right after the Days of Harvest, they were told, the Jews were told, to go in right after the Days of Harvest, so all the people in Jericho would have all their food stores in jars inside the city, right? Keep it safe and handle the siege from these Israelites. Well, but the Israelites were told, don't go take that.

Burn everything. So what do they find? Because that's what the Bible describes. What do they find? Here is jars full of burned grain. Just like the Bible describes. Jar after jar after jar after jar. Every place where they went and did one of those trenches we looked at. That's what they found. Burned grain. And so here's the guy holding the burned grain. Right? Just like the Bible says.

And so they went up this mud brick ramp that had formed itself from the wall falling out. They went up through the breaks in the wall that took place. And they went up and burned everything. That's what the Bible describes. And guess what they find on the ground? It's just like that. Okay?

Here is Dr. Bryant Wood again, about a decade ago, he spoke in this very room, at the Jericho excavation in front of pottery from the time of the destruction of Jericho, about 1406 BC. So, and he has his doctorate in dating materials with Canaanite, of Canaanite pottery. That's what his doctorate degree is in. using Canaanite pottery to date the materials in excavations. He said the date of the pottery that he finds there matches exactly. So here's some examples of some of the pottery once cleaned up and brought out of the excavation.

So then after Jericho, what did they do? They went into Israel and under Joshua you see this red area that's shown here on the map, that's the area that they conquered under Joshua. And then they were to continue going into these other areas, and that they did in great part, but not completely. And the areas that they were supposed to go into included this other area shaded in green. Jericho when they lost that battle because that god did take something from Jericho. So he was taking part of the Canaanite gods and he was going to use them for his own benefit. Here's the interesting thing.

Jericho was a unique circumstance. They weren't told in every place to just do what they did at Jericho. And so one thing is, when you go into Jericho, what the archaeologists found matches what the Bible describes. When you go into the other places, they would have different instructions. Sometimes it was just chase the people off, right? And in one case, what they did is draw the people out by pretending that they were running away, and so the people came out of the city, and then they came back and took them out.

But they didn't end up ruining the city. In great part, after Jericho, The Jews didn't come in and wipe out the city. What they did was go in and conquer the people, drive them off, and then use the city, and use the crops, and use the orchards, and use the vineyards that were there. So you won't find, except for Jericho, where you see the Bible describing great destruction and burning, you won't find that same pattern in the other cities. Because all they did was drive them off and, you know, here's houses and the houses have food, you know, in it and here's a walled city and they would conquer places and drive the people off without destroying everything. They weren't even allowed to cut down a live productive fruit tree. That was against the law. That was against the law of Moses. You can't go and cut down a live productive fruit tree.

So they didn't just wreck everything, they drove the people off and, except for Jericho, had places that they could immediately inhabit. Okay, so then here's Hazor up at the north, which is also one that's had a great deal of excavation, more excavation than even Jericho. The green area here was what was supposed to be conquered, after the time of Joshua, in great part was, but some exceptions. After conquering the land which the Lord had told them to conquer, but not driving out all the people they were supposed to, Israel entered the period of the Judges. Okay, now we have the book of the Canaanite Wars. This lasted until the time of the first king of Israel, Saul. Now, you have another colored map that talks about the time of the judges and also says where each of the tribes was supposed to go.

We'll point that out in a minute. You have this one on page two. It's about a half page. Should be easy to see and read. This is the cycle of sin in the book of Judges. Start off at the top there. Peace in the land. Israel serves the Lord. Israel does evil on the side of the Lord. God punishes Israel. Israel is enslaved by one of the either neighboring nations or peoples that they didn't drive out. And then Israel cries out to the Lord. God raises up a judge, not a king, but someone who would for a time relieve them of their oppression and get their oppressors off their back until they got into trouble again. And then Israel is delivered and then back to peace in the land it will serve the Lord. So that cycle of judges repeats itself again and again. Here is the list also on page two of the judges. Here's what's interesting. We have the names of each of the judges. There's the passage for each one. After that, all the rest of the information is partial.

That is, who is the enemy? We don't always know. We're not always told who is the enemy. We're not always told what the duration of that oppression was. We're not always told how long that judge carried out that judgeship. We are for about the second half of the book of Judges, and then what duration of peace was there. What's interesting is that we have some of that information for every single one of the Judges. But we don't, in any of those categories, have it for all of the judges.

Yes, Dan? Did they rule concurrently, or did they rule like kings, where you had a beginning and an end? The evidence that we have from God's Word is that it was sequential, and when you look at it, it also fits the cycle. That is, here's the cycle, right? Things start off good, they start going bad, God sends in a judge to bring them back to a place where things are halfway decent, and then they fall back in again. So what you see is that cycle that we saw here repeating itself for each one of the judges. And so far as we know, nothing concurrent between them. Yes? Okay, was it in different tribes? They were raised up in different tribes?

