Bible Trivia Quiz | 6 Bible Stories, A Little Wild But True | Digging Deeper

Question 1. Which prophet was told by God to marry a woman who would be unfaithful to him, as a living illustration to Israel? (Where in the Bible is the account  recorded?)

Answer: Hosea, commanded to marry Gomer in Hosea 1:2–3.

Context & Exhortation: “Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD” (Hosea 1:2). 

Hosea didn’t get to treat this as just a nice teaching illustration he could talk about from a safe distance. He had to actually live it out in his own real marriage and real pain. God asked him to live it, in his own marriage, in front of his own community, for years. 

Gomer’s unfaithfulness became a real-life picture of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. And yet the book doesn’t end there. 

In chapter 3, God tells Hosea to go and buy Gomer back and love her again, “according to the love of the LORD toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods” (3:1). This is after Gomer had apparently sunk into slavery.

Hosea’s marriage is one of the most costly acts of prophetic obedience in the Old Testament, because the message and the messenger’s personal pain were the same thing. 

What this book communicates about God’s heart cannot be communicated any other way: He does not merely announce His love for an unfaithful people from a safe distance; He absorbs the pain of betrayal Himself, and buys back what left Him. 

If any of us ever wondered how far God’s pursuit of unfaithful people extends, Hosea’s own ruined and restored marriage is the answer, played out in his very life.

Question 2. Which judge made a rash vow that ultimately cost him his own daughter? (Give the passage of Scripture where this is related).

Answer: Jephthah, in Judges 11:30–40.

Context & Exhortation: Before going into battle against the Ammonites, Jephthah made a vow: “If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me… shall surely be the LORD’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering” (Judges 11:30–31). 

Jephthah won the battle. And the first thing to come out of his house to meet him was his only child, his daughter, dancing with timbrels to celebrate his victory. 

Scholars debate exactly what happened next — whether she was literally sacrificed or dedicated to lifelong service and virginity. But either way, the text is clear, that Jephthah’s vow cost his daughter everything a normal life would have held for her. The Bible also records her grief, not at dying, but “because she had known no man” (11:37). The daughters of Israel commemorated her for four days every year afterward (11:40). 

This is a hard story, and Scripture does not soften it or explicitly praise Jephthah for keeping the vow. What it does do is warn us, loudly, about the danger of making sweeping promises to God in the heat of a moment, without thinking through what they might actually cost us, and the people who never agreed to the bargain in the first place. 

Zeal is not the same as wisdom. Before we make any vow, we should count the cost, and consider who else might have to pay it.

Question 3. Which king asked God for wisdom rather than wealth or long life, and where is that request recorded?

Answer: Solomon, in 1 Kings 3:5–14.

Context & Exhortation: God appears to Solomon in a dream at Gibeon and gives him an open-ended offer: “Ask what I shall give thee” (v5). 

Solomon could have asked for anything — a long reign, military dominance, the death of his enemies, personal riches. Instead, he asks for “an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad” (v9). He explicitly frames his request around his responsibility to govern well, not around his own comfort. 

God’s response is worth noticing carefully: “because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of thine enemies… I have also given thee that which thou hast not asked, both riches, and honour” (3:11–13). 

Solomon received what he didn’t ask for precisely because he didn’t ask for it. 

This is a pattern worth internalizing: the pursuit of wisdom to serve others well tends to produce, as a byproduct, far more than the direct pursuit of comfort or wealth ever does. It’s also worth remembering how Solomon’s story ends. His later chapters show wisdom slipping through his fingers as he compromised on foreign wives and idolatry (1 Kings 11). 

The lesson here is that wisdom asked for is not wisdom permanently possessed. Keep asking. Don’t assume yesterday’s good request settles today’s need for it.

Question 4. Who hid the two Israelite spies in Jericho, and helped them escape over the city wall? (Which book and chapter of the Bible can this account be found)

Answer: Rahab, in Joshua 2.

