=5. The books of the Old Testament= were named in the order of their importance in Jewish estimation, and not as we would name them to-day in the order of their position in the single volume of our Bibles. The books of the Law always took precedence in the order, then the Prophets, and after them the Psalms, as three general divisions, and this statement included all, Luke 24:44. That some of the books were kept in separate rolls to a very late period is evident even in the time of Christ, for when he appeared in the synagogue at Nazareth only the roll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him, and from this he read, Luke 4:17.
=6. But in the enumeration= of the books individually, except in the case of the five “books of the Law,” which, as we have said, have never been known otherwise than in one volume, it is evident that some variations of the exact order have occurred. These variations had their origin in the Septuagint[137] translation, wherein the translators not only changed the Hebrew order, but the Hebrew names of some, and even divided some of the books, making two or more out of one.
=7. As an illustration of the changes in names= of the books, the translators gave the Greek names: GENESIS, “the beginning;” EXODUS, “the going out;” LEVITICUS, “concerning Levitical law;” NUMBERS (of Latin derivation), because the book contains the census of the tribes or numbers;[138] DEUTERONOMY, the Greek for “the repeated law,” because of the repetition of the law.
=8. The Jews used the initial Hebrew words= of each book in the Pentateuch for its name; but this does not occur afterwards. The books of Samuel were one with the older Jews, and so were the books of Kings; but the Greek translators made them the first and second books of the “kingdoms,” and the books of Kings came in course as the third and fourth books, and this is the reason for the additions to the titles in our English Bibles, “otherwise called the first book, the second book, etc., of Kings.”
=9. By this term= is meant the end of that time whose history is included in the latest of the Old Testament books. Some of these books contain histories which extend to a period nearer the Christian era than do the histories of others, as in the case of the books of the Chronicles, of Esther, of Ezra, and Nehemiah.