Chronicles is the history of Israel written for the Judean exiles who get to return to the land of Israel after seventy years.

The first half of Chronicles is Israel’s history from Adam up through David. The second half will go up to the command to let the Jews return to the land of Israel to rebuild the temple.

We start with lineages. These can be hard for us to read just for the reason we can’t pronounce the names, but it’s also hard if we can’t follow who’s who.

Online, you can hear a testimony of a Jewish man who came to Christ because he finally opened a New Testament and it started with a lineage showing Jesus was Jewish, a son of David, a son of Abraham. He had been taught the Bible was an anti-Jew book! The lineage showed him Jesus was a Jew and it caused him to realize that he hadn’t been told the truth. He pursued the truth until he found Jesus and realized the most Jewish thing in the world was believing in Jesus.

We don’t get much else in the chapter, but there are a few tidbits. We get to see the development of who will become the people groups that will war with Israel. With one name we get the note: from whom the Philistines came.

We see enemies on the same list, having the same ancestors at one point along the line.

Then we get these two lines. “The sons of Abraham: Isaac and Ishmael,” and “Abraham fathered Isaac.”

While Ishmael was certainly Abraham’s pride and joy for the first dozen years of his life, there is a difference between having a son and being a father. Abraham fathered Isaac.

Ishmael and Isaac were both taught there is one true God. Both got to know the one, true God as the God who sees and provides.

Only one got to know the God of covenant promise, the God of mercy, the God of love. Only one went out into the world knowing that he was a child of the Promise, chosen by the Most High God that He would be their God and that Isaac’s people would be God’s people. Isaac was chosen to pass on knowledge of the God who called his father Abraham to follow Him.

It was Isaac that Abraham bound to offer as a sacrifice, demonstrating what it meant to believe God.

It was Isaac who inherited all God had given Abraham. Abraham was a father to Isaac.