Bible Trivia Quiz | 6 Old Testament Moments You Skipped | Digging Deeper

Question 1. After Korah’s rebellion challenged Aaron’s right to the priesthood, God settled the dispute with a sign involving twelve rods. What happened to Aaron’s rod, and what did it prove?

Answer: Aaron’s rod, alone among the twelve, budded, blossomed, and produced ripe almonds overnight (Numbers 17:8) — proof that God, not popular vote, had chosen Aaron’s priesthood.

Context & Exhortation: Korah, along with 250 respected leaders, had just challenged Moses and Aaron directly: “ye take too much upon you… wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the LORD?” (Numbers 16:3). 

The ground swallowing Korah’s rebellion (16:31–33) should have settled things, but Israel kept grumbling anyway, blaming Moses for the deaths that followed.

So God does something quieter. Twelve rods, one for each tribal leader, are placed overnight in the tabernacle. By morning, only Aaron’s rod has changed at all. And it hasn’t just sprouted; it has budded, blossomed, and produced ripe almonds, all three stages visible on the same branch at once. This was something that doesn’t happen naturally in a single night (17:8).

The rod is then kept permanently inside the ark as a continuing witness, “a token against the rebels” (17:10) — a physical reminder that this argument had already been settled and shouldn’t need repeating.

Some disputes about who’s actually called to something can’t be won through better arguments. God didn’t ask Aaron to out-debate Korah. He let one rod, quietly obeying its own nature overnight, make the case louder than any speech could have.

Question 2. After Israel complained and was afflicted with venomous snakes, God told Moses to make a bronze image of the very thing killing them. What did people have to do to be healed, and what does Jesus later compare Himself to using this exact image?

Answer: Anyone bitten simply had to look at the bronze serpent on the pole to live (Numbers 21:8–9). Jesus compares His own crucifixion to this: “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up” (John 3:14).

Context & Exhortation: Israel’s complaint this time sounds almost identical to their usual pattern — tired of the journey, tired of the manna, speaking against God and Moses (21:5). 

What’s different is the response: “the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died” (21:6).

When the people repent and ask Moses to intercede, God’s solution seemed strange. He doesn’t remove the snakes. He tells Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole, and “it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live” (21:8).

No antidote, no ritual, no distance requirement. Just looking. 

A dying Israelite, venom already working through their body, had to trust that turning their eyes toward a bronze image of the exact thing that bit them would somehow save them instead of mocking them.

Jesus picks up this image directly with Nicodemus, centuries later, comparing His own coming crucifixion to it (John 3:14–15). 

The cure was never in the act of looking itself. It was in trusting that God had provided exactly what the moment required, however strange the method looked.

Question 3. After Israel’s stunning victory at Jericho, they suffered a shocking defeat at the much smaller city of Ai. What had one soldier secretly taken from Jericho that caused this, and what happened to him once discovered?

Answer: Achan secretly kept a Babylonian garment, silver, and gold from Jericho’s devoted plunder (Joshua 7:21), which was supposed to be entirely destroyed or given to the treasury. Once exposed, he and his family were stoned and burned (7:24–25).

Context & Exhortation: Jericho falls with barely a fight, just a march, a shout, and collapsing walls. Ai should have been even easier; it’s a much smaller city, and Joshua’s own spies recommend sending only two or three thousand men (7:3). Instead, thirty-six Israelites die, and the army flees in terror (7:4–5).

Joshua tears his clothes and falls on his face before God, assuming this must somehow be God’s fault. God’s answer is blunt: “Israel hath sinned… they have even taken of the accursed thing” (7:11). One man, acting alone, has compromised the entire nation’s standing before God.

The search narrows tribe by tribe, family by family, until it lands on Achan, who finally confesses: “I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment… then I coveted them, and took them” (7:21). Everything was buried in his tent, hidden exactly where he thought no one would look.

One person’s hidden disobedience cost thirty-six other people their lives before it was ever uncovered. Sin seldom stays as contained as we assume it will while we’re hiding it.

Question 4. The Gibeonites tricked Joshua into a peace treaty by pretending to be from a distant land. What specific props did they use to fake a long journey, and why couldn’t Israel simply break the treaty once the deception was discovered?

