It’s important to know that the first five books of the Bible were considered part of one work - not five individual works. They’re known as the Torah, the Pentateuch, or the Law. Whenever you read in later chapters about “the Law” it’s either referencing something specific in these five books or the work as a whole. Moses wrote this section of the Bible, but he doesn’t come onto the scene until Exodus which we’ll get to later.
We start with Genesis where the Lord appears and along with His Spirit and His Word begin taking what was once chaotic and ordering it into the earth, sun, stars, moon, animals, plants, and eventually humans. (It’s also important to note here that whenever you see the term “sea” throughout the OT (Old Testament) the listeners would have understood that term to also represent chaos - don’t forget most ancient peoples didn’t know how to swim which would heighten this fear even more).
God said, “Let us make man in our image” - the “us” reference there could be one of the first times and few times in the OT where the Trinity (the Father, the Son also known as the Word, and the Holy Spirit) are referenced. So together they created Adam, and knowing he needed a partner in crime, Eve - the first couple (literally partners in crime - read about the whole forbidden fruit thing if you don’t believe me).
The Lord set up the world perfectly for them but they essentially were convinced by the serpent - a.k.a. the devil - that it wasn’t good enough and they needed more…sound familiar? So they got kicked out of the garden and life got hard.
Adam and Eve had 2 sons - Cain and Abel - and Cain murdered Abel and he was banished from the Lord’s presence (the second crime if you will). Adam and Eve eventually had a third son as well - Seth.
Lots of people descended from Seth but the next one you’ll run into that seems a bit odd is this guy named Enoch who “walked faithfully with God’ then he was no more because God took him away”. What?!!! Taken away? What does that even mean? Footnote that to look back and figure it out but we gotta keep moving to our man Noah.
Noah also “walked faithfully with God” but he wasn’t taken up like Enoch. When Noah was living the whole earth was wicked and God needed to do something about it because God was holy and righteous and this wickedness had no place here. The Lord decided to flood the whole earth and start over - but wouldn’t you know our guy Noah ended up being the only righteous one of the bunch and so the Lord saved him and his family by getting him to build a huge boat to house both his family and all the animals. So Noah along with his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth boarded the boat and waited for the rains to stop.
After the rains stopped it was time for a fresh new start, but Ham looked in on his father naked after Noah had a little too much wine, and Ham along with his descendants were cursed (one of whom was the Canaanites who you’ll definitely read about). Seems pretty outlandish just to see his father naked - but there is enough evidence to suggest that this phrase could have also meant he tried a homosexual act against his father to assert his dominion - again you’ll have to read it to figure it all out.
Here the Lord made a covenant with Noah that he would no longer flood the earth and the rainbow was the sign of this covenant.
From here we will follow the family line of Shem because this is the lineage of Jesus Christ a.k.a. the son of God a.k.a. the son of man a.k.a. the Word a.k.a. the Messiah a.k.a. Lord a.k.a. the lamb of God a.k.a. lots more names that you’ll see as you read for yourself.
So Shem had lots of descendants but the story really starts to pick back up again with Terah who would father Abram. Abram left everything he had and followed the Lord and the Lord made a covenant with him as well. There was a promise of many descendants, of land, and of a royal lineage of kings.
Abram’s name was changed to Abraham - why you ask? Genesis 17 has your answer. Abraham got super old - into his nineties along with his wife Sarah - and they thought there was no way they’d be able to have many descendants because they didn’t even have one kid. They tried to do it their own way and it didn’t work but the Lord was faithful and blessed them with a son named Isaac. (Ironically Isaac is a sound in Hebrew that sounds like laughter so his american equivalent would be haha or something of the sort.)
Isaac had twins Jacob and Esau. A lot happened between these brothers and multiple crazy turnings of events led to Jacob wrestling with God and getting his name changed to Israel. (It should be mentioned that he tricked his brother at one point, but eventually the joke was on Jacob as he worked hard for his wife, Rebekah but was tricked into marrying her sister, Leah and was forced to work another seven years to be able to rightfully marry Rachel.)
Israel had 12 sons - These are all important because they form the foundation of the 12 tribes of Israel. We’ve got Gad, Dan, Levi, Joseph, Judah, Simon, Benjamin, Reuben, Asher, Zebulon, Issachar, & Naphtali.
We will follow the line of Judah because there was a prophecy that kings would come from his lineage and eventually both David and Jesus came from the line of Judah. However the Levites became the tribe of priests, and the tribe of Joseph had something really interesting happen as well.
So Joseph had this dream that his whole family would bow down to him and needless to say they kinda hated him for it. They sold him into slavery but, lo and behold, he becomes the second in command of all of Egypt. His family does end up bowing down to him, and his father Israel is ecstatic he is back in the family. In some families there are definitely favorites and in Israel’s family that would’ve been Benjamin and Joseph because they were the two sons that came from the wife he always wanted, Rachel. The others came from Leah and their maidservants. There is so much information here and it’s an incredible story so I’d put this on the reading list as well.
There was famine in the land, but Joseph was smart enough when he was in charge to store up some food. This meant that all the nations, including Israel, came streaming into Egypt to get some food and he was a savior figure for the nations in a way that foreshadowed what Jesus would do later. Now we have the 12 tribes of Israel living in Egypt and Joseph has two sons - Ephraim and Manasseh - who Israel would bless before his death as not grandsons but as his own sons and therefore tribes of Israel. So if you’re counting there was 12 tribes - then the tribe of Joseph was split into Ephraim and Manasseh. 13 tribes right? Technically yes but the tribe of Levi was a priestly tribe and so they were set to serve as priests for the other tribes which meant there were 12 land owning tribes in Israel and the Levites would live and serve in each of these areas.
Joseph eventually died and wanted his bones taken back to the Promised Land - you know, the land promised to Abram earlier - but we’ll get to that story later.
Before we get into Moses and the book of Exodus let’s recap where we are through the characters we mentioned.
We’ve got: Adam - Seth ~ Enoch ~ Noah - Shem ~ Terah - Abraham - Isaac - Jacob/Israel - 12 tribes
Also remember - out of the tribes:
Levites - Priests
Judahites a.k.a. Jews - lineage of Jesus
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