How to Understand Old Testament Books That Feel Confusing

Most people who give up on reading the Bible through give up in the Old Testament, usually somewhere in the middle of the law or the prophets.

The books are not the problem. Reading them with no context is the problem, and context is easier to get than it sounds. Psalm 119:130 promises that the entrance of your words gives light, and gives understanding to the simple. Entrance is the word doing the work. The light comes as the words go in, not after you have qualified to receive them.

Ask What Kind of Book It Is

Before the first verse, find out whether you are holding history, law, poetry, prophecy or wisdom. They ask completely different things of a reader.

Leviticus read as a devotional will feel like nothing. Read as the manual for how a people lived close to a holy God, it becomes coherent, and occasionally moving.

One paragraph in a study Bible introduction gives you this. Read the introduction before the book, every time.

Find Out Where It Sits in the Story

The prophets are the hardest books to place, and they become far clearer when you know which king was reigning and whether the exile had happened yet.

Read the historical account alongside the prophet. Isaiah beside 2 Kings, Jeremiah beside the fall of Jerusalem, Haggai beside Ezra. Suddenly the accusations are about something specific.

A single page timeline taped inside the back cover of your Bible does more for this than any amount of reading about it. Kings on one side, prophets underneath, the exile marked in the middle.

Let Yourself Skim

Genealogies, tabernacle measurements and land allotments can be read quickly without guilt. They are records, and they were meant to function as records.

Slow down for the narrative and the speeches. Skimming the lists is what keeps you moving toward the parts that will feed you.

Read for God's Character

When a passage confuses you, ask what it shows about who God is rather than what it requires of you. This question works in nearly every chapter.

The strange laws about harvest edges left for the poor, the years of debt release, the cities of refuge. Each one is telling you something about the character of the one who required it.

Ask the same question of the hard commands rather than only the gentle ones. It is a fairer test, and it is where the answers tend to be least obvious and most worth having.

Sit With the Hard Parts

Some passages are genuinely difficult, and the honest response is to say so rather than to explain them away quickly.

Write the question down and keep reading. Many of them resolve later, and the ones that do not are better carried openly than pretended about.

Take them to someone rather than only to a search bar. A pastor or an older believer who has read the book several times will often hand you the one detail that unlocks it.

Where to Start

If the Old Testament feels closed to you, start with Ruth, then Jonah, then 1 Samuel. Short, narrative and full of people behaving recognizably.

Read Ruth this weekend. It takes twenty minutes and it will remind you why the rest is worth the work.