Timeline

Light, land and living things spoken into being, and the seventh day set apart.

Genesis 1-2

Eden is closed, and the first promise of a deliverer is spoken.

Genesis 3

Rain for forty days; the ark grounds on Ararat and a bow is set in the cloud.

Genesis 6-9

One tongue becomes many, and the nations spread out over the earth.

Genesis 11

Leave your country, and take a promise of land, of seed, and of blessing for all families.

Genesis 12

Abraham bargains for the city, and Lot is pulled out of it before dawn.

Genesis 19

The promise arrives a lifetime late, and she laughs at the sound of it.

Genesis 21

Three days to Moriah, a knife raised, and a ram caught in the thicket.

Genesis 22

A stone for a pillow, a stair full of angels, and a promise repeated to a fugitive.

Genesis 28

A night of wrestling at the Jabbok leaves him with a new name and a limp.

Genesis 32

A coat, a pit, and twenty pieces of silver set the family on the road to Goshen.

Genesis 37

Seven full years stored against seven empty ones, and the brothers arrive to buy grain.

Genesis 41

A shepherd turns aside at a fire that does not consume, and is sent back to Egypt.

Exodus 3

Blood on the doorposts, bread without leaven, and a nation walks out between the waters.

Exodus 12

Thunder on the mountain, ten words on stone, and a people bound by covenant.

Exodus 19-20

While the covenant is still being given it is already broken at the foot of the mountain.

Exodus 32

Ten men see giants and two see a country, and the whole generation follows the ten.

Numbers 13

Manna, water from rock, and a generation that dies within sight of the promise.

Numbers 14

He sees the land from Nebo and is buried in a valley no one has found.

Deuteronomy 34

The river stands in a heap, and the first city of the land comes down without a siege.

Joshua 3-6

A cycle repeats for three centuries: the people forget, an enemy comes, a deliverer is raised.

Judges 2

A prophetess judging under a palm sends an army against nine hundred iron chariots.

Judges 4

An army is cut down to three hundred so the victory can belong to no one else.

Judges 7

A foreign widow gleans in a field and ends up in the line of David.

Ruth 2

Strength kept by a vow and lost with a haircut, spent at last on a temple of Dagon.

Judges 16

A boy sleeping by the ark hears his name three times and answers on the third.

1 Samuel 3

Israel carries the ark into battle as a charm, and loses it along with thirty thousand men.

1 Samuel 4

The people ask for a king like the nations, and are warned exactly what one will cost.

1 Samuel 9-10

A shepherd refuses the armour he cannot walk in and goes down with five stones.

1 Samuel 17

Hebron first, then Jerusalem taken and made a capital, and the ark brought up dancing.

2 Samuel 5-6

Offered anything, a young king asks for a listening heart to judge a people too many to count.

1 Kings 3

Seven years of cedar and gold, and a cloud fills the house so the priests cannot stand.

1 Kings 6-8

A son answers a request for relief with a threat, and ten tribes walk away for good.

1 Kings 12

Two altars, one of them soaked, and a whole day of silence from the other side.

1 Kings 18

A chariot of fire, a cloak falling, and a double portion asked for and given.

2 Kings 2

A prophet runs from a mission to an enemy city, and is angriest when it works.

Jonah 1

A throne, a cry of holy three times over, and a coal from the altar.

Isaiah 6

After three years of siege the northern kingdom ends, and its people are resettled far away.

2 Kings 17

Sennacherib takes every fortified city of Judah and does not take Jerusalem.

2 Kings 18-19

A book turns up during repairs, and a king tears his clothes at what it says.

2 Kings 22-23

Eighteen months of siege end with the walls broken, the house burned and the people carried off.

2 Kings 25

Among the deported, a priest with no temple sees wheels, living creatures and a throne.

Ezekiel 1

A law written so it cannot be repealed, and a window left open toward Jerusalem anyway.

Daniel 6

A Persian king orders the house in Jerusalem rebuilt and sends back what was taken from it.

Ezra 1

The old men who remembered the first house wept, and no one could tell the weeping from the shouting.

Ezra 6

An unsummoned queen walks into a throne room where that is punishable by death.

Esther 5

From morning until midday, in the open street, a people hears its own book read aloud.

Nehemiah 8

Fifty-two days of building with a trowel in one hand and a weapon in the other.

Nehemiah 6

The last prophet promises Elijah, and the page goes quiet.

Malachi 4

Wind, fire and a crowd of pilgrims who each hear their own language spoken back to them.

Acts 2

The first to die for the name, praying for the crowd, with a young Saul minding the coats.

Acts 7

A light at noon, a question with his own name in it, and three days without sight.

Acts 9

A vision of a sheet lowered from heaven undoes a distinction Peter had kept all his life.

Acts 10

The question is whether a gentile must first become a Jew, and the answer is no.

Acts 15

Three journeys across the empire, and most of the New Testament written along the way.

Acts 13-20

Rome ends the revolt, the second house burns, and the sacrifices stop for good.

Luke 21

An exile on a small island is told to write what he sees to seven churches on the mainland.

Revelation 1