Old Testament · 50 chapters

Genesis

• No. 6 Genesis 5:6-11

  By Genesis 5 the story has already moved from the creation and the garden through the first murder, Cain killing Abel, to the slow spread of humanity. This chapter is the bridge, a genealogy that carries the...

• No. 9 Genesis 7:13-24

  Genesis 7 is the flood. After the creation and the first families, the earth has filled with violence (Genesis 6), and God resolves to wash it back and begin again through one household. Noah has already built...

• No. 16 Genesis 24:1-5

  Genesis has followed Abraham from his call out of Mesopotamia into old age. Sarah has died, and Isaac, the son God promised, is still unmarried. Abraham is set on one thing: Isaac must not marry a local...

• No. 18 Genesis 41:25-32

  Joseph was sold into Egypt by his brothers and jailed there on a false charge. Years passed, and in prison he became known for reading dreams. When Pharaoh is troubled by two dreams none of his wise men can...

• No. 79 Genesis 34:11-17

  Jacob's daughter Dinah has been raped by Shechem, a prince of the local Hivite town. Her brothers hear of it while their father says nothing. This passage is the negotiation that follows, and every party in it...

• No. 91 Genesis 5:18-24

  This is the genealogy from Adam to Noah again, the chapter with the fixed template: he lived, he fathered, he lived on, all his days were, and he died. An earlier reading in this series covered Seth and Enosh...

• No. 108 Genesis 27:11-17

  Isaac is old and nearly blind, and has sent his elder son Esau out to hunt game and prepare the meal that will precede his blessing. Rebekah has overheard, and this passage is her instructing Jacob, her...

• No. 127 Genesis 38:22-30

  Genesis interrupts the Joseph story for a chapter about Judah. He had married off his son to Tamar, the son died, the second son also died after refusing to father a child in his brother's name, and Judah sent...

• No. 128 Genesis 45:1-15

  Joseph, sold into Egypt by his brothers, is now the man who controls the grain in a famine. His brothers have come to buy food and have not recognized him. He has tested them through two visits, and this...

• No. 132 Genesis 21:8-17

  Sarah, unable to conceive, had given her Egyptian slave Hagar to Abraham, and Hagar bore Ishmael. Then Sarah had Isaac. This passage is the feast held when Isaac is weaned, and what Sarah demands at it.

• No. 161 Genesis 27:25-29

  Rebekah has dressed Jacob in Esau's clothes and put goatskins on his hands and neck. Isaac, old and nearly blind, has already asked twice whether this is really Esau. This passage is the blessing going through...

• No. 191 Genesis 37:8-13

  Joseph is seventeen, the favorite of his father, and has already told his brothers a dream in which their sheaves bowed to his. This passage is what happens after, and Joseph does not read the room.

• No. 205 Genesis 36:9-14

  Genesis pauses the story of Jacob's family to record the descendants of Esau, the brother who was cheated out of the blessing and became the father of Edom. This passage is part of that register: Esau's sons...

• No. 214 Genesis 31:1-13

  Jacob has worked for his uncle Laban for twenty years, and the arrangement has gone sour. He came with nothing, married into the family, and built up large flocks, and now Laban's sons are saying he has taken...

• No. 223 Genesis 8:6-12

  The flood is going down. The ark has run aground, but Noah is still shut inside a wooden box with no clear view of the earth, and he has no way to know whether the world outside can hold life again. These...

• No. 236 Genesis 38:12-16

  Genesis 38 is a story dropped into the middle of the Joseph account, and it belongs to Judah. Two of his sons had married Tamar and died, and by the custom of the time Judah owed her his third son, Shelah, so...

• No. 248 Genesis 15:8-21

  Abram has been promised land and descendants, and he asks the plain question a person asks: how am I to know? God's answer is one of the strangest and oldest rituals in the Bible. He tells Abram to bring...

• No. 302 Genesis 25:19-23

  This is the beginning of Isaac's family, and it opens with a long wait. Isaac marries Rebekah, and she is unable to have children, so he prays for her, and the text notes almost in passing that twenty years go...

• No. 310 Genesis 11:16-21

  This is a stretch of pure genealogy, four generations of names between the flood and Abraham: Eber, then Peleg, then Reu, then Serug. Each entry is identical in shape. The man lived so many years and became...

• No. 404 Genesis 15:1-7

  God comes to Abram with an enormous promise about himself: do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward. God is offering Abram himself as the reward. And Abram's response is...

• No. 423 Genesis 43:1-5

  The famine has not lifted, and the food the family bought in Egypt is gone. So Jacob, matter-of-factly, tells his sons, go again and buy us a little more food. But it is not that simple, and Judah has to...

• No. 424 Genesis 41:33-45

  This is one of the most dramatic reversals in the Bible. In a single day, Joseph goes from a prison cell to ruling all of Egypt. Pharaoh, having heard Joseph interpret his dreams and propose a plan to survive...

• No. 436 Genesis 44:7-13

  To feel the weight of this scene you have to remember what these brothers did years earlier. They had sold their younger brother Joseph into slavery out of jealousy, because their father loved him best, and...

• No. 467 Genesis 3:16-24

  This is the aftermath of the fall, and it is heavy. God pronounces the consequences: pain and struggle for the woman, cursed ground and sweat and thorns for the man, and over it all the sentence, you are dust,...

• No. 474 Genesis 24:48-54

  This is the climax of a long, lovely errand. Abraham had sent his most trusted servant far away to find a wife for his son Isaac, and the servant, not knowing where to begin, had prayed for a specific sign at...

• No. 478 Genesis 24:61-67

  After a long chapter of the servant's errand, the story finally brings Rebekah home to Isaac, and it ends on a note of unexpected tenderness. Isaac has gone out, the text says, to meditate in the field at...

