This broke me. Not the book itself, although it took an audiotape and a long drive to get through it, but the write up. I had originally planned to illustrate it with a family tree. Except that the first four verses of the first chapter are a vertical family tree through thirteen generations from Adam to Japheth. The fifth verse lists Japheth’s seven sons. Verses six and seven list the sons of two of Japheth’s seven sons, one of whom had three sons and the other four. And it just keeps going.

There are more than a hundred names (although only approximately 75 unique individuals because of course every father is listed twice, once as a “son of” and then again as a “father of”) within the first 26 verses of chapter 1, at which point we get to the sons of Abraham: Isaac and Ishmael, who at least are names I recognize. After that, there are a lot more names that I don’t recognize at all. A lot.

The first chapter has 54 verses. The book as a whole has 29 chapters. And it’s the first of two scrolls that make up Chronicles 1 and Chronicles 2 respectively.

What do you even do with this?

Although as a baby name book, it’s pretty excellent. If you can get over some of the names themselves. I do feel like no one should be named after Ham (1:4), but then there’s Tilgathpilneser (king of Assyria, listed in 5:6 and again in 5:26 because why make things easy to keep track of?), since that is a bitching name.

“I wanted to give my son a biblical name, but also a unique one.”

“So, little baby Tilgathpilneser?”

“We call him Tilgy.”

(Also, rather than just a name in a list, like so many are, we learn that God roused Tilgathpilneser’s spirit in order to punish the Israelites – even the Reubenites! – so… there’s that? 5:26)

The family trees just keep going, but we do occasionally get some few verses dotted here and there giving a few details about what’s actually happening with and to at least some of these people.

There’s also the occasional woman mentioned, such as Hammoleketh who bore three children of unspecified gender (but certainly not unspecified name!) listed in 7:18. And then there’s Sherah (7:24) who makes me grin because Shera! Princess of Power! which was a favorite cartoon that dates me horribly (and also aged horribly.)

We also get to a few parts where the people don’t always have names, but do have hereditary positions of employment such as porters of various quarters, overseers of vessels, cooks, and singers. Of course, sometimes they do have names, and those many, many names are listed. (chapter 9.)

And, sometimes there isn’t familial connections, just being in the same battle but still needing a chapter devoted to the roll call of those valiant warriors. (chapter 11).

By chapters 15, it became too much for the original writer apparently because it breaks down into numbers rather than lists of names, or at least lists of names associated with the number of children rather than lists of names associated with lists other lists of names.

Chapters 16-22 actually get back to story telling with King David and the ark of the covenant, a list of rules of behaviors, and the temple that David really wants to build and has very specific ideas about but that can’t be built within his lifetime because God says so and thus needs to be described to his son Solomon for him to do later.

After that break, chapters 23-27 are back to genealogies and employment records.

Chapters 28-29 are a rousing speech that King David gives, somewhat about the greatness of the Lord but mostly about exactly what the temple he wants built after he dies to look like, described in extremely excruciating detailed instructions. It all finally ends with a quick summary of King David’s reign (good) and his biographies (three of them)  and mention that King Solomon is the next king.

Summary: There are a lot of people and population increases geometrically over time if couple has more than two kids. They’re mostly employed being porters, priests, singers, cooks, warriors, and kings. And wow, does King David want to be in charge of building his temple even if it can’t be started until after he dies.

Moral: As time goes by, being one more name in a long list of names is not a great legacy, in my ever so humble opinion.

Next up: Chronicles 2

And here in Kings 2, we continue the rundown of the various kings of Israel and Judah, along with their rather fraught relationships with the kings of Moab, Egypt, Syria, Assyria, and Babylon, plus a note on how God is judging them (hint: mostly sinful.)

Once more, the chapters that discuss the various kings of Israel and Judah generally end with the direction that more information about that king is available in The Annals of the Kings of Judah, or The Annals of the Kings of Israel.

Also the prophet Elisha gets a lot of stories:

Chapter two: A chariot of fire comes to take the prophet Elijah bodily up to heaven. The devoted assistant/apprentice Elisha becomes an even greater prophet (and sends bears to kill 42 men who mocked his bald head. – Kings 2 2:23)

Chapter four: Elisha is a prophet and, among other miracles, raises the dead.

