The ESV Reference Bible

I’m a big fan of Crossway and most everything they do with Bibles. I don’t always love their cross reference placement though. Some of their best editions have the cross references in the bottom corner of the page in a small paragraph. That’s why I wanted to check out the Reference Bible, where the references are placed in a center column. It’s only offered in TruTone and I’m reviewing the Coffee color. Let’s dive in!

The Coffee color is a very dark brown. The spine is blind stamped. Page edges are in gold and there’s a single ribbon bookmark. It’s a TruTone cover so you are getting what you pay for here. There’s a paste down paper liner. The real focus is on the block of this Bible. The block is Smyth-sewn so it has that going for it in terms of durability.

The paper in this Bible is thinner. It has some ghosting and the text isn’t line matched. It’a a double column layout with center column references. Words of Christ are in red. The type size is a 9 point. This Bible has concise book introductions. There are over 80,000 cross references and it features a concordance with over 12,000 references. There are a lot of great textual study features built into this Bible! In the back are full color maps.

All in all, this is a nice budget offering from Crossway. I’d love to see them line match it and make it in at least a top grain leather and make the words of Christ black. However, if you’re looking for a Bible without the references tucked in the bottom right corner, you’ll be pleased with this offering!

You can pick up your copy of this Bible from Crossway or on Amazon (affiliate).

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this Bible from Crossway in exchange for a fair and honest review.