Relatives in the Old Testament Quiz

Answer: Hannah

Hannah was one of Elkanah's two wives and had not been able to have a child. She went to the Tabernacle and cried as she prayed to God to have a son, saying she would dedicate him to God. The high priest Eli observed her and thought she was drunk until she explained and then he blessed her and she had a son, who she called Samuel.

When Samuel was still a little boy she took him to the temple and gave him to Eli to raise and Eli blessed her again and she had other children. Hannah went to see Samuel every year and each time gave him a new priest's linen garment. Samuel grew up to become an important figure in Jewish history as he was a judge and a prophet as well as a priest.

Answer: Leah

Jacob had children by his two wives, the sisters Leah and Rachel, and also by his concubines/servants, Bilhah and Zilpah. Whilst the names of his twelve sons are given in the Bible, only one daughter, Dinah, is spoken of by name and her mother was Leah. When she visited women in the Canaanite city of Shechem Dinah was raped by a man also named Shechem, the son of Hamor, a Canaanite/Hivite prince.

Hamor then asked Jacob to allow Dinah to marry Shechem and her brothers agreed on condition that the men in Shechem were circumcised. This was done and Dinah's full brothers Simeon and Levi then killed all the males in the city while they were still in pain and freed Dinah. At least most of Jacob's other sons afterwards attacked and plundered the city of Shechem.

Answer: David

Abigail was a beautiful and intelligent woman who was married to Nabal, a rich but unpleasant and mean man who was a Calebite. David, who had been good to Nabal in the past, sent servants to ask Nabal to provide food for him and his men. Nabal refused which made David angry and he prepared to attack and kill Nabal and his servants. When a servant told Abigail what Nabal had done, she loaded donkeys with food and wine and took them to David's camp, flattering him and asking him to spare Nabal.

David acceded to her request and his men did not attack. The next day Abigail told Nabal what she had done whereupon his heart failed and he died ten days later. When David learned of this, he sent messengers to Abigail to ask her to marry him. She agreed to this and became one of his two wives, with Ahinoam of Jezreel being the other.

Answer: Moses

Jochabed was married to Amram and they had three children named Miriam, Aaron and Moses. They were among the Israelis whose ancestors had moved to Egypt when Joseph was a powerful man there. By the time that Moses was born the Israelis were being treated as slaves and Pharaoh had even decreed that all boy babies born to Israeli women should be killed. Jochabed managed to hide Moses for three months and then she waterproofed a basket, put the baby in it and hid it in some reeds by the Nile while Miriam stayed close by to see what happened.

Pharaoh's daughter saw the basket, realised he was a Hebrew baby and agreed to Miriam's suggestion that she find an Israeli woman to care for him. Miriam fetched her mother and for a few years Pharaoh's daughter paid her to look after the baby. Eventually Jochabed took him back to Pharaoh's daughter, who raised him as her own son.

Years later Moses killed an Egyptian who was ill-treating an Israeli and had to flee to Midian but eventually God sent him back to lead the Israelis out of Egypt.

Answer: Abraham

Abraham was originally named Abram and he, Nahor and Haran were all sons of Terah who were born and brought up in the city of Ur in Chaldea. All three brothers married but Haran died after fathering a son, Lot. Terah decided to move with his family, including Lot, Nahor and his wife Milkah and Abram and his wife Sarai, to Canaan. However, on the way there they decided to settle in the town of Harran instead.

Eventually Terah died and God told Abram to move with his family to Canaan, which he did, settling in Hebron. Abram and Sarai had no children but, when he was 99 years old, God told him to change his name to Abraham and his wife's name to Sarah and promised them a child.

Abraham did as God wanted and Isaac was soon born to him and Sarah, but years later God told Abraham to sacrifice the boy to Him. Abraham obediently travelled to a mountain, laid a fire and put Isaac on it, and was ready to kill his son. God stopped him at this point, and directed him to a thicket in which a ram was trapped and Abraham sacrificed this ram instead of Isaac.