Chapter five: Elisha cures a leper but refuses a reward. His assistant Gehazi sneaks around in order to con the reward out of the former-leper, and Elisha curses Gehazi with the leprosy himself.

Chapter six: Elisha spies on the Syrian king via prophesy and then leads a troop of Syrian soldiers intent on kidnapping him to Samaria, has them given the food and water offered to prisoners of war and then sent on their way back to Syria.

Chapter seven: Elisha breaks a siege by scaring away the Syrian troop besieging Samaria to the extent that the troops even leave all their supplies behind and the starving Samarian residents feast, except for an unbeliever who gets trampled to death.

Chapter thirteen: Elisha dies an old man and is buried, but later some Moabite bandits went to bury one of their own dead in his tomb, but as soon as the dead bandit came in contact with Elisha’s bones, he came back to life. Wowza.

As for the rest, there’s a continuation of the various Kings, each of which have their own stories that mostly involve being invaded by various other kings.

Kings of Israel

• King Ahaziah (son of King Ahab, fell off a porch, broke his leg, and died) (sinful)
• King Jehoram* (son of King Ahab, brother of King Ahaziah) (sinful)
• King Jehu**** (son of King Jehoshaphat of Judah) (sinful)
• King Jehoahaz (son of King Jesu) (sinful)
• King Jehoash + (son of King Jeheoahaz) (sinful)
• King Jeroboam II *****(son of King Jehoash) (sinful)
• King Zechariah (son of King Jeroboam II, king for only six months before he was assassinated by Shallum) (sinful)
• King Shallum (king for only a month before he was assassinated by Menahem)
• King Menahem (sinful)
• King Pekahiah (son of King Menahem) (sinful)
• King Pekah (assassinated King Pekahiah) (sinful)
• King Hoshea (assassinated King Pekah) (sinful)

King Shalmaneser of Assyria invaded in King Hoshea’s seventh year. Three years later, Samaria is conquered and the people of Israel are taken from the land (due to their sinfulness). This happens in the sixth year of King Hezekiah of Judah.

And thus ends the Kings of Israel.

Kings of Judah

• King Jehoshaphat
• King of Joram* (son of King Jehoshaphat) (sinful)
• King Ahaziah (son of King Joram) (sinful)
• Queen Athaliah ** (mother of King Ahaziah) (unstated)
• King Joash *** + (son of King Ahaziah) (virtuous but also sinful?)
• King Amaziah (son of King Joash) (mostly virtuous)
• King Azariah (aka King Uzziah?) (son of King Amaziah) (mostly virtuous)
• King Jotham (son of King Azariah) (mostly virtuous)
• King Ahaz (son of King Jotham) (sinful)
• King Hezekiah (son of King Ahaz) (virtuous)
• King Manasseh (son of King Hezekiah) (extremely sinful)
• King Amon (son of King Manasseh) (sinful)
• King Josiah (son of King Amon) (extremely virtuous)
• King Jehoahaz (son of King Josiah) (sinful)
• King Eliakim aka King Jehoiakim (son of King Josiah, puppet to Pharoah Neco) (sinful)
• King Jehoiachin (son of King Jehoiakim) (sinful)
• King Mattaniah AKA King Zedekiah (uncle of King Jehoiachin, puppet to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon) (sinful)

Judah is essentially destroyed after King Mattaniah attempts to rebel. All the remaining population left for Egypt as refugees. Some 37 years after King Jehoiachin is dethroned and replaced by King Mattaniah, the new king of Babylon, King Evilmerodach releases Joehoiachin from prison, gives him a regular allowance and a seat at the table of kings.

And thus ends the listing of the Kings of Judah.

Summary: There are a lot of Kings of Israel and Judah, most of them were sinful, but they each get little stories of their lives and troubles. It’s kind of overwhelming as the two sets of kings are tracked in relationship to each other.

Moral: Punishment is coming. It doesn’t matter if you weren’t aware you were sinning, and apologizing might postpone the inevitable a generation or more, but punishment is definitely coming.

* The edition I was using of the Living Bible actually had several typos here and confused King Jehoram with King Joram and it made a confusing situation even more so. I cross-checked with a copy of the New English Bible to figure out who’s who.

+ The edition of the Living Bible also uses Joash for both King Joash of Judah and King Jehoash of Israel. Trying to figure out who’s doing what is incredibly frustrating.

