The Purple Pencil
You may be familiar with “red letter text” in the New Testament of the Bible where the words of Jesus are coloured red and stand out against the words of everyone else. But the Old Testament doesn’t have this for the words of God. I’m sure there is an important theological and literary reason for this, but as I’ve been reading through the Bible I’ve taken a purple pencil and outlined the words of God throughout the Old Testament texts. Why the colour purple? Apparently purple is attributed to royalty and divinity, so I thought that would be appropriate for the holy words of God.
Why would I do this?
This has helped me do a few things. Firstly I’ve been able to intentionally read through the specific voices and dialogue in the Bible to distinguish between God and other characters. Secondly, it taught me to slow down and isolate what God is actually saying to people in the Biblical stories (rather than assuming or imposing what He says). And lastly, it helped me understand how various people in the Bible respond to the voice, or lack of voice, of God.
Ultimately it has helped me take my time and become more familiar with areas of the Bible that I would normally rush through and drive on the mental highway of my Bible roadmap. By slowing down here are 3 things I’ve been able to notice.
1) Sometimes God talks a lot
Throughout the early chapters of Genesis, there is a lot of dialogue between God and various people. And there are fantastic sections of interaction where we learn a lot about the character and nature of God.
Did you realise that in Genesis Chapter 4 when Abel murders his brother and after God condemns him, Abel says his punishment is too harsh - and God actually listens and adjusts His judgment!? That says a lot about who God is.
In Genesis chapter 20 we have a negotiation scene between Abraham and God where Abraham intercedes for the city of Sodom where he convinces God to not destroy Sodom if there are only ten righteous people there. It is amazing to think that God would entertain that level of discussion let alone agree to it. Unfortunately, there are not even ten righteous people found in Sodom and it along with the city of Gomorrah is destroyed.
These sections of dialogue should be read and reread and studied if you want to understand who the Israelites believed God to be and how He interacts with humanity.
2) Sometimes God doesn’t talk a lot
Throughout the book of Judges, we still have portions of discussion between God and other characters but there seems to be a slow descent of less input from God to the judges themselves.
Gideon is a great example of this - early in his story God provides a lot of encouragement and instructions, but towards the end of his leadership Gideon seems to make choices according to what God would want. Judges 8:22-27 provides a story of the men of Israel petitioning Gideon to be their leader - at first, he refuses but then he makes questionable requests of the Israelites which lead to him taking leadership anyway.
This decline of dialogue between God and His people matches the narrative of the book of Judges as “…everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25) and the phase of prophets and kings are introduced.
3) Sometimes God doesn’t talk at all
The patriarchs of Genesis (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) all have interesting and diverse conversations with God. But when we get to Joseph I found that there was no text for me to highlight with my purple pencil. God never directly talks to Joseph in the text.
This doesn’t mean that God isn’t there.
God clearly empowers Joseph to interpret dreams and we see the hand of God leading Joseph from extreme suffering to extreme blessing. Instead of Joseph depending on a direct voice from God, he instead is relying on the testimony and witness of God he has gotten from his father Jacob.
This model of trusting God and His ways, even when there seems to be silence, is repeated A LOT throughout the scriptures. The book of Ruth and Esther are great examples of this. Entire sections of Psalms are all about wrestling with the silence of God and trusting Him anyway.
If I was writing the Bible I wouldn’t have entire sections where He doesn’t say anything because that may not produce a good image of Him. But instead, we get unfiltered realities of how God interacts with His people and how they live with them.
These are just a couple of examples of things I’ve noticed while highlighting the direct voice of God with my purple pencil.
Is this something you should do?
This sort of Bible mapping takes time. There isn’t a shortcut to it and you have to take the time to slow down and really read the text, even reread it to make sure you’re highlighting the right area.
If that is something that interests you, then start with Genesis and see how that goes. In an effort of mapping out my personal Bible roadmap, I’ve found it to be incredibly beneficial. My plan for 2023 is to go over my purple pencil with a purple highlighter to make it more obvious and pop out even more.