The Bible clearly teaches that sin causes suffering (Deuteronomy 11:26-28; etc.), but does that mean all suffering is caused by sin – as some claim? Even sincere people who are committed to doing what is right can sometimes wonder if they are at fault when things do not go well for them – or even judge others who are experiencing ongoing problems.
There is no question that we do often bring suffering upon ourselves. We all recognize that if we break certain health principles, for example, we will probably suffer as a result. First Peter 4:15 also tells us, “If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler” – showing that wrongful behavior of many types can lead to self-induced suffering.
However, that’s not the whole picture. It was the limited understanding of Job’s friends in this regard that caused them to presume he must have done something wrong to be experiencing such pain and misery. But the conclusion of the book of Job shows God’s displeasure with those friends and that Job’s suffering was not really caused by wrongdoing at all (Job 42:7-9).
There is, in fact, a great deal of biblical evidence to show that individuals can and often do suffer as a result of circumstances beyond their control that have nothing to do with their righteousness or lack thereof. Sometimes we suffer as a result of sheer chance. Jesus himself confirmed this in what he told his disciples when they asked about people who had suffered because of political upheaval or physical accidents:
“Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! … Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no!” (Luke 13:2-4).
Jesus continued to explain that such extreme cases should remind us of the uncertain nature of life and the need to repent, if we have not already done so; but he was adamant in stressing that such suffering may be the result of chance rather than sin.
In other cases, the Bible makes it clear that illnesses and other difficulties come upon us and are used by God to ultimately help us – as in the case of the apostle Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9) – so this suffering can hardly be seen as being the result of failure on the part of others or ourselves.
There is another section of Scripture, not so well known, that can also encourage us that suffering need not be equated with God’s displeasure. The prophet Jeremiah was given a vision by God regarding the people of Judah – both those who had been carried into captivity in Babylon, and those who had not. In this vision, the people in captivity were symbolized as a basket of good figs, and those who were not taken captive as a basket of bad figs. God then told Jeremiah:
This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Like these good figs, I regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Babylonians. My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.
‘But like the bad figs, which are so bad they cannot be eaten,’ says the LORD, ‘so will I deal with Zedekiah king of Judah, his officials and the survivors from Jerusalem, whether they remain in this land or live in Egypt. I will make them abhorrent and an offense to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a byword, a curse and an object of ridicule, wherever I banish them. I will send the sword, famine and plague against them until they are destroyed from the land I gave to them and their ancestors.’ (Jeremiah 24:5-10)
From the perspective of those who had escaped captivity, it may have been natural to think that those who had been deported and were now suffering captivity were still the objects of God’s displeasure. In actuality, the opposite was true. Those who had suffered deportation were spared a later, more thorough, destruction and – despite their present suffering – were now closer to God and his favor than those who had not suffered, but who would eventually be punished.
We find scriptures such as these throughout the Bible – showing time and again that suffering is not a sure sign of God’s displeasure. Suffering that comes upon us may happen as a result of time and chance, the actions of others, or simply genetics. The Scriptures warn us to be sure, whenever possible, that we do not suffer as a result of our own foolishness (Psalm 107:17, etc.), and if we find ourselves experiencing ongoing problems, it is always a good idea to reflect on our lives to see if some of those problems are self-induced (Ecclesiastes 7:14). But we should never simply presume that suffering experienced by us or by others is self-caused.
If suffering does come, we should strive, like Job, to trust that God has a purpose in what he allows us to experience. As the apostle Peter assures us: “the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast” (1 Peter 5:10).
You need only compare a color TV with a black and white TV, or an old black and white movie with a more recent color film, to know how much color can add to our visual experience. Now the same can be said of Bibles!
Although “red letter” Bibles – where the words of Jesus are printed in red type – have been made for some time and may be somewhat helpful, they are a bit like black and white TV’s with only one extra color. In the past year or two, however, the world of Bible publishing has been revolutionized by the offering of color-coded Bibles – Bibles in which the text is printed with colored highlighting – in the same way that our Bibles look if we use colored pencils or markers to highlight different scripture topics.