** When she learned of her son’s death, she had all of his sons (her grandsons) killed, so that she could rule instead.

*** He was hidden in a temple as an infant and raised there in secret for seven years.

**** This was a crazy drive-by anointing. Elisha tells one of his younger prophet students to go get Jehu away from his friends, dump a bottle of holy oil over his head, tell him that he’s been chosen as the new king of Israel, and then the young prophet needs to run for his life to avoid being killed in the fallout. (chapter 9).

***** Kings 2 14:25 references the prophet Jonah (son of Amittai) the prophet from Gathhepher. Jonah apparently saw the various failures of King Jeroboam II. Was this the Jonah of Jonah and the whale? I have no idea.

Next up: Chronicles I

This book is literally a listing of the various Kings of Israel. This is clearly a summary of events and many of the chapters end with a citation: For more information about King [whatever king this chapter discussed] see The Annals of the Kings of Judah, or The Annals of the Kings of Israel. These are apparently both lost books, with no known copies still in existence.

Anyway, at the start of this book, King David is old enough that it is time (again) for his sons to fight over the succession.

King David’s son Adonijah apparently decided that it was better to ask forgiveness than permission and went ahead and arranged his own coronation. (With Joab’s support, too!) With some prompting from his wife, Bath-sheba, King David immediately arranges for the officially recognized coronation of their son Solomon.

King David dies but not before reminding Solomon of all the betrayals he (David) suffered and all the people he (David) promised not to kill, but reminded Solomon that those promises would not bind him (Solomon). Thus there’s no surprise that Solomon starts off his reign with ordering a variety of deaths (chapter 2). After that, Solomon prays for the wisdom necessary to rule the land, which God grants (chapter 3).*

After some talk about how wise King Solomon now was, there’s a lot of description of the temple he has built to hold the Ark of the Covenant. It was built with much cedar wood (as a gift from King Hiram of Tyre) and gold and brass in a very specific design (chapters 5 thru 7) and then consecrated with much worship and sacrifice** (chapters 8 and 9).

Chapter 10 is about Solomon’s wealth and Chapter 11 is about his virility with his 700 wives and 300 concubines. However, it also talks about how he let some of those wives worship gods who were not the one God and thus he sinned started a pattern of sinful behavior in the line of kings. God decides that in punishment, Solomon’s son would only rule over only one of the tribes of Israel and be king in Jerusalem, while a man named Jeroboam would rule over the remaining ten tribes as king over Israel.

The next eleven chapters (chapters 12 thru 22) list the various kings who ruled and the ways in which they variously offended God and tried to kill one another.

Kings of all Israel:

• King David
• (King Adonijah, son of King David – had himself anointed king without his father’s blessings)
• King Solomon (son of King David) (sinful)
• King Rehoboam (son of King Solomon)*** remained king of the tribe of Judah

Kings of Judah:

• King Rehoboam (sinful)
• King Abijim (son of King Rehoboam) (sinful)
• King Asa (son of King Abijim) (faithful)
• King Jehoshaphat (son of King Asa) (faithful?)
• King Jehoram (son of King Jehoshaphat) (unstated)

Kings of Israel (minus Judah):

• King Jeroboam (sinful)****
• King Nadab (son of King Jeroboam) (sinful)
• King Baasha (having assassinated King Nadab) (sinful)
• King Elah (son of King Baasha) (unstated)
• King Zimri (having assassinated King Elah) (sinful)
• King Omri (having defeated General Tibni the other claimant after King Zimri’s suicide) (even more sinful than Jeroboam!)
• King Ahab (son of King Omri) (even more sinful than King Omri!)*****
• King Ahaziah (son of King Ahab) (sinful)

While there’s all sorts of civil unrest within each of Judah and Israel as well as between them, there’s also all sorts of conflict and temporary alliances with the various kings of Syria.

And thus we are through Kings 1 and thus on to Kings 2.

Summary: There have been a lot of kings of Israel and Judah and most of them have been sinful. Most of the sins, however, have had to do with allowing the worship of idols rather than regarding their tendencies towards killing one another.

Moral: There’s a lot of sinning going on here, but punishments for those sins is largely hit or miss.

* Chapter 3 contains the famous story of Solomon’s wisdom in which two mothers are claiming an infant child is theirs. King Solomon orders the baby to be cut in half so that they can each have half. The woman who protests that decision is identified as the actual mother. Given Solomon’s recent history, it’s no surprise that the two women involved absolutely believed that King Solomon would be more than willing to cut a baby in half.

