The Bible in Small Steps

Genesis 11: The Tower of Babel Why did the builders of Babel want a city and a tower, and what does their desire to make a name for themselves reveal? Explore the setting in Shinar, ancient building technology, the scattering of peoples and languages, and the contrast between human ambition and God’s purposes. In this episode of The Bible in Small Steps, Jill from the Northwoods explores the topic...

Genesis 10: Noah’s Descendants and the Table of Nations After the flood, Genesis 10 traces the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth and introduces the peoples and places that appear throughout the rest of Scripture. Discover why this genealogy matters, how it relates to the ancient world, and why all the nations belong to one human story. In this episode of The Bible in Small Steps, Jill from the...

Genesis 9: The Covenant and the Rainbow The Bible in Small Steps After the flood, God blesses Noah’s family, gives instructions concerning life and blood, and establishes a covenant with every living creature. Genesis 9 brings the rainbow as a sign of God’s promise—and a sobering reminder that human sin remains. In this episode: • Be fruitful and multiply • Animals and food after the flood • Blood...

Genesis 8: God Remembered Noah The Bible in Small Steps The rain has stopped, but Noah and his family still have to wait. Genesis 8 follows the receding waters, the raven and dove, the olive leaf, and the moment life begins again. At its center is the remarkable promise that God remembered Noah. In this episode: • God remembered Noah • Wind and the retreating waters • The ark rests in Ararat • The...

When the Flood Came | Genesis 7 What happens when the time for preparation ends and the warning becomes reality? In Genesis 7, Noah enters the ark with his family, the animals arrive, and the waters rise. We consider the difference between merely believing a warning and acting on it, the distinction between clean and unclean animals, and what the chapter actually tells us about the flood—without i...

Jill’s Links The World Before the Flood | Genesis 6 Genesis 6 takes us into a world where violence and corruption have spread throughout humanity. Before we get to the familiar picture of Noah’s ark, we need to understand why judgment was coming—and why Noah finding favor with God matters. We explore the difficult questions surrounding the sons of God and the Nephilim without pretending Scripture...

Genesis and ancient Mesopotamian literature describe a world before a great flood, extraordinary early figures, and life afterward. I explore those similarities through a family reunion illustration while keeping the differences clear. Shared memory is the interpretation considered here, rather than an archaeological conclusion that the surviving texts can prove. Ten Generations and Ancient King L...

Who was Enoch, what are the books attributed to him, and why does Jude quote an Enoch tradition? I distinguish the biblical account from later Jewish literature, explore the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and consider how a noncanonical text can be historically useful while Scripture remains the standard. What Scripture Tells Us about Enoch Genesis describes Enoch as walking with God and be...

What happens when sin is not only one bad act, but a direction that keeps being repeated? Genesis 4 shows the progression with uncomfortable clarity. Adam and Eve hide, Cain denies, and a few generations later Lamech is openly boasting about violence. From Hiding to Denying to Bragging Genesis shows sin changing posture across generations. Adam and Eve hide, Cain denies responsibility, and by Lame...

Genesis 5 is one of those chapters people are tempted to skim because it looks like a long list of names, ages, sons, and deaths. But the repetition is doing important work. This genealogy tells us what happened to the image of God, whether death really came as God warned, and how God's promise keeps moving through generation after generation. Why Not Skip the Genealogy? Genesis 5 can look like a...

Why would God ask for sacrifices at all? It's easy to picture a God who is hungry, needy, or waiting to be bribed, and plenty of ancient religions thought exactly that. In this episode I step back from Genesis 4 to trace what sacrifice meant from Cain and Abel all the way to Romans 12, and why the question underneath every offering in Scripture is the same one: do you trust God enough to let go? *...

Genesis 3 gave us the fall. Genesis 4 gives us the first funeral. In this episode I walk through the whole chapter, from two brothers bringing two very different offerings, to God's warning about sin crouching at the door, to the first murder, the mark of Cain, Lamech's violent song, and a quiet new beginning through Seth. This is where sin stops being something two people did in a garden and star...