The great advantage of a printed Bible that already has color-coded text, of course, is that the color coding is complete throughout the whole Bible. It saves the reader countless hours of carefully marking up verses – time that can often be better spent reading and reflecting on the word – not to mention the fact that printed colors invariably look better than hand marked ones!
Color-coded Bibles have many other advantages: they help us better understand the organization and key subjects of the biblical text, and they can be especially useful for topical study – reading all the texts highlighted in a single color that marks the theme we are studying. On a passage-by-passage basis this can be important – we often see that there was more to what we read than we had previously thought. Seeing the color-differentiated blocks of text can be a wonderful advantage. It provides a built-in analysis of each passage and helps us to follow the message that is being developed in a given biblical book.
About the only drawback of printed color-coded Bibles (and it is a minor one) is that we must use the color categories that the publisher has chosen. Perhaps we would have chosen different categories or themes. On the other hand, modern color-coded Bibles are produced with up to a dozen or so well-thought-out themes. Additionally, using a slightly different color-coding system than we are used to or might have chosen ourselves can often stimulate us to see things in ways we would not otherwise have done.
A number of color-marked Bibles are now available, but the difference in quality between them can be surprising. The most important aspect of these Bibles, of course, is how well they differentiate key subjects. Some color-coded versions of the Scriptures utilize only a few different colors and are not very helpful as they have to cram too many types of text into each color. Others fail because they do not choose subjects that are truly helpful for study.
The best color-coded versions we have found are the “Rainbow Study Bibles” produced by Holman Bibles. These Bibles are available in the excellent Christian Standard Bible* and also the King James Version and the New International Version at this time. The Rainbow Bibles utilize twelve colors, which allows for an effective differentiation of most types of text, and the subject categories covered by each color are clear and logical. The twelve colors represent: God, discipleship, love, faith, sin, evil, salvation, family, outreach, commandments, history, and prophecy.
As an added bonus, these study Bibles include maps, notes, over 100,000 cross-references, a concordance, a harmony of the Gospels, a reading plan, and other helps. The original translator’s notes are also included under the last verse on each page. They primarily consist of alternate Hebrew and Greek renderings. Refreshingly, the additional material in these Bibles focuses on background information rather than theological speculation.
Finally, the Rainbow Study Bibles are available in both printed and electronic forms, so they allow study of the Scriptures on either the page or the screen, according to preference and need. Overall, we rate them among the best Bibles for personal study available at this time – especially because color really does add to the experience of effective Bible study.
*Download our free E-Book Which Bible Should I Use? How to Choose the Best Translation for Your Needs, here
Earlier this Spring, the Associates for Biblical Research, an American archaeological research group, announced the discovery of a curse text discovered on a small, folded lead tablet that had been found in archaeological excavations in Israel in late 2019. The artifact is of particular interest to readers of the Bible not so much for what its inscribed text says, but for the fact that it contains the earliest instance of the Hebrew name for God – Yahweh – that has ever been found in an archaeological context, and also for its significance regarding the history of Hebrew writing and the Bible itself.
The tablet, which is barely larger than a postage stamp, contains an inscription that is believed to be centuries older than any known Hebrew inscription from ancient Israel. The small international team of scientists studying the artifact employed advanced tomographic scans to recover the text, slowly recovering one after another of the artifact’s written letters. When the text had been completely recovered, the textual specialists could tell that the text reads:
Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God YHW.
You will die cursed.
Cursed you will surely die.
Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.
This “curse text” was found in discarded material from an archaeological excavation on Mt. Ebal near modern Nablus. Significantly, this was the site, according to Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8, where the people of ancient Israel were instructed by God to recite curses on those who did not obey the Law of God. As a result, the site became associated with cursing, and numerous artifacts such as the newly translated tablet were left there in ancient times. Joshua 8:30 tells us that Joshua built an altar on Mt. Ebal and the curse tablet was found in the location where Joshua’s altar is believed to have stood and where its possible remains have been found.
But the new text is tremendously important as it may well represent both the oldest known example of written Hebrew, and also the oldest known example of the Hebrew YHW [or YHWH]– the name for God often transliterated as Yahweh. The find, which predates the famous Dead Sea Scrolls by more than a millennium, is so significant because the text seems to date to the Iron Age I or Late Bronze Age periods – around 1200 BC at the latest, and perhaps as early as 1400 BC or earlier. Either way, this is centuries before the oldest previously known Hebrew texts and instances of the name of God in Hebrew outside the Bible.