** 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep and goats were sacrificed at the temple over the course of 14 days. This comes to a bit more than 7 animals killed every minute for 14 days. Oof.

*** The people of Israel asked King Rehoboam to be a kinder taskmaster than his father, to which he responded along the lines of: you only thought you had it bad under Solomon. I’ll work you to the bone and whip you till you bleed. They decided not to accept him as their king after all.

**** King Jeroboam didn’t want his people going to Jerusalem to worship since King Rehoboam remained king of Jerusalem even after Jeroboam took over the remaining ten tribes. Thus, Jeroboam made a bunch of local temples with local priests for his people to worship at and thus horribly offended God. For a while, Jeroboam is the benchmark for the sinfulness of all other kings.

***** King Ahab was so wicked that he gets chapters 17 thru 22 to recount some of his evil deeds which include marrying Jezebel and worshiping Baal. The prophet Elijah comes in here to, first, announce the coming of a drought and, second, to demonstrate the non-existence of Baal. He also arranges the slaughter all 450 of the prophets of Baal, who had been under Jezebel’s protection. Eventually, Ahab was so terrified of a prophesy Elijah made that he rent his clothing, fasted, and wore sackcloth, such that God decided to punish Ahab’s children instead of him.

Next up: Kings 2

It’s been a while since my last Bible post, but I am determined to get through the whole thing, even if there is no way I’ll manage my original finish-it-in-a-year goal. (It seemed so easy at the time!) Anyway:

Apparently the reason why there are two-part books in the bible sometimes (Samuel 1, Samuel 2; with Kings 1, Kings 2 and Chronicles 1, Chronicles 2 to come) is because these books were too long to be written on individual scrolls as they originally were. These books are literally scroll 1 of the text and scroll 2 of the text, separated into two parts for practical convenience rather than from narrative intent. This explanation helps a lot with understanding the naming conventions because by the time we get to Samuel 2, the character Samuel is dead some chapters back.

In Samuel 1, we are introduced to David as the plucky rebel who is gets quite the reputation for defeating enemies and surviving assassination attempts by King Saul, and being generally much beloved by the populace.

In Samuel 2, David is now king and it’s maybe a lesson that plucky rebel types do not necessarily make the best kings. In particular, the king in these circumstances (intermittent civil war and periodic invasions) needs to be fairly ruthless (according to his advisers.) If he’s not willing to kill potentially traitorous friends and family, then his advisers are more than willing to do so in his stead and against his wishes.

At this point we’ve got an emotional king who will dance lasciviously in the streets when he’s happy (chapter 6), rend his clothes and refuse to eat when sad (chapter 12), and willing to send a soldier on a suicide mission so as to marry the widow (chapter 11). He’s supported by Joab, a politically practical and ruthless adviser more than willing to kill people with whom the king has already promised peace. The neighboring kingdoms are understandably wary.

Also, King David’s son Absalom tries to take over, and part of this is sleeping with all of his father’s wives. Urg. There is much conspiring by various individuals on both sides. King David, however, manages to send out his army to fight Absalom’s army while also instructing his army to be gentle with his son.

So King David’s army manages to defeat Absalom’s army and find Absalom* but then sort of wander around wondering what to do about the guy who just lead an unsuccessful rebellion but who their king wants treated gentle. Joab pulls out his daggers and kills Absalom where he hangs (chapter 18). Then Joab rides back to Jerusalem, where King David is in deep mourning for his son Absalom. Joab tells him that David is going to stop that mourning, get up and start celebrating with the returning troops or Joab is going to be leading the next rebellion. King David hops to it (chapter 19).

Anyway, civil unrest and external warfare continues, and King David sings a song of praise for the lord that is particularly questionable given the juxtaposition with actual events.

Plus, in chapter 24, David decides to hold a census, Joab argues that counting the population is an insult to God, and God is so incensed by David’s decision to go ahead that he sends a plague to kill 70, 000 men over the course of three days. David builds a special alter to the Lord and the plague finally stops.

Summary: David makes for a wishy-washy king and there is a bunch of civil unrest.

Moral: I don’t even know.

