Here are some questions:
Did the people of the Old Testament, outside of the priests, have access to the written Word, the Scriptures?
If not, why was it written?
Why was the Word of God then written if most could never read it?
How were the Israelites to learn what God had said if they could not read it?
Why does the written Word seem to carry so much authority that the phrase “It is written” is used 80 times in the Bible and 63 times in the New Testament?
We will start our search for these answers by looking at:
2 Peter 1:21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
These holy men of God, prophets, communicated God’s will to people primarily by speaking what God told them.
So then in the Old Testament what people had of the scriptures was the spoken Word. They had to remember what they heard. Some Eastern cultures put great emphasis on memorization for this reason. This way they could teach their children God’s Word, and they taught them to put it to memory.
At times God told these prophets to write down what he had told them. WHY?
Exodus 31:18 And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.
This may be where the expression “written in stone or it is not written in stone” comes from.
Exodus 24:3,4 And Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do. And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, ……
Deuteronomy 17:14-20 When thou art come unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me; And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them: That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.
Deuteronomy 31:9-13 And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and unto all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, When all Israel is come to appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law: And that their children, which have not known any thing, may hear, and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as ye live in the land whither ye go over Jordan to possess it.
Deuteronomy 31:24-26 And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, That Moses commanded the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD, saying, Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee.
Moses wrote the Words of God down, and if they had a king, the king was to make a copy for himself. There were only two copies of the written Word as far as we have read. Notice there is no allowance made for additional copies. There were not copies handed out to the people. You could not go the local Bible book store and buy it. The people only had the spoken Word.
1Samel 10:25 Then Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book, and laid it up before the LORD. And Samuel sent all the people away, every man to his house.
1Kings 15:31 Now the rest of the acts of Nadab, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?
2Chronicles 32:32 Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and his goodness, behold, they are written in the vision of Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, and in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.
Nehemiah 13:1 On that day they read in the book of Moses in the audience of the people; and therein was found written, that the Ammonite and the Moabite should not come into the congregation of God for ever;
As we have read several times, the people only heard the Word when is was read to them. They had no copies of their own. In fact, from what we have seen there was a copy in the Temple, and if the King did what God commanded him to do, he also had a copy. That was it. Other scrolls or books that the prophets wrote down were taken to the temple and laid up before the lord.
Even as late as Judah being carried away in the Babylonian captivity, there was only one copy as recorded in:
2Kings 23:24 Moreover the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images, and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the LORD.
When Judah was carried away to Babylon and Jerusalem was burnt to the ground along with the Temple and the Palaces, some believe the scrolls were taken with some of the righteous men that were carried away to Babylon.
It was during that time that eventually the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek. That Greek translation is called the Septuagint. While the Hebrew, according to scholars, had many rules about who could copy it and how, the Greek translation had none of those rules.
Thus, if you were a wealthy family you could hire a slave to copy all of the Old Testament so your family could have a copy. This is most likely how the synagogues had scrolls in them to read from. Remember, just before the captivity they found THE Book of the law. Now when Jesus come on the scene there are copies in the synagogues.
Bullinger notes in his Companion Bible whether Jesus quotes from the Hebrew or the Septuagint.
Remember, Jesus was of the House of Judah and would not have had access to the scrolls that the priest and Levites had in the temple. Being the son of God, he needed to know the scriptures. God took care of that problem. His family must have had the funds to have the Old Testament copied out.
There is no doubt that the Old Testament was addressed TO the people of that time. It was addressed mostly to Israel, but other sections were addressed to the nations around them. But it was all spoken to them.
Jonah 3:2-4 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
Once again, the Ninevites had the spoken word.
So why did God have all this Old Testament written down?
To answer that, let’s look at Genesis. God had made Adam three parts: body, soul and the most important part was spirit.
Genesis 3:9-15 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
God is standing there with Adam and Eve, who had the dominion of the creation, on one side and the devil on the other side. At this point, because of the sin of Adam, the dominion of the creation is overthrown from Adam to the devil. As we will read in a minute in Ephesians 1:4, the word, “foundation” is sometimes translated “overthrow” or “reordered.” The devil then became the god of this world, and the world was overthrown or reordered. On that day of Genesis 3:15, God lost his son, Adam, because of Adam’s sin. So God promised to send a redeemer to pay for Adam’s sin.
God knew that once Jesus Christ had paid in all that was required to redeem mankind that He would have sons and daughters once again born of His spirit that He could talk with like He did with Adam whose spirit had died.