Answer: Solomon

When king David was very old, his eldest surviving son, Adonijah, decided he should have the throne and gained support from many royal officials and from his brothers, except for Solomon. As Nathan the prophet advised her to do, Solomon's mother Bathsheba told David what was happening and said that he had told her that Solomon should be the next king. In response David declared that Solomon should be the king from then on and Solomon was acclaimed as such by the people.

Upon this happening, Adonijah's support melted away and he took sanctuary by grasping the horns of an altar and asked that the new king spare him. King Solomon's men fetched him, and he bowed to Solomon, who allowed him to go home unharmed.

When David died, Adonijah asked Solomon via a request from Bathsheba to let him have Abishag, a concubine of David's, as his wife. Because in Israel and neighbouring nations a new king took over the previous king's wives and concubines, this request could be regarded as similar to Adonijah asking for the throne. Solomon appeared to think this the case and had Adonijah killed.

Answer: Mahlon

Because there was a famine where they lived, a family from Bethlehem moved to Moab. There the father of the family, Elimelek, died leaving his widow, Naomi, and two sons, Mahlon and Kilion. In due course both sons married Moabite women with Mahlon marrying Ruth and Kilion marrying Orpah.

After some years both men died, and Naomi heard that the famine had passed in Bethlehem and prepared to return there. Ruth and Orpah started out with her, but Naomi then told them to return to their mothers' homes as she had nothing to offer them. Orpah did so but Ruth decided to accompany Naomi and they arrived in Bethlehem at harvest time. Ruth gleaned grain in fields that belonged to Boaz, who turned out to be a relative of Naomi's husband. Eventually Boaz and Ruth married and had a son, Obed.

Answer: Ephraim

After Joseph had been appointed to high office in Egypt he married an Egyptian woman, Asenath, and they had two sons. The elder one was named Manessah and the younger was called Ephraim. Jacob, Joseph's father, and Jacob's other sons later moved from Canaan to Egypt to be with Joseph. Some seventeen years after this Jacob lay dying and Joseph brought both his sons to see his father.

Jacob blessed both the brothers but gave the younger Ephraim precedence over his older brother, which was against tradition and displeased Joseph. Jacob, though, prophesied that Ephraim would become the greater of the two. He divided the Israelis into twelve tribes, ten of them led by his other sons and the remaining two led by Manessah and Ephraim, and the latter's tribe did later become the preeminent one.

Answer: Esther

Vashti, the wife of Xerxes, the king of Persia and Media, declined to come when he summoned her and he banished her from his presence completely. He later caused young and beautiful virgins to be brought to become part of his harem. One of these young women was Hadassah, who was also called Esther and was the orphaned cousin of Mordecai, an Israeli living in Persia who had brought her up. Once in the harem Esther told no-one of her nationality, as Mordecai advised her. In due course she was brought in front of Xerxes, who was impressed by her and made her his new queen.

A high official, Haman, was displeased that Mordecai did not bow to him, discovered he was Jewish and persuaded Xerxes to issue a decree that all the Jewish people in his kingdom should be murdered on a designated date. Mordecai asked Esther to beg the king for mercy and Esther accordingly did this and told Xerxes the full story of Haman's plot. Xerxes had Haman killed and Esther then persuaded him to have a new decree issued, which overturned the previous one and instead allowed Jews to defend themselves from attack.

Answer: Goliath

Lahmi and Goliath were both members of the Philistine tribe and Lahmi's exact height is not recorded but Goliath is described as being nine feet, nine inches tall. At one time when the Philistines and Israelis were at war their armies were lined up on hills at opposite sides of a valley ready for battle. The well-armed and well-armoured Goliath went forward and offered to fight an Israeli in single combat with the loser's tribe becoming subjects of the winner's tribe.

The Israeli soldiers were afraid of him but their king's young armour bearer, David, offered to fight Goliath and chose to go into combat against the large man armed with only his staff, a sling and five pebbles. As they approached each other, David slung a pebble which hit Goliath in the forehead, killing him. David then cut off his head and the Philistines fled and were pursued and killed by the Israelis. Some time later, when the same tribes were again at war with each other, Lahmi was killed by an Israeli soldier named Elhanan.