Podcast: Ray Ortlund on Recording the Entire ESV Bible: “An Epic Experience of the Bible in Its Totality”

June 19, 2024 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Surprised Afresh at a Deeper Level of Vividness

In this special episode, Ray Ortlund shares how recording the entire ESV Bible felt like the culmination of fifty years of reading, studying, and meditating on God’s Word. He reflects on what it was like to record for six hours a day and ultimately how spending all of that time reading Scripture aloud reawakened him to the incredible power and authority of the sixty-six books that make up our Bible.

ESV Audio Bible, Read by Ray Ortlund

ESV Audio Bible, Read by Ray Ortlund

Crossway

The Bible is made up of 66 books that tell the magnificent story of God’s redemptive work through Christ. In this audio recording of the full Bible, that story comes alive in a fresh way through the voice of author and pastor Ray Ortlund.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

Earlier this year, Crossway released several new audio Bibles designed to offer God’s people yet one more way to engage deeply with God’s Word as they hear it read aloud. But what was it like to actually create such a recording? What would it be like to read the whole Bible aloud, one verse at a time? A few weeks ago, I spoke with author and recording artist Jackie Hill Perry, and she shared about her experience recording the full ESV Bible. Today I’m talking with pastor Ray Ortlund, and in our conversation he shares how recording the entire ESV felt like the culmination of fifty years of reading, studying, and meditating on God’s Word. He reflects on what it was like to record for six hours a day and ultimately how spending all of that time reading Scripture aloud reawakened him to the incredible power and authority of the sixty-six books that make up our Bible.

01:00 - Fifty Years in the Making

Matt Tully
Ray, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Ray Ortlund
It’s a privilege, Matt. Thanks for having me.

Matt Tully
Ray, you’re a pastor, you’re an author, a podcast host, and you’re now an audio Bible narrator as well. Did you ever imagine doing something like this?

Ray Ortlund
No. The technology is astounding to me, and this is what technology was created for. If not for getting out the Scriptures, then what on earth is the point? So one thing I feel really good about is taking this technology, which in our world today, sadly, is used for evil and destructive purposes, and, by God’s grace, bending it around for a Christ-honoring, life-giving purpose. That really feels good.

Matt Tully
What went through your head when you first were approached by Crossway to do this project? Is it something that you had to work yourself up to doing or that you had to think about for a while? Or were you on board from the first moment?

Ray Ortlund
I was so psyched. I felt so privileged, and here’s why. Fifty years ago I was sitting in a classroom at Dallas Theological Seminary, and it was basic New Testament exegesis. It was pretty technical and clunky and geeky. And I’m sitting there minding my own business. I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t have time to duck. Suddenly, this awareness from above—it was a divine moment that God gave—this awareness came upon me. I had two thoughts with remarkable vividness. One: I was born to do this. Secondly, I’m going to spend the rest of my life as a serious student of the Bible. From that moment and through many years of living in the Scriptures all the way up to reading aloud the English Standard Version for this audio Bible, the ESV audio Bible was the culmination of literally fifty years of dwelling in, living in, marinating in the Scriptures. I’m so grateful I could do it.

03:18 - Savoring Scripture

Matt Tully
That’s such a cool thing to get to be a part of. Ray, you are a pastor, and you’ve preached, I’m sure, dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of sermons at this point over the course of your life. And so obviously you’re in the Bible, preparing for those kinds of things that you’re doing, but what does your Bible time look like on an everyday basis? You talk about just spending all this time meditating on God’s Word, giving yourself to it, as a core part of your life. What does that look like Monday through Friday, so to speak?

Ray Ortlund
Basically, I have a rhythm of two kinds of Bible reading. One, an annual read-through from Genesis to Revelation, breaking it up into 365 days of about four chapters a day. Just read the Bible through, wrap my brain around the Bible as a totality, and see it in its wholeness yet again. And the other kind of reading I do is a deep dive. Right now, I’m doing a deep dive in the book of Psalms, and I just take one psalm a day. I’m using the ESV Scripture Journal, which has the biblical text on the left page and lined, blank paper on the right page. So I’m underlining words, circling words, yellow highlighting, writing out thoughts and cross-references. The key is enjoying it and spoiling myself every morning. This is not something I have to do. This is something I get to do.