That shows up on your map. And so let's take a look at that. Here's your other colored map. You'll see a globe, right? And so this map is cool. And here's one of the reasons I wanted to give it to you and give it to you in color. And I also added some other printed labels on it so that it's very readable. But here's the deal.

Each one of those colors indicates a different tribal area. And one of them, here's an area up here by Tyre. that never was conquered, even though they were supposed to, that never was conquered. So Tyre remained independent, never under Jewish control, even though they were supposed to have conquered it. So each of these colors represents a different tribal area, and then you have on top of that labels for each one of the judges.

Some of them are more major judges, and those are underlined and bolted. those about whom we are given more detail, they were there for a longer duration, there's more to the account. So this is a very good chart in terms of telling us where were the Jews supposed to conquer by tribe, and what tribe did each one of the judges come from?

So this answers your question. I think it's very interesting. It's scattered. They tend to come from here or they tend to come from here. The answer was God picked the judges out of different tribes. And it wasn't like it's always out of the tribe of Judah or Benjamin. There wasn't any particular pattern. It's not totally, but fairly random. Fairly random. Yeah, right?

Explain the east and west of Manasseh. What's very interesting is Manasseh was given two areas. So you'll see that east and west. It's just two areas that they were given. And so that's why. So each of them had an assigned tribal area. They were each to drive out the inhabitants. in their particular tribal area. The main place where they failed was up here, but also to some extent down here where the Philistines live, which is now around Tel Aviv. Okay, so I think you'll find that handout helpful because it shows where the Jews were supposed to go by tribe, and then it also tells you where each one of the judges came from.

Very interesting. In a couple instances, we don't know precisely the location of the town or the city. And so that, you may have a question mark. There's an empty circle with that. Yes? Okay, so this map, is this the land that supposedly they're supposed to get back during the thousand years? Here is what's interesting. I'll show it in the main service, and I think I've sent you a copy. During the time of the millennium, they will actually have much more land and their land will run in east-west strips.

Let me see if I can find that. Pardon? Why did it change? Well, a part of it is because they will have much more land during the time of the coming millennium. Let me see if I can quickly locate that. I know. Yeah, right there. This is the one. We'll show this again in the main service, but I think it's relevant. When did that change? Was there a covenant or something?

Genesis 15, 18 through 21 says here is ultimately the land that you're promised. So what they were given initially was only a small part of it. The ultimate definition is that the land of Israel in the coming millennial kingdom goes from the Mediterranean all the way over to the Euphrates River and includes something like eight of the modern nations either in whole or in part. And you see the lands are, in great part, horizontal stripes across the country by tribe, rather than these designations that we see here initially.

Tom? I just mentioned in the revelation that the Euphrates River will dry up at some point. Yes, and that'll be towards the end. For the kings of the east. Right. It's a little stiff, but I listened to it a little bit over the radio. Oh, yeah, it's India and China. India and China. Yeah, India and China. At any rate, it's Ezekiel 48 is the one that gives the Israel's land by tribe in these east-west strips in the much greater configuration. And while I don't have it in the handout, I'd be glad to email this to anybody If you'd like it, let me know.

Yeah, basically it was a disobedience, certainly a lack of faith. They should have continued. There was no reason for them to stop. God said that I will go before you. So it would be a miraculous working of God to continue. And so not believing God, not trusting God for that, is the reason for their not continuing.

Stan? Well, if you really look at that map of the three sons of Noah, and you see that Ham actually moved up into this area initially, it kind of It kind of looks like that God had to take this area where Ham had moved into out of Egypt, if that makes any sense. Yeah, and what you'll find is that there's all sorts of adjustments and early migration patterns that are later on going to be erased. God will move people around and assign different locations. with this area that can't move north and specifically settled in this particular area, but didn't seem to spread out much north and east of there. Yeah, there was a displacement that's evident.

Okay, now you have David and Solomon, and what we're going to do is end with David today and start with Solomon and there'll be a reason for that that we'll make evident here. Under Saul, Israel has its first king, King Saul, the tribe of Benjamin. By the way, have you ever heard of any other Saul under the tribe of Benjamin? Paul. The apostle Paul was also a Saul of the tribe of Benjamin. So, interesting. Same name, same tribe, right? Different kind of people. Saul is of the tribe of Benjamin.

Saul is the last of his line. In other words, you got the first of this line and the last of his line, that's Saul, that's it. Right? And so why is Saul the last of his line? Yeah, he basically disobeyed God, didn't follow the Lord, didn't listen to the Lord. And so the Lord said, Saul, you're done. I'm going to replace you with David.

That wasn't a smooth transition, but it was. One of the places where David found himself, especially during the transition between the time of Saul and him, was this area of Engedi, which is an oasis that is on the west side of the Dead Sea before it drops down into the lower part there. Here are some pictures of the Engedi area. They have waterfalls and animals and a really nice area. And a little bit, here you can see the Dead Sea in that area.

