Raising Readers in a World That Forgets What Is Written

There’s a reason the serpent didn’t wait until Adam was alone to twist the truth. He came after Eve first. Not because she was gullible, not because she was weak—but because the enemy always targets the bridge between generations. Eve was the mother of all living. The adversary knew that if he could confuse her, he could corrupt the seed. That’s been in his playbook ever since. And what is the one thing that has guarded the seed of righteousness down through centuries of exile, slavery, wandering, persecution, and modern secularism? The written Word of God. But a written word is powerless if nobody can read it.

This is why, from the very first breath of covenant, God began wrapping His voice in letters. When God thundered from Mount Sinai, His words didn’t just echo off the rocks. He etched them—katab (כָּתַב), to inscribe, to record with permanence—into stone with His own finger. And then He gave those tablets not to angels, not to scholars, but to a man leading families—husbands, wives, and children—through a wilderness. It was always meant to be read, remembered, rehearsed, and relived in the home.

You can hear it in the heartbeat of the Shema, the cry of Israel from Deuteronomy 6:4–7: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart... And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children..."

Those words—devarim (דְּבָרִים)—weren’t floating in the air like mist. They were written. Preserved. Passed down. Carried in scrolls, tied in phylacteries, nailed on doorposts. You didn’t just whisper them. You read them. You taught them. You sharpened your children with them—shanan (שָׁנַן), a Hebrew verb that means to pierce, to engrave like a blade on stone. These were not bedtime stories. These were covenant commandments, life or death instructions, the very words by which a nation would live.

And how could a child be pierced by what he couldn’t understand? Let’s make it plain: You cannot obey what you cannot read. You cannot keep what you cannot know. And you cannot walk in what has never been taught.

The rabbis understood this. Long before public schools or standardized curriculums, Jewish children—boys and often girls—began learning Torah as early as five years old. Not just hearing it, but reading it. Their little hands would trace the letters of Genesis on wax tablets. Their teachers would put honey on the parchment and let the children lick it—so that from their earliest years, they would associate the written Word of God with sweetness, with delight, with joy.

Psalm 119:103 wasn't metaphorical to them—"How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!"—it was physical. Literal. Memorable. That was their phonics lesson. By the time they were twelve or thirteen, many could recite large portions of Torah by memory—not because someone made them, but because someone showed them how precious it was. A written Word, in a world that worshiped idols. A scroll that spoke when false gods stood mute. That’s what reading really was in ancient Israel—not education, but revelation.

God's people weren’t just called to believe. They were called to remember. But memory is fragile, and God knew it. So He told Moses in Exodus 17:14, "Write this for a memorial in a book..." Not whisper it. Not sketch it in the sand. Write it—katab in Hebrew. Record it so that it can be read again and again, even after the speaker is gone. And who was it for? For Joshua. For the next generation of leaders who would take the land and fight giants. The implication? Joshua would need to know how to read what Moses had written. His success in battle would depend not on his sword, but on his literacy in the Law.

The same command is echoed when God tells Moses in Deuteronomy 31 to write down the law and put it beside the Ark of the Covenant, where it could be taken out and read to the people every seven years—including children. Yes, children. Listen carefully to Deuteronomy 31:12: "Gather the people together, men, and women, and children... that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law."

Let me ask you something. What kind of God calls children into the assembly, into the solemnity of Torah reading? The kind of God who wants His Word in their minds and mouths from the beginning. You don’t wait till they’re grown to open the Book. You open it while their hearts are still soft, their minds still moldable. That’s why literacy is not a luxury—it’s a lifeline.

It’s also why, when God instituted kingship, He told every king to write out his own personal copy of the Law. That’s in Deuteronomy 17:18–19: "And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life..." If you were a king, you didn’t get a pass on reading. In fact, you were the example. You were expected not just to read, but to write out the Law by hand. Not to outsource it. Not to dictate it. To write it yourself. Because copying the Word engraves it not just on scrolls, but on souls.

This idea didn’t fade in exile. When Israel was scattered, reading became survival. That’s why, in Nehemiah 8, after returning from Babylon, the first thing Ezra does is stand on a wooden platform and read the Law of Moses from morning till midday. And the people stood to hear it. They wept when they understood it. Why? Because some of them were hearing it for the first time in years. But they understood it—because they had been taught to read. Ezra 7:10 says, "For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments." That “seeking” in Hebrew is darash (דָּרַשׁ)—to search diligently, like digging through earth for treasure. You don’t do that with guesses and stories. You do that with reading.

When Jesus came, He didn’t change that pattern. He affirmed it. Luke 4:16–17 says He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read. Not preach. Not testify. Read. He opened the scroll of Isaiah and read aloud: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me..." And then He said, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Scripture. Graphe (γραφή) in Greek—that which is written. The fulfillment of prophecy began with reading. And Jesus assumed the people were familiar with what He read. That’s a culture of literacy. That’s what synagogue schooling had produced.

Even Paul, writing to Timothy, says in 2 Timothy 3:15: "And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures..." The Greek word here for "child" is brephos (βρέφος)—a very young child, even infant. Paul is saying, “Timothy, you were raised on the Scriptures like a baby on milk.” But that means somebody was reading to him. Teaching him. Probably his mother and grandmother—Lois and Eunice—godly women who understood that if their boy was going to follow God in a pagan world, he had to know the Book.

And it’s no accident that in Revelation 1:3, the final blessing over all of Scripture is this: "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy..." Notice the order. First the one who reads. Then those who hear. Because without a reader, the scroll stays silent. And without literacy, truth gets locked in ink.

So yes, it is not just good or wise or helpful to teach our children to read. It is biblical. It is covenantal. It is commanded in the spirit of every law, every feast, every revival in the Word of God. Because without reading, the next generation cannot know the God who speaks through written words. And when they cannot know Him, they will surely forget Him.

We are not raising scholars. We are raising saints. But saints must be readers if they are to be disciples. Because our faith is not built on vibes or visions or voices in the wind. It is built on what is written. "It is written, man shall not live by bread alone..." "It is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God..." "It is written..." Even Jesus fought the devil with literacy. If the Son of God, the Word made flesh, fought Satan with the written Word—don’t you think our children should at least be able to read it?

So teach them. Not just phonics and punctuation, but awe and reverence. Let them see your joy when the Word comes alive on the page. Let them smell the old Bible, feel the weight of the cover, hear the crackle of onion-skin pages turning. Let them taste it like honey. Because it is. And the God who wrote it is waiting on the other side of every sentence.

Somewhere between sunrise and supper, a little child holds a scroll in his lap, a finger tracing lines of ancient letters while his mother hums beside him, oil lamp flickering just enough to kiss the words with golden light. It isn’t for show. It isn’t even for school. It’s for survival. Because the Word of God, in every generation, must be read to be known, known to be loved, and loved to be lived.

 

 

image by chatgpt (as told to do according to this teaching)