Which book of the Old Testament is your favourite?

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This is a tough question…I have always enjoyed pondering the Book of Proverbs. It is like food for thought!

But, recently, I read the Book of Joshua,and I was struck by the authority given to God’s Priests to work miracles so long ago and how the same is still true today. Praise God!

The Book of Joshua, Chapter 3, verse 13 and 17 says:

13When the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the ark of the LORD, the Lord of the whole earth, touch the waters of the Jordan, it will cease to flow; the water flowing down from upstream will halt in a single heap.”

17The priests carrying the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood on dry ground in the Jordan riverbed while all Israel crossed on dry ground, until the whole nation had completed the crossing of the Jordan.

Those Words made me think about how God’s chosen Priests help to save souls even today.

So, just as our feet have “soles”, our bodies have “souls” too. How appropriate that part of God’s plan to bring the Israelites into the Promised Land would be the use of the Priests to carry the Ark of the Covenant thru the flood waters of the Jordan River back then and it would be through the soles of the Priest’s feet in which that miracle by God would be instrumented.

And, how appropriate that part of God’s plan to bring the gentiles into Eternal life would be the use of the Priests dispensing the Sacraments of the Church today which saves souls. How appropriate that God’s chosen, His Priests Forever, should administer to our “souls” and help lead us into Eternal Life with Jesus forever. Dedicate your prayers today to God’s chosen Priests, to keep them holy and pure and protect them from evil so they may minister to God’s people. Amen.

Peace2U.
 
Genesis (and Luke) for my interest in astronomy.

1 and 2 Maccabees, to understand the run up to the Incarnation and the Kingdom of God. Great amount of historical information there with the end of the Hasmonian Dynasty and the tie into the Herodian Dynasty - Herod the Great and his son Herod Antipater.
 
Nelka said:
Is there one that you enjoy more than others or have read more than the others?

Maybe there is something in this particular book that connects with you?

I always used to like Daniel (the impending doom) but I do like Zechariah and Malachi as I seem drawn to them but don’t know exactly why yet.

🙂
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I love Genesis and specifically the frist three chapters of Genesis.
That is the text book for all ills.
 
I can’t choose just one because they change based on my life circumstances, but my favorite(s) are:

Song of Songs
Psalms
Tobit
Wisdom
Proverbs
Job
 
very difficult to answer becuase even the “boring” books where they number all the clans or meqsure out the inheritances, or instruct thenlevites etc, still contain small treasures here and there, well worth the uncovering.

Like many however the book of Job looms large. I used tomsee it as a book ofmsuffering, but learned over time and successive readings that it is a revealing of Elohim and His true self
 
Teaching the bible all these years makes the choice hard. If I were to choose one book it would probably be Genesis. In Genesis we have the plot of the story and the exciting establishment of God’s early family.
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I like Samuel 1& 2 - how God called him and about David which we have been reading for the last while at mass.
 
JCavins - of Great Adventure Bible Study?

Thanks - you have the only Bible thumb-tabs that I’ve ever found that include the entire canon of Scripture, instead of the mangled Protestant canon.
 
Well, the most dog-eared Old Testament book in my Bible is Ecclesiasticus, also known as Sirach. It was written to instruct new Christians, which may be why so many of the verses begin with a comforting “My son.”
It has served as a tremendous aid to me in confronting the complexities of life, of aging.
Topic titles include "Choice of friends, Advice concerning women, Duties toward parents (“take care of your father when he is old…even if his mind fail, be considerate of him”), The proper use of speech, Gaining wisdom (“My son, if you wish, you can be taught…be willing to listen…let no wise saying escape you…and the wisdom you desire He will grant.”)
I love Ecclesiasticus.
 
Ecclsiasticus was written 200 years before Christ!

I do love the book, though, but like Proverbs and Psalms, it’s not a book to be read in one reading, or read straight-through.
 
I don’t get all of the Canticle-loving - I personally can’t stand nor understand the book (and I’ve read the allegorizing commentaries too, but the book is still jarring to me - I skip it when I read the Bible, although I’m working up the courage to maybe read it again on this read-through, as I just cycled back to Genesis). It’s a faith-shaking book for me.

