Questions to Ask When Studying the Bible

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What would you read next to understand this passage better?

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What do you hope to find there?

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Next step Questions for a small group

How it works

These 100 questions to ask when studying the Bible fit any passage: what it says, what it meant to its first hearers, how it connects with the rest of the Bible and what to do with it this week.

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Reading alone

The first three topics are the questions to ask while reading the Bible by yourself. Press Topic and start with What does it say?: which word or phrase is repeated? Then move to What did it mean to its first hearers? and How does it connect with the rest of the Bible?

Leading a group

What do I do with it this week? holds questions to ask in Bible study once the passage is understood. For a leader with a quiet group holds questions to ask during Bible study when nobody speaks: turn to a neighbor, what did each of you notice? Show follow-up gives a second question.

Tips

When a round of 12 ends, Print these gives the topic you picked as slips to pass around a circle.

Questions and answers

What are good questions to ask about a Bible passage?

Start with what is on the page: Who is speaking in this passage, and who is being spoken to? What happens first, next and last? What does the Bible say right before this passage, and right after? What does it say? holds twenty like these.

Do the questions follow one church's teaching?

No. They ask and do not answer, so they state no doctrine and name no denomination, preacher, translation or study guide. Any translation works, and one card asks how different translations word the hardest verse.

What can a leader ask when a Bible study group goes quiet?

Something with no wrong answer: What stood out to you as we read? What is one word for how this passage leaves you? For a leader with a quiet group holds these, each with a follow-up.

In what order are the questions arranged?

From the words of the text to its meaning and then to what a reader does with it, the order of inductive Bible study. The third topic adds how the passage connects with the rest of the Bible, and the fifth is for a leader.

All 100 questions

What does it say? 20

How would you retell this passage in three sentences? Follow-up: What was hardest to leave out of the three?
What cause-and-effect words appear: because, so, therefore, if? Follow-up: What does each of those words connect?
What commands, promises or warnings can you list? Follow-up: Who is each one addressed to?
What contrasts does the writer set side by side? Follow-up: Which side of the contrast gets more words?
What does the Bible say right before this passage, and right after? Follow-up: How does that change what you just read?
What does the passage leave unsaid that you expected to hear? Follow-up: Where did that expectation come from?
What emotion does each person in the passage show? Follow-up: Which words tell you about that emotion?
What happens first, next and last? Follow-up: Which step would you have left out by mistake?
What is the first verb in the passage? Follow-up: Who is doing that first action?
What kind of writing is this: story, poem, letter, law or vision? Follow-up: What does that kind of writing ask of a reader?
What questions are asked inside the passage itself? Follow-up: Which of those questions gets an answer?
What surprised you on a slow second reading? Follow-up: Which word did you skip the first time?
What time of day, season or year is mentioned, if any? Follow-up: Why might the writer have included it?
What title would you give this passage? Follow-up: What title does your Bible's heading give it, if any?
Where does this passage take place? Follow-up: What does the place add to the scene?
Which sentence would you underline, and which would you circle? Follow-up: What is the difference between the two marks for you?
Which word or phrase is repeated? Follow-up: What changes each time it comes back?
Which words would a child ask you to explain? Follow-up: How would you explain one of those words?
Who is named, and who is present but unnamed? Follow-up: What do the unnamed people do?
Who is speaking in this passage, and who is being spoken to? Follow-up: How can you tell that from the text?

What did it mean to its first hearers? 20

How do different translations word the hardest verse? Follow-up: What does the difference between them show you?
How might this have sounded read aloud to a crowd? Follow-up: Which line would have drawn a reaction?
What customs, places or objects appear that are unfamiliar today? Follow-up: What would a modern equivalent be, if there is one?
What did the first hearers fear, hope for or argue about? Follow-up: How does the passage speak to that?
What did this passage ask its first hearers to do? Follow-up: What would that have cost them?
What does the writer assume the reader already knows? Follow-up: Where does that assumption show?
What is the main point the writer wanted remembered? Follow-up: Which verse says it most plainly?
What is the writer's tone: urgent, gentle, joyful or stern? Follow-up: Which words carry that tone?
What metaphor or picture does the writer use? Follow-up: What did that picture mean in daily life then?
What problem or question was the writer answering? Follow-up: What in the text tells you so?
What question would the first hearers have asked next? Follow-up: What does the following passage do with that question?
What would a farmer, a soldier or a merchant of that day have noticed here? Follow-up: What do you notice from your own work?
What would have been shocking or new to the first audience? Follow-up: What has dulled the shock for readers now?
What would the first hearers have known that you have to look up? Follow-up: Where could you look it up?
When was this written down, according to your study notes? Follow-up: What difference might that date make?
Where do study notes disagree about this passage? Follow-up: Which reading fits the surrounding verses best?
Which earlier events did the first hearers have in mind? Follow-up: How does the writer point back to those events?
Which word here meant something different in its own time? Follow-up: How do study notes or a dictionary explain it?
Who first heard or read these words? Follow-up: What was happening in their lives?
Who had power in this scene, and who had none? Follow-up: How does the passage treat each of them?

