Micah 6:6-8–I have many Bibles. I buy different translations with different layouts, different size fonts, and different thicknesses of paper. Various purposes drive my purchases; I use some for reading, some for writing in, some for studying, and some for teaching. Despite those differences, all my Bibles have a common feature – they all have A LOT of pages filled with A LOT of words. English translations have, on average, 750,000 words, not including references, footnotes, and other added features (by comparison, all seven books in the Harry Potter series contain 1,084,170 words – not that much more than the Bible).
While the Bible’s thickness can daunt readers, its sprawling and complex mix of ancient Semitic narrative and poetry adds additional layers of difficulty. Given its intimidating size and content, we might yearn for a ‘cliff notes’ version, for short, executive summaries that help us understand its message. Fortunately, the Bible includes several passages that offer such a summary. This lesson will consider some of those passages and explore their applications for our lives.