Brandon Smith and Trevin Wax
58 episodes listed below
Two Bible translators unpack Scripture's hardest passages, from Revelation's 666 to the Witch of Endor.
Word Matters treats confusing biblical texts as real interpretive problems, not puzzles to flatten. Brandon Smith and Trevin Wax compare views, read closely, and ask how a passage should be taught with faithfulness.
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Word Matters is a co-hosted podcast run by Brandon Smith and Trevin Wax, both of whom worked on the Christian Standard Bible translation team. The dominant format is a two-host panel discussion built around one confusing or contested passage of scripture per episode, with the hosts walking through competing interpretations before converging on a conclusion and its implications for teaching or preaching. Passages covered in the sample include the number 666 in Revelation 13, the warning against altering 'the words of this book' in Revelation 22, the Witch of Endor episode in 1 Samuel 28, and Old Testament holy-war texts in Deuteronomy and Joshua. Some episodes bring in outside guests, such as pastor and author Joshua Butler of Imago Dei Community in Portland, to address a specific interpretive question in depth. Occasionally the show broadens into wider theological and church-history conversations, including a reunion-style interview about Trevin Wax's book on orthodoxy and heresy and the church's post-scandal credibility crisis. Recurring analytical tools include gematria and manuscript-variant analysis, ancient Near Eastern war rhetoric, and citations of figures like G.K. Beale, N.T. Wright, and Tremper Longman. The tone is consistently educational and even-handed, presenting multiple named views before the hosts state their own position rather than arguing a single line from the start. It appears aimed at pastors, seminary students, and Bible study leaders rather than a general devotional audience. The podcast ran roughly three years and concluded after just over 50 episodes.
Made for: Pastors, seminary students, and Bible study leaders seeking a scholarly, multi-view walkthrough of specific contested biblical passages.
What sets it apart: Unlike broader theology or devotional shows, each episode is anchored to a single difficult passage and works through named competing scholarly interpretations before the hosts commit to a reading.
Word Matters is a podcast dedicated to helping Christians understand some of the most confusing passages of the Bible. Hosts Brandon Smith and Trevin Wax, along with special guests, help the audience both understand why the passage is difficult and how to teach it to others. Word Matters is sponsored by the Christian Standard Bible. Find out more at CSBible.com.
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Trevin Wax and Brandon Smith make disputed biblical passages clearer by comparing interpretations, testing them against context, and tracing their theological consequences.
Word Matters takes difficult biblical passages one question at a time, with Trevin Wax and Brandon Smith setting out the textual problem before comparing possible interpretations.
666 gets three readings before you decide how much numerical detective work the text can bear.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A warm, church-history-minded conversation about orthodoxy as living faith, not museum theology.
Brandon and Trevin Wax use their Word Matters reunion to make a warm, historically alert case for orthodoxy. The conversation looks back on their years together around the Christian Standard Bible and then turns to Wax's Thrill of Orthodoxy, asking why sound theology should…
A careful final Word Matters episode on Revelation's warning against altering John's prophecy.
Word Matters ends its run by lingering over the warning at the close of Revelation: John's charge not to add to or take away from the book. Trevin Wax and Brandon Smith keep the discussion anchored in the passage itself, especially the way John writes in continuity with the Old…
A careful, sober reading of Saul, Samuel, and the witch of Endor.
Word Matters handles the witch of Endor with sober curiosity, placing the strange scene near the end of Saul's long spiritual collapse rather than treating it as a Bible trivia problem.
A careful, readable guide to one of Revelation's most disputed numbers.
Word Matters handles this Revelation discussion with a steady hand. Trevin Wax and Brandon Smith move through several readings of the 144,000 and keep returning to the reasons each view has real support.
A measured, church-minded guide to 666 that turns Revelation anxiety toward allegiance, comfort, and Christ as King.
Word Matters takes the Bible's most notorious number out of superstition and puts it back inside Revelation 13. Brandon Smith and Trevin Wax begin with the ordinary unease around 666, then move into the harder question of how John's first readers would have heard it: empire,…
A careful Christian reading of conquest language that faces the difficulty without flattening the biblical text.
Word Matters takes up one of Scripture's most troubling conquest questions by slowing down how Deuteronomy, Joshua, and 1 Samuel use the language of war.
Live sermons with Easter-shaped urgency.
Daily Scripture with pastoral urgency.
Brandon Smith reunites with Trevin Wax, his former colleague on the Christian Standard Bible translation team and co-host of the Word Matters podcast, to discuss Wax's new book Thrill of Orthodoxy and his documentary-style podcast Reconstructing Faith.
In the final episode of Word Matters, hosts Brandon Smith and Trevin Wax examine Revelation 22:18-19, the passage where John warns against adding or taking away from 'the words of this book.' They argue that John was referring specifically to the book of Revelation, not the entire Bible, making this a classic case of 'right doctrine, wrong text.' The episode covers Mormon and Muslim interpretations of the passage, the KJV-only translation debate, and how the warning should be understood as a call to trust God's promises rather than a literal prohibition on editorial changes.
Hosts Trevin Wax and Brandon Smith examine one of the Bible's strangest passages — 1 Samuel 28, in which King Saul consults the Witch of Endor to summon the dead prophet Samuel on the eve of a battle against the Philistines.
This episode discusses James 1:5-8 about praying without doubting, with guest Dr.
This episode examines Hebrews 4:14-16, discussing whether Jesus was tempted like humans and the theological implications for believers.
Hosts discuss Matthew 16:13-20 with a guest theologian, exploring Jesus' identity and the building of the church.
Trevin Wax and Brandon Smith spend the final episode of season two on the question of who the 144,000 are in Revelation.
This episode examines whether Jesus descended to hell, focusing on 1 Peter 3:18-22 with guest Dr.
Hosts Brandon Smith and Trevin Wax examine three major interpretations of the number 666 from Revelation 13: the futurist view linking it to a coming Antichrist, the preterist view identifying it with Roman Emperor Nero through the ancient letter-number code of gematria, and the idealist view reading it as a symbolic contrast to the perfect number 777.
Pastor Joshua Butler joins hosts Trevin Wax and Brandon Smith to address whether God commanded genocide in passages like Deuteronomy 7 and 1 Samuel 15.