The first five books of the Bible

The first five books of the Bible also known as the law of Moses the Pentateuch or most commonly the Torah.

Torah means law it's a Hebrew word and these books in the Bible were written in Hebrew.

Why we would use the word law to describe all of this.We're going to see how the five individual books come together to make the foundation of the Bible now the Torah is very important because if you don't have a Torah you don't have a Bible everything that we find in the pages of Scripture from here on out has its roots in the events and promises that you see here in these five books so this is super important another thing that we should know going into this is that whenever someone in the New Testament Jesus or Paul or Peter is talking about the law they're usually referring to the Torah let's jump in and get an idea of what these books are about.

The Torah begins with Genesis and from a high level view Genesis gives us the origin stories of Israel's relationship with God and their ancestors in the first half of Genesis we see God creating and ruling the cosmos and then by the time we get to an event that's known as the Tower of Babel we see the relationship between God and human and also the relationship between God and other spiritual beings in a in a state of disintegration humans are scattered and being violent toward each other we have other spiritual beings that are in rebellion against God and seeking to bring about harm on humans as well so it's not a very good situation and what we have in in the book of Genesis is we have humans scattering and becoming different nations.

Deuteronomy we find that the ancient Israelites believed that time the different nations split up and they were assigned different gods so different nations had their own Pantheon which we see with the ancient Hittites we see it with the ancient Chaldeans we see it with especially the ancient Egyptians they're probably the most famous and so while humans are splitting up into different nations with different gods.The God that the Israelites believed was above all of them ruling the entire cosmos.

Chooses a man named Abraham directly in fact he makes a series of promises to Abraham he promises to be with him as a protector in God,He promises to give him a special land on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea and that land is called Canaan he promises to give him many descendants and he promises that from Abraham all the nations of the world will be blessed so although God and humans are at odds with one another God does plan to bring a blessing about for everyone and all of that is set up in the book of Genesis.

Abraham's descendants finding their way to Egypt to escape a famine fast forward a little while and we find ourselves in the book of Exodus where Israel is a mighty group of people but they're enslaved by the Egyptians and what happens in the book of Exodus is God rescues Israel from Egypt and he doesn't just free them for they're human oppressors instead he frees Israel from both their human and their divine oppressors we see God going to war and executing judgment on the gods of Egypt or so the the ancient Israelites wrote about and so when this happens God leads Israel out into the wilderness and makes a special pact a special agreement with them he gives them the law and this law isn't just like a series of rules really it's a solemn and binding agreement between two parties and it's very common or it shares some commonalities with some political agreements that were made way back in the ancient Near East and this kind of agreement was called a covenant.

Now in ancient times you would have mighty kings and then lesser Kings and the mighty kings were called suzerainty these are powerful Kings that could exert force over smaller kingdoms and what would happen is it would be in the sewer and the the lesser kingdoms are the vassals best interest to instead of fighting each other look out for each other now these old agreements had a lot of things in common and some things that we find in the rest of the Torah.

We have a history of the suzerainty Inasa  oftentimes the mighty king would write about how he had freed the smaller kingdom from some other mighty king or some other suzerain we had laws and expectations for the vassal if you're going to be part of the Scissor hands Empire then you need to play by their rules there would be blessings that the suzerain would give to loyal vassals but there would also be curses that the vassals would incur if they were to break those laws and then there were some rituals for remembering this relationship and keeping it on people's minds that's stuff that was going on between humans.

In the ancient world and they would usually invoke their own gods the gods of their various nations to to bear witness to this agreement but what we see happening in the book of Exodus is different because instead of a human King offering that sort of relationship into a smaller nation we see the God of the cosmos offering that relationship with Israel. 

He says I've rescued you from Egypt so again the scissor hands generosity is he's rescued Israel from Egypt and he's going to bring them to that land that he promised to Abraham but in order for Israel to maintain this relationship they're going to have to keep some terms these are God's expectations of Israel and there are many terms many rituals that are explored throughout Exodus Leviticus numbers and Deuteronomy but they all boil down to two basic commands God wants love and loyalty. 

Israel is not allowed to worship other spiritual beings and God also expects love and respect for other humans this is where you get laws like don't murder a lot of your father and mother don't steal those kinds of things and this is God's expectation for Israel.

If Israel can do this then they can inhabit the land of Canaan and that's introduced here in Exodus and because we have these terms in order to keep the relationship going this is called the law or in Hebrew the Torah.

We have that name for all of these works in Leviticus God comes to dwell among the people God is his presence is manifesting like a fiery cloud and he moves in with this nation of mortals to inhabit a portable temple called a tabernacle.

Book of Leviticus explores there are different rules and rituals that the ancient Israelites believed would make it make it possible for them to coexist in the presence of such a mighty being.

Book of Numbers we hear about that famous 40 year journey from the mountain outside of Egypt Mount Sinai to the edge of the promised land now in numbers things start going really south because the people of Israel rebel against God they forfeit the Promised Land for a little while and then they have to deal with the consequences an entire generation turns on God and says where we don't believe that you're going to hold up your end of the bargain which is a dangerous thing to tell the person who's demonstrated a history of generosity so they say we don't believe you're going to help us take the land so we're going back to Egypt and God says no you're not going to go back to Egypt but it does meet them halfway and they don't enter the Promised Land instead they have to wait 40 years for a new generation to make the choice as to whether or not they're going to remain loyal to God during those 40 years though God both disciplines the disobedient Israelites but he also preserves them and protects them from their enemies along the way until a new generation can make a choice.

Deuteronomy we see Moses giving Israel that choice now Moses is this iconic ancient great prophet that the Israelites believed was the mediator of this covenant he was the go-between for God and the people of Israel and right as Moses is about to die Moses gives this new generation of Israelites a choice he says remember we have this existing relationship with God so are you going to choose the blessings of keeping the Torah.

God's protection everything will be great or are they going to choose the curses if they break the Torah then they face the risk of God's discipline and they also face exile from the land which we see all of these things playing out in the rest of the Old Testament both blessings when Israel keeps the Torah and curses and eventually exile from the land now this all comes together to give us this this picture we see these promises that God has made and this agreement that God has made with Israel in order for them to keep the land and for the rest of the Old Testament.

This is going to be a point of tension we're going to meet many many prophets who are going to remind Israel and Israel's leaders about this agreement that they've made with God and try to call them to be loyal to God and and remain faithful to these laws in this covenant and sometimes Israel obeys and things start to go better for them and other times they don't obey and things get worse so this sets up the tension between God and Israel God wants to have a good relationship with his special nation but every generation of Israelites needs to make the call are they going to accept that offer or are they going to try and make this work on their own and the story of those choices form the rest of the Old Testament.

Torah that's how it all comes together and you can see why this is foundational to the rest of the Bible now if you want to know more about the Torah in context of the rest of the books of the Bible and also some other really important covenants that happen between God and humans.