* Absalom managed to ride his mule under a tree, get his neck caught on a branch, and have his mule wander off without him. He’s just sort of swinging there trying to get down while his father’s army wonders what to do about him. Hahahaha!

Next up: Kings 1

So it’s probably pretty obvious that I’m falling behind in my year schedule for reading the Bible. I will excuse it because a) this has proven to be a remarkably difficult year, and b) the Bible is really amazingly dense.

However, I just ran across some pretty awesome biblical artwork that I want to share:

Photographer James C. Lewis noticed that while the bible is set in the Middle East and Africa, most of the illustrations of the people involved look really northern European. So he decided to fix that:

What Would Characters From The Bible Really Look Like? Here’s One Photographer’s Idea (The Huffington Post article shows 10 of the photographs)

An antidote to lily-white Bible characters (The Church Times article shows 14 of the photographs)

A Tumblr post (shows 51 of the photographs)

I’ll also take this opportunity (despite not having gotten anywhere near the New Testament yet) to reflect back on a really gorgeous painting by Janet McKenzie, “Jesus of the People”, which won the 1999 National Catholic Reporter’s competition for a new image of Jesus, judged Sister Wendy Beckett.

With all the horrible things that happen in the bible, it’s been easy to forget how funny it is sometimes. I find myself chortling a bit.

In chapter 3, young Samuel is dedicated to the temple and is very devoted in his duties to the elderly priest Eli. Samuel is still quite young when God first reaches out to make him a prophet.

One night, God calls to him: “Samuel.”

And Samuel leaps out of bed and to Eli’s bedside: “I am here! You have summoned me!”

And Elis says, “No, I didn’t. Go back to bed and get some sleep.”

So Samuel goes back to bed, but then God calls out to him again, “Samuel.”

And Samuel leaps up and to Eli’s side, and once more Eli sends him back to bed.

The third time, though, God calls, Samuel goes to Eli, Eli (who is in his nineties at this point and dealing with an eager young devotee “realizes” what must be happening and tells Samuel: “It must be God calling you. So next time you hear someone call your name, stay in bed, and say, “I hear you, Lord! I am listening.” And then you can tell me all about it in the morning.”

😀

This works admirably.

And so God talks to Samuel and tells him that something big is going to happen soon.

The Lord said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.” — Samuel 3:11

“… make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.” That just… hee! There are bound to be some parts of the bible that get a bit mixed up in translation, but there’s only so far off it can be.

😀

In chapter 8, the people of Israel offend God by asking for a king. Samuel is an elderly priest by this point, and tries to convince them against this (his arguments come down to the idea that God is their king and is offended that they would want anyone else; their arguments come from wanting an actual physical person who can do people things like interact with people who are not the head priest.) God is offended, but does the passive aggressive thing where he’s, like, oh, I’ll show you, I’ll give you what you’ve asked for and then you’ll see how wrong it all goes!

So this does not speak well of the future king, and you’ll notice that while the people are demanding a king, none of them are exactly volunteering for the position. And thus along comes Saul, in chapter 9, who’s searching for a pair of goats who wandered away from the herd. In chapter 10, Samuel waylays poor Saul, strong arms him into having dinner with him, and then anoints him the new king of Israel.

Afterwards Saul sneaks off, gets his goats, and returns home hoping to never speak of these events again.

😀

It doesn’t really work, though, and in chapter 11, Saul is forced to take up the kingship in a more practical sense, ie, raising an army and defeating the enemies of Israel.

Chapter 14 is pretty hilarious too, not so much intrinsically as because I recognize the storyline from Tamora Pierce’s Alanna: The First Adventure, right down to it being Prince Jonathan who disobeys his father the king to cross a battle line. I’m not sure if it would be funnier if it was pure coincidence or if Pierce was inspired by this.

😀

Anyway, there are more battles after that and much hewing of various people, and David the shepherd is introduced and has his infamous battle with Goliath in chapter 17.

Then seriously, the rest of the book starts reading like a somewhat more developed version of Wiley Coyote and the Road Runner. David gains much renown and Saul becomes jealous and tries to kill him. But David is too clever to be caught and is always running away just out of reach, and occasionally counting coup back on Saul but never makes a serious attack.

Samuel dies at the beginning of chapter 25 (out of 31) of Samuel 1, which is particularly odd because there’s whole second book of Samuel. But the death of Samuel does not stop the somewhat ludicrous chases and ambushes attempted by Saul on David.