Answer: They wore worn-out sandals and clothes, carried moldy bread, and brought cracked, patched wineskins (Joshua 9:4–5) to look like exhausted long-distance travelers. And Israel couldn’t break the treaty because they had sworn an oath “by the LORD God of Israel” (9:18–19), and honoring that oath mattered more than the fact they’d been deceived into it.

Context & Exhortation: News of Jericho and Ai’s destruction had reached every nearby king, and most of them responded by forming a military coalition against Israel (9:1–2). 

The Gibeonites choose a different strategy entirely: deception instead of battle. Their disguise is detailed and deliberate. Old sacks on their donkeys, cracked and patched wineskins, worn-out and patched sandals, dry and moldy bread (9:4–5). Every prop calculated to sell the story that they had traveled from “a far country” rather than from a nearby city Israel was supposed to conquer. 

Joshua’s leaders make one costly mistake: “they took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the LORD” (9:14).

Once the deception surfaces three days later, Israel is furious but stuck. The oath was already sworn in God’s name, and breaking it wasn’t treated as an option, deception or not (9:19–20). Centuries later, 2 Samuel 21 shows God still holding Israel accountable for Saul’s later violation of this very treaty.

A promise made under false pretenses was still a promise. Getting tricked into a commitment doesn’t seem to have automatically freed Israel from keeping it. 

Not so today: some Christians enter into covenant relationships and turn their backs at the drop of a hat. May we, going forward, be mindful of this reminder today: A promise made under false pretenses is still a promise.

Question 5. After the Philistines captured the ark of the covenant and placed it in the temple of their god Dagon, what happened to Dagon’s statue overnight, not once but twice?

Answer: Dagon’s statue was found fallen face-down before the ark each morning - the second time, its head and hands had broken off entirely, left lying on the threshold (1 Samuel 5:3–4).

Context & Exhortation: Israel had actually brought the ark into battle themselves, hoping its presence would guarantee victory — and lost anyway, with the ark captured and Eli’s own sons killed in the process (1 Samuel 4:10–11). 

The Philistines treat the capture as a trophy of war, placing it directly in the temple of Dagon, their chief god, right beside his statue.

The first morning, Dagon is found fallen face-down before the ark, as though bowing to it. The Philistines simply set him back upright. The second morning, he’s fallen again — this time broken apart, head and hands snapped off, only his torso left intact (5:3–4).

It gets worse for the Philistines from there. Tumors break out across the region wherever the ark travels, and they eventually ship it back to Israel loaded with guilt offerings, just to be rid of it (5:6–6:5).

Israel had tried to use the ark like a good luck charm and lost a battle carrying it. The Philistines put it on display as a war trophy and watched their own god collapse in front of it. 

The presence of the one true and living God was never something either side actually got to control.

Question 6. Israel’s judge Ehud used an unusual physical trait to smuggle a hidden weapon past King Eglon’s guards. What was that trait, and where did he hide the weapon?

Answer: Ehud was left-handed (Judges 3:15), so he strapped his sword to his right thigh — the side guards wouldn’t typically check, since that’s where a right-handed man’s sword hand, not his weapon, would be.

Context & Exhortation: Israel had been serving the Moabite king Eglon for eighteen years by the time Ehud is raised up to deliver them (3:14). 

The text specifically calls out that Ehud was “a man lefthanded” (3:15) — an unusual detail to record, until you see what he does with it.

Guards searching a visitor for weapons would expect a sword on the left hip, ready for a right hand to draw. Ehud straps his blade to his right thigh instead, hidden under his clothing, exactly where a routine search wouldn’t think to look (3:16).

Granted a private audience with Eglon under the pretense of delivering a secret message, Ehud draws the hidden sword with his left hand and kills the king alone in his upper room (3:20–22), then escapes before the guards realize what happened.

God didn’t wait for Ehud to become someone other than who he already was. His left-handedness — likely considered unusual or even a disadvantage in his own culture — became the exact detail that made deliverance possible. 

Family, whatever makes you different might be preparing you for something specific, not holding you back from it.

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