Don’t stop now...

The guys at the ESV Blog posts some free tools to help you keep up with your bible reading.

For Fred...

ESV Reverse Interlinear New Testament is a Christian Book Award finalist. Just to let you know...the Eminently Superior Version does it again. Also noted is the Archaelogical Study Bible, which I likewise highly recommend.

Memorization Tip

Here’s a piece of advice on memorizing Scripture: pick a translation and stick with it. Confusion can set in very quickly if you get the paraphrase mixed up with the essentially literal.

Although I own more Bible translations than I care to count, I really only use NIV, KJV, and ESV with any regularity -- ESV being my preference when possible. Even limiting my exposure to three versions, ask me to quote a very famous Bible passage. What you'll get is an amalgam of two or three translations that never appears together in any one translation...

If you are in any position that requires you to read, recite, study, or teach the Scriptures, Confessions, or any other translated document— and that should cover pretty much everyone—keep translations in mind. If possible, try to use one translation of a text for a long period of time (decades, if possible).

Of course, memorization is encouraged frequently on this blog. See here, here, here, and here.

[HT - ESV blog]

Read the Bible in a Year: Start Anytime

Yeah, I know...I'm a geek. I even read blogs put out by Bible translation publishers. Here's a post on reading through the Bible in a year starting anytime.

Ten ways to raise a nonreader/reader

Tammy recently purchased a book entitled “Honey for a Child’s Heart” by Gladys Hunt. The focus of the book is to give parents guidance on selecting reading material for their children. Mrs. Hunt lists both classics and current literature for suggested reading. I don’t agree with every suggestion in the book, but do agree with quite a lot of it and am impressed by many of the ideas she suggests for developing young readers and lovers of God’s Word. Here are a couple of thought-provoking lists to ponder as a parent.

Ten Ways to Raise a Nonreader

1. Have the television on at all times. Make sure you put a television set and a computer in every room. (Don’t forget the kitchen!)
2. Keep the place neat - no books or literary magazines in sight.
3. Never let your children see you read a book.
4. Never take your kids to the library.
5. Never read stories aloud past age two.
6. Never talk about ideas while eating meals.
7. Keep the lights down low. Buy only forty-watt lightbulbs.
8. Schedule your children for every activity you can think of so they won't be bored.
9. Never play any table games together.
10. Absolutely no reading in bed or good lamps to make it easy to do so.

Ten Ways to Raise a Reader

1. Restrict television watching drastically.
2. Keep the computer under control and where it can be monitored. Don't allow too many hours on pointless computer games or in chat rooms.
3. Have books and other good reading material within easy reach, an enticement to read.
4. Let your children see you reading.
5. Read books aloud together regardless of age.
6. Talk about books together; play games together.
7. Have well-lit rooms with comfortable chairs that invite reading.
8. Balance activity schedules with reading time. Let your kids know the library is as important as the gymnasium.
9. Encourage reading in bed with good lights to do so.
10. Visit the library often, and listen to books-on-tape when traveling.

Now, why is this relevant for a Sunday school blog? God did not reveal Himself through video, pictures, or music. He revealed Himself through words in the Scripture. The ability to reason, follow a flow of argument, and take ownership of ideas from reading a text is uniquely human and part and parcel to the image of God in which we were first created. Reading good books forces the mind to engage in critical thinking - what is the author trying to say? - rather than the emotion-dominated - what does that mean to me? - thinking that permeates our video game, T.V. saturated culture. The Bible is literature. It has history, poetry, legal arguments, etc., each word divinely inspired. Yet, each type of literature has been written to be read “literally” in the sense that poetry should be read as poetry, history as history, etc.

By instilling in our children a love for reading all of these types of literature, we build within them a greater ability to read God’s Word with understanding of Its objective meaning, not their subjective preference.

Noel Piper on “Hunting” through God’s Word

I found this excerpt by Noel Piper interesting on how she finally read through the Bible in a year and what helped her do it...joyfully...

ESV - Truth Bible Memory Verse

This week’s ESV Bible Memory Verse is on the Return of Christ:

For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words. 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18

Bible Reading Plan

There are probably as many Daily Bible Reading plans as there are those with a Bible and a calendar. However, I found an interesting one you may find helpful to keep you motivated in reading your Bible consistently.

Each day of the week, you read anywhere from one to six chapters out of a different part of the Bible. Each week, you cover one or more chapters out of each major area of the Bible: The Law, History, Psalms, Poetry, Prophecy, Gospels, and Epistles. But, by switching areas daily, the thought is you don't get bogged down several days or weeks on an area that I might not currently find as interesting.

Some people lose it at Leviticus. I don't get that personally...but some do. Here's a way to keep moving and sample different types of Biblical literature each day. There's also a nifty little one-page chart you can print out and check off each day as you progress.

