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Having seen Job go through the rounds with three of his friends, readers now have a "wait, what?" moment as a fourth man steps up, having witnessed the entire conversation so far.  This man is Elihu, and until now, his youth has prevented him from speaking.  Now however, he's had enough of Job's nonsense and proves that age - or lack of it is no guarantor that you will get to t...

Tired of hearing his friends' near endless tirade against him, Job launches into a monologue that charts the depths of his distress. It's less a defence and more a wistful look back at how wonderful life was before tragedy struck. Meanwhile God seems utterly indifferent and leaves Job with no answers as to why his life has taken such a dramatic U turn. Written and produced by Chas Bayfie...

The suffering of  Job simply does not add up for his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. Despite what they know of Job from their own experience, their brains simply cannot compute that he might be innocent. Even when Job points out the very obvious fact that God allows many evil people to thrive, his friends maintain their unswervable position that his suffering has been brought on himself...

Job is utterly bewildered. His friends are convinced that he has done something dreadful to warrant so much suffering. He knows that he hasn't, and simply wants a hearing with God. This opens a can of worms. Is Job, a mere human,  claiming that God has made a mistake? Listeners feel especially smug knowing that all parties are wrong. Job hasn't sinned, at least no more than the average p...

A man sits in rags while his woulds fester. Three of his friends sit with him, explaining to him why he is suffering. It is crystal clear to them: his suffering is a punishment from God, and because the suffering is severe, so must be the sin that he is being punished for. What none of tyhem know is that Job is the subject of a game that is being played in the heavenly realm by God and the Devil....

Job is a good man. He enjoys a prosperous life. He worships God. The Devil is confident that Job's faith is paper thin and that a bit of adversity will soon have him rejecting God. God takes the opposite position and so the experiment slash wager begins. With his skin itching and sore, all his material wealth gone and his children dead, Job must now endure the "wisdom" of three of h...

In one of the most extraordinary gambits in the Bible, and possibly in the whole of literature, God and the Devil have a wager over the virtue of one man, a farmer named Job. Now synonymous with suffering, Job endures both terrible harships and the judgemental pontification of some of his closest friends. This is where the history section of the Bible ends and the poetry begins and the Devil is ab...

This has to be the Bible's greatest moment of schadenfreude. A man intent on genocide realises that the person who he believes is one of his closest allies is actually part of the ethnic group who he wants to cleanse. Furious back-pedalling ensues, vengeance is dealt and what might have been the darkest day in Jewish history is averted thanks to the bravery and cool-headedness of a single Jew...

From the pampered luxury of Persia's royal harem to a life or death encounter with the world's most powerful man. It's incredible that Shakespeare didn't write a play about Esther, the characters are so vivid. Then again, he didn't need to as the story is already told so well. Esther, the beautiful queen, ensconced in the harem. Mordecai, who directs the action from the pa...

You're king of one of the largest empires ever amassed. You're hosting a banquet for the governors of all your territories. And you want your queen to make an appearance. She feels that she is only being paraded in front of the men as a trophy, and refuses. The stage is set for one of the Bible's most remarkable stories, a literal rags to riches fairy tale with enough grit and gore...

The Jews may be back in Jerusalem but things are far from rosy. Nehemiah wades in like a teacher in an unruly classroom, desperate to create order and restore a level of godliness as Judah is resettled. His concern is that this is the Jews' last chance to get things right with God, and so they should avoid any of the behaviours that led to them being captured and exiled in the past. It's...

Jerusalem's wall may be rebuilt but Nehemiah's problems are far from over. There are people in his midst who are happy to betray him. There are also people within Israel who are denying their fellow citizens human rights, and who seem happy to exploit tose less well off than them. It's time to go back to basics.  To reboot the nation spiritually as well as physically. It makes life...

A refined member of the Persian royal court plans a remarkable restoration project in his Jerusalem homeland. Without a building qualification to his name, Nehemiah becomes cheerleader for one of the greatest construction projects in the Bible, the rebuilding of Jerusalem's curtain wall. But before he can execute a  project as near impossible as this one, he needs to pull off another near imp...