• No. 484 Genesis 11:1-9

  After the flood, the whole earth still shares one language, and humanity gathers on a plain in Shinar with a plan. Come, they say to one another, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top reaches to...

• No. 493 Genesis 9:18-29

  This is a strange and uncomfortable episode right after the flood. Noah, the righteous man God had just carried through the waters, plants a vineyard, makes wine, drinks too much of it, and lies uncovered and...

• No. 505 Genesis 2:1-16

  The great work of creation is finished, the heavens and the earth and all their vast array complete, and the account tells us what God did next. On the seventh day God finished his work, and he rested on the...

• No. 520 Genesis 19:23-28

  Sodom and Gomorrah are being destroyed, sulfur and fire raining down, and Lot and his family have been physically dragged out of the city by angels who told them plainly not to look back, only to flee for...

• No. 541 Genesis 46:8-23

  This is a roll of names, the household of Jacob listed tribe by tribe as they go down into Egypt: the sons of Reuben, of Simeon, of Levi, of Judah, and on through the family, with the daughters and grandsons,...

• No. 599 Genesis 3:6-10

  This is the moment everything breaks. The woman sees that the tree is good for food and pleasing and desirable, takes the fruit, eats, and gives to her husband, and he eats. And immediately something shifts....

• No. 622 Genesis 2:17-25

  In the creation account, God repeatedly looks at what he has made and pronounces it good, good, good, and very good. So it is arresting when, for the first time, God says that something is not good. It is not...

• No. 651 Genesis 36:15-19

  Genesis has followed Jacob through the whole cycle of the birthright, the blessing taken, the years with Laban, and the return. Now, before it moves on to Joseph, it stops and writes out the family of the...

• No. 653 Genesis 30:32-36

  Jacob has worked fourteen years for Laban, seven for each of his daughters, and now he wants to build something of his own before he leaves. He proposes his wages plainly. Let him keep every speckled, spotted,...

• No. 664 Genesis 36:31-43

  Genesis is still on Esau, and this closes his record. After the chiefs come the kings, a list of eight who reigned in Edom, each named with his city, each succeeding at the death of the last. The heading over...

• No. 706 Genesis 26:6-10

  A famine has driven Isaac to Gerar, in Philistine country, and there he does a strangely familiar thing. Afraid that the local men will kill him to take his beautiful wife, he tells them Rebekah is his sister....

• No. 707 Genesis 32:13-20

  Jacob is almost home after twenty years away, and the closer he gets the more afraid he becomes, because home means Esau, the brother he cheated out of a blessing and who once swore to kill him. So the night...

• No. 718 Genesis 3:11-15

  The fruit is eaten, and God comes walking in the garden and begins to ask questions. Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat? What follows is the first...

• No. 730 Genesis 40:8-15

  Joseph is in an Egyptian prison, sold there by his brothers and then jailed on a false charge, and two of Pharaoh's officials land in the same cell, each troubled by a dream no one can read. Joseph's first...

• No. 788 Genesis 41:9-13

  Two years earlier, Joseph had interpreted a dream for Pharaoh's cupbearer in prison, correctly, and had asked one small thing in return: remember me when it goes well with you. And the cupbearer had walked...

• No. 796 Genesis 35:9-15

  Jacob has come the long way home, twenty years and two wrestling matches later, and God meets him again at Bethel, the very place where, as a frightened young fugitive, he had once seen a ladder into heaven...

• No. 804 Genesis 4:1-8

  The first children born into the world are Cain and Abel, and the first murder follows almost at once. Both brothers bring an offering to God, Cain from the fruit of the ground, Abel the firstborn of his flock...

• No. 842 Genesis 45:21-28

  For more than twenty years Jacob has believed his son Joseph is dead. He had mourned him inconsolably, refusing every comfort, carrying the grief like a stone. Now his other sons come back from Egypt with news...

• No. 889 Genesis 30:27-31

  Jacob has served his uncle Laban for years, working off two marriages, and now he wants to leave and provide for his own household. Laban does not want to lose him. He admits, with unusual candor, that he has...

• No. 960 Genesis 10:6-14

  This is part of the table of nations after the flood, tracing the descendants of Noah's sons who become the peoples of the earth. Here it is Ham's line, and the list pauses on one figure: Cush fathered Nimrod,...

• No. 967 Genesis 10:1-5

  This is the opening of the table of nations, the great family tree of humanity after the flood, tracing how the descendants of Noah's three sons spread across the earth. It begins with Japheth's line, Gomer,...

• No. 1011 Genesis 24:55-60

  Abraham's servant has traveled far to find a wife for Isaac, and God has led him unmistakably to Rebekah. Now he wants to leave at once and bring her back, but her brother and mother want her to stay ten more...

• No. 1021 Genesis 34:24-31

  Dinah, Jacob's daughter, has been violated by Shechem, a local prince, who then wants to marry her. Her brothers pretend to agree to a marriage alliance on the condition that all the men of Shechem be...

• No. 1025 Genesis 31:43-55

  Jacob and his father-in-law Laban have a long history of mutual deceit, and now, after Jacob flees with his family, they meet for a tense parting. Laban still claims everything as his, but proposes a covenant....

• No. 1042 Genesis 17:15-21

  God renames Sarai to Sarah and announces the impossible: I will bless her and give you a son by her; she will become the mother of nations, and kings will come from her. Abraham's response is not reverent...

• No. 1081 Genesis 1:26-31

  The climax of the creation account. God says, let us make man in our image, and creates humanity, male and female, in his own image, blessing them and giving them dominion over the earth, to be fruitful and...

• No. 1101 Genesis 19:29-38

  This is a sordid, sad aftermath to the destruction of Sodom. The passage opens with a note of grace, that when God destroyed the cities, he remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the overthrow. But Lot,...