There’s still battles against external enemies though (ie, the original inhabitants of the land) and thus both Saul and his armies and David and his roving band of dissidents are having battles with other people. Ultimately, though, David is favored by God and is victorious; Saul is the poor schmuck who was coerced into fulfilling the role of king and thus offending God even in his obedience to God, and thus dies along with all of his sons. (Poor Prince Jonathan!)

And with the death of Samuel ages ago, and Saul more recently, apparently Samuel 2 will be all about David?

Summary: This is kind of a somewhat black slapstick comedy of war and religion and conflict. Samuel is an adorable kid, Saul just wanted to get his goats, and David is the Road Runner.

Moral: Stay away from priests: they can con you into getting a bit too close to God.

Next up: Samuel 2

This is an extremely short book, only four chapters long. In some ways it reminded me of the Book of Job, since it’s a single story with more developed individual characters. For the first time, this is really a more focused story about family love and loyalty; goodness on the scale of individuals.

It was a much appreciated palate cleanser from the previous few books.

In this story, Naomi was a married woman with two adult sons who had each married. Over time, though, both her husband and her two sons died. While she directs both of her daughters-in-law to return to their families as being better able to care for the widowed women, one of them, Ruth, insisted on staying with Naomi.

Where you go, I will go: where you lodge; I will lodge; your people shall be my people; and your God my God — Ruth 1:16

I had known this quote, of course, but it had always seemed the epitome of romantic and I’d assumed it was spoken by a woman to her husband or lover. I’m actually rather pleased to discover that it is spoken by the widowed Ruth to her mother-in-law. This isn’t about marriage, it’s about found family.

Naomi returns to her homeland accompanied by Ruth but are poor beggers. They work together to identify and then seduce for Ruth a new husband, so that Naomi can have an heir and Ruth can have a household. And they succeed in finding a nice older man who is both wealthy and kind (and flattered at being approached by a younger woman.)

And they all live happily after.

It was nice.

Summary: Widowed Ruth follows her mother-in-law Naomi home to a strange land and, with Naomi’s assistance, finds a kind and wealthy second husband to take care of them both.

Moral: Loyalty and kindness can pay off in a happy ending.

Next up: Samuel 1

So in Deuteronomy I complained about how Moses gave this lecture about how the people of Israel would betray the Lord and be punished for their sins, etc, and it really irritated me. Well, here’s the start of all the crap that’s going to happen to them, and sure enough it’s pretty thoroughly their own fault. Once more, I am reminded of Game of Thrones (a show that I actually don’t watch, but keep up-to-date on via summaries) in the way a bunch of unpleasant people wander around doing awful things to one another.

Plus, this should probably have an NC-17 rating, and more likely just be banned, because it is gruesome. And while previous books have been all pro-genocide, this one is pretty pro-rape.

Four nations* were left alive in order to provide a lesson in warfare to the generations of Israelites, and thus we have a timeline made up of conquerings and rebellions, covering the various “Judges” of Israel. There is no particular explanation of how a Judge is chosen or found, and very little information on some of them. (Footnotes mark the six who actually got stories.)

Bad guy: King Cushanrishathaim of Aram-naharaim conquered for 8 years
Judge: Othniel son of Kenaz judged for 40 years
Bad guy: Eglon of Moab conquered for 18 years
Judge: Ehud son of Gera, the Benjamite judged for 80 years**
Judge: Shamgar son of Anath judged (killed 600 Philistines)
Bad guy: King Jabin of Canaan conquered for 20 years
Judge: Deborah wife of Lappidoth judged for 40 years***
Bad guy (nation): Midian conquered for 7 years
Judge: Gideon, called Jerubbaal, son of Joash judged for 40 years****
(Judge? Bad guy?): Abimelech son of Jerubbaal, conquered? judged? for 3 years+
Judge: Tola son of Puah son of Dodo judged for 23 years
Judge: Jair the Gileadite judged for 22 years
Bad guy (nation): Philistines and Ammonites conquered for 18 years
Judge: Jephthah the Gileadite, bastard son of Gilead judged for 6 years ++
Judge: Ibzan of Bethlehem judged for 7 years
Judge: Elon the Zebulunite judged for 10 years
Judge: Abdon son of Hillel judged for 8 years
Bad guy: Philistines conquered for 40 years
Judge: Samson judged for 20 years +++

After Samson we trail off away from judges and get a random story about Micah who gets wealthy in chapter 17 and then gets it stolen away from him by a bunch of other Israelites in chapter 18.

