Everyone in the story

Moses' older brother and spokesman, and the head of Israel's priesthood. He also made the golden calf while his brother was on the mountain, which the text reports without softening.

Abdon son of Hillel, from Pirathon in Ephraim, judged Israel eight years. Like the minor judges before him, his legacy is counted in offspring, forty sons and thirty grandsons who rode seventy donkeys, a sign of wealth and quiet just before the storm of Samson.

The second son, a shepherd, whose offering of the firstborn of his flock was accepted. Killed by his brother. God tells Cain that his brother's blood is crying out from the ground.

A woman of quick judgment who rode out with provisions to stop David from slaughtering her husband's household over an insult, and talked him down. When her husband Nabal died, David married her.

Rehoboam's son, who reigned only three years. He committed the same sins as his father, yet when he faced Jeroboam's larger army he called on the LORD and won a great victory for Judah.

Not a deliverer but a usurper, Gideon's son by a Shechemite concubine. Abimelech murders his seventy brothers on a single stone to crown himself king; only the youngest, Jotham, escapes to curse him with the parable of the trees. Three years on, God turns Shechem against him. He razes the city, and at Thebez a woman drops a millstone on his head, so he has his armor-bearer run him through, that none say a woman killed him.

Saul's cousin and general, who kept the house of Saul on a throne for years after Gilboa, then quarreled with his puppet king and offered to hand the kingdom to David. Joab murdered him at the gate of Hebron, and David made a public point of grieving.

The man God called out of Ur with a promise of land, offspring, and blessing for all nations, at an age when he had none of the three. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all trace their story back through him. Paul makes his trust in the promise, credited to him as righteousness, the pattern of faith itself.

Handsome, aggrieved, and patient. After his sister Tamar was raped by their half-brother he waited two years and had the man killed, then spent four more years standing at the gate telling everyone their case would win if only he were judge. His revolt drove his father out of Jerusalem, and it ended with his hair caught in an oak and Joab's spears.

He kept a robe, silver, and gold from Jericho when everything had been devoted to destruction, and hid them under his tent. Israel's next battle, against a tiny town, failed because of it, and the search narrowed tribe by tribe until it reached him.

The king David fled to twice while running from Saul. The first time David escaped by feigning madness, scratching at the doors and letting saliva run into his beard. The second time Achish gave him Ziklag and came to trust him completely, while David raided elsewhere and lied about where he had been.

The first human being, formed from the dust and given the garden to keep. Paul later treats him as the head of the old humanity, the man through whom death entered, set against Christ as the head of the new.

He predicted a widespread famine, which prompted the first relief collection sent from Antioch to Judea, and later took Paul's belt, bound his own hands and feet with it, and warned him what waited in Jerusalem.

The most infamous king of Israel, who 'sold himself to do evil.' He married Jezebel of Sidon, built a temple to Baal in Samaria, and let her murder Naboth for a vineyard. Against him God raised Elijah, the three-year drought, the fire on Mount Carmel, the still small voice. Ahab died from a random arrow at Ramoth-gilead, and dogs licked his blood just as the LORD had said.

The Persian king of the book of Esther, usually identified with Xerxes I. He is presented as impulsive and easily managed, signing away a whole people on a courtier's word and later reversing himself just as quickly.

As faithless as any king of Judah. Ahaz burned his own son as an offering, sacrificed on every high hill, and when he saw a pagan altar in Damascus he had one built to match and pushed the LORD's altar aside. Told by Isaiah to ask God for a sign, he refused, and was given the sign of Immanuel anyway. At last he shut the temple doors.

A son of Jehoram and Athaliah who reigned a single year, taking his counsel from Ahab's house. Visiting the wounded king of Israel, he was caught in Jehu's purge and killed.

He met Jeroboam on the road, tore a new cloak into twelve pieces, and gave him ten, announcing the division of the kingdom before it happened. Years later, blind and old, he delivered the verdict on the dynasty he had helped begin.

The priest who gave David the consecrated bread and Goliath's sword, not knowing he was a fugitive. Doeg the Edomite reported it, and Saul had eighty-five priests killed along with the whole town. Only Abiathar escaped.

David's advisor, whose counsel was regarded as if a man had inquired of the word of God, and who went over to Absalom's revolt. When his advice to strike immediately was set aside for worse advice, he went home, set his house in order, and hanged himself.

The priestly and Levitical registers of 1 Chronicles 6 and 23 to 26: the line of Aaron down to the exile, and the twenty-four divisions David organized for service in the sanctuary, assigned by lot.

Never named in the Hebrew Bible, but present in it. Daniel's goat from the west with a conspicuous horn, moving so fast it does not touch the ground, and whose horn breaks at the height of its power to be replaced by four, is read across traditions as Alexander and the four generals who divided his empire.

David's nephew, made commander of Absalom's rebel army and then, after the revolt collapsed, offered Joab's job as a gesture of reconciliation. Joab took his beard as if to kiss him and stabbed him with a sword held in the other hand.

He did right, but not wholeheartedly. After defeating Edom he bafflingly carried home its idols to worship, then picked a fight with Israel and was captured as Jerusalem's wall was broken down. He too died by conspiracy.

Two of David's older sons, both of whom came to ruin. Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar and was killed two years later by her brother Absalom. Adonijah declared himself king while David was dying, was spared by Solomon, and was executed after asking for David's nurse as a wife.

Manasseh's son, who revived his father's idolatry without his father's late repentance. After two years his own officials assassinated him in the palace, and the people made his young son Josiah king.

A shepherd and fig-farmer from Judah, sent north to prosperous Israel to condemn how the rich crushed the poor while keeping up their religion. His demand that justice roll down like waters is the Bible's great cry for social righteousness.

The names attached to prophets and officials to identify them: Isaiah son of Amoz, Ezekiel son of Buzi, Hosea son of Beeri, Joel son of Pethuel, Jonah son of Amittai, Zechariah son of Berechiah son of Iddo, Baruch son of Neriah, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel.

A Levite couple whose three children were Miriam, Aaron, and Moses. Jochebed hid her son for three months and then built him a waterproofed basket, the same Hebrew word used for Noah's ark.

They sold property, kept back part of the price, and presented the rest as the whole. Peter's charge is not that they gave too little but that they lied about it when they were under no obligation to give at all. Both fell dead, and great fear came on the church.

The apostles the gospels say least about. Andrew, Peter's brother, is the one who keeps bringing people to Jesus: his brother, the boy with the loaves, the Greeks who came asking. Thomas is remembered for one sentence of doubt and forgotten for another, let us also go, that we may die with him.

A widow of many decades who never left the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. She came up as Simeon was speaking over the infant Jesus, gave thanks, and spoke about the child to everyone waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

The Greek king who tried to abolish Jewish worship: he outlawed the Sabbath and circumcision, plundered the temple, and set up a pagan altar on it. The revolt that answered him is what Hanukkah remembers. He called himself Epiphanes, meaning God manifest, and his critics called him Epimanes, the madman.

Eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures, teaching accurately about Jesus but knowing only John's baptism. Priscilla and Aquila took him aside privately and filled in what he was missing, and he became a formidable public advocate.

