Frequently asked

Type a reference into the Read bar — John 3:16, Psalm 23, 1 John 4:7-12. Spaces work in place of the colon too, so john 1 1 finds John 1:1. As you type, the dropdown offers matching books, chapters and verses; arrow keys move through it and Enter opens the highlighted one.

He sets the passage in the NASB above each group of his notes, and that translation belongs to the Lockman Foundation rather than to him — his permission to share his work is not theirs to give. So his notes are here in full and the verse headings say which verses each group treats, while the passage itself stays in the reading pane above, in whichever translation you chose.

Yes. Type any phrase — "the lord is my shepherd" — and matching verses appear in the dropdown. Free-text search covers the translations stored on the site, and it knows that a text may spell a word its own way: searching "honor" finds "honour", and "show" finds the King James "shew".

Then you are offered a short list beside the results. Search a person — David, Ruth, Paul — and it names the episodes they are known by, the contest on Carmel rather than the troop lists. Search a subject — love, grief, forgiveness — and it names the verses that subject is known by. Counting words in the text cannot find either, so both are written out by hand and checked against the text itself.

Yes — up to six. The day's reading is always the first tab and can't be closed; anything you look up afterwards opens to its right. Once six are open, the next lookup closes the oldest of the others.

As far as you like. A passage opens in its chapter, and the chapter scrolls — keep going and the next one loads underneath, on through the end of the book and into the next. The two small arrows floating at the top and bottom of the reading name the chapters either side, so you can step straight to them. Reading back works the same way: scroll up and the previous chapter appears above you.

The reading opens at that verse rather than at the top of its chapter, and tints it for a few seconds so your eye finds it. Everything before and after it is there to scroll through, and the “Whole chapter” button beside the reference takes you back to the chapter’s first verse whenever you want to start it from the beginning.

Under every passage, in a scrolling pane of its own. There are nine, and every one of them is read here rather than followed to somebody else's site: Matthew Henry, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Wesley's Explanatory Notes, Adam Clarke, Gill's Exposition and Spurgeon's Treasury of David are all public domain; the Gospel Coalition allow theirs to be reproduced in full for non-commercial use; and Bible Lessons International allow Bob Utley's Free Bible Commentary to be shared free of charge with credit. Because TGC's permission is to reproduce each volume whole, theirs opens at the section covering your chapter with the rest of the book above and below it.

Spurgeon wrote on the Psalms and nothing else, so he is offered there rather than everywhere with nothing to say. Utley did not treat every book, and Wesley's source edition has its own gaps — 2 Samuel 24 and much of Proverbs among them. Where a commentary has nothing on your chapter the pane says so and offers its publisher's own page for it.

Yes — the chooser beside the tabs holds all of them plus a page on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and up to six can be tabs at once. Four are picked to begin with: Matthew Henry, Adam Clarke, Wesley and Spurgeon. Your choice is remembered on your device, and follows your account between devices once you're signed in.

Yes — the Aa and A controls above the passage switch between three typefaces and three sizes. Your choice is remembered on your device.

23, across 7 languages. 11 are stored on the site itself and load instantly; the rest are fetched when you open them — the modern editions from their publishers' licensed service, the older ones from a free public-domain library.

Pick up to six from the translation menu. Each becomes a tab above the passage, so you can flip between them on the same verse. The first tab you open loads immediately; the others load as you visit them.

The Douay-Rheims and the Clementine Vulgate follow the older Septuagint numbering, where the Psalms are offset by one for much of the book — their Psalm 22 is the King James Psalm 23. That is faithful to those translations, not a mistake.

Yes — AMP, NKJV, NLT are served under licence from their publishers, which is why each carries its copyright line under the passage. The rest are public domain: free to read, compare and listen to without restriction, and stored here rather than fetched.

The passage is read aloud in the site's own narration voice — a deep, unhurried one, and the same on a phone as on a desktop. The reading scrolls in time with it and the verse being read is highlighted, so you can follow along, and it carries on into the next chapter rather than stopping at the end of this one.

Ours, on nearly every device. Browsers differ wildly in which voices they have installed — many phones have no male voice to offer at all — so the narration is recorded for the site instead and simply played back. If that audio can't be reached, your browser's own speech takes over mid-passage rather than the reading stopping.

The words of the verse, yes — they go to the site, which has them narrated by Google's text-to-speech the first time anyone asks for that particular verse, and keeps the audio file so nobody waits for it twice. Nothing about you goes with them: the audio is filed under a fingerprint of the words themselves, and no record is kept of who listened to what.

Two reasons. The Amplified Bible, the New King James Version and the New Living Translation are read here under a licence from api.bible that covers showing the text and not reading it aloud, so those three are never narrated — switch to any other translation and the button comes back. Your own screen reader is unaffected and will read them like anything else on the page. Otherwise it's your browser: the button only appears where speech is supported, which most current desktop and mobile browsers are and a few older ones aren't.