Israel's second king, David, was the first of his line, but of a line that would never end. So here's, by contrast, here's Saul. One king, that's it. Your line is done. Right? David, your line will never end. Why? Why is David's line never to end? Because of Christ, the descendant of David. Christ, the descendant of David, will reign over Israel and over the whole earth. Okay?

So here's 2 Samuel 7, 12 and 13, I will raise up your descendant after you, this is spoken to David, who will come forth from you and I will establish his kingdom and he shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. It doesn't mean I'm going to establish Solomon forever, right? Solomon's going to build the temple. But I'm going to establish the throne, that is the lineage through Solomon will be forever. That's what it's talking about. And Christ is the fulfillment of that.

Yes. And obviously, David came from the tribe of Judah. Yes. And David came from the tribe of Judah. And why is that significant? Because when Jacob was giving his last blessings to his sons, one of the things he said, here's Judah who is like a lion, and the scepter will not depart. from Judah, meaning his royal position will not depart from Judah. So it's from the line of Judah that David comes, it's from the line of Judah that Christ comes. Which by the way was evident and you could check on it all the way up to the destruction of the temple. In the book of Hebrews it says it is evident, present tense, that Jesus descended from Judah. You could check on it. You don't believe it? Go into the north central part of the inner temple. That's where they kept the records. You could check on it. It is evident. It could be written at that time.

And then the broken line of text in line 9 makes specific mention of the House of David. This is the Tel Dan Stella, it's called. And it's the earliest written record of the House of David, right in here, this part right here. And let's see, there we go. This is a little bit higher resolution and larger. That part right there says House of David, reference to David in writing.

Both King Saul and King David had to battle neighboring enemies as well as groups of people. The Israelites had failed to drive out. It's like, we haven't driven these guys out, we're going to continue to battle these guys. And they did. Both Saul and David battled them. At one point, the forces of Saul and David fought each other.

We have in that time period, here's 1 Samuel 17, 23. The champion, the Philistine from Gath named Goliath, was coming up from the army of the Philistines and he spoke these same words and David heard them. That's in the valley of Elah. And this little marking here, this little piece right here has written on it, Goliath. So, very interesting. Some archaeological confirmation there. Here is Gibeon in that same time period. It is relevant. There was a point at which David's forces and the forces of his opposition were on the opposite sides of a well. This is a profile of that well here. It was initially dug down here and as the water table dropped, they dug it down here.

So 2 Samuel 2, 12 and 13, now Abner the son of Ner went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon with the servants of Ishbosheth, the son of Saul, and Joab, the son of Zeruiah. And the servants of David went out and met them by the pool of Gibeon, and they sat down one on the one side of the pool and the other on the other side. He says, okay, you stay there, I'll stay here, we'll talk. Let's keep the pool between us. Now, what's interesting, in 1956, they discovered that pool. Now, they discovered that that didn't mean it was easy.

3,000 tons of material had to come out in order to excavate it, but you can now go down inside it. So, there's the pool, and you're just looking down from the top, spiral stairway going down into the top of the pool. And so 3,000 tons of material had to be removed to expose the pool. And then looking up from the lower part, this was the part that had to be dug down deeper, so it actually went down into a carved cavern. And this is looking up on the stairway that's there.

So you can actually go down into the bottom of where that pool was, where David was on one side and the opposing forces of Saul on the other side of that pool. So a real place, really existed. Previously to a lot of these archaeological discoveries, someone could say, well, who knows? But no, it's a real place. It really is there.

So here in Jerusalem, the excavations of the City of David have been ongoing since the late 70s. This is the City of David. Here's the edge of the Temple Mount from Herod's time. The City of David includes this area here. That's the old city of David, Jerusalem as it existed during the time of King David.

And excavations in that area, though they began several decades ago, are ongoing in different parts. And since there's people living in that area and having businesses and things like that, sometimes it gets a little tricky, right? So there it is south of the Temple Mount. So that area there, this is looking a little closer, there's some excavations of some of the structures that were there from the time of King David and afterwards.

This is called the stone wall or the stone structure and some debate about its use and purpose there. Okay, we'll go on to Solomon and Malachi and complete the old Testament period from the time of Solomon to the time of Malachi, the end of the Old Testament era, as we kind of step through Old Testament history.

Questions? Inspirations? Exasperations? Tom? Let's see if we can see it well enough. I know that's pretty high resolution. DVD. DVD. Not having the vowels. They dropped the vowels out. Not as we do, left to right, but right to left. This part of it says David. So this would be House of David. The last three letters there being David. Okay? Other questions? Insights? Inspirations? Consternations? Perspirations?

Okay, I guess we're done. Let me pray. Lord, we thank you for just what you have allowed us to see and understand and study in this fascinating area of Old Testament history and the archaeology and the records that go along with it. And we just thank you for the opportunities we have to dig into what's behind the truth of your word. We give you thanks for that and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.