Then comes the really rape-tastic story of the Benjamites (chapters 19-21), which starts out reminiscent of Lot’s situation in Genesis 19, where he offers his daughters to a mob in Sodom in place of his angelic visitors. Except that in Genesis, Lot’s daughters were not accepted as suitable replacement, while in Judges a mob of Benjamites do wind up accepting a Levite’s concubine in his stead. So they gang rape the concubine to death. In the morning, the Levite cuts his dead concubine into 12 parts and sends the parts to the different tribes of Israel to call up an army. The Benjamites refuse to give up to justice the actual participants in the gang rape and thus a series of remarkably even battles takes place, with the Benjamites eventually losing to the extent that their entire tribe was killed with the exception of 600 soldiers who fled into a particularly inhospitable area. Victory was declared but then they had the problem of 600 males left in the tribe of Benjamin and no women and all the other tribes of Israel had sworn not to give any wives to Benjamin but were also unwilling to just let them die out.

The army that had just slaughtered all the women and children of the Benjamites figured out that they could fix this by invading a Canaanite town, killing all the males and the adult females and delivering the young females to the remaining Benjamites to be their wives. This plan provided 400 young girls to “marry” but wasn’t enough to give each Benjamite soldier a wife of his own. So the army told the remaining Benjamites to just kidnap sufficient girls from the religious celebration happening Shiloh, north of Bethel, and then explain to their unhappy fathers and brothers that at least the oath not to give wives to the Benjamites hadn’t been broken, because the Benjamites had taken the wives by force.

So everything worked out?

Blech.

Summary: There were a bunch of people who weren’t as great as Moses or Joshua, but still somehow acquired the title of “Judge.” Occasionally they did stuff (ie, killed people.) Some other people did a lot of raping and sometimes it was bad and other times it was good.

Moral: Hahahahahahaha! “Moral,” you say. Hahahaha! The very last verse in the book is:

In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes. — Judges 21:25

* Philistines, Cananites, Sidonians, Hivites (Judges 3:1-4)

** The Moabite king he killed was so fat that Ehud left the sword in his body, hidden by the layers on fat, as he wandered out past the servants after his assassination of their king.

*** Deborah gets a song in addition to a rather convoluted story of manipulations.

**** Gideon makes God prove himself and then raises an army of some 20,000 people, but God decides that it’s too even a battle to really show God’s might, so has Gideon send 19,700 of them away, keeping only the soldiers who lap up water from the river like dogs.

+ It didn’t even seem clear to the narrator whether this guy was a good guy or a bad guy. He’s the son of Gideon, a previous judge, but he also killed his 70 brothers in order to inherit and winds up getting cursed and dying.

++ First occasion of human sacrifice: Jephthah sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering.

+++ Samson gets four whole chapters (13-16) and is an idiot and an ass. Among other things, he makes a bet that he can’t afford, and when he loses, he goes out and kills some local townspeople to take their stuff so he can pay off his bet. And, of course, there’s the famous story of him and his hair and his wife Delilah who cuts it off to weaken him. Four times (4 times!) Delilah asks Samson what will weaken him, and then does it, and calls his enemies in. The first three times, Samson lies to her, breaks his bindings and kills his enemies. The fourth time he decided to tell the truth???

Next up: Ruth

I had not expected reading the bible to be such a strong argument for atheism. I can certainly understand why there was such a long time when priests prevented their congregations from reading it themselves and insisted that a priest had to interpret it for them. Because this is just sort of miserable.

Current events are not helping, given:

• The modern country of Israel is bombing Gaza. Here is some background reading on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and here is some advice on how to criticize Israel without being anti-Semitic.
• There are apparently death squads roaming the hills of Iraq, and I don’t even have the heart to figure out the detailed right now.
• A police officer shot and killed an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, and the police department reacted by going above and beyond in victim-blaming and starting teargasing the entire community. For some reading on that, here is a master post of NPR reports and here are some more on-the-ground reports.

Generally speaking my faith in humanity is at a definite low point right now, and Joshua did not help at all.

