Peor: The Mountain and God of the Moabites
Peor was the name of a mountain in the land of Moab. It is significant as the final place that the prophet Balaam visited when he was being pressured by the king of Moab to curse Israel. The Israelites had recently conquered Si...
Rachel's Tomb: The Death of an Israelite Matriarch
The Biblical passage that relates Rachel’s death is from Genesis 35: “Then they journeyed from Bethel. And when there was but a little distance to go to Ephrath, Rachel labored in childbirth, and she had hard labor. Now it came...
What color is God? By a Christian Scholar
Because some of the most well-known depictions of God in Western culture come from the Renaissance painters, it’s easy to get the idea that God is a fair-skinned, Northern or Central European, or what we refer to as “white.” Ho...
Emperor, Liberator: Who was Cyrus in the Bible?
To understand the significance of Cyrus the Great, we need a little bit of context for the history of the ancient Israelites. If you know your Old Testament history, you know that there were two important time periods in the hi...
Gideon's Altar: What does "Jehovah shalom" mean?
Jehovah Shalom means something approximating, “the Lord is Peace”, and is sometimes used more loosely to mean, “the Lord is my peace” or that the Lord gives peace. The phrase occurs only once in the Bible, in the book of Judges...
Two biblical figures: Belteshazzar or Belshazzar
There was no king “Belteshazzar” in the Bible, though you may be misled by the similarity of this name to “Belshazzar.” The latter was a king, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire, and some scholars believe that he was th...
Abishai: Military leader for King David in the Bible
Abishai was a military leader who served under King David. He was the oldest son of David’s sister Zeruiah, who married a man named Suri. He commanded one of the three divisions of the army in the battle against David’s betraye...
Benaiah, soldier of David and Solomon: What did he do?
Benaiah, son of Jehoiada was one of King David’s “mighty men” in the Old Testament. He was one of the supporting characters in the life of King David, especially in the complicated struggle for the throne among David’s sons. W...