• No. 1149 Genesis 31:31-35

  Jacob has fled from Laban with his family, and Laban has pursued and caught up, accusing Jacob of stealing his household gods, the teraphim. Jacob, not knowing his wife Rachel took them, rashly declares that...

• No. 1157 Genesis 10:15-20

  The table of nations turns to Canaan and his descendants, and the names are significant: Sidon, Heth, the Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, Hivites, and the rest, spread across the land from Sidon to Gaza and...

• No. 1243 Genesis 9:1-7

  After the flood, God blesses Noah and his sons and renews the mandate to be fruitful and fill the earth. He gives them the animals for food, with one restriction about the blood. And then a solemn word about...

• No. 1276 Genesis 41:53-57

  The seven years of plenty end and the seven years of famine begin, exactly as Joseph had foretold. But because Joseph had spent the years of plenty storing grain, Egypt has bread when the whole earth is...

• No. 1304 Genesis 5:1-5

  The genealogy of Adam begins with a reminder: when God created man, he made him in the likeness of God, male and female, and blessed them. Then it records that Adam, at a hundred and thirty, fathered a son in...

• No. 1313 Genesis 34:1-10

  This is a dark and painful chapter. Dinah, Jacob's daughter, goes out to visit the women of the land, and Shechem, a prince of the region, seizes her and violates her. The text then says his soul was drawn to...

• No. 1324 Genesis 12:1-6

  The story of God's people begins with a command and a promise. The LORD says to Abram, leave your country, your relatives, and your father's house, and go to the land that I will show you. And he attaches a...

• No. 1353 Genesis 43:23-27

  Joseph's brothers have come back to Egypt in fear, sure they will be accused over the silver they found returned in their sacks. But Joseph's steward meets their anxiety with unexpected words: Peace to you, do...

• No. 1386 Genesis 25:1-11

  The account of Abraham's life comes to its close. He takes another wife, Keturah, and has more sons, to whom he gives gifts while sending them eastward, but he gives all he has to Isaac, the son of the...

• No. 1422 Genesis 19:6-11

  The men of Sodom have surrounded Lot's house, demanding that he hand over his two guests, the angels who came to warn him, so that they can abuse them. Lot goes out, shuts the door behind him, and pleads with...

• No. 1439 Genesis 20:11-18

  Abraham, sojourning in Gerar, has passed Sarah off as his sister rather than his wife, and King Abimelech, having taken her into his household without knowing she was married, confronts Abraham. Abraham...

• No. 1442 Genesis 10:21-32

  This passage is part of the table of nations, tracing the descendants of Noah's son Shem: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, and their lines, down through Eber, from whom the Hebrews would come, and Peleg, in whose...

• No. 1445 Genesis 26:28-35

  Abimelech and his men, who had earlier sent Isaac away out of envy, now come to him seeking a covenant of peace. We saw plainly that the LORD was with you, they tell him, so let there be an oath between us;...

• No. 1509 Genesis 26:23-27

  Isaac, having moved from place to place amid conflict over wells, comes up to Beersheba. That night the LORD appears to him: I am the God of Abraham your father; do not be afraid, for I am with you, and I will...

• No. 1512 Genesis 1:1-5

  The Bible opens with the beginning of everything. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, darkness over the deep, and the Spirit of God hovering over the...

• No. 1587 Genesis 7:1-5

  The flood is about to come, and God gives Noah his final instructions: come into the ark, you and your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take the clean animals by...

• No. 1592 Genesis 35:23-29

  The passage lists the twelve sons of Jacob, born to four different mothers: the sons of Leah, the sons of Rachel, and the sons of the two servants, Bilhah and Zilpah. These twelve, from a household marked by...

• No. 1614 Genesis 37:21-28

  Joseph's brothers, jealous of their father's favorite, seize him when he comes to them in the field. Reuben persuades them not to kill him but to throw him into a pit, hoping secretly to rescue him later. They...

• No. 1618 Genesis 30:22-26

  For years Rachel had been barren, longing for a child, watching her sister and the servants bear sons while her own womb stayed closed, grieving under the reproach of childlessness. And then a turning point,...

• No. 1622 Genesis 19:12-17

  The angels warn Lot that Sodom is about to be destroyed and urge him to gather his family and flee. He warns his sons-in-law, but they think he is joking. When morning comes, the angels press Lot to hurry,...

• No. 1630 Genesis 1:14-19

  On the fourth day of creation, God makes the lights in the sky: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars also. He sets them to give light on the earth, to...

• No. 1636 Genesis 12:14-20

  Abram, sojourning in Egypt during a famine, fears that Sarai's beauty will get him killed, so he passes her off as his sister. The Egyptians praise her to Pharaoh, and she is taken into Pharaoh's house; Abram...

• No. 1680 Genesis 27:1-10

  Isaac has grown old and blind, and feels his death may be near. He calls his elder son Esau and asks him to hunt game and prepare the savory food he loves, so that he may eat and give Esau his blessing before...

• No. 1712 Genesis 8:1-5

  The flood has covered the earth for many long days, and Noah and his family and all the animals have been shut in the ark, waiting. And then the turning point comes, in a single phrase: God remembered Noah,...

• No. 1727 Genesis 45:16-20

  The news reaches Pharaoh that Joseph's brothers have come, and it pleases him and his court. Pharaoh tells Joseph to send for the whole family: bring your father and your households and come to me, and I will...

• No. 1730 Genesis 13:10-18

  Abram and Lot, whose herds have grown too large to share the land, must part, and Abram generously gives his nephew first choice. Lot lifts up his eyes and sees the well-watered plain of the Jordan, lush as...

• No. 1776 Genesis 3:1-5

  The serpent, more subtle than any creature, approaches the woman with a question: did God really say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? She corrects him, but he presses further, contradicting God...

