Bible Quiz
How Closely Do You Read Your Bible?
Prepared by J. Kenneth Eakins a board-certified pediatrician and professor of archaeology and Old Testament interpretation at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.
1. What was the name of the wife of Joseph, favorite son of Jacob?
2. When David was being pursued by King Saul, where did he leave his mother and father for safety?
3. Which prophet had a “secretary”?
4. How long did it take to rebuild the wall around the city of Jerusalem under the leadership of Nehemiah?
5. What book, now lost, contained the story of the sun standing still at Gibeon?
6. Which Hebrew king built the city of Samaria, capital of the northern kingdom of Israel?
7. Which book of the Old Testament has as its theme the destruction of Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire?
8. Which Prophet had a vision of the Lord holding a plumb line?
9. Which Hebrew king suffered from leprosy?
10. Saul, the first Hebrew king, spent his entire reign fighting against which enemy?
Answers
1. Asenath. When Joseph was elevated to a position of prominence in Egypt, he married Asenath, daughter of Poti-phera, an Egyptian priest. Asenath, bore Joseph two sons, after whom two of the twelve tribes of Israel were named.
“Joseph named the first-born Manasseh, meaning, ‘God has made me forget completely my hardship and my parental home.’ And the second he named Ephraim, meaning, ‘God has made me fertile in the land of my affliction’ ” (Genesis 41:51–52).
2. Moab. David had roots in Moab because one of his great-grandmothers, Ruth, was from Moab. When Ruth’s husband died, she and her husband’s mother, Naomi, were living in Moab. Naomi, upon hearing that the famine in her homeland, Judah, had ended, decided to return there. Ruth declared her loyalty to Naomi by telling her, “Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried” (Ruth 1:16–17).
The two traveled to Judah, and eventually Ruth married Naomi’s Judean kinsman, Boaz. From this union came Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David king of Israel (Ruth 4:13, 22; 1 Samuel 22:3).
3. Jeremiah. In the seventh century B.C. Jeremiah had a faithful servant named Baruch, son of Neriah. The Lord commanded Jeremiah: “ ‘Get a scroll and write upon it all the words that I have spoken to you—concerning Israel and all the nations…Perhaps when the House of Judah hear of all the disasters I intend to bring upon them, they will turn back from their wicked ways, and I will pardon their iniquity and their sin.’ So Jeremiah called Baruch son of Neriah; and Baruch wrote down in the scroll, at Jeremiah’s dictation, all the words which the Lord had spoken to him” (Jeremiah 36:2–4).
4. 52 days. The Babylonians had destroyed the wall with the rest of the city in 587 B.C. In 445 B.C. Nehemiah returned to Judah from Babylon and saw that the “walls of Jerusalem were broken down, and the gates were consumed by fire” (Nehemiah 2:13).
Nehemiah led his people to rebuild the wall in record time. “The wall was finished on the twenty-fifth of Elul, after fifty-two days. When all our enemies heard it, all the nations round about us were intimidated, and fell very low in their own estimation; they realized that this work had been accomplished by the help of our God” (Nehemiah 6:15–16).
5. The Book of Jasher. This is one of several books no longer in existence that are referred to in the Old Testament. Not only the story of the stationary sun (Joshua 10:12–14), but also David’s lament over the deaths of Saul and Jonathan (1 Samuel 1:18) is said to have been recorded in the Book of Jasher.
6. Omri. Samaria was the third and final capital of the northern kingdom of Israel (after Shechem and Tirzah). “In the thirty-first year of King Asa of Judah, Omri became king over Israel—for twelve years. He reigned in Tirzah six years. Then [about 870 B.C.] he bought the hill of Samaria from Shemer for two talents of silver, he built [a town] on the hill and named the town which he built Samaria, after Shemer, the owner of the hill (1 Kings 16:–24).
7. Nahum. Composed in vivid poetry, the Book of Nahum describes the Babylonian siege of Nineveh and the city’s well-deserved doom. “The sword will put an end to you; it will devour you like the grub…All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For who has not suffered from your constant malice?” (Nahum 3:15, 19).
8. Amos. A native of Tekoah, a small village in Judah, Amos was called about 760 B.C. to deliver a message of judgment against the northern kingdom of Israel. In one vision, Amos tells us he saw God standing on a wall with a plumb line in his hand. God asked, “ ‘What do you see, Amos?’ ‘A plumb line,’ I replied. And my lord declared ‘I am going to apply a plumb line to My people Israel; I will pardon them no more. The shrine of Isaac shall be laid waste, and the sanctuaries of Israel reduced to ruins; and I will turn upon the House of Jeroboam with the sword’ ” (Amos 7:7–9).
9. Uzziah (also known as Azariah). Uzziah was king of the southern kingdom of Judah for approximately 50 years during the eighth century B.C. His contracting the disease was interpreted as a judgment of God. “When he was strong, he grew so arrogant he acted corruptly: he trespassed against his God by entering the Temple of the Lord to offer incense on the incense altar” (2 Chronicles 26:16).
When the priests warned Uzziah that he was trespassing, he rebelled. “But as he got angry with the priests, leprosy broke out on his foreheard…King Uzziah was a leper until the day of his death” (2 Chronicles 26:19–21).
The word leprosy appears often in the Bible and is used to describe a variety of skin diseases.
10. The Philistines. “There was bitter war against the Philistines all the days of Saul” (1 Samuel 14:52).
Displaced from the Aegean region, the Philistines eventually settled down on the southern coast of Canaan in the early 12th century B.C. and competed with the Hebrews for control of the land. Saul had only limited success against this formidable enemy, but the next king, David, was able to secure victory over the Philistines.