Only to post a reflection. Reading, comparing, listening and the daily verse are all open to everyone, with no sign-in.

Yes. Choose "Email me a code instead" and we'll send a six-digit code that signs you in. It expires in ten minutes and works once.

Use forgot password and we'll email a reset link. It works once and expires in an hour. Resetting also signs you out everywhere else.

So we can reach you if you ever lose your password. Your account works straight away either way — an unconfirmed address just can't receive a reset link.

Yes — your own reflections show a delete control when you hover over them. You can only remove your own.

There is a small row of reactions under each — Amen, loved this, peace, moved me, made me think. Deliberately small, and with nothing to disagree with: a longer strip of faces turns a devotional thread into a comment section.

Yes — up to 2 minutes and 10MB, recorded on your phone or picked from your files. It uploads straight from your browser to the site's storage rather than through the page, so a long clip doesn't have to survive a form submission.

The site itself. Each day it posts one short reflection on that day's passage, and the film made for that day goes into the same thread. It is not an account anyone can sign into, and it posts once a day rather than replying to anyone.

A way through the Bible at a pace you choose. There are five things to read — the Gospels, the New Testament, the New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs, the Old Testament, or the whole Bible — each offered over three months, six or twelve. The grid on the reading pane shows what each pairing asks of a morning, in chapters and in minutes, so you can see the cost before you commit.

Not to read one. Anybody can start a plan and work through it, and the first reading is a link you can open straight away. An account is what keeps your place from one day to the next — without one the plan lasts as long as the browser tab, and the page says so while you are reading as a guest.

Nothing is lost. A plan is paced but not dated: your place is how many readings you have finished, not what day it is, so a fortnight away leaves you exactly where you stopped rather than behind. If you would still like to finish by a particular date, the page tells you how many readings that would mean catching up — as information, not a telling-off.

Yes, and without losing anything. Pick the same plan at a different length — the New Testament in three months instead of six, say — and everything you have read comes with you. It is the same scripture either way; only the number of sittings it is divided into changes.

No — one at a time. It is a months-long commitment and one is the honest number, and keeping several meant two of every control on the page. Choosing a different plan switches to it: the same plan at another length keeps every reading you have done, and anything else starts from the beginning and asks you first. The plan you are on is starred in the grid.

"Leave this plan" on the plan itself. It asks first, because everything you have marked as read is forgotten with it and there is no undo. Starting the same plan again later begins it from the beginning.

"What you have read", on the plan and on your profile. It draws a bar for each track, filling from the left, divided into its books with every slice as wide as the book is long — so Psalm takes far more room than Philemon, as it should. Hovering a slice names the book and says how much of it you have read.

If you ask it to. There is a tick box on your plan — "Email me where I am in my reading" — and it is off until you turn it on. It sends the day's reading and how far along you are, nothing else, and the same box turns it off again. If you already get the daily verse, your reading is in that email instead, so nobody gets two.

Yes — the sign-up under the day's reading sends it each morning. Only an address is needed; the name is optional. You'll get one email asking you to confirm, and nothing else until you do — an unconfirmed address is never mailed again.

Every email carries an unsubscribe link, and it works in one click without signing in or writing to anyone.

The same verse as a notification on this device instead of an email, if your browser supports them. If you are signed in and reading a plan, it carries that morning's reading too. It asks your permission first, and turning it off in the browser stops it just as surely as the toggle does.

An assistant that can help you find a passage, explain a verse, or show you around the site. When it quotes scripture it reads the site's own text rather than reciting from memory, so the wording is exact.

It writes a short devotional reflection on the passage you're reading. It's a starting point for your own thinking, not a commentary to lean on.

Treat both as a helpful companion rather than an authority. They can be wrong or miss the nuance of a tradition — read the passage itself, and take anything doctrinal to your own church.

Only what you give us: your name and email if you make an account, and the reflections you post. No record is kept of what you read or listen to — narration is fetched by the words of the verse, not by who asked for it. The privacy policy has the detail.

Two kinds, and the difference matters. Your browser talks straight to Vercel, which hosts the site, and to Cloudflare, which runs the “are you human?” check and stores the audio and video the site plays back to you — those can see your IP address, the way any site you visit can. Everything else we call on your behalf, so it sees what was asked for rather than who asked: Turso holds the database, Google renders the narration and carries our email, Anthropic answers the assistant, and api.bible and bible-api.com supply the translations we don’t keep here. The privacy policy names every one and says what it receives.

No analytics, no advertising, no third-party trackers of any kind. The site sets one cookie of its own, and not until you sign in. Your typeface, text size and commentary tabs are kept by your own browser and never sent anywhere, and the typefaces themselves are served from this site rather than fetched from a font service.

Yes. It follows the calendar — the church seasons, the day of the week, and a rotation through the year — on US Eastern time, and you can step back through the past week with the arrows.