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Why do most Protestant Old Testaments have 39 books when the Hebrew Bible has 24?

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Hebrew Bible Portion of the Aleppo Codex, a manuscript of the Hebrew Bible written in the Hebrew language in the 10th century ce; in the Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

The difference in book counts between the Hebrew Bible and the Protestant Old Testament arises primarily from how the texts are organized and subdivided, rather than a difference in the underlying content.1

The Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, contains 24 books, reflecting the number of scrolls on which these works were traditionally written. In contrast, most Protestant Old Testaments contain 39 books because they follow the organizational structure of the Septuagint, which separates several original Hebrew texts into multiple parts:12

Subdivision of Books: Protestant Bibles divide Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles into two parts each (e.g., I and II Samuel, I and II Kings).13
Minor Prophets: While the Hebrew Bible groups the 12 Minor Prophets into a single book, Protestant Bibles treat them as 12 separate books.13
Ezra-Nehemiah: Protestant Bibles separate the single Hebrew book of Ezra-Nehemiah into two distinct books.1

While some other Christian traditions include additional texts known as the Apocrypha, most Protestant churches consider these noncanonical, maintaining a canon that aligns with the content of the Hebrew Bible but utilizes a different structural arrangement.12