But Ruth replied, “Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” Ruth 1:16 I will go – “From a cultural perspective, Ruth has chosen death…
Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son Genesis 22:10 NASB Knife – The ma’akelet is a special kind of knife – a knife used to slaughter sacrifices. In the Old Testament, it describes the instrument used to cut a person into pieces (Judges 19:29) and to prepare animals for…
“Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the LORD do to me if anything but death parts me from you.” Ruth 1:17 NJPS Parts . . from – When we read Scripture, we must read with an awareness of linguistic connections. Scripture is like those word…
Abraham breathed his last and died in a ripe old age, an old man and satisfied with life; and he was gathered to his people. Genesis 25:8 NASB Satisfied with life – Let’s talk about death. In particular, let’s talk about the death of Abraham. Abraham is the father of our faith. Paul holds him…
“I am El Shaddai. Walk in My ways and be blameless.” Genesis 17:1 (JPS commentary on Genesis) El Shaddai – Certainly you realize that God’s personal name, revealed in Exodus 4, has been vocally lost. Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey are the consonants of that name, but the actual vocalization of this name disappeared in the Jewish reticence to…
Sometimes I think we get the idea that God leaves us in the dark on purpose. We have the bump-into-things view of faith, like walking through a room with the lights off. This morning my wife and I read our devotional page from Oswald Chambers’ book. We talked about our current situation. Nothing seems to…
And it happened as the sun was setting and a deep sleep fell on Abram, and behold, a terror of great darkness falling on him Genesis 15:12 Deep Sleep – One of the principles of Hebraic interpretation is connecting thoughts based on similar words. When a word appears only a few times in Scripture, the…
“You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” James 2:24 Thursday night, 7 PM. The weekly Bible study at our home. We’re making our way through Genesis, one verse at a time. We read the passage where God establishes the covenant with Abram. We followed the reference as it…
Have you brushed up against that moment when you knew that everything was at risk? When you knew that to take a step of obedience would forever alter your connection to God? That moment when you knew that what was most precious to you had to be left behind if your were to seek Him…
“God has made a joke of me” Genesis 21:6 I don’t think we know the people of the Bible very well. We are the victims of years of watered-down teaching. The stories of the lives of our spiritual ancestors have been “sanctified”. We know the triumphs of their faith, but we have little appreciation for…
