Studies, reading plans and every single day within them, alongside devotionals and articles. Search by title, book of the Bible, passage or topic.
Bible Memory collection
…both read these words as speaking of Jesus. Micah 5:2 Out of Bethlehem, small among the towns of Judah, comes one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origins are from of old. Matthew records the chief priests quoting this verse to Herod. Psalms 22:16-18 The psalmist describes pierced hands and…
Bible Memory verse
Out of Bethlehem, small among the towns of Judah, comes one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origins are from of old. Matthew records the chief priests quoting this verse to Herod. It shows prophecy that is specific enough to be checked, and it keeps Christmas tied to the Old Testament rather…
Chapter study
…after it, Psalm 24, is a coronation hymn asking who may ascend the hill of the Lord. Psalm 23 sits between abandonment and enthronement, which is exactly where most believers live. So the man writing about green…
Chapter study
…sacrifice begins here: a father, a son, a mountain, wood carried uphill, a substitute provided at the last moment, and a name for God that Israel never forgot. It also sits near the centre of the Bible's story of…
Chapter study
…beside a watercourse survived a season that killed everything on the hillside. To be told that the person who delights in the LORD's instruction is like such a tree was to be told where the supply of a durable life…
Reading plan
…names Bethlehem, one of the smallest and least significant towns in Judah, as the birthplace of the ruler who would shepherd Israel. God repeatedly chooses small, overlooked places to do his largest work. Jeremiah…
Bible study
…held a shepherd's staff and fled for his life across the wilderness of Judah, and it carries the weight of both experiences. In the Ancient Near East, 'shepherd' was a standard royal title. Kings of Egypt, Assyria and…
Dig Deeper
…the knife. Centuries later a Son carried the wood of a cross up a hill outside Jerusalem, and no ram appeared. Peter writes that believers are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and…
Reading plan
…not sin against him. Psalm 121 Help The psalmist lifts his eyes to the hills and asks where his help will come from, then answers his own question: from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. The size of the creator is…
Verse study
…slaughter in Isaiah 53:7. Then John the Baptist, standing in the same country, says behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world. Genesis 22:8 is a promise waiting a very long time for its noun.…
Verse study
…arranges the conditions in which rest becomes possible. Green in a dry country Judean pasture is not English meadow. Deshe is the tender growth that follows the rains, found in patches, and a shepherd's competence was…
Verse study
…a mountain and a substitute is provided at the last moment. On another hill nearby, no substitute was provided, because by then the substitute was the Son. Substitution is not an abstract doctrine. It means that the…
Verse study
…Mount Moriah, the same ridge. Psalm 121:1 I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence comes my help. Matthew 6:32 Your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. Philippians 4:19 My God shall…
Verse study
…be heard as 'deepest darkness.' Gei is a ravine, a narrow cut in the hills where a predator can wait unseen. The pronoun turns Verses 1 to 3 are all third person: He makes me lie down, He leads me, He restores my soul.…
52 Week Journey
…sample of prophetic voices in their own settings: a shepherd sent from Judah to confront the north, a priest called while still a young man, a preacher who ran from his commission, and others besides. It asks what made…
52 Week Journey
…“Please, Yahweh, wasn’t this what I said when I was still in my own country? Therefore I hurried to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness,…
Devotional
…who hear it. Amen. Jeremiah ministered through the final decades of Judah before the Babylonian exile, warning kings who mostly ignored him and watching the very disaster he had said would come eventually arrive. His…
Devotional
…be their God, and they shall be my people. WEB Jeremiah writes after Judah's covenant unfaithfulness has led to the exile he prophesied. In the middle of that judgment, he announces a covenant that will not be broken…
Devotional
…Israel.'" WEB Amaziah, a priest at Bethel, tries to send Amos back to Judah, treating prophecy as a paid trade Amos should practice elsewhere. Amos answers by describing exactly what he was before the call: a herdsman,…
Devotional
…on, and centuries later another Son carries His own wood up a different hill. Genesis 22 does not claim to be a direct prophecy of the cross, but the parallel has struck readers of both accounts for good reason.
