Chronicles–Maccabees

The historical books of the Old Testament recount the fortunes of the people of Israel beginning with the conquest of the Promised Land. The First Book of Chronicles gives the background of the chosen people of God and of the families that made up the 12 tribes; it records, too, the career of David. Second Chronicles begins with Solomon in all his glory and ends with Israel’s ignominious deportation to Babylon. Ezra through Nehemiah record the epic rebuilding of Jerusalem and its temple after the 70-year Babylonian exile. The final books, Maccabees, give vivid accounts of the Jewish experience at a time when Greek successors of Alexander the Great sought to stamp out all traces of the religion of Moses and to replace it with a cosmopolitan pagan ethic. This, the second of two volumes of “historical books” in the Navarre Bible edition, also contains the three picturesque narratives of Tobit, Judith, and Esther.