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It's hard to get inside the minds of people from other cultures, especially when we are separated by time as well as distance. And the main problem here is cultural: We have an expectation of greater precision than ancient people did. The other answers hint at this, but IMO they don't fully appreciate the divide between modern and ancient levels of ...

Many different explanations have been proposed. The best article I've read on the subject is The Number Pi in the Bible by Abarim Publications. I'll begin with what I think is the obvious and correct explanation, then mention some other explanations (mentioned e.g. in the article above). 10 ≠ 10.0 (rather, "10" means (10.0 ± 0.5)) 1 Kings 7:23 says ...

To start with, compare the circle the diameter we're given would make with the circle the circumference we're given would make: Since a circumference is π times the diameter, a 'pure' circle of 10 cubits in diameter as we describe the sea as having would be 10π cubits in circumference, or roughly 31.4 cubits. Now, since the circumference attributed to ...

Read in isolation, 2 Kings 4:38-41 can be understood as a story about a foul tasting soup that Elisha improved by adding a new flavor. However, the context in II Kings is miracles performed by Elisha to save people from death by famine. From within that context it seems that the "death in the pot," was an actual danger that required Elisha's intervention. ...

According to the Talmud, certain things associated with a king (his horse, e.g.) are forbidden ever to be used by a commoner. Specifically, the widow of a king is forbidden to marry anyone but another king. And if the next king is his son, she can’t marry him either—the laws in Leviticus still apply. Avishag was not married to David, and so was not ...

From a post by Cecil Adams, aka The Straight Dope In 150 A.D. a Hebrew rabbi and scholar named Nehemiah attempted to explain away the anomaly in Chronicles by saying that the diameter of the tub was 10 cubits from outer rim to outer rim, whereas the 30 cubit circumference was measured around the inner rim. In other words, the difference between the ...

NASA interprets the passage: ...tells of an "accidental" sundial, in which the number of steps covered by the Sun's shadow on a staircase was used to measure the passage of time. In that story, the shadow miraculously retreated ten steps on the staircase built by King Ahaz. The word translated "steps" also is translated as "degrees" (likely ...

At the outset 1 Kings, King David is near death and he hasn't explicitly chosen a successor. David's first three children, Amnon, Absalom, and the unnamed child from II Samuel 12 are dead, so Adonijah is next in line for the throne. Adonijah thinks he will be king and he has an entourage, but he doesn't have the support of the whole nation (1 Kings 1:5-10). ...

This was also recorded by the chinise on the same date. They said the sun set and later rose back up.They had two sunsets in one day. Other sisemic events were recored on this date globily. Answer The sun or the planets did not move, the earth didn't stop spining. It was a polar shift of the earth's crust mayby ten or more degrees. Recently Around the time ...

The word in Hebrew, verse 40, is maveth. It means death, as in pestilence. It is used in the Bible where death and destruction is conveyed as a meaning. It's not talking about bitterness. The message is, the prophet intervenes for these men due to Yahweh's mercy. Ref.: Gesenius's Lexicon of Hebrew and English and my knowledge of Hebrew.

A wild gourd is just that. A gourd which grows in the wild. It would be difficult to say which species of gourd it might be though. "There was no more death in the pot" has also been translated "there was no more bitterness in the pot" or "there was no more harm in the pot". Starch, by my understanding, does have the ability to mitigate certain bitterness ...

we don't even know what the real numerical value of pi is. When written out as a number, it will always be rounded. The question is: At which decimal place will you believe God's Word is true? The hundredth decimal place, the thousandth decimal place? I'm guessing for most, there will never be enough decimal places. For me pi = 3 is close enough.

Hezekiah's Sin Did Hezekiah sin in this matter? Quite simply, yes. God would not come and pronounce judgment on him in response if he had not sinned. But what was his sin? What ought he to have done instead? The OP wrongly insinuates that his sin was to receive the Babylonians; rather it was the manner in which he received them. Joel Beeke and James La ...

@Richard A bit of reading of some commentators on the subject does indicate that pride is the cause. A significant emissary was visiting King Hezekiah and it appears that by showing the Babylonians everything he had, Hezekiah was trying to impress them - putting stock in his relationship with them, over his relationship with God. He should have shown more ...