The embattled returnees discover that rebuilding their temple is fraught with opposition. Like modern day battles about planning permission and with much resistance from hostile locals who moved into the region while the Jews were in exile in Persia, a letter is sent to Persia's king. Jerusalem is in his jurisdiction and so Artaxerxes has the final say on whether the city gets a new temple. T...

Episode 100! I need to say that again. Episode 100! Almost two years into the journey and we're still only  15 books into the 66 book epic that is the Bible. Still, why rush. You see a lot more from a slower bus. You join us at the start of the Book of Ezra, an exiled Jew who has returned to Jerusalem to rebuild its temple, a project that is not without its obstacles. Fun fact: Ezra probably...

Told differently to a different audience, the utter collapse of Judah's monarchy, its principal city and its temple still hits home. Its kings deposed or captured, the survivors are dragged to Babylon where they languish in exile for the next seven decades. A ragged bunch of survivors eventually makes it home to the wasteland that was once Jerusalem, and these are this book's original re...

The propaganda machine continues apace. In this episode, one of Judah's most virtuous kings, Hezekiah, reinstates the religious calendar and celebrates Passover.  Then his son Manasseh, the nation's most wretched and evil ruler is given a moral makeover after and leaves the Bible both reformed and forgiven.  The end destination of absolute destruction for Judah is still the same, but for...

If nothing else, the account of the Kings of Judah who rule after David and Solomon shows a fascinating range of personalities, from psychopath to narcissist to saint, and pretty much everything in between. Given that rule one in Judah's  monarchy, and in daily life for every Jew is to put God first, an amazing number of  the nation's kings fail to do this. The question is, do Judah&apos...

To see the Books of Chronicles as a rehash of the Books of Samuel and Kings is to do them a disservice. It's actually the same events seen through a different lens, and these events are some of the most thrilling in the Bible - epic battles, assassinations, heroic act of rescue and grisly deaths from disease.  But there are also unique events which only exist in Chronicles which add to and en...

After eulogising about King David for an entire book, the Chronicler now turns his attention to David's son, Solomon and Solomon's son, Rehoboam. The elephant in the room that is the almost complete collapse of Israel that happens on Rehoboam's watch is fabulously airbrushed out. Including it doesn't help the agenda of this book which is to make the newly returned exiles from P...

I'll be honest, the Books of Chronicles are no one's go-to place for encouragement and spiritual succour. Mostly a repetition of the Books of Samuel and Kings, there is little new material and a lot of pro monarchist propaganda. However, there are unique passages and in this one, David lays out his vision  for Jerusalem's first temple and encourages his son Solomon to be the godly k...

Not many books have the audacity to stop in the middle of the action, go back and retell exactly the same thing, but the Bible is no ordinary book. Spun for a new generation of Jews who are struggling to rebuild their nation after returning from exile, the writer of Chronicles  cherry picks history. His people need building up, not reminding of what a shocking mess they and their kings made of the...

Judah has one last roll of the dice. After the appalling, godless reign of Manasseh, Josiah is a complete saint. But are his virtue and his religious reforms enough to  turn the ship around and avoid annihilatioon by Babylon? Will Judah survive agains almost impossible odds? It's time for Josiah's sons to take the wheel and lead their nation into either gory or oblivion. This is the Seco...

Terrified that Jerusalem will fall,  one of Judah's holiest kings, Hezekiah seeks the help of the holiest man he knows, the prophet Isaiah.  The result is one of the biggest acts of carnage in the Bible. However, Hezekiah's son Manasseh is an absolute horror show, a man who thinks nothing of sacrificing his own children, and it is left to Israel's final devout king, Josiah to try an...

After centuries of autonomy and nineteen almost exclusively godless kings, God calls time on the northern kingdom of Israel. Meanwhile, an Assyrian force threatens the southern and much smaller kingdom of Judah. Is God about to call time on his chosen people and write the whole project off as an experiment that went badly wrong? Or is there still some fuel left in the tank, a shred of hope that th...