Session 08: The Restoration
Prayer
Blessed are you Lord our God,
for you come to us and seek to make your home in us.
As we study now, let our eyes and our ears be open to you
let our hearts find their rest and their joy in you
that we may grow in grace and live to your glory.
Blessed are you, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.
Amen.
1&2 Chronicles, Ezra & Nehemiah
Watch the videos below and make notes in your learning journal about anything that strikes you.
In the lecture to which we now turn, Hayes continues the discussion of the psalms, and the genres and forms in which they appear, such as psalms of praise and thanksgiving, divine kingship, lament and petition, blessing and cursing, or wisdom. Another poetic book of the Bible is the Song of Songs, an erotic work the sexually explicit content of which has been piously reinterpreted over the centuries. The second half of the lecture turns to the period of the Restoration when the Judean exiles returned to what was now the province of Yehud under Cyrus, the Persian ruler. The books of 1 and 2 Chronicles refer to some of the events of this time as well as the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra and Nehemiah are said to renew the Mosaic covenant with the Torah at its center, and to institute a number of social and religious reforms (including a universal ban on intermarriage that will ultimately fail) in order to consolidate the struggling community.
Click here to watch Hayes Lecture 22
Exercise Â
The bible records two versions of Israel's history: the Deuteronomistic History and 1 & 2 Chronicles. There are some differences between them which you can find summarised in the document in the Resources section. They also paint nany different pictures of God (wrathful, vengeful, judgemental vs merciful, forgiving, gracious) how does this impact on our understanding of the nature of God and how we discern what is the ‘truth’ in all of this? ​
Something Practical To Do
Pray
Blessed are you, Lord our God, all things come from you:
from you come our life,
this world and all that we have and are.
Blessed are you, Lord our God, all things come from you:
from you come our life,
this world and all that we have and are.
Teach us to love and respect your creation
and give glory to you.
Blessed are you, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Amen
Reflect
Spend some time prayerfully thinking about what you have discovered in this session. What are the most significant things for you? How might you use what you have learned in your own faith journey? Write this down in your reflective learning journal.