One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” Luke 11:1 NIV Teach us – The disciples were Jewish, through and through. They had been praying in the synagogue and in their homes since they were…
For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. 1 Thessalonians 2:13 NASB Accepted – This verse raises several important questions: 1) Why did…
a person who touches any such shall be unclean until evening, and shall not eat of the holy gifts unless he has bathed his body in water. Leviticus 22:6 Until – Eve Levavi Feinstein points out that the biblical idea of pollution (ritual and moral) is quite similar to our present idea of environmental pollution. She writes:…
For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; 1 Thessalonians 4:3 NASB Sexual immorality – As you know, there are two kinds of impurity in the Bible. The first is ritual impurity. All kinds of ordinary human conditions can be the cause of ritual impurity, like seminal emissions…
I know it’s Shabbat, but I thought you might like to see this beautiful work on such a lovely day.
But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; Acts 9:15 NASB Gentiles – Footnotes matter. So often we find information in those tiny print words at the bottom of the page that makes all the difference in the…
Somewhere in most churches in Italy (and maybe in all of Europe) you will find something like this. Since this depiction has been part of the church for centuries, you can well imagine why Heschel characterized Christianity as a religion of death rather than life.
When both are blown, all the congregation shall gather themselves to you at the doorway of the tent of meeting. Numbers 10:3 NASB Congregation – What connects the elect of the Lord to the feasts, the place of atonement, the marriage of YHVH to Israel, the assembly of the apostolic times and the worshipping community? …
Experiencing the power of pagan worship in other parts of the world makes it possible to appreciate just how difficult it was for Paul and the disciples to speak about the one true God in the first century Roman Empire. The same family-civil cult continues today, as evidenced by this photo I took just a…
Sarah laughed ]to herself, saying, “After I have become old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” Genesis 18:12 NASB Pleasure – By this time you know the definition of hapax legomenon. You also know that such words are extremely difficult to translate. Context helps. Guesswork is good. But in the end, we don’t…