A reformer whose heart was fully the LORD's all his days. Asa smashed the foreign altars and sacred pillars, and would not spare even his grandmother Maacah: he deposed her as queen mother and burned her obscene idol. His one late failure was buying Aram's help instead of trusting God, and jailing the seer who rebuked him.

The men David appointed to lead music before the ark, and the guilds descended from them who ran worship in the temple for centuries. Twelve psalms carry Asaph's name, and others carry Heman's and Ethan's.

A daughter of Ahab and Jezebel married into Judah, and the one queen ever to rule it. When her son the king died, she massacred the royal heirs and took the throne for six years, never knowing that the infant Joash had been hidden in the temple by his aunt. When he was revealed and crowned, she was dragged out and killed.

He murdered his way to the throne and reigned twenty-four years, fortifying against Judah until Asa hired Aram to break him. For his evil, the prophet Jehu foretold that his house would fall like Jeroboam's, and it did.

A diviner from the Euphrates hired to curse Israel, who could only say what God gave him to say, including one of the clearest messianic lines in the Torah. The Bible's later verdict on him is harsh: Numbers, Peter, Jude, and Revelation all treat him as the pattern of a religious professional who sells his gift.

Frightened by the size of Israel's camp, he hired a foreign seer to curse them, and got four blessings instead. His frustration builds through the episode until he tells Balaam to stop talking altogether.

The man Deborah summoned to lead ten thousand against Sisera's chariots, and who answered that he would go only if she went with him. She agreed, and told him the honor of the day would go to a woman instead.

A Levite from Cyprus whose nickname means 'son of encouragement,' which fits the two things he is best known for: vouching for Saul when the church was still afraid of him, and later splitting with Paul rather than give up on John Mark.

He shouted for the Son of David and was told to be quiet, so he shouted louder. Mark records that he threw off his cloak, which for a beggar was the thing he collected coins on, and jumped up. Asked what he wanted, he said he wanted to see.

He wrote Jeremiah's words on a scroll, read them publicly when the prophet was barred from the temple, and rewrote the whole thing after the king cut it up and burned it. He gets one short oracle of his own, telling him not to seek great things for himself.

The stewards, counselors, recorders, bodyguards, and hangers-on who fill the books of Samuel and Kings. Barzillai the Gileadite fed David's army in exile and then refused to come to the palace because at eighty he could no longer taste what he ate.

The woman David saw from his roof, in an episode the text presents as the king's sin rather than hers, and whose husband Uriah he had killed to cover it. She later secured Solomon's succession, and Matthew lists her in the genealogy of Jesus.

The king who threw a feast using vessels looted from the Jerusalem temple and saw a hand write on the plaster. Daniel read it for him: weighed, and found wanting. Babylon fell that night.

One of David's mighty men, remembered for killing two Moabite champions, striking down a huge Egyptian with the man's own spear, and going down into a pit on a snowy day to kill a lion. Commanded the royal bodyguard, stayed loyal at Solomon's accession, and replaced Joab as commander of the army.

The clan lists for the tribes other than Judah and Levi, spread across Numbers 26 and 1 Chronicles 4 to 8. Each tribe is broken into families, and the families into households, which is how land was allotted and armies were raised.

A landowner of Bethlehem who let Ruth glean in his fields, protected her from harassment, and then acted as kinsman-redeemer to marry her once a nearer relative declined. Their son Obed was the grandfather of David.

A family name that became a title. Augustus orders the census in Luke 2. Tiberius reigns during the ministry. Claudius expels the Jews from Rome, which is how Paul meets Priscilla and Aquila. Nero is almost certainly the Caesar to whom Paul appealed and under whom he died.

The high priest who presided at Jesus' trial and had already reasoned that it was better for one man to die for the people. John records that line as unintentional prophecy.

Adam and Eve's firstborn, a farmer, whose offering was not accepted while his brother's was. The text never explains why, which is part of its difficulty. God warns him that sin is crouching at the door and must be mastered, and he kills Abel in a field anyway.

The other spy who urged Israel to go up at once. Forty-five years later, at eighty-five, he asked for the hill country with the fortified cities in it, on the grounds that he was as strong as the day Moses sent him out.

A God-fearing officer who prayed and gave alms, and whose vision and Peter's happened on the same day. When the Spirit fell on his household while Peter was still speaking, the argument about Gentiles was effectively settled by God before the church could vote on it.

The Persian king whose policy was to send captive peoples home with their gods and their temple goods. For Judah that meant the end of exile. Isaiah names him as the LORD's shepherd and anointed, and a clay cylinder in the British Museum records his general policy in his own words.

Taken young into the Babylonian court, Daniel rose by wisdom and unbending faith, refusing the king's food, reading dreams and the writing on Belshazzar's wall, and emerging unharmed from the lions' den. His later visions map the rise and fall of empires to the end.

The ruler who reluctantly signed the decree that put Daniel in the lions' den, then spent the night fasting and came running at first light. His identity is one of the standing puzzles of Old Testament history, with proposals including Cyrus himself under another title, or a governor named Gubaru.

The shepherd-poet who killed Goliath, outlasted Saul's jealousy, and united the tribes with Jerusalem as his capital. A man after God's own heart, yet his adultery with Bathsheba and its cover-up cost him dearly. God promised his throne would endure forever, the covenant the Messiah would fulfill.

The only judge who is also a prophetess, holding court under her palm in the hills of Ephraim. She calls Barak to face Jabin's commander Sisera and his nine hundred iron chariots; when Barak balks, she foretells the glory will fall to a woman, and it does, as Jael drives a tent peg through Sisera's skull. Her victory song in chapter 5 is among the oldest poetry in Scripture.

When Alexander died his generals carved up the empire, and two of the resulting dynasties fought over Judea for a century and a half: the Ptolemies from Egypt and the Seleucids from Syria. Several kings and generals of both, named Demetrius, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Tryphon, Lysias, and Bacchides, move through the Maccabean books.

The wives, servants, allies, and children who fill out the patriarchal narratives. Zilpah and Bilhah are the servants whose sons become four of the twelve tribes, which the text records without ever giving them a line of speech.

Known for the coats and garments she made for widows, which the widows were holding up and showing Peter when he arrived after her death. She is the only woman in the New Testament called a disciple with the feminine form of the word.

A foreigner in the palace who heard that Jeremiah had been lowered into a muddy cistern to die, went to the king about it, and pulled him out with ropes and old rags for padding under his arms. He was promised his life for trusting God.

The very fat Moabite king who held Israel for eighteen years and was killed in his own locked upper room by a left-handed Benjaminite with a homemade dagger. The narrative lingers on the grisly details and on the servants waiting outside, embarrassed to knock.

A left-handed Benjaminite, an irony, since Benjamin means 'son of the right hand.' Ehud forges a short double-edged sword, straps it to his right thigh where no guard would check, and delivers a private message to the fat Moabite king Eglon: a blade to the belly. Israel's longest recorded rest, eighty years, follows.

Baasha's son, who reigned two years. While drinking himself drunk in a servant's house, he was struck down by Zimri, one of his own officers, ending Baasha's line.

Aaron's third and fourth sons, who inherited the priesthood after the older two, Nadab and Abihu, were killed offering unauthorized fire. Eleazar succeeded Aaron as high priest and stood with Joshua to divide the land.

