Job, Psalms and the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible holds the hardest questions in Scripture: a righteous man suing God, a psalm that ends in darkness, a city’s children starving under siege. Eleven Dig In conversations work through Job, the Psalms, Lamentations, Isaiah and the Twelve with the scholars who study them.
Pull a book
off the shelf.
All eleven conversations, in the order their books appear in the Hebrew canon: Torah, then the Prophets, then the Writings. Filter with the spines above or the chips below. Some episodes sit on more than one shelf.
Showing all 11 episodes
- 01Dr. Dylan JohnsonSodom and Gomorrah: Sin, Judgment, and What We’ve MissedGenesis 19 read against hospitality, injustice and oppression, and how writers from Ezekiel to Jude each named Sodom’s sin.Ancient Near Eastern texts and Hebrew BibleWatch and read
- 02Prof. Steven MannWhen God Speaks, Things Happen: How Speech Act Theory Transforms Biblical Understanding“And God said” as an act, covenant as the strong serving the weak, Jeremiah’s potter and Jonah’s Nineveh.Chair of the seminary, Azusa Pacific UniversityWatch and read
- 03Prof. Gary AndersonWhy God Forgave David but Rejected Saul1 Samuel 15 beside 2 Samuel 12: two kings, the same words, “I have sinned,” and two different outcomes.Hesburgh Professor, University of Notre DameWatch and read
- 04Dr. Paul WegnerIsaiah’s Prophecies: How History and Structure Reveal God’s VisionThe history behind Isaiah, why the book is built the way it is, and the guilt offering of Isaiah 53.Senior Distinguished Professor of Old Testament Studies, Gateway SeminaryWatch and read
- 05Dr. Iain ProvanOld Testament Ethics, Isaiah, and the Moral Vision of ScriptureThe difference between biblical law and ethics, Isaiah’s prophetic message, and how to wrestle with the hardest texts.Author, Seriously Dangerous ReligionWatch and read
- 06Dr. James NogalskiThe Book of the Twelve: One Scroll, Many VoicesHosea to Malachi as one scroll, the Day of Yahweh, and why Jonah may be the most surprising book in the Bible.Craig Professor of Hebrew Bible, Baylor UniversityWatch and read
- 07Dr. Kevin FothThe Psalms Unveiled: Ancient Worship, Modern LessonsWhat temple worship sounded like, the genres of the Psalter, and why praise without lament comes out cheap.Scholar of Old Testament wisdom literature, worship leaderWatch and read
- 08Dr. William MorrowProtest and Praise: What the Lament Psalms Teach Us About SufferingHow ancient Israel protested to God in the lament psalms, and why protest was once counted a holy act.Professor Emeritus, Queen’s UniversityWatch and read
- 09Dr. Edward GreensteinJob Never RepentedJob’s lawsuit against God, the “mother” in Job 3 that is not in the Hebrew, and Job 42:6 word by word.Professor Emeritus of Bible, Bar-Ilan UniversityWatch and read
- 10Prof. Bradley CameronThe Fear of God: Emotion, Power, and Awe in the Old TestamentFear of God across Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Leviticus, the tabernacle’s lessons in awe, and a fear that draws people closer.Old Testament scholarWatch and read
- 11Dr. Timothy YapChildren in Lamentations: Forgotten Voices of Biblical SufferingThe Hebrew words Lamentations uses for children of different ages, Daughter Zion, and the order built into its acrostics.Lecturer in Old Testament, Olivet College, AustraliaWatch and read
Three shelves,
one library.
The Hebrew Bible comes in three parts. Here is what each guest brought to the part they study, in their own terms. Guests disagree with each other at points, which is why it pays to hear them all.
Torah and the kings
Johnson reads Sodom against its ancient backdrop of hospitality, injustice and oppression, and traces how later writers, from Ezekiel to Jude, each named the city’s sin. Ezekiel 16:49 points to pride, excess of food and prosperous ease while the poor and needy went without help.
