Every subject has its vocabulary, and most of these are ordinary words doing a particular job. You do not need to learn them in advance — but here they are when you want them, and this page is worth a bookmark.

Tabernacle

The tent Israel carried through the wilderness and set up wherever they camped — a portable place of worship, built to a pattern God gave, where the priests made the sacrifices. Later replaced by Solomon’s temple. When John says the Word “lived among us,” the verb he uses is pitched his tent.

Atonement

Putting right what has gone wrong between a person and God — the cost being met so the relationship can be restored. The Day of Atonement was the one day a year the whole nation dealt with it at once.

Clean and unclean

Not dirty, and not sinful. A ritual category: whether a person or thing could come near the tabernacle at that moment. Touching a corpse made you unclean; so did childbirth. It is about approach, not morality.

Holy

Set apart for God’s use, and therefore different. The opposite of ordinary rather than the opposite of wicked.

The remnant

The few left after a disaster — and, in the prophets, the promise that God will always keep a few. When everything is carried off, a remnant returns.

High places

Hilltop shrines, usually to other gods. The measure of a king in Kings and Chronicles is often whether he tore them down or left them standing.

The Day of the LORD

A day of reckoning when God acts openly — sometimes a coming national disaster, sometimes the end of all things. The prophets use it both ways, and often in the same breath.

The Servant

The figure in Isaiah who suffers on behalf of others. Sometimes Israel, sometimes plainly one person; the New Testament reads him as Jesus.

Type, shadow, pattern

Something real in its own right that also turns out to prefigure something later. The Passover lamb is a real lamb; it is also a picture. This site uses these words a good deal, and always with that meaning.

Covenant

A binding agreement, closer to a bond than a contract — God committing Himself to a people and setting out how they are to live. The whole Bible is organised around a handful of them.

If a word is missing from this list and you had to stop and guess at it, that is worth telling me — say so here, and it will go in.