Bible Review, April 2004
Features
We are told that God hears our prayers. Then why doesn’t he listen? The most consoling words in the New Testament are, “Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7 = Luke 11:9). The absolute assurance of this promise is something everyone […]
It’s hard to imagine any parents calling their child Dog. But that’s just what the Bible tells us Jephunneh and his wife did: They named their son Caleb—from klb, the Hebrew root for “dog.” Is it just an unfortunate appellation? Or did the biblical authors have a reason to identify this great leader, who […]
While Moses was up on Mt. Sinai receiving the first edition of the Ten Commandments, the people down below grew impatient and asked Aaron, Moses’ brother, to make them another god to lead them. Aaron instructed the people to rip off their gold earrings, which, the text tells us explicitly and unambiguously, “he made […]
You probably know the old joke about the psychiatrist who gave his patient a series of Rohrschach tests. The patient identified every single inkblot pattern as depicting a man and a woman copulating. The doctor then pronounced his official diagnosis: “You, sir, are obsessed with sex!” “But, Doc, you’re the one with the dirty pictures!”