The priest who raised Samuel, and who failed to restrain his own sons when they stole from the offerings and abused the women serving at the entrance. Warned that his house would fall, he answers only that the LORD should do what seems good.

The prophet who confronted Ahab and Jezebel head on: three years of drought at his word, fire on the altar at Carmel, and then a collapse into despair under a broom tree. He did not die but was taken up in a whirlwind, which is why later Jewish expectation looked for his return before the day of the LORD.

Elijah's successor, who asked for a double portion of his master's spirit and got it. His ministry runs through ordinary households as much as royal courts: a widow's oil, a borrowed axe head, a foreign general's skin, a poisoned pot of stew.

A man of the hill country of Ephraim with two wives, Hannah and Peninnah, who went up yearly to Shiloh to worship. His question to his grieving wife, am I not better to you than ten sons, is either tender or tone-deaf depending on how you read it.

Elon the Zebulunite judged Israel ten years and was buried in Aijalon in Zebulun. That is all Scripture says of him, a name, a tribe, a span of years. Even the near-silent are counted in the tally.

Seventh from Adam, of whom Genesis says only that he walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. One of two people in Scripture who do not die, the other being Elijah.

Isaac's elder son, a hunter, who sold his birthright to his brother for a bowl of stew and later lost the blessing to the same brother in disguise. Ancestor of the Edomites.

A Jewish orphan raised by her cousin, taken into the Persian king's harem, and crowned queen. When Haman's plot threatened her people she risked an unsummoned approach to the throne, on the reasoning that she may have come to her position for exactly such a time.

A priest carried to Babylon with the first exiles, Ezekiel prophesied in strange visions and street-theater signs, the fiery wheels of God's glory departing the temple, and a valley of dry bones rising to live again as the promise of Israel's resurrection.

A scribe who set his heart to study the law, to do it, and to teach it. He led a second group of exiles home and read the law aloud to the assembled people, with others explaining it so everyone could understand.

The governors, kings, and officers who handle Paul's case. Felix keeps him two years hoping for a bribe. Festus inherits the problem and cannot work out what to write to Caesar. Agrippa II and his sister Bernice come to hear him out of curiosity.

Called David's seer, he advised him during the years on the run and later brought him the three-fold choice of judgment after the census.

The most respected rabbi of his generation, and Paul's teacher. When the council wanted the apostles executed he counseled patience with an argument still quoted: if this is of human origin it will fail on its own, and if it is from God you will not be able to stop it.

Ahikam's son, appointed by Babylon to govern the few people left in Judah after Jerusalem fell. He told them to settle down, gather the harvest, and serve the king of Babylon, and it was working.

Threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from Midian's raiders, Gideon is the reluctant judge, twice testing God with a fleece and the morning dew before he'll move. God then whittles his army from thirty-two thousand to three hundred so the victory can't be claimed by human strength; they smash jars, blow trumpets, and Midian turns its swords on itself. Also called Jerubbaal.

The figure in Ezekiel 38 and 39 who leads a coalition from the remote north against a restored and unwalled Israel, and is destroyed there. Ezekiel calls him the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, of the land of Magog.

The giant of Gath who challenged Israel's army for forty days and was killed by a shepherd with a sling. The text is careful about his armor and his reach, which is what makes the choice of weapon the point.

The seventy names of Genesis 10, repeated at the head of Chronicles, tracing the peoples of the known world back to Noah's three sons. Most are not individuals but peoples and places written as ancestors, which is how ancient genealogies mapped the world.

Habakkuk dared to ask how a holy God could use wicked Babylon to punish Judah. The answer he received, that the righteous shall live by faith, became a cornerstone of the New Testament, and his book ends in trust though the fields lie empty.

A name borne by several foreign rulers, mostly Aramean kings of Damascus. Ben-hadad besieged Samaria; Hazael, whom Elisha wept over on foreseeing what he would do, seized the throne by smothering his master with a wet cloth and became Israel's most destructive enemy.

When the returned exiles had paneled their own houses but left God's house in rubble, Haggai's brief, blunt oracles shamed and stirred them to finish the second temple, with a promise that its glory would one day outshine the first.

The king's favorite, who took Mordecai's refusal to bow as grounds for exterminating every Jew in the empire, and was hanged on the gallows he had built for his enemy.

The Hivite ruler of Shechem whose son violated Dinah and then asked to marry her. Jacob's sons agreed on condition that every male in the city be circumcised, and killed them all while they were recovering.

Scripture names the men who prophesied against its own prophets, and it does not present them as obvious frauds. Hananiah broke the wooden yoke off Jeremiah's neck in the temple and announced that Babylon would fall in two years. Zedekiah son of Chenaanah made iron horns and promised Ahab victory, then struck Micaiah across the face.

A woman who prayed for a son so intensely that the priest assumed she was drunk, then gave the child back to God's service when he was weaned. Her song of reversal, where the proud are brought down and the hungry filled, is closely echoed centuries later in Mary's Magnificat.

An Aramean official who smothered his own king and took the throne, exactly as Elisha had wept and foretold. He then spent decades grinding down Israel, and 2 Kings says he did to them what Elisha had seen him do.

A son of Herod the Great, ruling Galilee through the whole of Jesus' ministry. He imprisoned John the Baptist for condemning his marriage, had him beheaded on the strength of a rash oath at a birthday party, and later heard about Jesus and wanted to see a miracle. When Pilate sent Jesus to him, he got nothing and sent him back.

A client king under Rome, a prodigious builder who expanded the temple into one of the wonders of the ancient world, and a ruler so afraid of rivals that he executed members of his own family. Matthew reports his order to kill the children of Bethlehem.

She held a grudge against John the Baptist for calling her marriage unlawful, and used her daughter's dancing and her husband's oath to get his head on a platter. Mark notes that Herod himself had feared John and liked to listen to him, which makes the manipulation the point.

One of Judah's finest, none trusted the LORD like him. He reopened and cleansed the temple, kept a great Passover, and smashed even the bronze serpent of Moses when it became an idol. When Assyria's Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem, Hezekiah spread the enemy's letter before God, and the angel of the LORD struck down the Assyrian camp. Granted fifteen more years, he unwisely paraded his treasure before Babylon's envoys.

The high priest who found the book of the law during Josiah's temple repairs, and the scribe Shaphan who read it to the king. Josiah tore his clothes. Shaphan's son Ahikam later protected Jeremiah from being killed.

The Phoenician king who supplied David and then Solomon with cedar, cypress, and skilled craftsmen for the palace and the temple, floating the timber down the coast in rafts. Paid in wheat and oil, and later given twenty Galilean towns he was not impressed by.

Told to marry Gomer, who left him for other lovers, Hosea's aching marriage became the sermon: Israel had played the adulteress against her God, yet He would buy her back. Love and judgment bound together in one broken home.

The final king of the northern kingdom. A vassal who gambled on Egypt and withheld tribute from Assyria, he brought down Shalmaneser's army; Samaria endured a three-year siege and then fell. The ten tribes were carried into exile and scattered, the end of Israel as a kingdom, and a warning Judah did not heed.

When the lost book of the law was found in the temple, the high priest and the king's officials went to her for a ruling on it. She confirmed the judgment and promised Josiah he would be spared seeing it. Jeremiah and Zephaniah were both active at the time, and the delegation went to her.