Why do people hide from God? Not just Adam and Eve in the garden, but why is it still the default setting of the human heart thousands of years later? This episode traces the anatomy of hiding, from Genesis 3 all the way through Jonah and the Psalms, and lands on why hiding never actually works. **The Anatomy of Hiding** It starts with hearing God in whatever form that takes for you, moves to fear...

God's judgment in Genesis 3 reads like the end of the story, but it's actually the beginning of the solution. This episode takes a deeper dive into verses 14 through 24, the curses pronounced on the serpent, the woman, and the man, and the first promise of a rescuer tucked directly inside them. **The Serpent's Curse: From Beautiful to Debased** The curse on the serpent isn't about snake anatomy. I...

# What Marriage Was Before We Complicated It Every wedding you've ever been to borrowed its most famous line straight from Genesis 2. Before we let centuries of tradition and culture pile on top of it, I wanted to ask a simpler question: what was marriage actually designed to be? **Two Reasons, Not One** Scripture gives two separate purposes for marriage: filling and stewarding the earth together...

# What Life Was Like Before Sin Before we can understand what sin broke, we need to slow down and look at what life was actually supposed to be. Genesis 1 and 2 describe a world that was never meant to include brokenness at all. **Made in God's Image, Placed as Ambassadors** Out of everything God made, land, water, plants, every animal, only man and woman are described as being made in his image....

Flag before publishing: this episode opens with "Last episode we set up Genesis 1 as the cosmic frame, today we zoom into Genesis 2," which reads like it should follow directly after your Genesis 1 episode (261). Worth double-checking whether 262 and 263 should swap numbers before you publish. I think most of us carry around the wrong picture of Eden. We imagine a finished postcard paradise that g...

Flag before publishing: this episode's opening ("we talked previously about what Eden was like, what was the purpose of Eden") sounds like it's referencing TBISS263's content, not preceding it. Worth double-checking whether 262 and 263 should swap numbers before you publish. I take this one slow, verse by verse, because Genesis 2 and 3 carry more weight than a quick read gives them credit for. We...

Six words in Genesis have been argued over for thousands of years: let us make man in our image. This episode slows all the way down on that one verse from last time and asks what it actually meant, and still means. Selem and Demut: Two Words That Aren't Neutral The Hebrew words behind image and likeness carried real weight in the ancient world, tied to the practice of kings setting up statues to...

We just closed out Revelation, and now we're going all the way back to the beginning. This episode kicks off a new format for The Bible in Small Steps as we move through Genesis story by story instead of chapter by chapter, starting with the six days of creation. **A New Way Through Genesis** Genesis doesn't break cleanly into chapters the way the New Testament did, so this series moves story by s...

We just closed the entire New Testament with the last word of Revelation, and now we’re doing something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time: starting the Old Testament. But we’re not doing it the same way. Instead of walking chapter by chapter the way we did through the Gospels and the epistles, we’re going story by story, because that’s how the Old Testament is actually built. Here’s wha...

This is it, not just the last chapter of Revelation, but the last word of the entire New Testament and the whole Bible. After walking through seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls, two beasts, a great prostitute, a wedding, and a final battle, Revelation 22 brings the whole story home. Here’s what closes out this study before we start Genesis next week. The river and the tree, r...

This is the chapter I’ve been looking forward to more than any other in this entire study. After seven letters, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls, two beasts, a great prostitute, and a final battle, we finally get to see what it looks like when every tear is wiped away. Here’s what’s in Revelation 21. No more sea. John’s vision opens with a new heaven and a new earth, and the detail that “t...

Last week, the beast and false prophet were defeated almost as fast as the battle began. Chapter 20 slows things back down and takes on the most debated passage in the entire book: the thousand years, the first resurrection, and the final judgment before the great white throne. Three major readings of the thousand years exist, and I walk through all of them honestly. Premillennialism reads it as a...

Six words in Genesis have been argued over for thousands of years: let us make man in our image. This episode slows all the way down on that one verse from last time and asks what it actually meant, and still means. **Selem and Demut: Two Words That Aren't Neutral** The Hebrew words behind image and likeness carried real weight in the ancient world, tied to the practice of kings setting up statues...