Lecture 11: The Chronicler's Hope, the Half-Hearted Return, and the Hidden God of Esther

The lecture, section by section

1. The same story from another angle

   Chronicles retells the story of Kings from a different perspective, and the author's perspective shows in his selection, adaptation, and arrangement of the material. Schreiner reads a summary from Brevard Childs: the chronicler interprets Israel's history to the restored community in Jerusalem as an eternal covenant between God and David that demands an obedient response to God's law. Israel prospered when obedient and courted God's wrath through disobedience, despite constant prophetic warning; yet after the judgment God restored his people, who stand under the same divine imperative still.

2. Genealogies with a message: the promise not revoked

   The first nine chapters are genealogies, and they preach. Written after the exile, they focus on Judah and on David: the promise is not revoked. The chronicler also dwells on the priests and Levites worshiping the LORD, and he keeps sounding the note of all Israel; there is hope in this book for the whole people.

3. David, the ark, and the reason Uzzah died

   The chronicler features what serves his message. Saul's rejection for seeking a medium is stated explicitly; Elijah appears only once, in a letter. All Israel wants to make David king, David assembles all Israel, and David succeeds because he inquires of God. And where Samuel simply reports Uzzah's death at the ark, Chronicles explains it: the ark was not carried according to the rule God had given. That is selection and interpretation at work.

4. The temple at the center

   David's sin at the census is included while the sin with Bathsheba and Uriah is not, and the reason is the chronicler's great theme: the census account leads to the site of the temple. The temple represents God's presence with his people, so the book is full of worship and the giving of praise to God.

5. Judah's kings and the faithful from the north

   The focus falls on Judah rather than the northern kingdom, because Judah is David's line; Israel enters the story only as it relates to Judah. Yet the chronicler goes out of his way to note when northerners come south to join the true worship of the LORD. He wants to emphasize, as much as he can, the unity of all who truly follow the Lord, even as the kings of Judah trace the same downward road.

6. Manasseh: hope for the far gone

   Kings never tells us that Manasseh repented; Chronicles does. Why include it? To say that when you repent there is hope, no matter how far down you have gone. Manasseh stands for the nation itself: sunk very low, and yet forgiven by God upon repentance.

7. Exile is not the last word

   Israel was judged for its disobedience, its covenant violations, and God's presence was withdrawn. But the book ends with Cyrus telling the people to go up to Jerusalem and build the temple. The chronicler's appeal is plain: go back to the land, build the temple, restore the kingship, worship as God said, obey him, and God's presence will be with his people again.

8. Ezra and Nehemiah: one book, one question

   Ezra and Nehemiah are a single book in the Hebrew canon, and Ezra opens by taking up the last words of Chronicles. The question running through both is whether Israel will be devoted to the LORD or slide back into syncretism. The rebuilding begins under Cyrus in 538 BC, God working through pagan rulers for the good of his people; the temple is finished under the preaching of Haggai and Zechariah, led by Zerubbabel and Joshua the priest, with the cost paid out of the royal treasury. A caution for readers: chapter 4 of Ezra sweeps across hundreds of years very quickly.

9. Help refused: the peril of syncretism

   Outsiders offer to help build the temple and, later, the wall, and Israel sharply refuses, with the author's approval. The concern is syncretism and idolatry, which leave the people of God weak. Schreiner presses the analogy: church bodies that blended their faith with the surrounding culture lost their gospel witness, and the calling of faithful ministry is to be a remnant that does not.

10. Study, obey, teach

    Ezra's journey from Babylonia in 458 BC is long and dangerous, and God prospers it. The verse Schreiner lingers over is Ezra's resolve: he set his heart to study the law of the LORD, to do it, and to teach its statutes in Israel. The order is the point. Study is genuinely tiring work; but before teaching comes obeying, and Schreiner testifies from years under John Piper's preaching that what makes a ministry powerful is a man who keeps in his own life what he preaches. Ezra was great because of his devotion to God.

11. Slaves in our own land

    Ezra confesses the people's sin and says something striking: we are slaves in our own land. They have returned, and in a sense they are still in exile. Having the temple and standing in the land mean nothing if the people look like pagans, so the foreign wives, marriages that would compromise devotion to Yahweh, must be put away. The pressure to compromise always sounds reasonable in the moment; the pastor's charge is to hold the line on what is clear.

12. Nehemiah: prayer, not a program

    Nehemiah takes up the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and it begins with grief: he weeps, prays, and confesses Israel's sin, because he cares about the spiritual state of God's people. The book is sometimes preached as a leadership manual, and Schreiner objects: it is not a can-do book of five steps but a book of prayer and of God's mercy. The opposition is real, ridicule, intimidation, threats, even prophets hired to speak against the work, and Nehemiah both prays and plans under God's sovereignty. The covenant is renewed, the people separate from the nations, the marriage problem surfaces again, and the book's repeated prayer is remember me. Where does the story now stand? Israel is back, near the close of the Old Testament era, and weak: half-hearted, compromising, needing to obey the Torah, keep the temple worship, and stay distinct, for the LORD will fulfill his covenant with an obedient people.

13. Esther: the hidden God who preserves his people

    Esther is queen under Ahasuerus, the Persian ruler, from 486 to 464 BC, and famously the book never mentions God; yet everything in it happens on Israel's behalf. There is no miracle here, no dream, no prophet interpreting events, and still his hand is in every turn: God unnamed is not God absent. Haman, a descendant of Amalek, is the offspring of the serpent, like Cain against Abel and Pharaoh against Israel; Mordecai and Esther stand where Joseph and Moses stood, preserving the people. The providence is exquisite: Vashti's removal opens the way for Esther, the king's sleepless night brings out the record of Mordecai's loyalty, and Haman's pride walks him into honoring the man he meant to destroy. Mordecai's word to Esther says it without saying it: if she keeps silent, deliverance will arise from another place, and that other place is God. She goes: if I perish, I perish. Esther is among the few books never quoted or alluded to in the New Testament, and it fits the storyline perfectly: at Israel's lowest point, the offspring of the serpent do not win.

1. Ezra set his heart to study, then to obey, and only then to teach, and Schreiner says the preaching that shaped him most came from a man who kept what he preached. Which of the three do you tend to shortcut, and what would restoring the order look like this month?

2. The compromise in Ezra and Nehemiah arrived sounding reasonable, even kind. Where does a reasonable-sounding compromise press on your own household or church right now, and what would holding the line cost you?

3. Esther never names God, and Mordecai speaks only of deliverance arising from another place. Recall a season when God's hand was invisible at the time and unmistakable afterward. How does that memory steady you in what is unresolved now?