Blessed Assurance

Every week the ESV website puts out a memory verse through one of their RSS feeds. (See yesterday's post) This week is on Assurance and the verse is John 10:27-28 in which Jesus promises:

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

What confidence we can have in the hands of the Savior!

What on earth is a Daysman?

In class Sunday, we were studying Job's recognition of his need for an "umpire" between him and God. In looking at the KJV of the passage, the word "daysman" is used instead of mediator, or arbiter, or someother similar phrase. Scott asked me if I knew what a "daysman" was, and, although I was confident it was another word for mediator, I had to admit I was unfamiliar with the origin of the word. As you can imagine, it was a difficult time for me. I have yet to recover from my shame. Nevertheless, I looked into it when I got home that afternoon. Here is what I found.

Consider the different translations of Job 9:33, part of our text in Sunday school last week.

Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both. (KJV)

If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, (NIV)

There is no umpire between us, Who may lay his hand upon us both. (NASB)

There is no (or would that there were an) arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both. (ESV)

There is no one to judge between us, to lay his hand on both of us. (HCSB)

Daysman is an old English word formed from the Latin diem dicere, i.e., to fix a day for hearing a cause. Diem means "day" (we talk of per diem reimbursements). Dicere means "to judge". A Daysman is empowered by mutual consent to decide the cause, and to "lay his hand", i.e., to impose his authority, on both parties, and enforce his sentence. We use the term arbiter today.

It is important to understand that in the Greek of the New Testament there two major terms for "time." One, chronos, emphasizes the passage of time without any stress on the significance of events in the period; the other, kairos, stresses the special or revelatory significance of time. All life happens between chronos and kairos, so to speak. Or, to put it differently, chronos is one thing after another; kairos is one significant event.

Our word "day" is a word that captures in its various definitions both of the biblical meanings of time. On the one hand is the "chronological" meaning of "day"-- "the time of sunlight," as it is defined in the dictionary. On the other hand we know that "day" can signify a "great day" or an important day. The theological concept of the Judgment Day or "the Day of the Lord", stresses this meaning.

Pushing the research further, "Day" had a rich significance in law that has been lost to our day, and this usage relates to day as a verb. "To day" means "To appoint a day to anyone" or "to cite or summon for an appointed day," such as in the 15th century sentence, "he should be sente fore and dayed ernestly agayn, for to abyde such jugement."

But the second usage of "day" as a verb is "to submit (a matter) to, or decide by, arbitration." We know that the use of "day" in this manner was already obsolete in the 18th century, but an Oxford English Dictionary example from the 16th century is "They have him enforced when all their money was...spent, to have their matter dayed, and ended by arbitrement."

This use of "day" seems to have spawned two nouns, "dayment" and "daysman." "Dayment" is simply defined as "arbitration," such as in the sentence "to spende all..that money and put it to dayment at last." A "daysman" is an "umpire or arbitrator; a mediator" in its archaic usage, according to the OED. From a 16th century legal source we have, "If neighbors were at variance, they ran not straight to law: Daysmen took up the matter, and cost them not a straw." Or, in another case, "They had some common arbitrators, or dayesmen, in every towne, that made a friendly composition between man and man."

The sense from the quotation just given is that arbitration, or dayment, was not only a cheaper procedure than a court trial, but was the principal method to reconcile parties and deliver quicker justice than might be attainable through the King's Bench or Common Pleas or Exchequer. In his magisterial history of English law in the 16th century, Baker points to the popularity of arbitration at any stage of the legal proceedings in this period, even though the surviving records of arbitrations are much more scanty than purely judicial proceedings (Oxford History of the Laws of England, 333-34). Thus daysmen were important in that period, even though the word has long disappeared from our vocabulary.

Yet even though the word is no longer used, its 16th-17th century usage is preserved in a most unlikely place: the Book of Job in the King James translation of the Bible (1611). When Job is expressing his frustration with not being able to know how to approach God in his distress, he expresses a contrary to fact wish (Job 9:33) which the KJV translated as follows: "Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both." It is interesting that the KJV translators were following the 1535 English translation of the Bible by Miles Coverdale, who rendered 9:33 as follows: "Nether is there eny dayes man to reprove both the partes, or to laye his honde betwixte us."

A leading commentator on the Book of Job, David Clines, comments on this passage that the author isn't specific as to whether what is in view is a person who has the power to make decisions or just to try to reconcile the parties (Job 1-20, p. 243). He actually translates the Hebrew word (Mochia) as "mediator," which seems to be precisely wrong. What is in view in Job 9:33-34 is an umpire-like figure who can "lay his hand upon us both."

The phrase "lay his hand" only appears in the Hebrew Bible in one other place, Ps. 139 (verse 5). In that context the words "lay his hand upon" suggests the authority of God to make something happen in the Psalmist's life. In law the person who can make decisions by "laying his hand" on both parties is the arbitrator, not the mediator.

