{Book Review} ESV Prayer Bible

The ESV Prayer Bible is a new release by Crossway. This Bible is not intended to be a study Bible (such as the ESV Study Bible), but instead it is seeking to accomplish something that is missing from the plethora of Bibles that are currently available to the church.

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The ESV Prayer Bible aims to help Christians read the Bible prayerfully by including the prayers of some of the giants that have gone before us.

The prayers interspersed throughout this Bible come to us from over 50 different authors over the history of the New Testament church. The authors include: Ambrose, Anselm, Augustine, Bernard of Claivaux, Jane Austen, John Calvin, Lady Jane Grey, Chrysostom, Clement of Rome, Martin Luther, John Newton, Ann Judson, Charles Spurgeon, Richard Sibbes and much more!

There are over 400 prayers included, and these prayers are connected to specific verses and passages. This format allows Christians to see what it looks like in practice to pray the Bible, and this is most certainly what Crossway is longing to accomplish with this Prayer Bible.

Features of the ESV Prayer Bible

This Prayer Bible includes the following:

• Introduction to the ESV Prayer Bible by Donald Whitney (the author of the book Praying the Bible) in which he explains how to best use and benefit from this Bible.
• Bible Reading Plan: This plan gives three readings a day (one Old Testament, one New Testament, and one Psalm).
• Prayer Index: This index gives full bibliographic information in regards to each and every prayer in this Bible, allowing you to quickly find out the source of the prayer quote.
• Author Index: This index gives a very brief description of each of the contributing authors, and also provides the location of each of their prayers throughout the Bible.
• Book Introductions: There is a book introduction for each of the 66 books of the Bible, and these are intended to help the reader connect the topic of prayer to the entirety of the individual book.
• A Comprehensive Scripture Index: This feature allows the reader to see where every prayer is found by giving the exact Scripture reference where the prayer can be found. For instance, by going to the Scripture Index and looking up Habakkuk, one can see that there are prayers found in 1:1-4, 1:12-17, and 3:1-19.
• 9.25-point font for the Biblical text; 7.5-point font for the prayers.
• Single Column Format.
• Sewn Binding.
• Ribbon Included.
• Words of Christ in Black.

Benefits of the ESV Prayer Bible

1. Quality/Design of Cover

Crossway has produced a wonderful Bible! The hardcover edition that I am reviewing is a beautifully done, aesthetically pleasing Bible. The cover is dark blue with gold lettering. The prayer emblem (folded hands) adds a nice, simple touch to the design.

2. Size (of Bible and Fonts)

The size of the Bible is just right! It’s not too big or too small. The 9.25-point Bible text and 7.5-point for the prayers is very comfortable to the eyes. The single column feature is a personal favorite of mine, as Crossway had me in love with this format since the origins of the ESV Study Bible.

3. Readability

This Bible also has zero cross-references, so the page is very clean and undistracting. Apart from the prayers that are interspersed throughout, the only thing that you will find is the biblical text, chapter and verse references, and the occasional textual footnote.

This was a great decision by Crossway because of the purpose of this Bible: to help the Christian focus on prayerful Bible reading. There is, of course, a place for cross references and study notes, but this Bible is aiming for the Christian to focus on the text of Scripture, the God of Scripture, and how to pray the text back to the God who gave us the Scriptures.

4. Indexes

The prayer index and the author index are very valuable to this Bible. I was able to look up a specific author (such as John Newton) to locate each of his prayers very easily. This allows one to catch a glimpse of what the prayer life of each of these authors looked like. By using the author and prayer index, I have found this Prayer Bible to be incredibly useful and beneficial, so don’t forget to use these features! I believe that this Bible is able to help the Christian to become more and more accustomed to praying the Bible back to the Lord. One of the greatest assets to this Bible is the number of authors of prayers that have been included!

Another way that this Prayer Bible shows itself to be valuable is the way in which it can help the Christian to become familiar with the godly, spiritual mentors that have come before us. This is a wonderful opportunity to see into the lives of these men and women and how they approached their Father in Heaven through the blessing of prayer. In this way, Christians can learn from these saints, and they can mature in their own individual prayer lives, as well as their corporate prayer lives (as many of these prayers are to be prayed together as the church, not just individually).

Drawbacks to the ESV Prayer Bible

If there is one thing I would change about this Bible, it is the number of prayers provided and the length of those prayers.

1. Number of Prayers

Although 400+ prayers sounds like a lot, at times it feels like you read for days until you arrive at another prayer. There is approximately 1 prayer for every 3 chapters, so realistically, that is a job well done. However, if you’re reading through entire books of the Bible, it often feels like it takes a while to get to the next prayer.

A good way around this is to use the author index by reading the specific prayers of each author along with the biblical text that the prayer is attributed to. This has been one of my favorite ways to utilize this Bible!

2. Length of Prayers

In addition to more prayers, I’d also like to see much longer prayers included in this Bible.

Though there are certainly some more lengthly prayers included, others consist of a short, one sentence-long prayer (and to be fair, there are some very long, run-on, one-sentence prayers as well). It’s not that the 1-2 sentence prayer isn’t effective, but it just left me wanting more! (Perhaps this is the result of reading Valley of Vision on a daily basis for the last 8 years in which the prayers are much longer.)

So though the prayers are indeed beautiful and encouraging to my soul, I would have preferred longer, more substantial prayers to be provided. This is especially the case since we have so many surviving prayers of saints throughout church history, so we are not in a shortage of recorded prayers by any means.

Cost of the ESV Prayer Bible

The ESV Prayer Bible is currently selling for $20 on Amazon and ChristianBook.com in the hardcover edition, and $33.99 for the imitation leather brown version on Christianbook.com.

There is also an imitation leather black version to be released around the beginning of June 2019 for the price of $33.99 on Christianbook.com.

Summary

Though I would have preferred more from some of the prayers (in quantity and in length), this Bible is still an incredibly well-done, affordable, and useful resource!

If you are a Christian and you desire to grow in your prayer life and in your fellowship with some of the great brothers and sisters that have gone before us, consider this wonderful resource from Crossway. This Prayer Bible consists of some beautiful, soul-stirring prayers that will lead you into intimate fellowship with the Lord! For this reason, I highly recommend this Bible.

Disclaimer: My thanks to Crossway Publishers for providing me with a complimentary copy of this ESV Prayer Bible as part of the Blog Review Program. The opinions expressed are my own.