With Aaron, he held up Moses' arms through the battle with Amalek when Moses grew too tired to keep them raised, one on each side, until sunset. Left with Aaron to handle disputes while Moses was on the mountain.

Ibzan of Bethlehem judged Israel seven years. His mark was dynastic marriage: thirty sons and thirty daughters, the daughters sent to husbands abroad and thirty brides brought home for the sons, sixty alliances knitting the tribes together.

The son of the promise, born to parents past childbearing age. His life is quieter than his father's or his son's: he reopens his father's wells, is deceived by his own family, and passes the blessing on.

The towering prophet of Judah, called in the year King Uzziah died amid a vision of the thrice-holy LORD. He counseled kings against Assyria and saw far ahead, the virgin's son Immanuel, and the suffering servant pierced for our transgressions.

Abraham's son by Hagar, born when Sarah despaired of a child of her own. Sent away with his mother after Isaac's birth, and promised by God that he too would become a great nation.

The younger twin who grasped for a blessing he was promised anyway, and spent twenty years in exile before wrestling a stranger at the Jabbok and coming away limping with a new name. His twelve sons become the twelve tribes.

She offered the fleeing Canaanite commander milk and a blanket, waited until he slept, and drove a tent peg through his temple. Deborah's song calls her most blessed of women, and the episode fulfills the warning that the glory of the day would go to a woman.

Jair the Gileadite judged Israel twenty-two years. What Scripture remembers of him is his household: thirty sons who rode thirty donkeys and ruled thirty towns in Gilead, called Havvoth-jair. A judge measured not in battles but in a wide and settled clan.

A respected official who fell at Jesus' feet begging for his dying daughter, then had to stand through a delay while a woman in the crowd was healed, and heard while waiting that the girl had died.

James son of Zebedee, John's brother, one of the inner three, and the first apostle martyred, killed by Herod Agrippa. James son of Alphaeus, of whom almost nothing is recorded. And James the brother of Jesus, who did not believe during the ministry and became the leader of the Jerusalem church.

The Thirty and the Three, listed at the close of 2 Samuel and again in 1 Chronicles: the men who fought with David through the wilderness years and afterward. Most appear only here, identified by their home town, which is why the lists are thick with words like Netophathite and Hushathite.

Chosen by the people after Josiah fell at Megiddo, he reigned only three months before Pharaoh Neco deposed him, fined Judah heavily, and took him captive to Egypt, where he died.

He wept over the dying Elisha, who told him to strike the ground with arrows, and for striking only three times, won only three victories over Aram. He also crushed Amaziah of Judah and broke down Jerusalem's wall.

He reigned three months before surrendering Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar in the first great deportation, carried to Babylon with the craftsmen and treasures. Decades later a new Babylonian king released him from prison and gave him a seat at his table.

He and his wife hid the infant Joash in the temple for six years while Athaliah ruled, then produced him at seven, crowned him, and had the queen dragged out. He guided the boy king for as long as he lived, and the reforms did not survive his funeral.

Set on the throne by Egypt and renamed, Jehoiakim taxed the land heavily and did evil. When Jeremiah's warnings were read to him he cut the scroll to pieces and burned it. He submitted to Babylon, then rebelled, and died as Nebuchadnezzar closed in.

Jehoshaphat's son, who married Athaliah of Ahab's house and walked in the ways of Israel. He killed all his brothers to secure the throne; Elijah sent him a letter of doom, and he died in agony of an incurable disease, unmourned.

A God-seeking king who sent Levites through the towns to teach the Law. Facing a vast coalition, he set singers ahead of his army to praise the LORD, and the enemies turned on each other before a sword was drawn. His weakness was alliance: he bound Judah to wicked Ahab by marriage and nearly died in Ahab's war.

Anointed by Elisha's man to end the house of Ahab, and he did it with terrible speed, cutting down King Joram, hurling Jezebel from her window to the dogs, killing Ahab's seventy sons, and luring the Baal worshipers to slaughter. For that zeal God promised him four generations on the throne. Yet he never left Jeroboam's golden calves, so Scripture's verdict on him is split.

A Gileadite outcast, son of a prostitute, driven off by his half-brothers and later begged back to lead. Jephthah vows that if God grants victory over Ammon he'll offer whatever first comes out of his house to meet him, and it is his only daughter. He wins the war and keeps the vow. Afterward he crushes Ephraim at the Jordan using a password its fugitives couldn't pronounce: 'Shibboleth.'

The genealogy that fills 1 Chronicles 2 to 4, running from Judah through Perez and Hezron to David and beyond the exile. It is the longest single family record in Scripture, and it is placed first because the Chronicler is writing to a community that needed to know the royal line survived.

Called as a youth under Josiah, Jeremiah spent forty tearful years warning Judah that Babylon was God's rod, and was beaten, jailed, and thrown in a cistern for it. He lived to see Jerusalem burn, and promised beyond it a new covenant written on the heart.

The first king of the breakaway north, once Solomon's own officer, raised up by Ahijah's torn-cloak prophecy. Afraid his people would drift back to Jerusalem to worship, he cast two golden calves, one at Dan, one at Bethel, and said, 'Here are your gods, O Israel.' It became 'the sin of Jeroboam,' the idolatry every northern king after him would repeat.

The north's longest and strongest reign, he won back Israel's old borders, just as Jonah had foretold, and the land grew rich. But it was prosperity without righteousness: Amos and Hosea thundered in his day against the crushing of the poor and the rot beneath the gold. He never turned from the sin of Jeroboam, and the verdict stayed evil.

A Bethlehemite of Judah, Boaz's grandson, whose eight sons were paraded before Samuel until the youngest was fetched from the sheep. His eldest, Eliab, is the one Samuel assumed was the choice, and who later snaps at David for coming to the battle line.

The carpenter from Nazareth whom the New Testament proclaims as the Messiah promised to Israel and the Son of God. He taught for roughly three years in Galilee and Judea, was executed under Pontius Pilate, and was raised on the third day. Christians across every tradition confess him as fully God and fully man, the formula the Council of Chalcedon settled on in 451.

A Jerusalem teacher who wrote the long wisdom book called Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, and one of the very few writers in this whole library who signs his own name. His grandson translated it into Greek and wrote a preface explaining the difficulty of the job.

A Sidonian princess married to King Ahab, who brought the state sponsorship of Baal into Israel, hunted the prophets of the LORD, and arranged Naboth's judicial murder over a vineyard. Her name became a byword, used as such even in Revelation.

Ruthless, effective, and impossible to control. He murdered rivals, killed Absalom against direct orders, and spoke to David more bluntly than anyone else dared, including telling him he was destroying his own army with his grief. David never managed to be rid of him and left the problem to Solomon.

Hidden from Athaliah's massacre as a baby and crowned at seven by the priest Jehoiada, Joash did right and restored the temple, as long as Jehoiada lived. After the old priest died he fell to idols and even had Jehoiada's son stoned, and was assassinated by his own officials.

A wealthy man of Uz, described as blameless and upright, who loses his children, his property, and his health in a single stroke, and spends thirty-eight chapters demanding an explanation from God. His three friends come to comfort him, sit with him in silence for seven days, and then start talking.