Mann brings speech act theory to divine speech. “Let there be light” does not describe light; saying it makes it so. Mann notes that ancient hearers who knew the Babylonian creation story would have braced for a fight at “the deep,” and none comes. He adds Jeremiah 18: if a nation turns from evil, God says he will relent from the disaster he announced. Nineveh in Jonah is the test case.
Anderson sets 1 Samuel 15 beside 2 Samuel 12. Saul and David both say “I have sinned.” Saul loses his kingdom; David is forgiven, though the consequences remain, which Anderson describes as repair rather than humiliation.
The Prophets
Wegner reads Isaiah through its history and its structure, and argues that the servant of Isaiah 53, whose life is made a guilt offering, cannot be Israel and points to the Messiah.
Provan separates biblical law from ethics and shows how to read Isaiah’s moral vision, and the harder Old Testament texts, with honesty.
Nogalski reads Hosea through Malachi as one scroll, held together by recurring themes and by the Day of Yahweh, a phrase he says is widely misread. Nogalski also explains why Jonah may be the most surprising book in the Bible.
The Writings
Greenstein spent decades retranslating Job and won the 2020 EMET Prize. He argues Job files a literal lawsuit against God, that a “mother” in Job 3 was never in the Hebrew, and that in 42:6 Job does not repent. He stays defiant to the last verse, and God vindicates him while condemning the friends.
Foth says temple worship was loud: many voices, trumpet, harp and lyre (Psalm 150). His count of the top 100 songs on CCLI found almost all follow problem, solution, praise. Psalm 88 is the one psalm that never turns to praise. “To have praise without lament,” he says, “I think cheapens our understanding of why we’re praising in the first place.”
Morrow, author of Protest Against God, shows how Israel’s lament psalms brought protest straight to God as an act of faith, not a failure of it.
Yap notes that Lamentations, Eikah in Hebrew, meaning “how,” is read on Tisha B’Av. It uses distinct words for infants and older children, and four of its five poems are acrostics, a sign to Yap that the suffering is not outside God’s hand. Daughter Zion suffers alongside the children.
Cameron traces the fear of God through Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Leviticus as awe that draws people closer, not fear-based control.
Greenstein calls Job a hero and a paragon of truthfulness, vindicated by God himself.
Questions people
bring to the text.
- 24Books in the Jewish count of the Hebrew Bible
- 150Psalms in the Psalter
- 22Letters in the Hebrew alphabet, the frame of each acrostic
- 66Verses in Lamentations 3, three per letter
- 1Psalm, 88, that never turns to praise
- 12Prophets on a single scroll
It is the collection of Jewish scriptures, called the Tanakh, arranged in three parts: Torah (the Law), Nevi’im (the Prophets) and Ketuvim (the Writings). It contains the same books as the Protestant Old Testament in a different order. Jewish tradition counts 24 books because it treats the Twelve, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah as single books.
Most translations say he did, in Job 42:6. Dr. Edward Greenstein, who retranslated the book for Yale University Press, argues the Hebrew does not say that. In his reading Job never backs down, and God vindicates him: in 42:7 God tells the friends they have not spoken rightly, as Job has.
Lament psalms bring distress, complaint and even protest directly to God. Dr. Kevin Foth describes a movement from distress to petition to trust that takes time, and Psalm 88 never reaches praise at all. Dr. William Morrow argues that protest of this kind was understood as faithfulness, not doubt.
Dr. Timothy Yap explains that Tisha B’Av, the ninth of Av, remembers the destruction of both the First and Second Temples. Lamentations, one of the five scrolls in the Writings, mourns the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon, so it is read on that day.
The twelve shorter prophets, Hosea through Malachi, were copied together on one scroll and counted as one book. Dr. James Nogalski reads them as a unified collection with recurring themes such as justice, restoration, covenant and the Day of Yahweh, so each book reads differently beside its neighbors.
Dr. Dylan Johnson reads Genesis 19 against ancient expectations of hospitality and shows how later writers interpreted it differently. Ezekiel 16:49 names pride, plenty and ease while ignoring the poor and needy; Jude 7 focuses on sexual immorality. The episode walks through each reading and what archaeology does and does not show.
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