Matt Tully
Is that ever hard to do? Is it ever hard to get in that mindset? Because I would imagine maybe many of our listeners can be like me, where I have to confess that sometimes the thought of reading my Bible in the morning and making that a priority doesn’t feel as enjoyable, perhaps, as I wish it did.

Ray Ortlund
Sure. I understand that. I’ve been there. But what helped me was figuring out different ways to read the Bible that I found interesting. Not somebody else’s plan, but something that really resonated with me. Here’s another way I read the Bible. I go to the ESV website or the Greek New Testament produced at Tyndale House, and I cut and paste a section of Scripture—maybe John’s Gospel or the book of Romans in the original text. I create a document from that on my laptop, and I format it with lots of wide margins and big spaces between the lines. And then I print it out on 24Lb paper, which is a little thicker and heavier than the usual. Then, I take it down to the FedEx office and have them spiral bind it. And then I’ve got my own book. I know this is really going to sound crazy, but I even do it with the Latin Vulgate. I really enjoy that. Latin is so much fun. And I do it with the Hebrew Bible. So just find a way where reading the Bible feels like—didn’t C. S. Lewis say that reading works best when you treat it as a vice? Just enjoy it.

Matt Tully
You do it a little longer than you should maybe, but you just can’t get enough.

Ray Ortlund
There is a way for every single one of us to go about exploring Scripture, savoring Scripture that just works for us. The Bible says in Philippians, "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." So this is one of the ways we do that.

06:55 - From Genesis to Revelation

Matt Tully
So when it came to this audio Bible recording, were there ever moments in the middle of this thing that you thought to yourself, What have I gotten into here? I’m never going to finish this thing.

Ray Ortlund
What was I thinking? The genealogies in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. You know what I did there? That was not easy, and I had this huge ESV Pulpit Bible.

Matt Tully
You’re holding it up right now. The pulpit Bible is a very large format resource with very large type size, but probably really good for reading for long periods of time.

Ray Ortlund
Well, what I had to do, since these many, many hundreds and even thousands of Hebrew names are sometimes hard to pronounce, I went through and in advance of each reading each chapter, I looked up each name and wrote down the proper pronunciation with their critical marks on the page. Usually I read from an iPad. If it’s just poetry or prose like in Genesis or Psalms, but these genealogies were lots and lots of strange names, and I had to get them right. I changed over to this big pulpit Bible, and I made it super obvious and simple, or I knew I would blow it. Simple works for me, you know what I mean? So that’s how I helped myself in those tough ones. That was really a challenge. You know, Matt, one of the things I learned about while doing the audio Bible is I discovered how, in a way, kind of sloppy I had been as a reader of the Bible. I didn’t even realize I was sort of leapfrogging over things I didn’t understand. But this time I couldn’t do that. I had to read literally every syllable. So it was eye opening and humbling. And it was a really, really good discipline for me to pay attention at a deeper level than ever before.

Matt Tully
You mentioned before we started recording that you opted to read through the Bible for this recording from Genesis to Revelation—to just start at the beginning and read straight through. What was behind that decision?

Ray Ortlund
I wanted to experience the Bible as it was structured within the canon. I wanted to have a personal, vivid, sustained experience of exposure to the Bible as it has come down to us in its properly authorized form. Not only the content, but the form as well. And I don’t regret that at all. That was a very satisfying experience.

Matt Tully
As you said before, you’d been listening to the Bible every year as a part of your spiritual habits. Do you feel like you learned new things about the Bible through reading it that you hadn’t really picked up when you were listening to it?

Ray Ortlund
Yes. When I was in my twenties, all my friends were reading The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. And so I tried it, and I couldn’t stay with it. It seemed as though the plot was so slow in unfolding and with so many little subplots along the way that seemed to me to sort of inhibit the progression of the story. I became impatient. I thought, Tolkien, get to the point, man! So I put it down. But then the summer before the first The Lord of the Rings movie came out, I decided to try again. This time, I was in my fifties. I couldn’t put it down. Tolkein hadn’t changed. I had changed. And by the time I was in my fifties, I had come to realize that the way he tells that story is exactly how our lives play out. It is so true to life. And the Bible is Tolkienian as an epic story, a massive novel, with lots of subplots along the way. My initial response to it might be frustration. But as I grow and mature I realize this is, in fact, the way history unfolds. It’s the way my life unfolds. This book understands me before I ever understand it. And as I grow and go through the experience of journeying through this life, and as I become a deeper man, the Bible makes more and more sense. So I really enjoy that kind of epic experience of the Bible in its totality, cover to cover.

