OUR COUNTRY Bears'Den: Writers in the Bible

Some Old Testament writers did not aim to be historical at all. Instead, they taught through works of art like poetry and literature. The Psalms and the Proverbs fit in this category. And then there are the precious words of prophets, such as Isaiah and Malachi, who spoke the word of God to ancient Israel—and, through the miracle of the Bible, still speak to us today.

Did all of these prophets, poets, and compilers know that their words would be read by people all over the world thousands of years later? We don’t know. But we marvel that this is exactly what has happened. Nations rose and fell, cities were conquered, kings lived and died, but the Old Testament outlasted them all, from generation to generation, from scribe to scribe, from translation to translation. Of course some things were lost or modified, and yet somehow so much was miraculously preserved.