From The Etymologies VI:i
. . .
3. The Hebrews take the Old
Testament, with Ezra as its redactor, as consisting of twenty-two books,
corresponding to the number of letters in their alphabet. They divide these
books into three classes: Law, Prophets, and Sacred Writings. 4. The first
class, Law (Lex), is taken as being five books: of these the first is
Bresith,1 which is Genesis; second Veelle Semoth, which is Exodus; third Vaiicra,
which is Leviticus; fourth Vaiedabber, which is Numbers; fifth Elleaddebarim,
which is Deuteronomy. 5. These are the five books of Moses, which the Hebrews call
Torah (Thora), and Latin speakers call the Law. That which was given
through Moses is properly called the Law.
6. The second class is of
Prophets (Propheta), in which are contained eight books, of which the
first is Josua Benun, called Iesu Nave in Latin (i.e. the book of Joshua
‘ben Nun,’ the son of Nun). The second is Sophtim, which is Judges; third
Samuel, which is First Kings; fourth Malachim, which is Second Kings; fifth
Isaiah; sixth Jeremiah; seventh Ezekiel; eighth Thereazar, which is called the
Twelve Prophets, whose books are taken as one because they have been joined
together since they are short.
7. The third class is of Sacred Writings
(Hagiographa), that is, of ‘those writing about holy things’ (sacra scribens;
cf αγιος “holy”; φραγειν, “write”), in which there are nine books: first Job;
second the Psalter; third Masloth, which is the Proverbs of Solomon; fourth
Coheleth, which is Ecclesiastes; fifth Sir hassirim, which is the Song of
Songs; sixth Daniel; seventh Dibre haiamim, which means ‘words of the days’ (verba
dierum), that is Paralipomenon (i.e. Chronicles); eighth Ezra; ninth
Esther.
All together these books – five,
eight, and nine – make up the twenty-two as was reckoned above. 8. Some add
Ruth and Cinoth, which in Latin is the Lamentations (Lamentatio) of
Jeremiah, to the Sacred Writings, and make twenty-four books of the Old
Testament, corresponding to the twenty-four Elders who stand present before the
face of God (Apocalypse 4:4, etc.).
9. We also have a fourth class:
those books of the Old Testament that are not in the Hebrew canon. Of these the
first is the Book of Wisdom, the second Ecclesiasticus; the third Tobit; the
fourth Judith; the fifth and sixth, the books of Maccabees. The Jews hold these
separate among the apocrypha (apocrypha), but the Church of Christ
honors and proclaims them among the divine books. (The Etymologies of
Isidore of Seville [trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and
Oliver Berghof; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 135, emphasis in
bold added)