• No. 1796 Genesis 48:17-22

  The dying Jacob blesses Joseph's two sons, but he crosses his hands, laying his right hand, the hand of the greater blessing, on the head of Ephraim, the younger, and his left on Manasseh, the firstborn....

• No. 1822 Genesis 17:22-27

  God has just given Abraham the covenant of circumcision, and when the LORD finishes speaking and goes up from him, Abraham acts. That very same day, the text stresses, Abraham took Ishmael and every male of...

• No. 1841 Genesis 32:1-12

  Returning home after twenty years, Jacob must face the brother he had wronged, Esau, and word comes that Esau is coming to meet him with four hundred men. Jacob is greatly afraid and distressed. He takes...

• No. 1877 Genesis 20:1-5

  Living as a foreigner in Gerar, Abraham does something we have seen him do before: he passes off his wife Sarah as his sister, out of fear, and Abimelech the king takes her. But God comes to Abimelech in a...

• No. 1921 Genesis 46:24-34

  Jacob and his whole household, seventy in all, come down to Egypt at Joseph's invitation. Jacob sends Judah ahead to Joseph to point the way to Goshen. And Joseph readies his chariot and goes up to meet his...

• No. 1953 Genesis 47:13-19

  The famine is severe, and there is no bread in the land. The people come to Joseph and buy grain until their money runs out. Then they come again: give us bread, they plead, for why should we die before you?...

• No. 1982 Genesis 33:12-20

  Reconciled at last with Esau, Jacob declines his brother's offer to travel together. My lord knows that the children are tender, he says, and that the flocks and herds have their young; if they are driven too...

• No. 1991 Genesis 17:9-14

  God gives Abraham the covenant of circumcision as a sign. This is my covenant, God says, which you shall keep: every male among you shall be circumcised, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and...

• No. 2002 Genesis 48:1-7

  The aged Jacob, near death, blesses Joseph and does something striking with Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, who had been born in Egypt. Your two sons, he says, who were born to you before I came, are...

• No. 2008 Genesis 33:6-11

  Jacob, returning home after twenty years, dreads meeting his brother Esau, whom he had wronged and who had once vowed to kill him. But when they meet, Esau receives him in peace. Jacob presses on Esau the gift...

• No. 2049 Genesis 17:1-8

  When Abram is ninety-nine years old, the LORD appears to him and says, I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. Then God renews and enlarges his covenant, changing Abram's name to Abraham, father...

• No. 2050 Genesis 44:14-29

  Joseph's silver cup has been found, by his own design, in Benjamin's sack, and the brothers are hauled back before him in dread. They fall to the ground, and Judah, speaking for them, can find no defense. What...

• No. 2053 Genesis 44:30-34

  Judah reaches the climax of his plea before Joseph, whom he does not recognize. Benjamin is to be kept as a slave, but Judah cannot bear to return to his father without the boy, for his father's very life is...

• No. 2062 Genesis 37:29-36

  Joseph's brothers, having sold him to traders, deceive their father. They dip his tunic in goat's blood and bring it to Jacob, who concludes that a wild animal has torn his son to pieces. Jacob tears his...

• No. 2080 Genesis 4:15-26

  The chapter traces the line of Cain into a darkening world. His descendant Lamech boasts of escalating violence, killing a man for merely wounding him and vaunting a vengeance far beyond Cain's. The world is...

• No. 2108 Genesis 33:1-5

  Jacob approaches the meeting he has dreaded for twenty years. He sees Esau coming with four hundred men, and, fearing the worst, he arranges his family defensively and goes ahead of them, bowing to the ground...

• No. 2120 Genesis 37:14-20

  Jacob sends his beloved son Joseph on an errand of care: go, see whether it is well with your brothers and with the flock, and bring me word. Joseph obeys, going out to seek his brothers, even wandering in a...

• No. 2138 Genesis 34:18-23

  After the assault on Dinah, Hamor and his son Shechem come to Jacob's family proposing intermarriage and alliance, and then present the plan to the men of their own city. Their public words sound generous:...

• No. 2169 Genesis 22:8-12

  At the height of Abraham's testing, he binds his son Isaac, lays him on the altar, and stretches out his hand with the knife. Then the angel of the LORD calls out: Abraham, Abraham! Do not lay your hand on the...

• No. 2205 Genesis 47:7-12

  When Joseph brings his aged father Jacob before Pharaoh, the king asks him his age. Jacob's answer reflects on the whole of his life: the years of my pilgrimage are one hundred thirty; the days of the years of...

• No. 2253 Genesis 27:35-40

  When Esau comes to receive his father's blessing, he learns that his brother Jacob has taken it by deceit. He is stricken. He took my birthright, Esau cries, and now he has taken my blessing. Have you not...

• No. 2361 Genesis 22:1-7

  Genesis tells of the day God tested Abraham, asking for the one thing dearest to him: take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and offer him on a mountain in Moriah. Abraham rises early, saddles the...

• No. 2366 Genesis 39:13-18

  Genesis catches the aftermath of Joseph's refusal. Having fled Potiphar's wife and left his garment in her hand, Joseph becomes the target of her lie. She calls the household, waves the garment as evidence,...

• No. 2367 Genesis 11:10-15

  Genesis gives a genealogy, the line of Shem: Arpachshad, then Shelah, then Eber, each entry the same shape, a father, a son, more sons and daughters, and a span of years. It is the kind of list most readers...

• No. 2424 Genesis 18:29-33

  Abraham is standing before the LORD, pleading for Sodom, and this is the end of a remarkable negotiation. He has been talking God down, from fifty righteous people to forty, to thirty, to twenty, and now to...

• No. 2436 Genesis 43:17-22

  Joseph, still unrecognized by his brothers, has them brought to his house for a meal. But they are terrified. They assume the worst, that they are being led inside so the returned money in their sacks can be...

