The Bible
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Bible - Book of Genesis
The Bible's book of beginnings: the creation of the world, the first humans, the flood, and the family of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, bound to God by promise.
Bible - Book of Exodus
Israel's founding story: slavery in Egypt, Moses and the burning bush, the plagues and the sea, and then the covenant, the commandments and the tabernacle at Sinai.
Bible - Book of Leviticus
The priestly heart of the Torah: how a people is to live beside a holy God, through sacrifice, purity, the Day of Atonement and the command to love your neighbour as yourself.
Bible - Book of Numbers
Israel's forty years between Mount Sinai and the Jordan: two censuses, a refusal at the border of Canaan, a generation lost in the desert and a new one made ready.
Bible - Book of Deuteronomy
Moses' farewell speeches on the edge of the promised land: the story so far, the law restated, a covenant to choose, and the death of Israel's greatest prophet.
Bible - Book of Joshua
After the wilderness, Israel crosses the Jordan under a new leader, takes and divides the promised land, and is asked to choose whom it will serve.
Bible - Book of Judges
Between Joshua and the kings, Israel falls again and again into unfaithfulness and is rescued by flawed champions such as Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah and Samson.
Bible - Book of Ruth
A widowed foreigner's stubborn loyalty to her mother-in-law turns famine, grief and emptiness into a harvest, a marriage and the family line of King David.
Bible - Book of 1 Samuel
Israel asks for a king and gets Saul, who rises and unravels while a shepherd named David, anointed in secret, kills a giant and spends years on the run from the man he will replace.
Bible - Book of 2 Samuel
Israel's greatest king wins a nation, receives a promise that his dynasty will last forever, then watches his own sin tear his family apart.
Bible - Book of 1 Kings
From Solomon's wisdom, wealth and Temple to a kingdom split in two, a line of failing kings, and the prophet Elijah's lonely stand against Ahab and Jezebel.
Bible - Book of 2 Kings
From Elijah's chariot of fire to the burning of Jerusalem, the story of how two kingdoms ignored their prophets and lost their land.
Bible - Book of 1 Chronicles
Israel's story retold for a later age: long family lines from Adam to the tribes, then David as the king who brings the ark to Jerusalem and prepares everything for the Temple.
Bible - Book of 2 Chronicles
Four centuries of Judah's kings, from Solomon's golden Temple to its ashes, told as one long lesson that God hears those who humble themselves and turn back.
Bible - Book of Ezra
The return from Babylon: exiles rebuild the Temple under Persian kings, and the scribe Ezra arrives to teach the law and confront a community in crisis.
Bible - Book of Nehemiah
The king's cupbearer gets leave to rebuild Jerusalem's ruined walls, finishes them in fifty-two days against threats and plots, and then fights to reform the community inside.
Bible - Book of Esther
An orphaned Jewish girl becomes queen of Persia and risks her life to stop a decree to destroy her people, in the only biblical story besides the Song of Songs that never names God.
Bible - Book of Job
A blameless man loses everything, refuses his friends' easy explanations, demands an answer from God, and receives one out of a whirlwind that he did not expect.
Bible - Book of Psalms
Israel's songbook: 150 hymns, laments and thanksgivings in five books, from the shepherd psalm to the rivers of Babylon, still prayed and sung every day.
Bible - Book of Proverbs
The Bible's handbook of wisdom: a parent's speeches, Wisdom's own voice and hundreds of sharp sayings on work, words, money, anger and the fear of the LORD.
Bible - Book of Ecclesiastes
A king who has tried everything looks hard at work, pleasure, wisdom and death, calls it all vapor, and concludes that the best we can do is enjoy our days as gifts and fear God.
Bible - Song of Solomon
The Bible's great love poem: a woman and her beloved seek, praise and long for each other in gardens and city streets, in verses read for centuries as both human passion and divine love.
Bible - Book of Isaiah
The great prophetic book of judgment and comfort: Jerusalem's fall and renewal, the holy God enthroned, the suffering servant and a peace that reaches every nation.
Bible - Book of Jeremiah
A reluctant prophet warns a doomed kingdom for forty years, argues bitterly with God, and still holds out the promise of a new covenant.