The names that keep coming back.
Short profiles — not full biographies — for figures whose stories recur across this site and across scripture.
Abigail
Described as intelligent and beautiful, she intercepted an armed force headed for her household and talked its commander out of a massacre.
Read the full story →Abraham
Called by God to leave his homeland and become the father of a nation, his story spans a promise, a long wait for a son, and a near-sacrifice that becomes one of the most debated scenes in Genesis.
David
A shepherd anointed king while still a boy, a fugitive for years before ever taking the throne, and the central figure of more Old Testament chapters than almost anyone else.
Read the full story →Deborah
A judge and prophet who led Israel during a period of oppression, and one of very few women in the Old Testament shown holding public judicial authority.
Ehud
A left-handed judge from the tribe of Benjamin who assassinated a Moabite king through a carefully engineered blind spot in palace security.
Read the full story →Elijah
A prophet who called down fire from heaven in a public contest, then fled into the wilderness the next day and asked God to let him die.
Read the full story →Esther
A Jewish woman who became queen of Persia and used her position to prevent a planned massacre of her own people, in a book that never mentions God directly.
Jonah
A prophet who ran the opposite direction from his assignment, succeeded anyway, and then resented the outcome.
Read the full story →Moses
Raised in Pharaoh's household, then a fugitive shepherd, then the reluctant leader who confronted Egypt and led Israel out of slavery — his own speech, by his own account, was not his strong point.
Paul
Formerly a persecutor of the early church, later its most prolific letter-writer, author of the New Testament's shortest personal letter as well as some of its densest theology.
Ruth
A Moabite widow whose loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi becomes the center of one of the Old Testament's few stories told almost entirely through its women.
Samson
A judge with supernatural strength tied to a vow he kept breaking piece by piece, long before Delilah ever cut his hair.
Read the full story →