• No. 2440 Genesis 22:13-18

  This is the resolution of the hardest test. Abraham, knife raised over Isaac, is stopped, and he lifts his eyes to see a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. He offers the ram in place of his son and names...

• No. 2473 Genesis 16:1-5

  Years pass and God's promise of a child has not come. So Sarai proposes a shortcut: the LORD has kept me from bearing, she says, so go to my servant Hagar; perhaps I will build a family through her. Abram...

• No. 2482 Genesis 38:17-21

  This is a sordid episode in the family line of Judah. Judah, not recognizing his widowed daughter-in-law Tamar behind a veil, takes her for a prostitute and promises a young goat in payment. She asks for a...

• No. 2506 Genesis 39:1-6

  Joseph, sold into slavery and carried down to Egypt, ends up in the house of Potiphar. And the refrain that governs the whole scene is simple: the LORD was with Joseph. He prospers, his master notices, and...

• No. 2535 Genesis 32:27-32

  Jacob has wrestled through the night with a mysterious man, and as dawn breaks he will not let go without a blessing. The stranger asks his name, then renames him: no longer Jacob, but Israel, for you have...

• No. 2551 Genesis 50:22-26

  At the end of Genesis, Joseph is dying in Egypt, having lived a hundred and ten years and seen his great-grandchildren. His last words are not about his own achievements but about a promise he will not live to...

• No. 2556 Genesis 14:1-12

  A war breaks out among the kings of the region, four kings against five, and the armies clash in the valley of Siddim. When the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah are routed, the victors plunder the cities and carry...

• No. 2566 Genesis 44:1-6

  Joseph, still unknown to his brothers, sets one last test. He has his steward fill their sacks with grain, return their silver, and secretly hide his own silver cup in Benjamin's sack. Then, once they have...

• No. 2583 Genesis 42:8-12

  The famine has driven Joseph's brothers to Egypt to buy grain, and there they stand before the very brother they sold, without recognizing him. But Joseph knows them at once. And the text notes what runs...

• No. 2587 Genesis 4:9-14

  After Cain kills his brother Abel, God asks him, where is your brother? Cain's answer is one of the oldest evasions in the world: I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? God does not accept the dodge. What...

• No. 2594 Genesis 30:1-8

  Rachel, unable to conceive while her sister Leah bears son after son, is consumed by envy. Give me children, she demands of Jacob, or I will die. Jacob's anger flares: am I in the place of God, who has kept...

• No. 2607 Genesis 31:20-24

  Jacob, afraid of his father-in-law Laban, slips away in secret with his family and flocks, not telling Laban he is leaving. When Laban finds out, he gathers his relatives and pursues Jacob for seven days,...

• No. 2629 Genesis 14:13-24

  Abram, hearing that his nephew Lot has been captured, arms his household and rescues him, defeating the raiding kings. On his return, two kings meet him. Melchizedek, priest of God Most High, brings out bread...

• No. 2654 Genesis 41:1-8

  The chapter opens with a small, painful phrase: at the end of two full years. Two years earlier, Joseph had interpreted the cupbearer's dream in prison and asked to be remembered, and the cupbearer forgot him....

• No. 2672 Genesis 11:22-26

  The genealogy runs its quiet course, another string of names, Serug, Nahor, Terah, each living, fathering the next, and dying, the record moving generation by generation with nothing dramatic to report. And...

• No. 2674 Genesis 50:1-5

  When his father Jacob dies, Joseph, by then second only to Pharaoh in Egypt, does not carry on as a busy statesman. He falls on his father's face and weeps and kisses him. He has him embalmed, and mourns him...

• No. 2686 Genesis 23:1-6

  Sarah dies at Hebron, and Abraham, who has followed God's promise for a lifetime, comes to mourn and weep for her. Then he rises from beside his dead and does something ordinary and heavy: he goes to buy a...

• No. 2709 Genesis 23:12-20

  Abraham is finishing the purchase of a burial place for Sarah, and the whole exchange is a study in the courtesy of the town gate. Ephron offers the field of Machpelah as a gift, waving off the price as...

• No. 2712 Genesis 19:1-5

  This is a scene that should be read soberly. The two angels reach Sodom at evening, and Lot, sitting in the gate, presses them not to sleep in the open square but to shelter under his roof. He bows, urges...

• No. 2731 Genesis 47:20-24

  The famine grinds on, and Joseph, who reads Pharaoh's dream and stored grain for seven years, is now managing a nation with no food. As people run out of money they trade their land for bread, until the fields...

• No. 2750 Genesis 8:13-17

  The flood has drained away. Noah pulls back the covering of the ark and sees with his own eyes that the ground is dry. And yet he does not rush out. He waits, weeks longer, until God finally speaks the word:...

• No. 2751 Genesis 49:1-16

  On his deathbed Jacob gathers his twelve sons to tell them what lies ahead, and it is not all blessing. Reuben, the firstborn, forfeits his place for defiling his father's bed. Simeon and Levi are rebuked for...

• No. 2764 Genesis 26:1-5

  A famine comes, and Isaac heads toward Egypt just as his father once did in hard times. But God stops him at Gerar: do not go down to Egypt. Stay in the land I show you, and I will be with you and bless you....

• No. 2766 Genesis 26:17-22

  Isaac reopens the wells his father Abraham had dug, which the Philistines had filled in out of spite, and his servants dig fresh ones too. But the herdsmen of Gerar quarrel over the first well, claiming the...

• No. 2768 Genesis 42:26-38

  On the road home from Egypt, one of Joseph's brothers opens his sack and finds his silver returned inside it, and their hearts sink. Trembling, they ask one another, what is this that God has done to us? At...

• No. 2850 Genesis 29:26-30

  Jacob has worked seven years for Rachel, only to be tricked by his uncle Laban into marrying her older sister Leah first. Laban shrugs off the deceit with a maxim: it is not done here to give the younger...

