Read Esther chapter 2, verses 15 to 17, where Esther is chosen as queen instead of Vashti, who had made the

king angry by her disobedience.

Job is probably the oldest book in the Bible. It is not about the Jews, but about one man - Job, and the terrible

things that happened to him.

First of all Job's cattle and camels were taken from him, and his sheep and servants killed. Then his sons and

daughters were killed. Finally Job himself became very ill. The book shows us that Satan, the great enemy of God,

was the cause of all this trouble.

Job's friends talked about why these things had happened to Job, but were not able to give the right answer.

They could not see that Satan was being allowed to test Job's trust in God.

Job cried out to God in his trouble, and God heard him. Job became well again, and God gave him sheep,

camels and cattle, far more than he had before. God also gave Job sons and daughters.

Job is known for his patience. Terrible things happened to him, but in spite of it all he still trusted in God. He

knew about the Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer. Read chapter 19, verses 23 to 26.

This book can be a lesson to us. We do not know what may happen to us or what we may have to go through,

but we can be like Job and trust in God. The Lord Jesus is our Redeemer too, and so we need not be afraid of

anything. We have a promise in the New Testament that all things will come out well in the end, as they did with

Job. You can read the promise in Romans chapter 8, verse 28, but notice that it is for them that love God.

We have already seen that psalms means songs. The Psalms were used by the Jews at different times, in the

somewhat similar way in which people sing hymns in church today. The Lord Jesus and His disciples sang a psalm

on the night when He ate that last supper with them, just before He was crucified.

Nearly half of the psalms have the name of David, and were either written by him or for him.

Psalm 119 is an interesting one. Open your Bible and look at it. You will see that it is very long, and is divided

into parts. Each part is headed by a strange name. Look at the first part, the name is ALEPH. Then we have BETH,

then GIMEL. These strange names are the Jewish alphabet. ALEPH is the name of the first letter, BETH the second,

and so on. There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, so the psalm is divided into 22 parts.

Some of the psalms are prophecies. They told of things that would happen to the Lord Jesus on the day He died.

Read Psalm 22, verses 1 to 18, and then read Matthew chapter 27, verses 35 to 46. See if you can find the three

places in the psalm which are referred to in Matthew.

The first verse in this book tells us with whom the Proverbs are associated. They were either written for

Solomon or by him. Those he wrote himself would be the result of what he learnt as king of the Jews; the others

were written to help him. Remember that God caused all of them to be written, as with all parts of the Bible.

Although written so many years ago, they can still help us today in the way that we live. Read Proverbs chapter 13,

verse 1. This verse if written today would probably look like this:

`A sensible son listens to what his father says, but one who would laugh at his father, does not listen'.

This book is also to do with Solomon the king. He wrote it after he had tried all that the world had to offer.

Read chapter 1, verses 12 to 14, where he set his mind to find out about all things done in the world, and how,