Image: In 1946, Norman Rockwell produced this painting for the Saturday Evening Post following his visit to a one-room schoolhouse in Carroll County, Georgia.
My son’s first-grade class learned two things “by heart.” They learned to sing the song of the U.S. presidents, and they used a sort of rhythmic chant to help them learn to recite the second chapter of Luke, the popular “Christmas story.” I remember using one memory trick when I was in college—a Greek professor taught us to sing the Greek alphabet using the same alphabet song we had all learned as English-speaking children. (I cannot get past Epsilon thirty years later.) Nevertheless, singing and poetry are well-known memory tricks. Another involves landmarks and pictures. In fact, before a trip to New York, I found it helpful to memorize the landmarks on a map of Manhattan.
“Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahaleel, Jered, Enoch, Methusaleh, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The sons of Japheth … the sons of Ham … the sons of Shem …” 1 Chronicles 1:1-17.
The book of First Chronicles begins with a genealogical record that runs for nine chapters! NINE CHAPTERS. Why? Because Israel had been captured and the people were going into captivity in Babylon for what Jeremiah prophesied would be seventy years. When their unborn descendants returned to Israel, they would need a detailed record to prove which of them were Israelites, to which tribe they belonged, and whether they were qualified to serve as priests.
But why does the Bible pass such records down to us? What can these long, boring lists of difficult-to-read names teach us today? Here are seven lessons from genealogies; the first six I have discussed previously:
- Biblical genealogies prove that character traits can be passed down: they run in families.
- Genealogies indicate that in God’s eyes, the birth of a child is the birth of a lineage—not just a single person.
- Genealogies prove no man is an island. We are connected.
- Genealogies prove God loves “the little people.”
- Biblical genealogies defeat racism, proving that we are all the human race.
- Genealogies indicate that God values family trees and our ancestral heritage more than we do. (It means something or it would not be in the Bible!)
- Finally, memorizing Biblical genealogies provides a mental framework on which to hang additional information.
The children growing up in Biblical Israel would have memorized parts of these genealogies the way the song of the U.S. presidents was memorized by my son and his first-grade friends. Such memorized lists then become a frame from which to hang future information.
Without that mental structure, facts just float around in your head never connecting to other facts in a meaningful way. For example, you must know something of the map of Israel if you are going to understand the Bible. You have to know the difference between the relatively small Sea of Galilee (a freshwater lake) and the Mediterranean Sea—which is basically the ocean. You should know that the Jordan is a small river bisecting the nation from north to south, and that Bethlehem is a small village just a short walk from Jerusalem. Similarly, you need some sense of history and the timeline. The genealogies provide that. They provide landmarks to help you chart the history of the nation.
Dear God, help us to do a better job studying the Bible. Show us how to study the broad strokes: genealogies, the order of the kings and which kings were heroes and which were evil, the Divided Kingdom and the captivity and occupation periods. And God, give us an interest in studying the maps of the Holy land. Thank you for the amazing resources available to us today. May we use them in a way that honors You through our hard work.
AΩ.
Household Words: 