Matt Tully
That’s so good. How often and at what time of day would you typically record? Was there a set schedule that you were following?

Ray Ortlund
There was for quite a number of months, and I could only do about six hours at a crack. But first thing in the morning, after my other early morning responsibilities, I would just sit down and grab myself by the scruff of the neck and say, Come on! Here we go! And my voice would become a little bit weakened after about six hours or so and my capacity for focus.

Matt Tully
Do you have a favorite memory or a favorite part of the Scriptures that just kind of came alive in a special way for you?

Ray Ortlund
That’s a great question. Well, the Psalms, Isaiah, Romans, and John’s Gospel are like the highest peaks in the biblical Himalayas. I love those. Isaiah and Romans—Isaiah is the Romans of the Old Testament, and Romans is the Isaiah of the New Testament, in that they’re sort of air traffic control. All lines of biblical thought and vision, faith, and so forth flow through Isaiah and flow through Romans. I remember years ago seeing a British Airways advertisement. It was a poster or something in a magazine—I forget exactly. It was the Western Hemisphere, and there’s Europe and there’s little Britain, and all these lines were converging where London is, where all those flights would come to Heathrow Airport there in London. And Isaiah in the Old Testament and Romans in the New Testament, each of them is that point of convergence, where so many lines of theological thought land and are processed and then keep moving. So those two books were great.

13:20 - The Conviction to Read Scripture Well

Matt Tully
Your recording is available as a CD, a digital download on Audible, and in the ESV Bible app. But Crossway has also created this daily podcast with your recording, and it features a few different passages that you’re reading each day. And I’ve been listening to your podcast almost every day since the beginning of the year. That was my pick to do this year, and one of the things that I love the most about your recording is just how intentional it is. You slow down at certain points to emphasize things. You really draw out certain words when the text is focused around that word or idea. In some passages—I’m thinking of certain sections of the Psalms; the imprecatory psalms, for example—your voice is more stern. But in other passages, it gets more quiet and soft. And it just made me think to myself that here’s someone who knows how to read the Scriptures. He isn’t just reading the Scriptures, but you know how to read them well. And so I wonder if you could just speak to that. After doing this massive project, what goes into reading the Scriptures well, in your mind?

Ray Ortlund
That’s great. Well, thank you, Matt. I’m so glad that it’s helping you in that way. I do believe, as a matter of conviction, that the Scripture should be read well. And a flat, monotone kind of reading is just not fair. Even if you don’t believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and you and I do believe that, but even if we didn’t believe it, we would still respect it the way we would respect Milton or Shakespeare or Dostoevsky. And such things deserve to be read well, especially because we do believe that all Scripture is inspired of God and profitable at many levels. So there is always, in each verse, what I call the operative word or maybe an operative phrase. It’s that word that the other words are supporting. The other words are there to provide context for that word or that phrase. And that word or phrase needs just a gentle emphasis to help the listener realize, Oh, that’s what we’re talking about here. And I don’t remember how I read Isaiah 40:1, but there are two ways it could be read. "Comfort, comfort my people, says your God." Or, asking what are the operative words there? I mean, he repeats the word comfort. "Comfort, comfort my people, says your God." So it’s my people, your God. I have not forsaken you. I know what you’re going through. I know that you feel utterly abandoned and overwhelmed. But you are my people. I am your God. And my heart is to comfort you profoundly. All of that is, in fact, going on there. And I just want to read that in such a way that—I wouldn’t want my reading to hinder a listener connecting with that, sensing that. I want my reading to be such that maybe, under God’s blessing, the reader would go, Whoa! That’s real for me too? So that was my thought behind that kind of dynamic.

