Then Psalm 106 chastens, with Israel getting hardly anything right. If we didn’t know the full Old Testament background, it would be hard to credit both portrayals as true.

It is important to understand that Old Testament Israel was not simply a religious movement, but a system of earthly government. In other words, Israel was both church and state.

“Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks” by Walter Brueggemann (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 165 pages, $15) When comparing the ideology of Israel at the time of the destruction ...

She is the mother of the Messiah, whereas her prefigurations in the Old Testament prepare, suggest and intuit his future coming.” Continue to Roten’s full article to read the stories of 14 biblical ...

In the Old Testament, Israel found herself surrounded by monarchies and empires with powerful rulers and highly stratified societies, and she eventually sought to emulate that kind of system.

Discovered in 1993 in northern Israel, Aramaic inscriptions on the ninth-century b.c. fragments commemorate a king’s victory over a “king of Israel” and a king of “the House of David.” ...