Reading a devastating locust plague as a foreshadow of the Day of the LORD, Joel called Judah to rend their hearts and return. His promise that God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh is the very text Peter quotes at Pentecost.

The officers and priests who move through Jeremiah's later chapters. Johanan son of Kareah warned Gedaliah of the plot against him, avenged him, and then led the survivors into Egypt against Jeremiah's explicit word, taking the prophet with them. Seraiah son of Neriah, Baruch's brother, carried a scroll of judgment to Babylon and threw it in the Euphrates.

A fisherman called with his brother James, part of the inner three, and traditionally the author of the fourth Gospel, three letters, and Revelation. The Gospel calls him the disciple Jesus loved and places him at the cross, entrusted with Jesus' mother.

A prophet in camel's hair who preached repentance at the Jordan and baptized Jesus. He named himself the voice crying in the wilderness from Isaiah, and was beheaded by Herod Antipas for condemning the king's marriage.

The reluctant prophet who ran from his commission and was swallowed by a great fish, only to be spat out and sent again. When wicked Nineveh actually repented, Jonah sulked, a book less about the fish than about God's mercy reaching even Israel's enemies.

Saul's son and heir, and David's closest friend, who protected the man who would take his own throne. He died with his father and brothers at Gilboa, and David's lament for him is one of the great elegies in Scripture.

Another son of Ahab, who put away the Baal pillar yet clung to Jeroboam's calves. His reign ran alongside Elisha's wonders and wars with Aram; he was killed by an arrow from Jehu, his body thrown onto Naboth's field.

Jacob's favored son, sold into slavery by his brothers, imprisoned on a false accusation, and raised to second in Egypt because he could read dreams. When his brothers finally stood before him he said the line the whole story turns on: you meant it for evil, God meant it for good.

A wealthy member of the council who had not consented to its decision. He went to Pilate and asked for the body, which took nerve, and buried Jesus in his own new tomb. All four Gospels record it.

A craftsman of Nazareth, betrothed to Mary, who was told in a dream to take her as his wife despite a pregnancy that was not his. He named the child, which in that culture was the act of claiming him as a son, and it is through Joseph that Jesus is legally of David's line.

Moses' assistant and one of the two spies who came back from Canaan saying it could be taken. He led the crossing of the Jordan and the conquest, and at the end of his life made the whole nation choose openly whom they would serve.

Crowned at eight, and the great reformer. When the lost Book of the Law was found during temple repairs, the young king tore his robes and set about tearing down idols across Judah and even Bethel in the north, fulfilling a prophecy three centuries old. He kept the largest Passover since the judges. No king turned to the LORD so wholly, yet he fell at Megiddo, fighting Pharaoh Neco.

The deuterocanonical books, and the King James New Testament, often carry names in their Greek shapes: Josias is Josiah, Jeremias is Jeremiah, Elias is Elijah, Esaias is Isaiah, Noe is Noah, Booz is Boaz, Jonas is Jonah, Zorobabel is Zerubbabel, Nave is Nun.

Uzziah's son, who did what was right and grew strong because he ordered his ways before God. He built the upper gate of the temple and fortified Judah, though the people continued corruptly.

One of the twelve, who kept the money box and sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, then threw the money back into the temple and hanged himself. The Gospels report his motives sparingly and do not speculate.

The priest Mattathias and his sons, who revolted when Antiochus IV banned the practice of Judaism and installed a pagan altar in the temple. Judas, nicknamed Maccabeus, probably the hammer, retook Jerusalem and rededicated the temple, which is the origin of Hanukkah.

A widow of the besieged town of Bethulia who walks into the camp of the Assyrian general Holofernes, is welcomed for her beauty, waits until he is drunk, and cuts off his head with his own sword. The army breaks when it is displayed on the walls.

Saul's father, of Benjamin, whose lost donkeys sent his son on the errand that ended with Samuel anointing him king. Abner, Saul's cousin and army commander, held the northern kingdom together for two years after Saul's death before being murdered by Joab.

Levi's three sons, whose families divided the work of the sanctuary. The Kohathites carried the ark and the holiest furnishings on their shoulders, the Gershonites the curtains and coverings, the Merarites the frames, bars, and sockets.

A Levite who led two hundred and fifty leaders in challenging Moses and Aaron, arguing that the whole congregation was holy and the two of them had exalted themselves. The ground opened and swallowed the ringleaders.

Rebekah's brother, living in Haran, who took in Jacob and then outmaneuvered him for twenty years: seven years of work for Rachel, the substitution of Leah on the wedding night, another seven years, and wages changed ten times.

The brother of Mary and Martha, whom Jesus raised after four days in the tomb. John presents it as the last and greatest of the signs, and as the event that hardened the authorities' decision to act.

Laban's elder daughter, given to Jacob by substitution on his wedding night. Unloved, and the mother of six of the twelve tribes including Levi and Judah, from whom the priesthood and the kingship come.

The sons and grandsons of Levi's three houses, named in the genealogies that open Exodus 6 and Numbers 3 and fill the Chronicler's registers. Libni and Shimei from Gershon; Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel from Kohath; Mahli and Mushi from Merari.

Abraham's nephew, who traveled with him from Haran and then chose the well-watered Jordan plain when the two had to separate, settling near Sodom. Rescued from the city before its destruction, at the cost of his wife, who looked back.

A dealer in purple cloth at Philippi, which was an expensive trade, who was worshiping by the river when Paul arrived. She was baptized with her household and opened her home as the base for the church there.

A name borne by both men and women across the Old Testament. The best known is the queen mother, Abijah's wife and Asa's grandmother, whom Asa removed from her position because she had made an obscene image for Asherah. Another Maacah was the mother of Absalom, a foreign princess.

Manasseh's son and the clan descended from him, who took Gilead east of the Jordan. In the Song of Deborah, Machir stands in for the whole tribe. A separate Machir of Lo-debar sheltered Mephibosheth and later supplied David during Absalom's revolt.

The final voice of the Old Testament, rebuking a half-hearted, cynical post-exilic people for shoddy sacrifices and broken faith. He promises a messenger to prepare the LORD's way, then four centuries of silence fall until John the Baptist.

The longest reign in Judah and the darkest. Hezekiah's son rebuilt every high place his father had torn down, set altars to Baal and the stars inside the temple, passed his sons through the fire, practiced sorcery, and filled Jerusalem with innocent blood. Hauled to Babylon in hooks, he humbled himself and God restored him, but the guilt of his reign is what finally sealed Judah's exile.

A Danite of Zorah and his wife, who is never named, and to whom the angel of the LORD appeared twice to announce a son who would be a Nazirite from the womb. She is the one the angel comes to both times; Manoah asks to have the visit repeated so he can hear it himself.

Sister of Mary and Lazarus, remembered for working in the kitchen while her sister listened, and also for the confession she made at her brother's grave, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

A young woman in Nazareth who answered the angel's announcement with consent, and whose song of God lifting up the lowly is one of the earliest Christian hymns. She appears at the wedding in Cana, at the cross, and with the disciples in the upper room.

A woman from Magdala on the Sea of Galilee, out of whom Jesus cast seven demons, who supported his ministry and stayed at the cross when most had fled. All four Gospels place her at the empty tomb, and John has her as the first person to see the risen Jesus.

