Israel entering and taking the land of Canaan under Moses's successor, Joshua, and dividing it among the twelve tribes.

It opens with the crossing of the Jordan and the fall of Jericho. The conquest is presented as God keeping the promise of land he made to Abraham centuries before. The book closes with Joshua challenging the people to choose whom they will serve, and their promise to serve the LORD.

Joshua 24:15

The chaotic centuries after Joshua, when Israel kept falling into idolatry and God kept raising up leaders, called judges, to rescue them.

The book follows a repeated cycle: Israel turns away, an enemy oppresses them, they cry out, God sends a deliverer, there is peace, and then it starts again. Each round is worse than the last, and the judges themselves, such as Gideon and Samson, become more flawed. Its closing line is the verdict: there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

Judges 21:25

A Moabite widow who stays loyal to her Israelite mother-in-law Naomi, marries a relative named Boaz, and becomes the great-grandmother of King David.

It is set in the same dark period as Judges but reads as its opposite: ordinary people acting with faithfulness and kindness. Ruth is a foreigner from a nation Israel was suspicious of, yet she becomes an ancestor of David and so of Jesus. Her words to Naomi, "where you go I will go", are often read at weddings.

Ruth 1:16

Israel's move from judges to kings: the prophet Samuel, the failed reign of King Saul, and the rise of the young David.

The people ask Samuel for a king "like all the nations", and Saul is chosen. He is impressive but disobedient, and God rejects him. David is anointed while still a shepherd boy, defeats Goliath, and spends years on the run from a jealous Saul. The book ends with Saul's death in battle.

1 Samuel 8:5

The reign of King David: his successes, God's promise of a lasting dynasty, and the disasters that followed his sin with Bathsheba.

David makes Jerusalem his capital and unites the tribes. In chapter 7 God promises that David's throne will last forever, a promise the rest of the Bible keeps coming back to and which the New Testament applies to Jesus. From chapter 11 on, David's adultery and murder unleash violence inside his own family, including his son Absalom's rebellion.

2 Samuel 7:16

Solomon's reign and the building of the temple, the split of the kingdom after his death, and the prophet Elijah's struggle against King Ahab.

Solomon begins with famous wisdom and ends with hundreds of foreign wives and their gods. After him the kingdom divides into Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The book judges every king by one question: did he stay faithful to the LORD? Most did not.

1 Kings 11:11

The long decline of both kingdoms, ending with Israel's destruction by Assyria and Judah's by Babylon.

It opens with Elijah taken up in a whirlwind and the ministry of his successor Elisha. A few good kings, especially Hezekiah and Josiah, try to turn Judah back, but it is not enough. The book ends in exile, with one small note of hope: the captive king Jehoiachin released from prison and given a place at the Babylonian king's table.

2 Kings 17:7

They retell Israel's history from Adam to the end of the exile, written for the Jews who had returned home and focused on David, the temple, and worship.

Samuel and Kings explain why the exile happened. Chronicles, written later, asks what the returned community should hold on to. So it leaves out most of the northern kingdom and much of David's scandal, and spends its time on the temple and the line of David. In the Hebrew Bible it is the very last book, ending with Cyrus telling the Jews to go up to Jerusalem.

2 Chronicles 36:23

The first Jews returning from exile, rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, and, decades later, the priest Ezra coming to teach them the law.

The rebuilding meets opposition from neighbouring peoples and stalls for years before it is finished. Ezra arrives around 458 BC and is dismayed to find the community drifting from the law, especially through marriages with the surrounding peoples. The book is about a small, fragile community trying to be God's people again.

Ezra 7:10

Nehemiah, a Jewish official at the Persian court, returning to Jerusalem to rebuild its ruined walls and reform the community.

He hears that the walls are still broken down, gets permission from the Persian king, and organises the rebuilding despite threats and ridicule. The wall is finished in fifty-two days. Ezra then reads the law aloud to the gathered people, who weep and renew the covenant. In the Hebrew Bible, Ezra and Nehemiah are one book.

Nehemiah 6:15

A Jewish woman who becomes queen of Persia and risks her life to stop a royal official, Haman, from having every Jew in the empire killed.

The name of God never appears in the book, yet the plot turns on a string of well-timed coincidences that the reader is meant to notice. Her cousin Mordecai tells her she may have come to her position "for such a time as this". The Jewish festival of Purim celebrates the deliverance.

Esther 4:14