Transition: From History to Wisdom and Poetry

Up to this point, most of what we’ve read has been narrative. Joshua through Esther covers long stretches of history. Leaders rise, nations split, cities fall, people return, and the story keeps moving forward in time.

The next set of books is different.

These are usually called the Wisdom and Poetry books. Instead of telling you what happened next, they zoom in on what it felt like to live through real life with God in the background. Success, loss, fear, anger, suffering, doubt, regret, gratitude. All of it.

A quick heads up on format, because it needs to change a bit here.

With the history books, it made sense to summarize the storyline the same way each time. With wisdom and poetry, that approach gets clunky fast. Psalms is not one story. Proverbs is not one reflection. They are collections. Job is mostly speeches. Ecclesiastes is one long train of thought about meaning. Song of Songs is love poetry.

So going forward, I’m going to focus less on plot and more on basic clarity:

• What kind of book is this?

• What does it include?

• Why do people get confused by it?

• What is one anchor example to know so you can recognize it later?

I am also going to keep interpretation to a minimum. One, because I’m less than qualified and two, because there are countless resources you can find to help interpret. The goal here is not to tell anyone what or how to think. It is to help the books make sense so you can read them without feeling lost.

We start with Job, because it deals with one of the most common questions people ask when life turns sideways: what happens when bad things happen to good people? Spoiler alert…there is no easy answer.

Next post: Job.