Working my way through paraphrasing the Old Testament for the Casual English Bible, I’ve jumped from Ruth to Isaiah. I did it because Isaiah is on the Top Ten list of favorite Old Testament books.
It’s a favorite because it has a bunch of prophecies that New Testament writers said pointed to Jesus.
This is a tough book to put into casual English.
I’ve posted a first draft of chapters 1-9. Here’s an excerpt from Isaiah 7, one of the most famous scenes in Isaiah that scholars say points to Jesus.
Isaiah is trying to calm King Ahaz, who’s worried that two neighboring nations are going to attack and destroy Jerusalem. Isaiah tells the king,
“Listen to me, your highness…The young woman here is going to have a baby son. She’ll name him Immanuel. By the time he’s eating honey and milk curds, he’ll know the difference between right and wrong. Before the child is old enough to do that, the land of the two kings you’re afraid of will be deserted” (Isaiah 7:13-16).
The anonymous writer of the Gospel of Matthew took the context of that passage and applied it to Jesus. Some would say he stretched the context a tad:
“Look, a virgin is going to give birth to a boy. They’re going to name him Immanuel.” The name translates: “God is here with us” (Matthew 1:23).
Funny-odd proverbs video coming
This morning I filmed my next Bible-background video. It’s about unusual proverbs in the Bible.
I wrote a blog article about it a couple of years ago, and it became one of the top-searched among my features: Funny-odd proverbs.
We’ll see how it goes with me reading them out loud and finding backup visuals to help illustrate the points each one made.
This could go either way.
Casual English Bible
Steve’s Bible-background YouTube Channel
More feature articles
Bible Gateway
Leave a Reply