Essay / Misc.

Quick ESV Bible Trick

The publishers of the English Standard Version didn’t just produce a highly usable translation of the Bible. They also worked hard to make their work easily available on the internet. They’ve got a whole ESV blog full of nifty techie tricks that their version can do. But here’s one I discovered on my own:

When you Google a Bible verse by itself, you often get a whole lot of junk hits. So these days when I search for a Bible verse, I start my search with the letters ESV. For example, searching ESV Psalm 23 gets you, as the top hit, the 23rd Psalm in the English Standard Version.

Once you’re on an ESV page, notice that there’s a little “Listen” tab available. Just click it and it’ll start playing an audio file of that passage. Nice and tidy, without opening a new media player or a new window or anything.

Together, these two features have changed the way I wash dishes. I can just Google ESV + whatever chapter I want to hear, and then hear it read aloud while I scrub the pots and pans. In the future, I’m sure I’ll just be able to shout a Bible passage at my robot housekeeper (the Scourby-Bot 3000), but for now I’m pretty thrilled with the few clicks it takes me to get ESV Bible audio on demand.

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