There’s something unusual about how the Old Testament ends.
Not in our English Bible—but in the way the Scriptures were arranged in the Hebrew tradition. The final words come from 2 Chronicles, and they don’t sound like an ending at all:
“Who is there among you of all his people? The LORD his God be with him, and let him go up.”
Those words are spoken by Cyrus the Great, the king who allowed Israel to return from captivity.
But instead of wrapping everything up neatly, the text leaves us standing at the edge of something unfinished.
An Ending That Feels Like a Beginning
Israel had gone into exile because of disobedience. Now, by God’s mercy, a door had opened.
“Go up.”
Go back to the land.
Go rebuild the temple.
Go restore what was lost.
But if you keep reading the story through Ezra and Nehemiah, something becomes clear:
They returned… but not fully.
They rebuilt… but not completely.
They resumed worship… but something was still missing.
The deeper restoration—the kind the prophets spoke about—had not yet come.
So the Old Testament, in this order, doesn’t close the story.
It leaves it open.
A Long Silence… Then a Voice
Centuries pass.
No new prophets. No new writings. Just expectation.
Then the New Testament opens with the words of Gospel of Matthew:
“The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David…”
Matthew doesn’t begin with an explanation—he begins with a declaration.
The King has come.
From “Go Up” to “He Has Come”
If you hold these two moments together, a pattern starts to emerge:
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Chronicles ends with a call to return
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Matthew begins with the arrival of the King
Chronicles points people back to a physical land and a physical temple.
Matthew points to a person.
What the return from exile could not fully accomplish, Jesus comes to fulfill.
The restoration Israel longed for wasn’t just about geography—it was about redemption.
The Witness of an Unfinished Story
In that sense, Chronicles becomes a kind of “character witness.”
Not by telling us everything—but by leaving something unresolved.
It testifies that:
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God keeps His promises (they returned)
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But the promise was always pointing beyond itself
The command “go up” was real and necessary.
But it wasn’t the end of the story.
Why This Matters
It’s easy to read the Bible as a collection of completed moments—finished stories neatly tied together.
But this ending reminds us:
God’s work often moves forward in stages. As it states in Ephesians 3:10.."the manifold wisdom of God..."
What looks complete in one generation may only be preparation for the next.
And sometimes, the most powerful testimony isn’t in what is finished…
…but in what is still waiting to be fulfilled.
A Final Thought
The Old Testament closes with an invitation:
“Let him go up.”
The New Testament opens with an answer:
Jesus Christ has come.
The story didn’t restart—it continued.
And the One who arrived is the fulfillment of everything that was left unfinished.
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