Sunday, July 12, 2009

Really, Really Long Geneologies

While the Bible is God's Word, I have to admit that my devotionals this week have been pretty challenging. For some reason I think that many mornings I would gladly take all of the many passages on various sacrifices in Leviticus to genealogies. I can understand more easily how Leviticus points to God's holiness, than why it is necessary to have excruciating detail the genealogies of 1 Chronicles. There are 9 straight chapters of genealogies, and my struggle this week was asking almost constantly, "Okay God I understand that you are making the point that you are preserving your people, but why such detail? The author himself notes that these genealogies are recorded elsewhere; Why are all of these ones necessarily needed here?"

So my initial reactions are that this is to show how the Lord has gone to great lengths to preserve his people in mercy in spite of their rebellion. By looking at these genealogies we see irrefutable proof of what the Lord has done to preserve his people.

Any one else have any other insights into 1 Chronicles 1-9? What else can we learn from these genealogies?

2 comments:

Tom said...

I've always appreciated how personally God is involved with us through the geneologies. In many places the Scriptures talk about entire nations with just a few words, but here each individual - who was born, raised, made choices about who God was, loved, was loved, sought to raise his family well, grew old, and died - is mentioned by name. Their fame is preserved forever in the infallible word of God.

So while it's not necessarily easy to get excited about reading about all these people I don't know, I stand in awe of God's personal care for each one of them. He knew the very hairs on their heads!

Sojourning Med Student said...

Wow those are good thoughts Tom! That is really helpful as I went back to meditate on all of those chapters!