The Scriptures Say

The Same Word Twice

rlarose@tutanota.com (Richard J. Larose Jr.) — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 20:38:25 -0500

The Same Word Twice
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Two verses sit next to each other in Hebrew, and they end with the same sound.

God Is Departed From Me

rlarose@tutanota.com (Richard J. Larose Jr.) — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 20:03:32 -0500

The most terrifying sentence in the Saul narrative is one he says about himself, and he gets it exactly right.

“I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams” (1 Samuel 28:15).

Samson Part III

rlarose@tutanota.com (Richard J. Larose Jr.) — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 19:13:23 -0500

He Did Not Know
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It had already happened to him once.

Twenty years earlier, at his own wedding feast, the Philistines wanted something only Samson knew. They couldn’t get it from him, so they went to the woman beside him and threatened to burn her and her father alive if she didn’t produce it. She turned that pressure on Samson as tears, every day, until he broke and told her. She handed it over the same afternoon.

Samson Part II

rlarose@tutanota.com (Richard J. Larose Jr.) — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 21:01:08 -0500

The Jawbone and the Thirst
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The strongest man who ever lived killed a thousand soldiers with a bone he picked up off the ground, and then almost died because he was thirsty.

Samson Part I

rlarose@tutanota.com (Richard J. Larose Jr.) — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 20:15:42 -0500

The Man Who Kept Arriving Second
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Nobody asked her.

That’s the first thing worth noticing about Judges 13, and almost nobody notices it, because we’re conditioned to read annunciation scenes as good news being delivered rather than as assignments being handed out. An angel shows up in a field where a woman is standing alone, tells her she’s going to have a son, and then — without pausing for a response — specifies what she will eat for the next nine months, what will never touch the boy’s head, and what he will spend his life doing.

The Iron Did Swim

rlarose@tutanota.com (Richard J. Larose Jr.) — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 19:06:13 -0500

Four words in the King James, and they describe something that has never happened before or since.

“And he cut down a stick, and cast it in thither; and the iron did swim” (2 Kings 6:6).

Four Things God Appointed

rlarose@tutanota.com (Richard J. Larose Jr.) — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:15:43 -0500

The book of Jonah uses the same verb four times, and nobody notices because the objects it attaches to are so unimpressive.

God appoints a great fish (Jonah 1:17). God appoints a plant (4:6). God appoints a worm (4:7). God appoints a scorching east wind (4:8). Same Hebrew verb — manah, to assign, to ordain, to hand something its specific commission — deployed across the whole book on a sea creature, a gourd, an invertebrate, and some weather.

The Widows Flour

rlarose@tutanota.com (Richard J. Larose Jr.) — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:20:34 -0500

The Jar That Never Filled Up
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She was gathering sticks when he found her.

Not baking. Not stocking a pantry. Gathering sticks, because that’s what you do when you’re down to a single meal and you’ve already decided how it ends — you build one last fire, you make the bread, you and your son eat it, and then you die (1 Kings 17:12). She says this plainly, to a stranger, with no self-pity in the wording. It’s not a complaint. It’s an itinerary.

The Barns He Never Used

rlarose@tutanota.com (Richard J. Larose Jr.) — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 03:37:16 -0500

Somebody asked Jesus to settle an inheritance dispute.

It’s a reasonable request. A man in the crowd wants his brother to divide the family estate, and rabbis handled that kind of thing routinely. Jesus refuses — “who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” (Luke 12:14) — and then, instead of moving on, tells a story that has nothing to do with inheritance law and everything to do with what the man was actually asking for.

The Oldest Trick in The Book

rlarose@tutanota.com (Richard J. Larose Jr.) — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 17:16:47 -0500

How κατέχω Operates From the Top Down
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There is a detail in 2 Timothy 2:26 that rarely survives the sermon it appears in.

The Raven Cries

rlarose@tutanota.com (Richard J. Larose Jr.) — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 14:38:30 -0500

It isn’t a beautiful sound. Nothing measured or dignified about it — just a raw, insistent noise thrown into the air because something is hungry and has no other way to say so. Easy to miss. Easier to ignore.