But before God reordered the world and gave the dominion to the devil, He called out the church of today. This is what this verse in Ephesians is referring to.
Ephesians 1:4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
In the Old Testament times, the people were body and soul, sons by adoption, servants of God. God did some mighty and great things for them, but they were not His children born of His spirit
God knew from this point of Genesis 3:15 that He would have children once again. God wanted His children to know what all He had done to redeem and acquire His family. He wanted us to know what He liked and disliked, how He had delivered his people and saved them in the past. He wanted his children to know the history of what all transpired to bring their redemption to pass.
So the prophets spoke, rehearsed in the ears of the people, what God told the prophets to say. But at times, God told those prophets: Write that down. My children are coming, and I want them to know.
There is great importance in words. 2 Peter 1:21 says holy men of God Spake… The Old Testament was Spoken TO, Addressed TO the people of the times of the Old Testament. But the written scriptures were not available to the common people. In fact copies of the scriptures were very limited. The king may have had a WRITTEN copy and there was a WRITTEN copy in the temple. So we need to see the difference between the word “TO” and the word “FOR”.
But then who was it written FOR? Not the people of that time, it was laid up before the Lord in the temple.
Before we answer the question of who the Old Testament and the gospels were written FOR, I want to cover the following point.
Why is it that things that are written are so full of authority, or why do we ascribe more authority to written words than we do to spoken words?
Why does the phrase “It is written” show up 63 times in the New Testament alone? I found an article written by Randall D. Kittle titled “The Enduring Power of the Written Word.”
He states that written words do have more power, are more permanent, more easily reproduced, and pervasive than spoken words.
Written words can penetrate more into people’s lives. In other words, people that may not listen, may pick up an article and read, thereby letting the words enter their minds. And these written words may move around the world because they are easily copied and transmitted and end up in places the speaker could never reach.
Words communicated by mouth can easily change when repeated from one person to another, as can be seen by children’s party games. Written words are easily reproduced and that, accurately, via magazines, newsletters, books etc.
Written words are more permanent. Spoken words disappear into thin air as soon as they leave the speaker’s mouth. Gone. Clay tablets have been unearthed in Ur of the Chaldees. Thousands of years old. Ancient works by great authors are still around. You may have read some of the words of ancient authors as well as more recent ones like the biographies of Bullinger, the works of Dickens, etc.
Finally, written words have more perceived authority. All of us have misspoken at times. We have used the wrong word. Sometimes we must back up and cover for what we did not really mean to say. But written words are completely different. We have all heard the phrase, “I read it in a book.” Or we have quoted some famous author. That is because our minds assume that words that are written are premeditated. We assume that the writer has researched the subject, has tried out the information, has chosen his words carefully, and once it is published, the piece is exactly what he meant to say. Therefore, written words carry more weight and have more authority than spoken words.
God had all the Old Testament and gospels written for our sake, His children that He had waited so long for. God wanted His words to endure over time. Having His Word written down gave it great authority to the end that the New Testament writers could say, “It is written,” all the way through the gospels and the first three books of the church epistles.
God explains that He had this all written for our sake, His children, upon whom the ends of the world are come that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.
Romans 4:23,24 Now it was not written for his (Abraham’s) sake alone, that it was imputed to him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;
Written for OUR sake also.
Romans 15:4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.
Written for OUR learning, that God’s children of the age of grace might have hope through patience and comfort of the scriptures.
1Corinthians 9:9,10 For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope.
Written for OUR sake. Could it be any clearer? It was addressed to Israel, spoken to Old Testament people, but it was written for OUR sake!
If God expected us to realize these truths for our administration from reading about an ox what else is hidden in the pages of the Old Testament that God put there FOR US? If we don’t read and study the Old Testament, we will never know. We short change ourselves in living The Prosperous Life!
1Corinthians 10:11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.
Written for OUR admonition (our instruction) upon whom the ends of the world are come.
For years I have heard people say, “Well, our group just studies the church epistles, the part that is written to us. We mainly work the book of Ephesians, the mystery, that was written to us.” Really? That is kind of an insult to our Father who went to all the work to have the entire Old Testament and gospels WRITTEN FOR YOU!
So read and enjoy the Old Testament. Read about Abraham. Read the law. Read of the rebellion of Israel in the wilderness. Read about how God worked with the kings of Israel and Judah. Read about David’s life. Read the wisdom of Solomon. As you read, the Church Epistles will come alive with new understanding.
God had the Old Testament written for YOU, His child. So reading and understanding the Old Testament is all part of our growth in, and ling of The Prosperous Life.
