Top Highlights

• Once you catch Jesus’s reference, you understand the contrast he is making. He is saying that his followers should be as eager to forgive as Lamech was to take vengeance. Just as Lamech was vowing a punishment that far exceeded the crime, we should let our forgiveness far exceed the wrong done to us. We should be Lamech’s polar opposite, making it ...
• Midrash, Midrashim Midrash (plural, midrashim) is a rabbinic explanation or commentary on the biblical text. In later centuries, midrash often included imaginative legends about biblical characters. Midrash can also refer to a compilation of commentaries on the Scriptures. These commentaries were handed down orally and later compiled in written for...
• “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough” (Matthew 13:33 NIV 1984). What the NIV translates as “a large amount of flour” was literally “three seahs.” Everyone in Jesus’s time would have recognized this as a reference to the story of when God and two angels vi...
• Often leaven is a negative image, as when Jesus uses it to refer to hypocrisy in Luke 12:1. Why would he speak of it here in a positive way? Perhaps Jesus “hints” to Abraham and Sarah’s feast because here leaven is used for the best of all purposes—in preparing an extravagant meal to be shared with three heavenly visitors.6
• T: Torah (Teaching/Law)—the five books of Moses         N: Neviim (Prophets)—the historical and prophetic books (Joshua, Judges, Isaiah, etc.)         K: Ketuvim (Writings)—Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, etc.