And one more: Nehemiah is now complete in my Chapter By Chapter series.

It continues to weird me out that Ezra just pops in to Nehemiah’s book, just as Haggai and Zechariah to do Ezra.

Esther is next. I’ve written a lot about Esther …

Finished another one today: Ezra is now complete in my Chapter By Chapter series.

Something new I noticed when reading Ezra so carefully is that it’s as much about rebuilding the exiles into the people of God as it is about rebuilding a city …

I have read 1 Kings many, many times. Yet tonight I noticed for the first time that the prophet Elijah flees from King Ahab to Jezebel’s homeland of Sidon—also under drought—showing that Yahweh, not Baal, rules rain and famine, life and death, in …

That’s already too much politics for one morning. Back to creating good things, rather than complaining about bad ones.

Yesterday, I published my Chapter By Chapter notes on 1 and 2 Samuel, which together ask and answer the timely question,

What …

Doing some research for Advent of Carols, I came across a review of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in The Atlantic that calls it a “Hegelian dialectic.”

Seriously.

The same paragraph confuses “e.g.” with …

Published Fearsome Opponents, Faithful God: Israel’s Encounters with Giants.

Wherein the giants leave the stories and finally appear on-screen.

Just posted October’s behind the scenes for VerseNotes members.

Wherein I admit that, despite writing more than 19,000 words last month, I somehow still didn’t meet the insane goal I set myself—and, worse, published almost none of it.

Why I keep dropping notes into Obsidian: I just referred to sermon notes from 2019 for the article I’m writing.

A fun toy I built over the weekend: Verse Clock.

A reader asked whether you could use my table of chapters, verses, and words to come up with a verse for every minute of the day (e.g., John 3:16 for 3:16pm), so I spent a few hours coding it up and …

This evening I’m trying to maintain motivation to keep going with Chapter By Chapter by looking at how far I’ve come.

There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible, which is daunting, but I’ve already written about 405 of them, which is …

I don’t think Paul Simon was thinking of Psalm 88:18 when he wrote “The Sound of Silence”, but the NIV translation sure sounds like it:

You have taken from me friend and neighbor—
darkness is my closest friend.

Spent the last afternoon of this mini-vacation writing summaries of psalms; I’ve finally crossed the halfway point (all the way to Psalm 77). I might finish by New Year’s after all.

All the times I have read Esther, and today I realized for the first time that she was an orphan. Somehow the fact that Mordecai was raising her didn’t clue me in on that obvious implication until today.

It’s not hidden! I’m just blind.

Re-read your …

A few weeks ago, I published Why Does Daniel Go By His Hebrew Name, But His Friends Go By Their Chaldean Names?.

Tonight, I was looking through old Twitter threads (as you do), and found the original: I first tweeted that thought on March 27, 2018. …

In the rolls of the families that first returned to Judah from Babylon, Nehemiah lists “the men of the other Nebo” (v33) and “the sons of the other Elam” (v34).

The weird part is that there is no first Nebo or first Elam in …

Five more chapters tonight; progress meter up from 25.2% to 25.7%.

I’m working on Judges, one of the most frustrating—and yet relatable—books. Every time Israel descends again into apostasy, you want to scream, “Not again!” And then …

“Remember for my good, O my God, all that I have done for this people.” ‭‭Nehemiah‬ ‭5‬:‭19‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Nehemiah could not have known how spectacularly God would answer his prayer. The good he did is remembered in his own words throughout time and …

That was an exhausting study/writing session, but I’ve completed chapter 300 of 1189 (25.2%).

Only 54 more sessions that hard to go, and I’ll be done!

(Writing. I’ll be done writing. Editing and publishing are another matter.)

Things I never noticed: the night of the transfiguration is the first time we see Moses in the Promised Land. He finally made it!

(Via a post on r/Bible this morning)

I am editing a series of books I am writing, and despite the fact that I typed every word of it, it’s helping me see and understand new things in the Bible.

Tonight’s example: the repetition of the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 12) to his …

Finished writing chapter notes on Deuteronomy last night, completing the Torah.

Today’s goal: editing. Then I can get them cleaned up for publishing.

Unfortunately, I had to change my YAML scheme recently to make Pandoc happy, so it’s no longer as …

My Bible reading plan today started three new books: 1 Timothy, Proverbs, and Ezra. It feels like they should be more connected, but I think that’s just how the timing worked out.

One observation is that they’re from three very different eras: Rome, …