The Israelites had been living for 400 years as slaves to the Pharaohs in Egypt. Through a series of miraculous events, they have now been set free, and are on their way to the land God promised to give their nation.
Two men have been sent by Joshua to secretly check out the city of Jericho to get a feel for what the Israelites would face when they got there. Unfortunately, either they weren’t very good at covert operations, or they just stood out as “not one of us,” and the king of Jericho found out about them. He sent soldiers to the house of Rahab, where he had been told the men were staying.
We find the story of Tamar in Genesis 38. As the chapter opens, Jacob’s son Judah has married a Canaanite woman named Bath-shua, with whom he had three sons, Er, Onan and Shelah. Er, the oldest son, married a Canaanite woman named Tamar, but he died before they had any children. Genesis 38:7 explains, “But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death.” The exact nature of his wickedness is not given.
Grasping the literary structure of Genesis 2 and seeing how it builds upon the structure of Genesis 1 is key to understanding Moses’ account of creation. With this, I am much indebted to a journal article by Mark Futato that first brought this to my attention.
We said in a separate article that God revealed His name to Moses as YHWH. Now, please understand that I am not a Greek or Hebrew scholar, and I certainly don’t have a seminary education, so I asked Jeff Pallansch, one of my coworkers, to read and comment on this article and help me navigate these rather turbulent waters.
In Exodus 3:13-15 God identified Himself to Moses as YHWH (pronounced Yahweh), and identified that as His “memorial name to all generations.” The root of this name is the Hebrew verb hayah, “to be”. This is the God who is—who He is now, who He has always been, and who He will always be.
I recently heard a minister say that if God doesn’t feel close to us, it’s our fault. Is this true? Not according to Job.
I beg your indulgence. One of the immense pleasures of my job is that I get to spend quality time every week simply reading books as I prepare to write articles for our website. (Yes, it’s a tough assignment!)
The first and short answer to the title question is no. In fact, the Bible tells us that God loves us (1 John 4:19). More on that later. But I’m…
In his delightful book The Ultimate Guide to the Names of God, Elmer Towns explains that “as each name of God is unfolded, a new source of strength is revealed…