Matt Tully
Do you think your experience with preaching has informed that dynamic? Because good preachers do that as well as they’re reading Scripture and even as they’re preaching their own sermons, their own words. Do you think that was a big influence? Did that experience that you have in the pulpit served you as you were reading this?

Ray Ortlund
Yes, I do. That’s a very significant contributor. I was ordained forty-nine years ago, and over the course of forty-nine years, I’ve just slowly, too slowly, but to some degree have come to understand a little bit about what people are going through in real life and how I might be able with Scripture to help and bring hope and bring heart back to people who are buffeted by the hammer blows of life in this world. So that’s why I felt so privileged and so earnestly desirous that I would be able to do this. I felt like I’ve been working toward this and preparing for this all my life. I just didn’t know it until you guys gave me the chance. So it’s very meaningful.

18:07 - The Stabilizing Power of Scripture

Matt Tully
You talk about the impact that Scripture can have on our lives as Christians, the stabilizing and the ballast that that can give to us. And I think in all of your books, at least many of your books, you incorporate lots of autobiographical elements. You speak very personally about the things that you write about so often. I wonder if you could just speak to the power of Scripture in your own life to stabilize you, to give you comfort when you’re feeling down, to remind you of the truth when maybe your mind is wandering. How have you experienced that stabilizing power?

Ray Ortlund
My dad helped me understand that, although it was years and years until it really landed on me. He prepared me to understand that, as a pastor, when I stand up there on a Sunday morning and preach, I’m not just tossing up my opinions. I’m not just giving my hunch, my take on things. Who cares? Why would anybody get in their car and drive down to church on Sunday morning to hear that? Who cares? What do I have to say? I can’t even talk to myself, much less anybody else. But if God has something to say, and if he actually is so kind and so accommodating as to put his hand on a knucklehead like me and say, I want you to go do this to help people, I think he does that, not disparage his own message, his own gospel, his own Word but to bring it to people in a way that would make it even more accessible, more relatable, because they’re hearing about Jesus, in his grace and glory, for the undeserving through an obvious knucklehead, who is himself undeserving. And everybody kind of melts and leans in and we all listen with a kind of reverent attention that we would never give to somebody who was merely impressive. Impressiveness—it’s not just overrated, it’s actually a barrier. To be an honest man of God, no bluff, standing there with no fancy tricks of the trade, declaring God’s Word with confidence and humility so that people hear the message precisely because they’re not dazzled by the man. When Martin Lloyd Jones preached, I never had the privilege of hearing him, but they used to say as his sermon would unfold, and he was a biblical preacher, he would become invisible—psychologically invisible in the experience. And people were captivated by the message coming from Scripture. And every authentic preacher understands that. So
I revere this. It says on the spine, Holy Bible. Holy means not like any other book. It means this is of God. To read it, hear it, preach it means that something is coming down from on high, entering into our world and our lives. There is nothing else like this in all this broken, wretched world. We are so grateful. And to be involved in that reading the audio Bible, it’s like, What am I doing here? This is amazing.

21:27 - The Grandeur of Scripture

Matt Tully
I know a lot of people have so appreciated the work that you did there, and they can hear that love for God’s Word, that respect, the reverence for God’s Word that comes through in your voice. As you were really getting into this project, were there any things that were surprising to you that you weren’t expecting as you first started?

Ray Ortlund
I was surprised by two things—one at the micro level, one at the macro level. At the micro level, I was surprised—and I should have seen it years and years ago—but I was just surprised afresh, at a deeper level of vividness by the minutia of Scripture, the detail of Scripture, the obvious care that went into the composition of Scripture. This was not just dashed off on the back of a napkin in a coffee shop. Isaiah, for example, is a work of literary artistry. So are the psalms, the book of Job, and so forth. So I was really struck by the minute care with which the Bible was written. And then at the macro level, I was struck by the, in the proper sense of the word, the coherence of the Bible, the narrative arc of the Bible as a totality. Again, it’s Tolkienian grandeur. I think Lesslie Newbigin points this out, the British missiologist. He said the Bible is unique among the world’s holy books in that it claims to be nothing less than an account of the entire universe. How does the Bible begin? God creates the heavens and the earth? How does the Bible end? God recreates the new heavens and the new earth. It begins and ends at the level of the cosmos. Inside that narrative arc is this whole story of human history from beginning to end. The Bible is not handy tips for ramping up on a busy Monday morning. Now, it speaks to that, but it’s so much more than that. The Bible is an account of the whole of reality under God. It’s that big. That’s why the Bible is not a moralistic scolding. The Bible is not nagging us. It is not small and petty and nitpicky. There’s grandeur all over the whole Bible. And when we stand back and look at it at that macro level, it’s breathtakingly obvious and glorious.