Context & Exhortation: Rahab is introduced plainly as “an harlot” (Joshua 2:1) — not a flattering résumé for someone about to become one of the most important minor figures in the entire biblical story. 

Yet when the king of Jericho’s men come looking for the Israelite spies, she hides them on her roof, lies to protect them, and makes a striking confession of faith: “for the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath” (2:11). This declaration and confession was a theological statement more confident than most of the Israelites managed to make during their own wilderness wandering. Rahab asks only that her family be spared when Jericho falls, and they are (Joshua 6:22–25). 

That alone would make Rahab a remarkable footnote. But the New Testament goes much further. Matthew 1:5 places Rahab, a Canaanite former prostitute, directly in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. She was the great-great-grandmother of King David. 

Hebrews 11:31 lists her by name in the faith hall of fame: “By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not.” And James 2:25 holds her up as an example of faith proven by works. Three different New Testament writers reach back to hold up a Canaanite ex-prostitute as a model believer. 

So, if you think your background disqualifies you from being useful to God or even from being an ancestor of the Messiah, literally, Rahab’s story proves otherwise.

Question 5. Who was Ruth’s mother-in-law, and what role did Boaz play in Ruth’s life?

Answer: Naomi was her mother-in-law; Boaz served as her kinsman-redeemer, later marrying her. The account runs through the book of Ruth.

Context & Exhortation: Naomi loses her husband and both her sons in Moab, and urges her two Moabite daughters-in-law to go back to their own people and gods. 

One does. The other, Ruth, refuses. This is one of the most quoted loyalty statements in Scripture: “whither thou goest, I will go… thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” (Ruth 1:16). She commits to a bitter, grieving, foreign widow with absolutely nothing to offer her in return — no land, no husband, no security. 

Back in Bethlehem, Ruth ends up gleaning in the field of a relative of Naomi’s late husband named Boaz, who takes notice of her loyalty to Naomi and her reputation in the town (2:11). 

By chapter 4, Boaz formally acts as a “kinsman-redeemer” — a near relative with the legal right and responsibility to marry a widow, buy back family land, and preserve a dead man’s name and lineage. If you want to understand more about the legal background, read Deuteronomy 25:5–10.

Boaz redeems Ruth, marries her, and their great-grandson is David. So,  this quiet, small-town story of loyalty and redemption sits directly in the family line of both David and, generations later, Jesus (Matthew 1:5–6). 

Being faithful when no one is watching — a foreign widow gleaning leftover grain — turned into building the family tree of the King of Kings. Small, loyal acts of love are never actually small in God’s accounting.

Question 6. Who was Timothy’s grandmother and mother, both commended for their genuine faith? (Where in Scripture is this found?)

Answer: Lois (grandmother) and Eunice (mother), named in 2 Timothy 1:5.

Context & Exhortation: “When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also” (2 Timothy 1:5). 

This one verse traces faith across three generations of one family — grandmother to mother to son — and Paul explicitly calls it “unfeigned,” meaning genuine, not performed. 

What’s notable is what Acts 16:1 adds to the picture: Timothy’s father was a Greek, apparently not a believer, and is otherwise absent from the story entirely. The spiritual inheritance that shaped Timothy into one of Paul’s most trusted co-workers in ministry came almost entirely through the women in his family, in what may well have been a religiously mixed or even difficult household. 

There is enormous encouragement here for any parent or grandparent, especially anyone raising children in faith in a family where not everyone shares it. We see that a legacy of genuine, unfeigned faith passed patiently through a single line of the family can produce, a generation or two later, someone who helps carry the gospel to the world. 

Timothy did not need a perfect household to become a man of extraordinary faith. He needed a grandmother and a mother whose faith was real enough to be worth passing on. 

Family, whatever our family situation looks like, our own genuine faith is not wasted. It may be laying the foundation for someone not yet born. So remain faithful to God in all things and at all times. Amen. 

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