This fact strongly argues against those who attempt to date the Bible to much later centuries by claiming that the ancient Hebrews were not literate and that the biblical books were probably not written down till around 700 BC. And it is important to stress that the new text is not only Hebrew writing, but also that it is a sophisticated composition written in a carefully balanced “chiastic parallelism” or crossover style found in many of the biblical writings and often said to be a mark of “developed” writing characteristic of later dates.
The date of the earliest Hebrew inscriptions has, in fact, been continuously pushed back in recent years. A nearly 3,000-year-old inscription called the stele of Mesha in which the king of Moab boasts of his victories against the Kingdom of Israel and its god Yahweh, contained the earliest known extra-biblical mention of the God of the Bible for a number of years after its discovery in 1868.
Since then, even older inscriptions have been found. An inscription found in what is today Sudan, in the temple of Soleb dedicated to the Egyptian god Amon-Re and built by the Pharaoh Amenhotep III (1378-1348 BC), has more recently been seen as the oldest known reference to Yahweh, God of Israel.
The new discovery from Mt. Ebal may be older than even the very early Soleb inscription, and continuing study by a wide range of ancient textual specialists will doubtless help to narrow down its date more precisely.
A new, revised, and expanded edition of one of our more popular downloads – Spotlight on the Psalms: A Closer Look at One of the Bible’s Best-Loved Books – by R. Herbert, is now available for free download.
Psalms is the Old Testament book most often quoted in the New Testament and most frequently read today. The new second edition of Spotlight on the Psalms includes more biblical, cultural, and even archaeological background information to enrich this practical commentary that can help you to better understand the psalms and better apply their messages in your own life.
Download a free copy of this new edition in the format of your choice, from our sister-site, here.
“Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. ‘Teacher,’ they said … ‘Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory’ ”(Mark 10:35-37). People will go to great lengths to get the best seats in a restaurant, a theater, or at some important public occasion, but James and John excelled themselves in their asking, through their mother (Matthew 20:20-21), for the seats at the right and left hand of Christ in his coming kingdom.
We should remember that this event took place shortly after Jesus had already promised his apostles that they should all “sit upon thrones” judging the twelve tribes of Israel in the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:28). Their request was not just for authority, but to be elevated to the highest positions at Christ’s right and left hand.
The audacity of these two men may seem remarkable in what they asked, but in reality, James and John were not the only disciples enamored by the thought of ruling with power. Mark shows that the other disciples were extremely angry once they realized the two brothers had made this bid for prominence in the group (Matthew 20:24). While the other disciples’ reaction may have been one of “righteous indignation,” it is probably more likely that they were simply angry at being almost outmaneuvered in regard to who would be the greatest among them.
Yet we should notice that Jesus did not rebuke the disciples regarding their desire for these elevated positions. Rather, he first asked James and John if they were able to “drink the cup” he was going to have to drink (Matthew 20:22).
Jesus then patiently explained to all the disciples that the greatest among them must be the greatest servant (Matthew 20:25-27) and tried to help them to understand that before any such elevated positions in his kingdom were assigned, he must suffer and die (vs. 28).
After this, Jesus continued on the way to Jerusalem where he knew his life would end. But we do not know if the disciples learned the lesson he had attempted to teach them. There is nothing in the Gospels that indicates they did understand or apply the lesson at that time. We can almost see them jostling with each other to get to be closest to Jesus as he rode, humbly yet triumphantly, into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1-11). But the events that soon took place must surely have brought the lesson back in their memories.
After Jesus’ betrayal, when it came to the time of his death on the cross, the only ones who were lifted up at his right and left hand were the two condemned individuals who were crucified on either side of him (Matthew 27:38). We can only wonder if James and John realized the irony of that fact, and if they saw in it the lesson Christ had tried to teach them – that those who get to be elevated on the right and left hand of the Son of God are not the great of the world who rule by the world’s power, but those who symbolically, spiritually, are crucified with him (Galatians 2:19-20).
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