Devotional
…and lifted up, still seated on the throne regardless of who sits on Judah's. The message Isaiah is given to carry, in verses 9-10, is a hard one: preach to a people who will hear but not understand. His commission is…
Devotional
…“Please, Yahweh, wasn’t this what I said when I was still in my own country? Therefore I hurried to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness,…
Devotional
…patriarchs confessed they were strangers and pilgrims, seeking a better country, a heavenly one. What in your daily loyalties or priorities reflects citizenship in heaven more than citizenship in the world you can see?…
Devotional
…will bruise your head. Centuries of narrower promises, to Abraham, to Judah, to David, will keep narrowing this seed until one man is named. The wound goes both ways, a bruised heel and a crushed head, and Scripture…
Devotional
…treating the father as already dead. Feeding pigs in a Gentile country compounds the shame, since pigs were unclean under the law. Luke's audience would have heard how far this son had fallen before the story ever…
Devotional
…it to its end. In verse 5 He is announced as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and in verse 6 John turns and sees a Lamb as it had been slain. That is the whole New Testament portrait of Christ in one turn of the head:…
Reading plan day
The psalmist lifts his eyes to the hills and asks where his help will come from, then answers his own question: from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. The size of the creator is the ground of the psalm's confidence.…
Reading plan day
Wise men from a foreign country travel a great distance to worship Jesus and bring him costly gifts, while King Herod, the powerful ruler close by, is troubled and threatened by the news. Even from birth, Jesus divides…
Reading plan day
…names Bethlehem, one of the smallest and least significant towns in Judah, as the birthplace of the ruler who would shepherd Israel. God repeatedly chooses small, overlooked places to do his largest work. Micah 5:2 Be…
Reading plan day
…our righteousness. This is a promise of a king unlike the failed kings Judah had known. Jeremiah 23:6 Do one just thing that costs you. Righteous king
Biblical concept
…it of God himself, forsaken for broken cisterns. consensus In the dry hill country a flowing spring meant life, while a cracked cistern meant slow loss of stored water. This is the ordinary background to Jeremiah's…
Biblical concept
…vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are His pleasant planting (Isaiah 5:7). God planted, protected and waited, and what came up was worthless fruit. Because the picture is about…
Place in Scripture
…in Moriah, Moses receives the law on Sinai, the temple is built on a hill in Jerusalem, Jesus teaches, is transfigured, prays and is crucified on rising ground, and the last vision of the city comes from a great high…
Biblical concept
…of the throne is their shepherd (Revelation 7:17). A shepherd was not a countryside figure in a painting. He was a labourer who lived with animals, often the youngest son of the household or a hired man, and the work…
Place in Scripture
…of no resources (Revelation 12:6). Much of the land east and south of Judah is dry steppe and desert. The Judean wilderness drops from the ridge near Jerusalem to the Dead Sea in a few miles, so a person could leave a…
Biblical concept
…promised in Abraham's line (Genesis 17:6) and the sceptre is given to Judah (Genesis 49:10). Judges No king, and everyone doing what is right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25). Kingdom Saul, David and Solomon, then a…
Biblical concept
…Matthew 5:14 You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. When Jesus stands in the temple courts and says I am the light of the world, he is making a claim about himself using an image…
Biblical concept
…sets a problem the Old Testament never solves. Israel's kings came from Judah and its priests from Levi, and the two could not be the same man. Uzziah tried and was struck with leprosy (2 Chronicles 26:16-21). Yet the…
Biblical concept
…A vineyard was a long investment. Vines were planted on terraced hillsides, and years passed between planting and a real harvest, so a vineyard represented a family's patience as much as its wealth. The work was…
Bible question
…The prophet Micah, an eighth century BC prophet from a small town in Judah The people of Judah, who were bringing elaborate sacrifices while neglecting justice and mercy in their daily dealings Micah answers a…
Bible question
…God did not spare his own Son (Romans 8:32). Isaac walked down the hill because Christ would one day walk up it. Israel on the night of Passover Exodus 12:12-13 Every household in Egypt was under the same judgment, and…
Bible question
…not be afraid, so both phrases lose their force. Isaiah, prophesying to Judah a people facing exile and the collapse of everything settled the comfort section of Isaiah, chapters 40 to 55, spoken to a nation about to…
Bible question
…the land in his lifetime, and Hebrews says he was looking for a better country. God calls himself unashamed to be their God. Living as a stranger here is not a failure of faith but its mark. Hope for heaven makes a…
Bible question
…Abraham, called out with no map Hebrews 11:8-12 He left his country not knowing where he was going, and lived in tents in the land he had been promised, dying without receiving most of it. God kept every promise, though…
Bible question
…first to them of Damascus, at Jerusalem, and throughout all the country of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance. Paul summarises his whole preaching…
Bible question
…so it should not be argued as though it did. Mark 6:3 James, Joses, Judah and Simon named, with sisters mentioned. John 7:5 His brothers did not believe in him during his ministry. Galatians 1:19 James called the Lord's…
Bible question
…edited out of Scripture. Habakkuk wrote during the final decades before Judah's exile to Babylon, watching violence and injustice go unpunished and asking God directly why he was silent about it. Job's speeches come…
The Sunday Study
Verse-by-verse teaching with historical context, and a prayer to close. Nothing else in the email.