Matt Tully
That’s one of the most wonderful things about reading large chunks of the Bible, or in this case, listening to the Bible, as we often do with audio Bibles, to large passages of Scripture. I would imagine most of our listeners would believe that, yes, Scripture is unified. There is this meta message that it has. It is telling this grand story. And then back to that first thing you mentioned, Scripture also gets into the details. We know these things, but sometimes we have to experience it. And when we read the Bible, when we focus on the Bible and prioritize it like this, we kind of experience those truths in a whole new way. We can have such a deeper appreciation for what God is doing through his Word. I wonder, Ray, just to close with these last couple of questions. What did it feel like to read that last chapter and then be done?

Ray Ortlund
When I came to Revelation 22, I took out my iPhone, propped it up over to the side by one of the microphones, and recorded my own reading of Revelation 22 because I really felt like, Oh my goodness! I’m coming to the end of a long, meaningful, challenging journey. I’m about to complete this journey. I can’t believe I got to do this. This is amazing! So I put my phone there, and I made lots of mistakes. And by the way, it was interesting. I’m sure I handed over to your editors there at Crossway the biggest nightmare they have ever experienced in terms of fixing all my bloopers, including Revelation 22. I found that when I would stumble over words and then say, "Sorry, guys. I have to back up and do verse thirteen again," pause, and then do verse thirteen again, that would actually precipitate more mistakes.

Matt Tully
You can kind of get psyched out a little bit.

Ray Ortlund
So these bloopers would snowball until I finally got it right and then I could keep going.

Matt Tully
Did you find yourself talking to the editors, talking to the audio engineers, apologizing to them?

Ray Ortlund
Oh yeah. I hope that all of that stuff is completely buried and deleted from your records, because it would be embarrassing. So I finally came to the end, I breathe this huge sigh of relief, and I was really grateful to God that he actually preserved—this is going to sound too dramatic—but he preserved my life to accomplish the reading of the entire Bible so that even my grandchildren will be able to listen to the Bible from me someday. Wow.

Matt Tully
What a blessing.

Ray Ortlund
Yeah. Hugely.

26:44 - A Prayer for the Listener

Matt Tully
So last question: What’s your hope, or even better, what’s your prayer for those who listen to God’s Word read aloud to them in your voice going forward?

Ray Ortlund
God gave us the Bible so that with the Holy Spirit’s blessing, something deep inside us would come alive to him as never before. I was just looking yesterday at Francis Schaeffer’s wonderful book True Spirituality, and he says there, which I think Crossway publishes now, and he says there as he goes around and speaks to different people—and Schaeffer was such a prophetic voice in my generation when I was in college—he says as he goes around and speaks with people, the anguish people keep wanting to talk to him about that they feel and experience and need help with is they’ve lost their sense of reality with the Lord. We all know what it’s like for God to become sort of a doctrine and not a reality. Well, we revere the doctrine, but the Bible is there not just to teach us the doctrine but the doctrine is the wardrobe into the Narnia of personal communion with God, personal reality with God. So my prayer for this audio Bible is that in a way that only God can orchestrate, and it’s really a gift from above, that he would use this audio Bible—all the readers of it—he would use these audio Bibles to awaken us to personal reality with the living God so that whatever we face in the future, we’ll be ready and we’ll keep our integrity and we’ll walk with our heads held high. That we’ll have some spring in our step, some steel in our spine because the risen Christ is real to us. So that’s my prayer.

Matt Tully
Amen. Thank you, Ray, so much for taking the time today to talk to us about this incredible journey that you have undertaken, and we so appreciate it.

Ray Ortlund
Thank you, Matt. It’s a privilege.

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