Prophetic parents: Who was Amoz father of Isaiah?
Amoz is one of those Biblical figures connected to prominent people in the Bible, but whom we know very little about. He is explicitly mentioned only thirteen times, all in reference to Isaiah: “Isaiah, Son of Amoz.” We only kn...
"A man shall leave his father and mother." What does it mean?
What does the Bible mean when it says “a man shall leave his father and mother” and that he and his wife will become “one flesh”? In short, the Bible sees marriage as creating a single, unified body out of two individual bodies...
Are curses real? What the Bible says about cursing
When people talk about “cursing” they usually mean “bad words” or “foul language,” but that understanding is a modern one. In the ancient world, a curse was a very specific thing, something you did to someone in the sense of “p...
What are the best Bible verses for men?
The Bible is not a single book; it’s a collection of many books from a variety of time periods, cultures, and genres. Much of the Bible is encouraging across a wide range of situations, both in practical matters as well as the ...
What is the sin of envy in the Seven Deadly Sins?
Some people think that envy as a sin is a silly idea. If you take envy to be seeing something you want and becoming motivated to get it, then envy is, in a certain sense, the entire basis for our economic framework in the moder...
What is Gilgal in the Bible? Crossing the river Jordan
Gilgal, like many locations mentioned in the Old Testament, is difficult to pin down. It’s mentioned all throughout the history of ancient Israel. Here are the passages in the Bible that mention Gilgal: Book of Joshua, chapter...
Pharaonic Magi: Who were Jannes and Jambres in the Bible?
The seventh chapter in the Book of Exodus records something like a “wizard battle.” When Moses and Aaron appeared before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, he asked them to perform a “sign” or miracle in order to validate the truth of the...
Who was Saint Longinus and what is his story?
There are many famous characters whose names aren’t recorded in the New Testament but who we know about through tradition and other extra-Biblical sources. For example, the “woman at the well” whom Jesus talks to, as recorded i...