The tax collector called from his booth at Capernaum, on the road running from Damascus to the coast. Mark and Luke call him Levi; Matthew's gospel calls him Matthew and adds the detail that he was a tax collector, which the others leave out of the apostle list.

He took the throne with savage violence and held it ten years. When Assyria's Pul came against the land, Menahem paid a thousand talents of silver, exacted from Israel's wealthy, to keep his crown, binding the north to Assyria.

Dropped by his nurse as a child when the news came from Gilboa, and lame in both feet after. David hunted for anyone left of Saul's house in order to show kindness, and gave him his grandfather's land and a permanent place at the king's table.

Names that recur constantly through Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, often carried by several different men, and usually attached to the priestly and Levitical families. They are among the most common Hebrew names of the period, which is why the text so often has to add a father's name to tell them apart.

A contemporary of Isaiah who indicted both kingdoms for corruption yet distilled true religion to a single line, do justice, love mercy, walk humbly. Seven centuries early, he named little Bethlehem as the birthplace of Israel's ruler.

The prophet Ahab hated because he never said anything good. Summoned alongside four hundred court prophets all promising victory, he mocked their message, then told the truth and was jailed on bread and water until the king should return in peace. The king did not return.

The only two angels Scripture names. Gabriel appears as a messenger, interpreting Daniel's visions and announcing the births of John and of Jesus. Michael is called a prince and an archangel, and is described contending for Israel.

Moses' sister, who watched the basket in the reeds and later led the women in song after the sea. She is called a prophetess, and she was also struck with leprosy for a week after challenging Moses' authority.

A Jewish official at Susa who raised Esther, refused to bow to Haman, and uncovered an assassination plot that went unrewarded until the king could not sleep and had the records read to him.

Raised in Pharaoh's household, exiled for forty years as a shepherd, then sent back to demand Israel's release. He led the nation out of Egypt, received the law at Sinai, and led them forty years through the wilderness, but died on Mount Nebo within sight of the land he never entered.

A foreign general with leprosy who came to Israel expecting a spectacle and was told to wash seven times in the Jordan. He nearly went home offended. Jesus cited his healing in Nazareth as evidence that God's mercy has always reached past Israel's borders.

A rich sheep owner at Carmel who insulted David's men after they had protected his shepherds, and whose wife Abigail intercepted David's raiding party with food and a speech that talked him out of a massacre. Nabal died ten days later.

A man of Jezreel who refused to sell Ahab his ancestral vineyard, since the law treated family land as inalienable. Jezebel arranged false witnesses, had him stoned, and handed the land to her husband.

Jeroboam's son, who walked in his father's sins. While besieging a Philistine town he was assassinated by Baasha, who then destroyed every heir of Jeroboam, just as the prophet Ahijah had foretold.

Abraham's father Terah, his brother Nahor, Nahor's wife Milcah, and their son Bethuel, who was Rebekah's father. The branch of the family that stayed behind in Mesopotamia when Abraham went on.

The twelve leaders named at the census in Numbers 1, who bring identical offerings over twelve days in Numbers 7 and are recorded in full each time, and the twelve spies of Numbers 13.

Where Jonah saw Nineveh spared, Nahum, a century later, saw its sentence come due. His book is a single sustained oracle against the brutal Assyrian capital, a comfort to Judah that no empire outlasts God's justice.

A woman of Bethlehem who went to Moab with her husband Elimelech and two sons during a famine and came back ten years later with none of them. She told the town not to call her Naomi, which means pleasant, but Mara, which means bitter, because the Almighty had dealt very bitterly with her.

The prophet who brought David both the covenant promise of an everlasting throne and, later, the parable of the poor man's lamb that trapped the king into condemning himself.

Named almost every time his son is, in the recurring formula about the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. The phrase appears more than twenty times and functions as the standard by which the northern kings are measured.

The Babylonian king who destroyed Jerusalem and its temple and carried Judah into exile. Daniel records his dreams, his furnace, his descent into madness, and his eventual acknowledgment of the God of heaven.

Cupbearer to the Persian king, who heard that Jerusalem's walls were still rubble and asked for leave to rebuild them. He organized the work by household, kept a weapon at hand against sabotage, and finished the wall in fifty-two days.

The commanders sent against Judas Maccabeus. Nicanor was defeated and killed at Adasa, and the anniversary was kept as a feast day for a time. Apollonius, Timotheus, and Gorgias lead other campaigns across 1 and 2 Maccabees.

He came to Jesus by night with careful compliments and was told he must be born again. He appears twice more, arguing for due process when the council wanted to condemn without a hearing, and finally bringing seventy-five pounds of spices to the burial, which is a royal quantity.

The one righteous man of his generation, who built a ship on dry ground on the strength of a warning about weather he had never seen. After the flood God set the rainbow as the sign of a covenant made with every living creature.

Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh are named with their fathers so consistently that the patronymics function almost as surnames. The two spies who brought back a minority report and the only men of their generation to enter the land.

The shortest book in the Old Testament, a single chapter against Edom, the descendants of Esau, for standing by and cheering as Jerusalem was plundered. The proud eagle nesting in the cliffs would be brought down.

A powerful soldier-king who bought the hill of Samaria and built the northern capital there. So dominant that Assyria long called Israel 'the house of Omri,' yet Scripture spends only a few verses on him, because he did more evil than every king before him, and fathered a worse son.

He ran from his owner Philemon, met Paul in prison, became a believer, and was sent back carrying the letter that asked for him to be received no longer as a slave but as a beloved brother. His name means useful, and Paul makes a pun of it.

The men who held or bought the high priesthood in the years around the Maccabean crisis. Onias III was respected and was deposed by his brother Jason, who purchased the office and built a gymnasium in Jerusalem. Menelaus then outbid Jason, and Alcimus later took the post with Seleucid backing.

The very first judge, and the model for every one that follows: Israel forgets the LORD, is sold into servitude, cries out, and is rescued. A kinsman of Caleb from Judah, Othniel breaks eight years under Cushan-Rishathaim of Mesopotamia and the land rests forty years.

The register of those who returned from Babylon, given twice at length in Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 and a third time in 1 Esdras. Roughly fifty thousand people, listed by family, by town, and by temple office.

A Pharisee trained under Gamaliel who persecuted the church until he was stopped on the road to Damascus. He then spent thirty years planting churches across the Roman world and writing the letters that make up roughly a third of the New Testament. He was a Roman citizen by birth, which is why he could appeal to Caesar.

He joined Aram to pressure Judah's Ahaz, the crisis behind Isaiah's Immanuel sign, but it backfired: Assyria's Tiglath-Pileser stripped away Israel's northern territories and deported their people. Pekah was then assassinated by Hoshea.

Menahem's son, who reigned two years before one of his own captains, Pekah, conspired with fifty men of Gilead and killed him in the palace stronghold.

Tamar's twin sons and their descendants, the line that runs from Judah to Boaz to Jesse to David. Perez's name refers to the breach he made in being born first, out of the expected order, which by now is a Genesis habit.

A Galilean fisherman who spoke first and thought later, walked on water and sank, confessed Jesus as the Christ, denied him three times, and was restored on a beach over breakfast. He preached the sermon at Pentecost and opened the door of the church to Gentiles at Cornelius' house.