When I was investigating Christianity, one of the main attractions to the Mormons was the fact that they consider it apocryphal.

However, I bow to the wisdom of the ages and of the Church in unanimously assenting to its canonicity - there must be something of value and truth, some redeeming quality in there, and it is only I who am too unspiritual, carnal, unfaithful and unlearned to see it. That witness is strengthened by this very thread, where a dozen distinct men have testified that they receive benefit from it (assuming good faith that it is spiritual benefit).
 
O dear, someone else who doesn’t read the Song of Songs except allegorically. That is only one tiny part of its meaning. Rabbi Akiva called it the ‘holiest of books’ and was deeply distressed at obscene comments on it. It is about the total unity of all creation in the glory of the Creator. Creation was not what God did, it is what he is continually doing. The Song celebrates how the love of man and woman, of man (used as a generic term) in terms of care and protection and admiration for the animal creation, the animal creation for the vegetable, the plants for the very rocks and the soil they generate (the continents themselves move and change) – all this is all one glorious, wonderful, utterly beautiful paeon of praise for the Creator himself, in whose work of creating we all take part. Glory, praise and love. It is more beautiful than words can express. Sorry. But it is WONDROUS.
Musadorn
PS the mystics, beginning with St Bernard, loved and used the Song continually in their devotion.
 
Oh, I know the great Saints have loved it, and the Church Fathers commented on it, and Origen wrote extensively on it. It’s one reason we have a Church - so people (ahem, Martin Luther) can’t remove books just because they personally dislike them or can’t see the spirit in them - but even reading it through the lens of the extreme allegorizing of Origen, it’s still faith-shaking. Reading it “except” allegorically? I assume you mean to say reading it “every way except” allegorically or something like that - anything even bordering on a literal or grammatical reading would probably lead me to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. I can’t believe the book was put there as anything but the most elaborate metaphorical, symbolical, and allegorical vision of the Church as bride of Christ (admittedly an absolutely amazing prophecy written by the wisest man of all time), never meant for a word to be taken literally (like much of the Apocalypse), and that I am merely incapable, due to an underdeveloped spiritual and overdeveloped rational nature, to read it in the proper light of full allegory.

Note, that I speak not poorly of the book, but of my inability to comprehend it: the greatest work of literature appears worthless to someone who can’t read it, or can’t speak the language. I can not appreciate Shakespeare, for instance, as my English is not sufficient, but I hear unanimously that he is the greatest poet of the English world of all time, equivalent to Rumi of Arabic. (Whereas an English-speaker can not appreciate Rumi, nor the Koran; the latter, being horrible in translation, disjointed, meandering, purposeless and meaningless, is quite beautiful based on the sound of it alone in Arabic.)

It was a stumbling-block to me possibly coming to Christianity (or Judaism) long ago (but I doubt it), when I read the Old Testament (the Tanakh) cover-to-cover to learn about the “earlier revelations” as a Muslim (to whom it is an article of faith to believe that they have been corrupted, and the NT corrupted beyond repair): when I saw the Canticle, I immediately thought, “Oh, this is what ‘corrupted’ means”, and thought of the Judaeo-Christian Bible no more until years later. The Koran has a similar chapter, but much worse (as it can’t be taken allegorically and isn’t breathed by the Holy Spirit), the purely pornographic Sura al-Yusuf.

With good reason did the ancient Scribes reserve the book of Canticles only to those who were on the path to being a Rabbi, and at least 30 years old. I’m assuming I’ll eventually “get it” through greater maturity, spiritual development, grace, etc. etc.
 
Wonderful response, Khalid. Just a small note: Rumi wrote in Persian (Farsi), not Arabic. This doesn’t, of course, detract from your point.
 
You’re kidding me? You mean I was reading an Arabic **TRANSLATION ** of Rumi? I thought it was original Arabic, it was so excellent. I can’t read Farsi.
 
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