These shorter books are passing quickly! Ezra and Nehemiah are done, and Esther will be finished in a week. That will be the end of the history books!

Somewhat appropriately, I've just passed 10,000 words for the project.

After the run of evil kings leads inexorably to the exile, it's a relief to find a new start for Israel in these recent books. But you can't quite escape the comparison with the great heights of earlier generations.

The Israelites felt the contrast themselves: in Ezra 3 the older people weep for the glory of the former temple even as the new foundations are laid.

This seems a very unresolved new beginning.

The keener-eyed among you may have noticed that I've changed my 'full chapter' links to point to eBible.com.

I've been looking for a Bible site with fewer adverts for a while now, so that's the main reason for the change. But it looks like the eBible team have interesting plans for the future as well. I'd recommend checking them out!

When I was first planning Bible Summary, a friend said to me, "Perhaps you'll have ten- or twenty-thousand followers by the end." I can clearly remember how inconceivable either of those figures sounded.

As it turned out, I gained my first 10,000 followers in the space of five somewhat crazy days between Genesis 6 and Genesis 11.

The next 10,000 have taken a lot longer. I reached 19,500 followers a few months ago and then the numbers fell for several weeks. I'll admit to being disappointed at the thought of not reaching the milestone.

But who can tell the ways of Twitter?! The numbers started rising again, and with over two years still to go, my summary of Nehemiah 2 went out to 20,010 followers!

By way of geeky celebration, I've added the number of followers I had for each summary to the chapter pages.

Thanks for following!