The king who would not let Israel go. Exodus never names him, which is itself a choice: the most powerful man in the world is a title rather than a person, while the Hebrew midwives who defy him are named. His hardening heart is described both as his own doing and as God's, and the two statements sit side by side without resolution.

Chosen to serve tables, he ended up preaching in Samaria, baptizing an Ethiopian official on a desert road, and settling in Caesarea, where Luke notes he had four unmarried daughters who prophesied.

Eleazar's son, who ended a plague at Peor by driving a spear through an Israelite man and a Midianite woman, and was granted a covenant of lasting priesthood. A second Phinehas, son of Eli, was a corrupt priest who died carrying the ark into battle.

The Roman official who tried Jesus, judged him innocent, and sentenced him anyway under pressure from the crowd. A stone inscription found at Caesarea in 1961 carries his name and title, confirming the office the Gospels give him.

A tentmaker who, with her husband Aquila, hosted churches in their home in three cities and took the eloquent Apollos aside to explain the way of God more accurately. She is usually named first of the pair, which was unusual enough to be worth noticing.

Not personal names but Assyrian titles, roughly chief cupbearer, commander, and chief officer. The Rabshakeh is the one who stood outside Jerusalem's wall and made a speech.

Laban's younger daughter, for whom Jacob worked fourteen years, and who was long childless before bearing Joseph and then Benjamin, dying in the birth. Buried on the road to Bethlehem.

A prostitute in Jericho who hid Israel's spies and asked for mercy for her household, and got it. Matthew names her in the genealogy of Jesus, and both Hebrews and James hold her up as an example of living faith.

Chosen for Isaac at a well in Haran, where she watered ten camels for a stranger, which is a great deal of water. Barren for twenty years, then mother of Esau and Jacob, who struggled in her womb.

A family that kept a vow made by their ancestor Jonadab: no wine, no houses, no sowing, no vineyards, live in tents. They kept it for generations, and when Jeremiah set jars of wine in front of them in the temple and told them to drink, they refused.

Solomon's son and heir, who threw the kingdom away in a sentence. Asked to ease his father's heavy taxes, he spurned the elders and told Israel he would scourge them with scorpions where Solomon used whips, so ten tribes tore away under Jeroboam. In his fifth year Shishak of Egypt stripped the temple of Solomon's gold.

After seven of Saul's descendants were executed and left exposed, she spread sackcloth on a rock and stayed from harvest until the rains, driving off birds by day and animals by night. When David heard, he gathered the bones and buried them properly.

A Moabite widow who refused to go home. When Naomi told her daughters-in-law to return to their mothers' houses, Orpah went and Ruth would not, answering with the speech that has outlived everything else in the book: where you go I will go, your people will be my people, and your God my God.

Set apart as a Nazarite from the womb, with no razor and no wine, Samson is raw strength and reckless appetite. He kills a lion bare-handed, slays a thousand men with a donkey's jawbone, and is finally undone when Delilah coaxes out the secret of his hair. Blinded and chained, he asks God for strength once more and brings the temple of Dagon down on himself and more Philistines than he'd killed in all his life.

Given to the tabernacle as a small boy after his mother's prayer, and called by name in the night. He judged Israel, anointed both Saul and David, and warned the nation plainly what a king would cost them before giving them one anyway.

The men who rebuilt Jerusalem's wall in fifty-two days, and the officials who tried to stop them. Sanballat governed Samaria, Tobiah was an Ammonite official with relatives inside the city, and Geshem was an Arab chief; the three of them worked by ridicule, then threat, then invitation to a meeting Nehemiah refused to attend.

Abraham's wife, who waited decades for a promised child and laughed when she finally overheard it announced. Isaac's name, which means 'he laughs,' keeps the memory of that laughter in the family line.

The Hebrew word satan means adversary or accuser, and in its earliest uses it is a role rather than a name, complete with the definite article: the accuser, standing in the heavenly court to press a case, as in Job and Zechariah.

Israel's first king, given when the people demanded one 'like the nations.' Tall and promising, Saul started well but unraveled, offering an unlawful sacrifice, sparing what God had devoted to destruction, and hunting David out of jealousy. Rejected by God through Samuel, he ended by consulting a medium and falling on his own sword at Gilboa.

The Assyrian king who took every fortified city of Judah and then failed at Jerusalem. His field commander's speech under the wall is a masterpiece of psychological warfare, delivered in Hebrew on purpose so the men on the wall could hear it. His army was struck down in the night and he went home, and was later murdered by his own sons.

The ten generations from Adam to Noah, and the parallel line from Cain. Seth is the son given after Abel's death, and it is in his line that people began to call on the name of the LORD.

Daniel's three companions, given Babylonian names in place of their Hebrew ones: Hananiah became Shadrach, Mishael became Meshach, Azariah became Abednego. Their Hebrew names all contain a word for God, and their Babylonian ones honor Babylonian gods, which is the point of renaming captives.

Daniel's companions, who would not bow to the golden image and told the king that their God was able to save them, but that even if he did not, they still would not bow. The furnace was heated seven times hotter and a fourth figure was seen walking in it.

He murdered Zechariah and seized the throne for a single month before Menahem marched on Samaria and killed him in turn, the north spiraling now from coup to coup.

One verse, one deed. Shamgar son of Anath kills six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad, a farmer's cattle-prod, and 'he too saved Israel.' No years, no tribe, no burial: a reminder that deliverance can come from anyone holding whatever is at hand.

Noah's three sons, from whom Genesis 10 traces the nations of the known world. Shem's line runs to Abraham, which is why the word Semitic exists.

A Benjamite of Saul's house who walked along the ridge cursing David and throwing stones as he fled from Absalom. Abishai offered to remove his head; David said to let him curse, since the LORD might have told him to.

Ordered by the most powerful man in the world to kill every Hebrew boy at birth, they refused, and told the king a story about how quickly Hebrew women delivered. Exodus names them and does not name the Pharaoh, which is the narrator making a point about who matters.

The rulers outside Israel who invade, extract tribute, or grant permission. Shishak of Egypt stripped the temple in Rehoboam's fifth year and left a relief at Karnak listing the towns he took. Necho killed Josiah at Megiddo. Tiglath-pileser III began the Assyrian deportations.

Two Amorite kings, of Heshbon and of Bashan, who refused Israel passage and were defeated. Their names become a fixed pair in Israel's memory, recited in psalms and speeches for centuries as the standard example of what God did.

A leading man in the Jerusalem church who carried the council's decision to Antioch and then traveled with Paul after the split with Barnabas. He was beaten and jailed at Philippi and was singing at midnight when the earthquake came.

He had been told he would not die before seeing the Lord's Christ. When the parents brought the infant in, he took the child in his arms and asked to be dismissed in peace, then warned Mary that a sword would pierce her own soul too.

A magician with a following who believed and was baptized, then offered the apostles money for the power to give the Spirit. Peter's answer is blistering. His name gave English the word simony, the buying and selling of church office.

The general with nine hundred iron chariots who oppressed Israel for twenty years and lost to a militia in a rainstorm that bogged his chariots down. He fled on foot to what he thought was a friendly tent and was killed in his sleep by Jael with a tent peg.

David's son, who asked God for wisdom and received riches and fame besides. He built the great temple in Jerusalem and his reign was Israel's golden age of peace. But his seven hundred wives turned his heart to their gods, and for that idolatry God foretold the kingdom would be torn in two after him.