• No. 2851 Genesis 18:1-5

  The LORD appears to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre in the heat of the day, while the old man sits at his tent door. He looks up and sees three men standing nearby, and rather than wait to be approached, he runs...

• No. 2897 Genesis 50:6-14

  With Pharaoh's blessing, Joseph goes up to bury his father Jacob in Canaan, accompanied by a great company of Egyptian officials, elders, and chariots. They stop at the threshing floor of Atad and mourn seven...

• No. 2908 Genesis 29:6-12

  Jacob, arriving in Haran after fleeing his brother, comes to a well where shepherds are waiting to water their flocks. When Rachel arrives with her father's sheep, Jacob goes over, single-handedly rolls the...

• No. 2919 Genesis 5:12-17

  This is a stretch of the genealogy from Adam. Kenan lived, became the father of Mahalalel, lived on and had more sons and daughters, and died. Mahalalel lived, became the father of Jared, had more children,...

• No. 2973 Genesis 21:24-29

  Abraham and Abimelech are about to make a covenant of peace, but first Abraham raises a grievance: Abimelech's servants had seized a well that Abraham had dug. Abimelech says he knew nothing of it, that this...

• No. 3007 Genesis 28:16-22

  Jacob wakes from his dream of the ladder reaching to heaven and says, surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it. Filled with awe, he calls it the house of God, the gate of heaven. He sets up the...

• No. 3029 Genesis 35:1-8

  God tells Jacob to go up to Bethel and build an altar there, the place where God appeared to him when he fled from Esau. But before he goes, Jacob says to his whole household: put away the foreign gods that...

• No. 3046 Genesis 12:7-13

  God appears to Abram and promises the land to his offspring, and Abram builds an altar and calls on the name of the LORD. He is a man of worship and faith. But then a famine drives him toward Egypt, and as he...

• No. 3088 Genesis 49:17-27

  Jacob continues blessing his sons. Dan a serpent by the road; Gad pressed by raiders yet pressing back; Asher's food rich; Naphtali a doe set free; Joseph a fruitful vine, attacked by archers yet kept strong;...

• No. 3089 Genesis 26:11-16

  Under Abimelech's protection, Isaac settles and farms, and God blesses him: he sows in that land and reaps a hundredfold in a single year, growing greater and greater until he is very great, with flocks and...

• No. 3113 Genesis 20:6-10

  Abraham has again passed off Sarah as merely his sister, and King Abimelech has taken her. But God comes to Abimelech in a dream: I know you did this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you...

• No. 3116 Genesis 39:7-12

  Day after day, Potiphar's wife tries to seduce Joseph, and day after day he refuses. My master has entrusted everything to me, he says; how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? When at last...

• No. 3133 Genesis 6:1-8

  As humanity multiplies, so does its wickedness, until the LORD sees that every intention of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil continually. And the response is not cold: the LORD was sorry that he...

• No. 3151 Genesis 27:41-46

  Esau, cheated of the blessing, hates Jacob and vows to kill him once their father has died. Rebekah hears of the threat and sends Jacob away to her brother Laban, telling him to stay until Esau's fury cools....

• No. 3189 Genesis 24:26-31

  Abraham's servant, having found Rebekah at the well exactly as he had prayed, does not congratulate himself. He bows his head and worships the LORD: blessed be the God of my master Abraham, who has not...

• No. 3192 Genesis 24:21-25

  As Rebekah waters his camels, Abraham's servant watches her closely and in silence, wondering whether the LORD has made his journey a success. Then he gives her a gold ring and two gold bracelets, and asks...

• No. 3219 Genesis 42:18-25

  Joseph, testing his brothers who do not recognize him, keeps Simeon bound and sends the rest home with grain, demanding they return with Benjamin. And there, in his hearing but thinking he cannot understand,...

• No. 3233 Genesis 28:6-15

  Jacob, fleeing his brother's murderous anger, leaves Beersheba and comes at nightfall to a certain place, where he lies down with a stone for a pillow. And there God meets him in a dream: a stairway set on the...

• No. 3234 Genesis 42:13-17

  Joseph, still unrecognized by his brothers, accuses them of being spies and demands they prove their honesty by bringing their youngest brother, Benjamin, to him. To test them, he puts them all in custody for...

• No. 3240 Genesis 36:20-30

  This is a genealogy of the Horites, the earlier inhabitants of Seir, listing their families and their chiefs, recorded in Scripture alongside the line of Esau. It is a list of a people not part of Israel at...

• No. 3308 Genesis 28:1-5

  Isaac calls Jacob, blesses him, and sends him away to Paddan-Aram to find a wife among his own kin. And he blesses him with the blessing of Abraham: may God make you fruitful and multiply you into a company of...

• No. 3324 Genesis 47:25-31

  As Jacob's long life draws to a close in Egypt, where his family has prospered in the good land of Goshen, he calls his son Joseph and makes him swear a solemn oath: deal kindly and truly with me; do not bury...

• No. 3330 Genesis 38:1-11

  The narrative steps aside from Joseph's story to Judah's household, and it is a somber account. Judah's firstborn Er is wicked and dies. The second son, Onan, refuses the duty of raising up offspring for his...

• No. 3335 Genesis 24:15-20

  Abraham's servant had prayed for a sign: let the woman who offers to water my camels be the one you have chosen. And before he even finishes praying, Rebekah comes to the well. Asked for a sip of water, she...

• No. 3343 Genesis 19:18-22

  As the angels urge Lot to flee Sodom to the safety of the hills, Lot pleads instead for a small nearby town: I cannot escape to the mountains, lest disaster overtake me; look, this city is near, and it is a...

• No. 3348 Genesis 42:1-7

  Driven by famine, Jacob sends his ten older sons down to Egypt to buy grain, keeping only young Benjamin at home. And there they bow before the very brother they had sold into slavery, fulfilling, without...

