Jeremiah 31:31-34 Jeremiah offers this vision of hope for future after the temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed, the King of Judah has been taken away, and many of the Israelites are in exile in Babylon. Is this judgment of God’s disobedient people the end? What is the future? Christians often interpret this as a…

Numbers 21:4-9 For Moses and his community, serpents represented both a threat to physical life for those unfortunate enough to be bitten and, if we follow their thinking that God sent the poisonous snakes, divine retribution for their lapse in faith that God would provide as God had promised. Yet they also were the sign…

Exodus 20:1-17 This is one of the two Old Testament passages containing the Ten Commandments, the other being Deuteronomy 5:6-21. The text itself does not make clear how the verses are to be divided into ten, and so they have been numbered slightly differently among different Christian denominations and Jews. But however they are divided,…

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 All of the readings for today have a common theme of faith: God’s faithfulness to us and our response. Psalm 22:22-30 This psalm actually begins in lament with the familiar: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Then, it moves to today’s portion, which includes praise, worship, and finally a…

Genesis 9:8-17 This passage, in its historical context, most likely served more as a folkloristic explanation for the appearances of rainbows than as a covenant story. Other such texts that use the term “covenant” involve agreements between two parties to perform (or refrain) from certain actions (according to the Anchor Bible Dictionary.) This text does…