One of the seven chosen to serve the Greek-speaking widows, who preached a sweeping survey of Israel's history before the council and was stoned for it. Luke notes that the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.

Luke names three of the women traveling with Jesus and the Twelve, and says plainly that they were supporting them out of their own means: Mary called Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, and Susanna, with many others.

Judah's widowed daughter-in-law, denied the marriage the law owed her, who disguised herself and secured a child from Judah himself. He admits she was more righteous than he was. She stands in the genealogy of Jesus. A second Tamar, David's daughter, is raped by her half-brother Amnon.

The chiefs and kings descended from Esau, listed in Genesis 36 and again in 1 Chronicles 1. Teman becomes a byword for wisdom, which is why Job's friend Eliphaz is a Temanite and why Jeremiah asks whether counsel has perished from Teman.

He asked for his servant to be healed and then said not to bother coming, because he understood chains of authority: he gave orders and they were obeyed, so a word would be enough. Jesus said he had not found faith like that in Israel.

A court official returning from Jerusalem, reading Isaiah aloud in his chariot and getting nowhere. Philip ran alongside, asked whether he understood it, and was invited up. They stopped at water and he was baptized, then went on his way rejoicing.

A traveler from the despised neighboring people who stopped for a beaten man that a priest and a Levite had walked past, bandaged him, paid for his lodging, and promised to cover anything more. Jesus told it in answer to a lawyer looking for a defensible definition of neighbor.

Two men praying in the temple. One thanked God he was not like other men and listed his observances, all of which were true. The other would not lift his eyes and asked God to be merciful to him, a sinner. Luke says the second went home justified.

A younger son who asked for his inheritance while his father was still alive, which was as good as wishing him dead, spent it all, and ended up envying pigs their food. He rehearsed a speech about being made a hired servant and never got to finish it, because his father saw him a long way off and ran.

A farmer with a bumper harvest who decided to tear down his barns and build bigger ones, then take life easy. God's answer is the only line in the parables where God speaks directly, and it is one word of address: fool. He died that night.

A man in purple who feasted daily and a sore-covered beggar at his gate, whose positions are reversed after death. The rich man, still treating Lazarus as an errand boy, asks for water and then for a warning to be sent to his brothers, and is told that people who will not hear Moses and the prophets will not be persuaded even by a resurrection.

Three servants entrusted with different sums while their master traveled. Two traded and doubled what they had; the third buried his in the ground and explained that he had been afraid. A talent was an enormous weight of silver, so even the smallest share was a fortune.

A Gentile mother who asked Jesus to free her daughter and was answered with a hard saying about not giving the children's bread to the dogs. She took the image and turned it: even the dogs under the table eat the crumbs. It is the only exchange in the Gospels where someone answers Jesus back and is commended for it.

Ten bridesmaids waiting with lamps for a bridegroom who was delayed. Five had brought extra oil and five had not, and the ones who left to buy more arrived after the door was shut. The point is stated plainly at the end: keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

Forgiven a debt so large it could never have been repaid, he walked out and seized a colleague over a trivial sum. Jesus told it when Peter asked whether forgiving seven times was enough.

She came to draw water at noon, when nobody else would be there, and got the longest recorded conversation Jesus has with anyone. She raised the real dispute between their peoples, which mountain was the right one, and left her water jar to go tell the town.

A young believer from Lystra with a Greek father and a Jewish mother, who traveled with Paul and was left in charge at Ephesus. Two of Paul's letters are addressed to him, and the second is the last one we have.

A Greek believer Paul deliberately did not have circumcised, making him a test case for the whole Gentile question. He later handled the difficult mission to Corinth and was left to organize the churches of Crete.

A pious exile in Nineveh who goes blind, and his son Tobias, sent to recover a family deposit and accompanied by a traveling companion who turns out to be the angel Raphael. Along the way he marries Sarah, whose seven previous husbands had died on the wedding night, and returns to heal his father's eyes.

After Abimelech's carnage, a man of Issachar named Tola son of Puah 'arose to save Israel.' Scripture records no war and no enemy, only that he judged twenty-three years from Shamir in the hills of Ephraim, and was buried there. Sometimes the work is simply to hold things steady.

The names at the beginnings and ends of the letters, which most readers skip. They are the actual shape of the early church: a courier, a runaway slave, a treasurer of a city, a woman who hosted a congregation in her house, two women whose disagreement was serious enough to be named in a public letter.

One of David's elite soldiers, a foreigner by descent, who would not sleep in his own house while the army was in the field. His refusal, the most honorable act in the chapter, is what forced David to have him killed, and he carried the letter that arranged it.

Also called Azariah, fifty-two years of building, farming, and a formidable army, as long as he sought God. But strength bred pride: he forced his way into the temple to burn incense, a priest's task alone, and leprosy broke out on his forehead at the altar. He lived apart until he died, the year Isaiah saw the LORD high and lifted up.

Summoned to display her beauty before a hall of drunken men, she refused, and was deposed by royal decree so that no other wife in the empire would get ideas. Her refusal is what opens the position Esther is taken into.

Short, rich, and hated, he climbed a sycamore to see over the crowd and was told to come down because Jesus was coming to his house. He gave half his goods to the poor and offered fourfold restitution, which is the penalty the law set for a stolen and slaughtered animal.

A priest of the division of Abijah and his wife Elizabeth, both descended from Aaron, both righteous, and both old and childless. Struck mute for doubting Gabriel's announcement, he wrote the boy's name on a tablet and his speech returned.

David's two priests. Abiathar had escaped the massacre at Nob and joined David in the wilderness, carrying the ephod. Zadok's line came from Eleazar. At Solomon's accession Abiathar backed Adonijah and Zadok backed Solomon, and Abiathar was removed.

The four Midianite leaders Gideon's campaign brought down. Oreb and Zeeb, whose names mean raven and wolf, were killed at the rock and the winepress that afterward carried their names. Zebah and Zalmunna were pursued far east and taken.

The fathers, mothers, and relatives named around the Twelve. Zebedee is left in the boat with the hired men when James and John walk away from the family fishing business, a detail Mark includes without comment.

Alongside Haggai, Zechariah urged the temple's rebuilding through a series of strange night visions, and looked further to the Messiah, a king coming humble on a donkey, and one they would look on whom they had pierced.

The last king of Judah, installed by Babylon and forever wavering. He ignored Jeremiah and rebelled; after a long siege Jerusalem fell, the temple was burned, and Zedekiah was captured. His sons were killed before his eyes, which were then put out, and he was led to Babylon in chains.

A prince of Judah preaching in Josiah's day, Zephaniah pressed the theme of the Day of the LORD, a sweeping judgment on Judah and the nations, yet closed with God singing over a rescued remnant.

The governor and the high priest who led the first returning exiles, laid the foundation of the second temple, and finished it under the preaching of Haggai and Zechariah.

David's sister, named far more often than her husband, and mother of Joab, Abishai, and Asahel. The three of them are David's hardest soldiers and his recurring problem.

The shortest reign in Israel, seven days. Having killed Elah and all of Baasha's house, Zimri found the army had crowned Omri instead. When Omri took the city, Zimri set the palace on fire and died in the flames.