• No. 3373 Genesis 37:1-7

  The seeds of a family tragedy are sown here. Jacob loves Joseph more than his other sons and shows it openly with a special coat, and the brothers hate him for the favoritism, unable to speak a kind word to...

• No. 3375 Genesis 36:1-8

  This genealogy of Esau records that the brother who once sold his birthright became the father of a nation, Edom. And a small detail stands out: Esau and Jacob had to separate because their possessions were...

• No. 3399 Genesis 32:21-26

  On the night before facing his estranged brother Esau, Jacob sends everyone and everything across the river, and is left alone. And there a mysterious man wrestles with him until daybreak. When the man cannot...

• No. 3421 Genesis 13:1-9

  As Abram and Lot both prosper, the land cannot support both their herds, and strife breaks out between their herdsmen. Abram, the elder, and the one to whom God had actually given the promise of the land, has...

• No. 3442 Genesis 21:1-7

  After all the years of waiting and doubting, and even laughing in disbelief, the promise comes true: the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and did to Sarah as he had promised. Isaac is born to a...

• No. 3493 Genesis 29:1-5

  Jacob, sent away to find a wife and still fleeing his brother, arrives in a far country and comes to a well in a field where shepherds gather their flocks. It is a quiet, ordinary scene, but it is the...

• No. 3505 Genesis 43:11-16

  Driven by famine, Jacob finally agrees to let Benjamin go down to Egypt, though it terrifies him to risk his youngest son. He does what he can, sending a gift of the land's best fruits and double the money,...

• No. 3553 Genesis 29:31-35

  Leah is the unloved wife, overlooked in favor of her sister Rachel, and the passage says simply, the LORD saw that Leah was hated, and he opened her womb. God sees the unloved and the overlooked; Leah's ache...

• No. 3577 Genesis 29:13-18

  Jacob arrives at his uncle Laban's house and is warmly welcomed, and soon he loses his heart to Rachel, the younger daughter. When Laban asks what wages he wants for his labor, Jacob makes an offer that...

• No. 3592 Genesis 24:32-47

  Abraham's servant, offered food after his long journey, will not eat until he has told his errand, and he recounts the whole story of how God guided him. He tells how he prayed at the well for a specific sign,...

• No. 3626 Genesis 21:30-34

  After a dispute over a well is settled, Abraham makes a covenant of peace with Abimelech at Beersheba. And then a small, beautiful detail: Abraham plants a tamarisk tree, and there he calls on the name of the...

• No. 3637 Genesis 9:8-17

  After the flood, God makes a covenant, not only with Noah and his descendants but with every living creature, that never again will a flood destroy the earth. And he gives a sign: I set my bow in the cloud,...

• No. 3643 Genesis 30:37-43

  This is a strange passage about Jacob's method of breeding the flocks with peeled rods to gain the stronger animals for himself, and by it he grows exceedingly prosperous. But the folk method is not really the...

• No. 3681 Genesis 1:6-13

  The creation account continues with God separating and ordering: the waters above from those below, the sea from the dry land, and then filling the earth with vegetation, plants and trees each bearing seed...

• No. 3711 Genesis 6:9-22

  In a world grown utterly corrupt and violent, one man stands out: Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God. Surrounded by universal wickedness, he did not go along with it;...

• No. 3732 Genesis 21:18-23

  Hagar, cast out with her son Ishmael, sits weeping in the desert, out of water, expecting the boy to die. But God hears the boy's cry and opens Hagar's eyes to see a well of water that was there all along. The...

• No. 3746 Genesis 22:19-24

  After the drama on Mount Moriah, this quiet passage almost slips by: a list of Abraham's brother Nahor's children, ending with a small but weighty note, and Bethuel became the father of Rebekah. Nothing seems...

• No. 3777 Genesis 27:30-34

  The deception is complete. Jacob has taken the blessing meant for Esau, and moments after he leaves, Esau comes in from his hunting with the meal he had prepared, expecting his father's blessing. When the...

• No. 3780 Genesis 35:16-22

  This passage holds deep sorrow and quiet hope together. Rachel, Jacob's beloved wife, dies giving birth, and with her last breath she names the child Ben-oni, son of my sorrow. But Jacob, grieving, renames him...

• No. 3803 Genesis 8:18-22

  The first thing Noah does when he steps out of the ark onto a cleansed earth is build an altar and worship. Before planting, before building a home, before anything else, he offers to God in gratitude for...

• No. 3812 Genesis 47:1-6

  Joseph brings his father and brothers before Pharaoh and settles them in Egypt during the famine. And Pharaoh, out of regard for Joseph, welcomes them warmly, telling Joseph to settle his family in the good...

• No. 3819 Genesis 40:16-23

  Encouraged by the good interpretation Joseph gave the cupbearer, the chief baker asks about his own dream. But this dream carries a grim meaning, and Joseph does not hide it or dress it up: within three days...

• No. 3820 Genesis 18:6-10

  Three visitors arrive at Abraham's tent in the heat of the day, and he throws himself into welcoming them. He hurries, he runs, he tells Sarah to be quick; he prepares a generous meal, a whole calf, bread,...

• No. 3829 Genesis 40:1-7

  Joseph, unjustly imprisoned and far from home, might well have been consumed by his own troubles. Instead, when Pharaoh's two officers are thrown into the prison and put in his charge, Joseph pays attention to...

• No. 3855 Genesis 16:6-16

  Mistreated by Sarai and fleeing into the wilderness alone and pregnant, Hagar, an Egyptian servant with no standing and no advocate, is found by the angel of the LORD by a spring in the desert. God had not...

• No. 3859 Genesis 27:18-24

  This is the deception at its boldest. Jacob stands before his blind, aged father, wearing his brother's clothes and goatskins on his hands, and lies to his face: I am Esau your firstborn. When Isaac wonders...