How does it connect with the rest of the Bible? 20

How do the Old and New Testaments each treat this theme? Follow-up: What differs between the two treatments?
How does the opening of the book prepare you for this passage? Follow-up: How does the ending of the book look back on it?
How does this passage fit the book it sits in? Follow-up: What would the book lose without it?
How does this passage fit the larger story the Bible tells? Follow-up: Which part of that story are we in here?
If this passage were missing, what else in the Bible would be harder to follow? Follow-up: What makes you say so?
On which day or season is this passage read aloud in a service, if you know? Follow-up: Why might it have been chosen for that day?
What does a cross-reference in your margin point to? Follow-up: How does that verse shed light on this one?
What does the chapter before this one set up? Follow-up: What does the next chapter do with it?
What does this passage show about God that other passages also show? Follow-up: Which passage says it differently?
What name or title is used for God in this passage? Follow-up: Where else is that name used?
What promise here is repeated elsewhere? Follow-up: Who receives the promise there?
What would you read next to understand this passage better? Follow-up: What do you hope to find there?
Where does a later writer look back on this passage? Follow-up: What does the later writer draw from it?
Where else in the Bible does this word, image or promise appear? Follow-up: What is the same and what is new there?
Which earlier passage does this one quote or echo? Follow-up: How is the earlier passage used here?
Which hymn, prayer or saying that you know draws on this passage? Follow-up: What did it keep and what did it leave out?
Which of the book's big themes shows up in these verses? Follow-up: Where did that theme first appear in the book?
Which other person in the Bible faced something similar? Follow-up: How did that person's story go?
Which passage seems at first to say the opposite? Follow-up: How do readers hold the two together?
Which psalm or proverb would you read alongside this passage? Follow-up: What do the two say together?

What do I do with it this week? 20

How would your week differ if you took this passage at its word? Follow-up: Which day of the week would change most?
What could a whole congregation or household do in answer to these verses? Follow-up: What could this group do together about it?
What did you learn here that you want to tell someone? Follow-up: How would you put it in your own words?
What do you understand now that you did not an hour ago? Follow-up: What made it clear to you?
What do you want to pray about after reading this? Follow-up: Who else could you talk it over with?
What does this passage change about how you see an ordinary day? Follow-up: Which hour of the day does it touch?
What habit of yours does this passage question? Follow-up: What is one small change you could try?
What have you assumed or done that this passage challenges? Follow-up: What would a first step look like?
What here comforts you, and what unsettles you? Follow-up: Which of the two will you think about longer?
What is one sentence you would pray from this passage? Follow-up: When this week will you pray it?
What is one thing this passage asks of a reader? Follow-up: What would doing it look like on Tuesday?
What part of this passage is easy to agree with and hard to do? Follow-up: What makes it hard for you to do?
What question from today will you carry into next time? Follow-up: Where will you write that question down?
What will you give thanks for after reading this? Follow-up: How will you put your thanks into words?
What will you read again before the week is out? Follow-up: What will you look for the second time?
What would it cost you to take this passage seriously? Follow-up: What might it give you in return?
Where at work, school or home does this passage apply first? Follow-up: Who will notice the difference?
Which verse will you copy out or memorize? Follow-up: Where will you keep that verse in sight?
Whom could you encourage with something from this passage? Follow-up: When will you see them next?
Whom in the passage do you most resemble this week? Follow-up: Whom would you like to resemble?

For a leader with a quiet group 20

If you could ask the writer one question, what would it be? Follow-up: What do you guess the writer would say?
On paper first: what is one question you have about these verses? Follow-up: Which written question shall we take first?
Turn to a neighbor: what did each of you notice? Follow-up: What did your neighbor see that you missed?
What did you expect the passage to say before we read it? Follow-up: How did the passage differ from that?
What do we agree on so far, and where do we differ? Follow-up: How does the text settle it, or leave it open?
What does someone who has read this many times still find fresh? Follow-up: What does a first-time reader see in it?
What have we not talked about yet in these verses? Follow-up: Why might we have skipped over it?
What is confusing here? Anything is fair to name. Follow-up: Who else wondered about the same thing?
What is one thing you will take with you from today? Follow-up: What helped you see it?
What is one word for how this passage leaves you? Follow-up: What put that word in your mind?
What is the hardest verse here, and what makes it hard? Follow-up: How have you heard that verse explained?
What picture came to mind while you listened? Follow-up: Where is that picture in the text?
What should we look up before next week? Follow-up: Who would like to look that up?
What stood out to you as we read? Follow-up: Which word made it stand out?
What would change if we read this as people who were there? Follow-up: Where in the scene would you be standing?
What would you tell a friend this passage is about? Follow-up: What would the friend ask you next?
Where did your attention drift, and what brought it back? Follow-up: What does that tell you about the passage?
Which person in the passage would you like to interview? Follow-up: What would you ask that person first?
Which verse would you like to hear read again? Follow-up: Who would like to read it for us?
Who would like to put the passage in their own words? Follow-up: What would anyone else add?

How this list was compiled

Written for this page by the Game Night Generator editors in October 2026; no question or follow-up is copied from another list. Every question fits any Bible passage, and each has its own follow-up. The questions ask and never answer, so the list states no doctrine and names no denomination, preacher, translation or published study guide. The first, second and fourth topics follow the order of inductive Bible study, from the words of the text to its meaning and then to its application, as the article Bible study (Christianity) on Wikipedia describes it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_study_(Christianity), read 2026-10-02 and again 2026-10-03; text under CC BY-SA 4.0, summarized and not quoted). Levels are an editor's judgment, not a measurement: easy questions can be answered from the page, medium ones take some thought or a study note, hard ones take a second passage or a longer talk. On 2026-10-02 a script compared every question and follow-up with every other list on this site, including the Christian conversation starters and the Christian icebreaker questions, and lines that repeated one elsewhere were rewritten. Licence: own work