A mediator in American law is a person who can get parties together and make suggestions (and even some warnings/threats), but s/he has no authority to force a decision on the parties. Thus, I think the KJV has it right after all--what Job is longing for is not simply a mediator, but an arbitrator, a daysman with all his power. Further, Job might consider a human judge as capable of acting as an umpire upon his own claims, but no man was worthy to question the purposes of Yahweh, or metaphorically, to "lay his hands upon" Him. To that end, I think the English Standard Version is the most correct in that it uses the term "arbiter", which is consistent with the context, rather than "mediator."

Commentator Arthur Walwyn Evans, notes that in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 4:3, anthropine, hemera) "man's judgment" is literally, "man's day," in the sense of a day fixed for the trial of a case. Both Tyndale and Coverdale so translate. See also 1 Timothy 2:5, where the Saviour is termed the "one mediator .... between God and men." Here the word connotes a pleader, an advocate or lawyer before an umpire, rather than the adjudicator himself (see Job 19:25-27).

Thirst is a Liar

Did you know that thirst is a liar? You can't always trust your sense of thirst to keep your water intake above the minimum required for good health. An hour of hard work or athletic competition that involves heavy sweating, for example, can dehydrate the body far beyond what a person would ordinarily feel like drinking. Similarly, people who are sick or elderly often have a dulled sense of thirst. In instances like these, it's better to trust objective guidelines than your own feeling of satiety.

In the same way, we don't drink long enough or deep enough from the Word of God on a regular basis. If we trust our "felt need" for Scripture, we would be spiritually dehydrated, indeed. Many times when we are spiritually "sick" through unrepentant sin, for example, or some lengthy trial, we don't even realize our desparate need for the Word of God to nourish our souls. I have found that an objective reading schedule is very helpful. There is no right schedule. Just pick something that is consistent and gets you deeper into study than the casual reading of the newspaper.

Here's one I like for a good overview:

Old Testament

1. Genesis (History of Creation, Fall, and Covenant in Patriarchal History)


2. Exodus (History of Israel’s liberation and formation as people of God)


3. Joshua (History of military conquest of promised land)


4. Judges (History of transition from tribal federation to monarch)


5. 1 & 2 Samuel (History of emerging monarchy with Samuel, Saul, and David; the golden age of Israel)


6. 1 & 2 Kings (History of Solomon and the division of the kingdom; the fall of Israel and the beginning of the age of the prophets)


7. Ezra/Nehemiah (History of return from exile; restoration of Jerusalem)


8. Amos and Hosea (Examples of Minor Prophets)


9. Jeremiah (Example of Major Prophets)


10. Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon (Examples of Wisdom Literature)


11. Psalms and Proverbs (Examples of Hebrew poetry)

This gives an Old Testament overview to which you can fill in the gaps later on.

New Testament

1. Luke (Life and teaching of Jesus)


2. Acts (History of early church)


3. Ephesians (Introduction to teaching of Paul)


4. 1 Corinthians (Teaching in the life of the Church)


5. 1 Peter (Introduction to Peter)


6. 1 Timothy (Introduction to Pastoral Epistles)


7. Hebrews (Theology of Christ)


8. Romans (Paul’s theology)

After this is finished, go back and fill in the gaps. This gives an overview of the component parts of the New Testament.

I read an article once where a teacher suggested starting in three different places: Genesis, Job, and Matthew. Apparently, that's almost the Bible in thirds. The idea is that it breaks up the reading so that you get several types at once. I’ve also heard that 3 chapters on the weekdays and 5 chapters each on Saturday and Sunday will get you through the Bible in a year. That would certainly get us through the New Testament several times a year. However, that pace is not the best for "study". But after reading the Bible through a few times, you'd be amazed at how you remember other passages and statements that shed light on what you are currently reading. I guess the point is: start somewhere and read it systematically.

I've also included 10 Rules for interpreting Scripture, just in case you find that helpful.

Rule 1: Read it like any other book. In other words, read poetry like poetry, narratives like narratives, and doctrinal treatises (i.e., Romans) like, well, doctrinal treatises.

Rule 2: Get under the skin of the characters. Get into the context of why the book was written and under what circumstances.

Rule 3: Historical narratives are to be interpreted by passages that teach or explain. Don't look to the life of David as a complete pattern for living. Look to the books that teach those principles. It may be that a story of David's life was included to show what not to do, for example.

Rule 4: What is implied should be interpreted by what is expressly stated.

Rule 5: Determine carefully the meaning of words

Rule 6: Note the Presence of Parallelisms in the Bible

Rule 7: Don’t make a Proverb into a Law…and vice versa

Rule 8: Note the difference between the Spirit and the Letter of the Law

Rule 9: Be Careful with Parables

Rule 10: Be Careful with Prophecy

Please note that we shouldn't ignore parables or prophecy and just accept what those with credentials would tell us. Study parables and prophecy, but study them carefully in light of the rest of Scripture. Scripture interprets Scripture.