• No. 3909 Genesis 43:28-34

  Joseph, now the ruler of Egypt, sees his younger brother Benjamin, his own mother's son, for the first time in years, and is overwhelmed. His heart yearns for his brother, and he has to hurry out of the room...

• No. 3915 Genesis 18:22-28

  As the LORD prepares to judge Sodom, Abraham does a remarkable thing: he draws near and begins to intercede, pleading for the city to be spared for the sake of any righteous people in it. Will you sweep away...

• No. 3931 Genesis 7:6-12

  After the long years of building, the moment comes: Noah, with his family and the animals, goes into the ark, and only then, after seven days, do the floodwaters come. The fountains of the deep burst open and...

• No. 3970 Genesis 31:14-19

  God has told Jacob to leave Laban and return to his own land, and when Jacob explains this to his wives Rachel and Leah, they respond with wholehearted agreement: whatever God has said to you, do. They are...

• No. 4016 Genesis 25:24-34

  Esau comes in from the field famished, and seeing Jacob's stew, he trades away his birthright, the precious inheritance and blessing of the firstborn, for a single meal. What good is the birthright to me? he...

• No. 4018 Genesis 48:8-16

  The aged Jacob, near death, blesses Joseph's two sons, and in doing so he gives one of the beautiful confessions of faith in Genesis. He describes God in three ways drawn from his own long life: the God before...

• No. 4029 Genesis 43:6-10

  As the famine forces Jacob's family to return to Egypt, and the ruler there has demanded that they bring their youngest brother Benjamin, Jacob resists, unwilling to risk losing another son. And it is Judah...

• No. 4038 Genesis 18:11-15

  God has promised the aged Abraham and Sarah a son, but Sarah, long past childbearing, laughs to herself at the thought; after all these years, could such a thing really happen? And God gently confronts her...

• No. 4073 Genesis 41:46-52

  Joseph, now raised to power in Egypt, has two sons, and the names he gives them tell the story of what God had done in his heart after all his years of suffering. The first he names Manasseh, saying, God has...

• No. 4083 Genesis 18:16-21

  As the LORD prepares to judge Sodom, he pauses and asks himself a question: shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? And he decides to tell his friend, giving the reason: I have chosen him, that he may...

• No. 4085 Genesis 25:12-18

  This short genealogy records the descendants of Ishmael, Abraham's son by Hagar, listing twelve sons who became twelve princes. It is easy to pass over such a list, but it is quietly significant. Ishmael was...

• No. 4091 Genesis 39:19-23

  Joseph, falsely accused by Potiphar's wife, is thrown into prison, punished for a crime he did not commit. It is a low point, another undeserved descent for a man who had already been betrayed and enslaved....

• No. 4098 Genesis 11:27-32

  This short passage introduces Abraham's family, and it contains a small but telling detail. Terah, Abraham's father, took his family and set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan; but, we...

• No. 4119 Genesis 41:14-24

  Brought up hastily from the dungeon to stand before Pharaoh, Joseph is told that Pharaoh has heard he can interpret dreams. It would have been a natural moment for Joseph to claim the ability as his own, to...

• No. 4122 Genesis 29:19-25

  Jacob loves Rachel and works seven years for her, and when the wedding day comes, he is given her older sister Leah instead, discovering the deception only in the morning. What is this you have done to me? he...

• No. 4124 Genesis 31:36-42

  After twenty years of hard service under his father-in-law Laban, Jacob finally pours out his grievance. He recounts his faithful, exhausting labor: how he bore the losses, endured the drought by day and frost...

• No. 4163 Genesis 24:6-14

  Abraham sends his trusted servant on a weighty mission, to find a wife for Isaac. And when the servant arrives at the well of the city, the first thing he does is pray. O LORD, God of my master Abraham, he...

• No. 4167 Genesis 49:28-33

  At the end of his long life, Jacob gathers his sons, blesses them, and gives his final charge: bury me with my fathers in the cave in the land of Canaan, where Abraham and Isaac are buried. And having...

• No. 4176 Genesis 5:25-32

  In the long genealogy from Adam to Noah, one moment breaks through the list of names and ages. When Lamech has a son, he names him Noah, saying, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the...

• No. 4182 Genesis 30:14-21

  This passage lifts a corner on the painful dynamics of Jacob's household, the rivalry between the sisters Leah and Rachel, the competition for their husband's love. Beneath it all is a woman's ache. Leah, the...

• No. 4229 Genesis 30:9-13

  This passage belongs to one of the more tangled family stories in Scripture, the rivalry between Leah and Rachel and their servants, each striving through childbearing for standing and love in a divided...

• No. 4233 Genesis 1:20-25

  As the creation unfolds, the waters teem with living creatures, birds fill the sky, and the land brings forth animals of every kind. And a refrain runs through it all: God saw that it was good. Again and...

• No. 4257 Genesis 23:7-11

  Grieving the death of Sarah, Abraham needs a place to bury her, and he approaches the Hittites to buy the cave of Machpelah. When Ephron offers to give him the field and the cave for nothing, Abraham insists...

• No. 4297 Genesis 50:15-21

  After their father Jacob dies, Joseph's brothers are afraid that Joseph will finally take revenge for the terrible wrong they did him years before, when they sold him into slavery. But Joseph reassures them...

• No. 4315 Genesis 31:25-30

  Jacob has fled from his father-in-law Laban, and Laban, angry, pursues and overtakes him with his kinsmen. Laban has both the will and the means to harm Jacob: it is in my power to do you harm, he says. But...

• No. 4320 Genesis 46:1-7

  Old Jacob is about to leave the promised land and go down to Egypt, a daunting move into the unknown at the end of his life. At Beersheba he offers sacrifices, and God speaks to him in a vision of the night:...