Intro to the Bible Jewish Meditation Literature - Pg 26

Jewish Meditation Literature

Family Guide

Now that you've completed the Jewish Meditation Literature unit, this family guide will walk you through
sharing these concepts with your family.

Engage

Briefly discuss the following as a family.

What is one book or movie that you keep going back to? What makes you want to reread or rewatch it?

Watch

Even though we often think about story Bibles when we think about Bible stories, we will never get too old for
Bible stories. These are stories that are designed to be read over and over again.

In fact, the Bible is a book designed for a lifetime of study. No matter how old you get, and no matter how
many times you read the Bible, you will make connections you never noticed before. This is part of what it
means to meditate on Scripture.

As we watch the video, let's try to listen for these three things:

key features of ancient Jewish meditation literature

the ideal Bible reader
what the writers of the Bible want for you
After watching the video, use the following questions to discuss the video with your family. Read the text
aloud. Whenever you reach a bolded question, pause to let your family respond. Comprehensive responses
are provided in brackets. You can use them to prompt members for responses or read them aloud.

Conversation Guide

1. What part of the video was most interesting to you or caught your attention?

2. The Bible tells stories in a different way than people tell stories today. What are the main features of
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ancient Jewish literature?

[It doesn't include details modern readers expect; every detail matters; some things that aren't easy to
understand at first are intentional clues that invite us to go on an adventure of discovery.]

3. The Bible is a work of genius. You have to become really familiar with the Bible to recognize its clues and
follow them from one story to another. It is so wonderfully rich that we can read the Bible our entire lives and
still discover new hidden treasures. Because of this, how does Psalm 1 describe the ideal Bible reader?

[Someone who meditates on the scriptures day and night.]

4. When the ancient Jews meditated on Scripture, they read it slowly and whispered it aloud to themselves.
But they didn’t keep what they read to themselves. Instead, their friends helped them make connections and
think about the Bible’s puzzles. In doing this, they made the Bible part of their lives. What did the writers of
the Bible want?

[For you to adopt the Bible’s story as your story.]

Practice

This worksheet is designed to help your family remember what you've just studied and practice approaching
the Bible as Jesus did.

Instructions:

This page is a storyboard of the Story of God, Humanity, and the Garden of Eden. This storyboard doesn’t
include everything in the creation story, but it includes parts of the story that frequently appear in other
stories. Guide your family in illustrating each box (see notes below).
Practice meditating on Scripture by whispering text aloud as you illustrate it. (Unless text appears in box, it
is a quote from Scripture.)
If you are compiling a Bible Binder, this page goes in the Torah section.
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Notes for each box:

Wild Places

The story starts with chaos. In Genesis 1, we read that “the land was wild and waste and darkness was over
the face of the watery deep." Some translations use words like “formless”, “void”, and “empty.”
In Jewish thought, if you had a lump of clay, you had “nothing” because it didn’t serve any purpose.
However, once you turned a lump of clay into a bowl, then you had “something.”
In the verses after this one, we hear God saying “Let there be light” and “Let there be a dome” to separate
the waters…but we never hear God say “Let there be water” or “Let there be land.” The water and the land
are included in the unordered state of chaos because they don’t have a job yet.
You might draw a picture of land covered by dark water.

Through the Waters

This story was originally written in Hebrew, and the Hebrew word for God is Elohim. After Elohim creates
light and separates light from darkness, He separates the waters. Then, He separates the waters from the
land.
In the top half of this box, students might draw an island with water around it.
Elohim is God’s title, but God’s name is Yahweh. In the next box, we read how “Yahweh Elohim formed a
human out of the dust of the ground” and breathed His life into the human. In the bottom half of the box,
draw something that reminds you of this.
Notice that the human came from the land, and the land came from under the watery chaos. Reading
future Bible stories will help us recognize how this story sets the stage for God bringing humanity out of
chaos.

Blessing

When God creates humanity, He blesses them with the ability to continue filling earth with life. In this
blessing, He tells them to grow their family and fill the land.
In this box, students might draw a picture of a really large family.

Covenant

God gives humanity the job of ruling over all the land and all of the creatures in it.
In a later part of the Bible, a prophet named Hosea recognizes that Yahweh was in a covenant partnership
with humanity. Note that the word for humanity is adam. This becomes the male human’s name after the
failure in the Garden.

Garden

Humanity had a job to do in the garden, but God intended them to work from a place of rest. As they filled
the earth, they’d fill the earth with the life of the garden, and all the land would become a place of rest.
There was a special tree in the middle of the Garden called the Tree of Life. This tree represents God's
wisdom. Eating of God's wisdom would allow them to live forever.
Choice

Humanity could work from a place of rest because God provided them with trees to eat from. However, He
asked them not to eat from one tree: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad.
The choice is followed by a temptation. A snake enters the story to trick the woman into eating the fruit
from this tree.

Reveal

In the last scene, God gives humanity a choice. This scene reveals their choice to eat fruit from the Tree of
the Knowledge of Good and Bad. Instead of letting God define what was good, they decided what was
good without partnering with God. It was like they were telling God they wanted to rule the land and the
animals without Him. They wanted to do things their own way. When we meditate enough on this scene,
we’ll see it repeat more than any other scene in the Bible. We’ll also see it in our own lives.

Promise

Even though the humans fail, God doesn’t abandon His plan to partner with humanity to rule and bless the
land. Instead, we see Him telling the snake that a woman’s “seed” will crush him. Think about how plants
have seeds that turn into more plants. “Seed” is another way of talking about children.

Out of the Garden

Eating from the Tree of Life would have allowed Adam and Eve to live forever. However, because they
wanted to do things their own way, God knew this would be terrible. So He banished them from the
Garden for their own protection. Note that the Garden was an area inside of Eden. Adam and Eve still lived
in Eden, but not in the Garden.
Their first son repeats their story. Instead of ruling over his desires, he kills his brother. He is banished from
Eden and wanders off to the east.

Words to Highlight

The words on the right side of the page are important words that repeat in other Bible stories. Highlight
them to help you remember to look for them.

Note: The boxes for each scene are well-suited for Instagram stories and reels. We’d love to see your students'
illustrations! If you’d like to share them, use the hashtag #onestorybible. You can find us on Instagram at
@onestory.bible.

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