The Book of Joshua

Joshua is a warlord. This book starts off with the details of the battles Joshua led as the Israelite army crosses the Jordan and starts to take over the land.

After the first few battles, though, the descriptions change to just lists. Here are all the cities who were invaded and the people who were killed, because there were too many to describe.

The third and largest part of this book gives detailed descriptions of how exactly the conquered land is divided among the people of Israel.

There’s also a call-out to the magician Balaam, mentioned in Numbers. In Numbers, he was hired to curse the Israel people but blessed them instead, and then gave a speech about the greatness and virtue of God. (It made me laugh.) Well, in Joshua, the army of Israel killed him. “Along with the rest of those put to death, the Israelites also put to the sword Balaam son of Beor, who practiced divination.” (Joshua 13:22)

Since the rest of my description is rather long, I’m going to put the rest under a cut: Continue reading →

First: urg, this is literally Moses giving speeches recounting the events and rules of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. It is called Deuteronomy because it’s the second telling. Urg.

Second: There is more than a bit of revisionist history going on here, not so much regarding the major events themselves as the motivations and details of intent and blame.

Third: Some of the rules that hadn’t been mentioned before are surprisingly specific. For instance:

Deutronomy 25:11-12:

If men get into a fight with one another, and the wife of one intervenes to rescue her husband from the grip of his opponent by reaching out and seizing his genitals, you shall cut off her hand; show no pity.

It sounds to me like there’s a story there, possibly involving Moses fighting with a married man and getting grabbed by the wife.

Fourth: Oh the genocide. The amount of genocide that god is demanding is more than a little disturbing. It is explicit that God is “giving” the Israelites land that is already inhabited by other peoples and plans to either kill or enslave the current inhabitants. The killing of all the current inhabitants is a recurring theme throughout the whole book, but chapter 20 is particularly specific. For instance:

Deuteronomy 20:10-13:

When you draw near to a town to fight against it, offer it terms of peace. If it accepts our terms of peace and surrenders to you, then all the people in it shall serve you at forced labor. If it does not submit to you peacefully, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword.

And

Deuteronomy 20:16-17:

But as for the towns of those peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them – the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites – just as the Lord your God has commanded,

Fifth: In the U.S. we have (in theory at least) a rule of “innocent until proven guilty.” In Deuteronomy 31-32, by contrast, there appears to be the rule of “guilty even before you are guilty.” Moses, and in his recounting God as well, do this thing that I find extremely irritating: They go off on what their audience is going to do and how mad they (Moses and God) are with their audience regarding what they (the audience) are going to do. Moses is giving this speech to the Israelites before they cross the river Jordan in order to take over the lands (and commit a minimum of six different genocides*), but apparently they’re going to get rich and fat off the land and forget the lord their god and worship other idols and God is going to be so furious with them that he’ll cast them out of the land and let their enemies defeat them, while sending plagues and disasters to bring the Israelites down. Moses even makes up a song all about the disasters God is going to bring down on the disrespectful heads of the Israelites after they betray God after they’ve grown fat and forgetful in the land that they haven’t even entered yet.

I’m not quite sure how this message is supposed to be taken: Don’t worry about the future? Because the immediate future is going to be so wonderful that you’ll forget about your extremely temperamental God and in the long run he is going to beat you down into the dirt?

Anyway:

Sixth: God treats the Nation of Israel as a single entity rather than as a group of individuals. It’s possible (likely) that I’m biased by living in a society that focuses so much attention on individuality, but it’s kind of disturbing how little the concept of individuals seems to mean to this god, as anything other than a part of the whole. Thus, one person acting in a displeasing manner can cause God to abandon the whole Nation, while one person acting in a pleasing manner can cause God to change his mind. But, even more to the point, God has promised to make of Israel a great nation, but also seems to think that as long as there is one survivor, it doesn’t matter how many of them he kills, because he can just rebuild the bloodline from the single survivor. Not only does this point towards the necessity of unpleasant levels of incest (something that God had just made illegal!), but also seems to imply that God figured the whole flood/Noah/ark thing was a great idea and could definitely be repeated, by means of plague this time, because he wouldn’t be breaking any promises as long as there is a single surviving descendant.

Summary: Moses is about to die and so he gives three sermons on the past, the present, and the future of the Israeli tribe: how God rescued them from Egypt, the rules of society and sacrifice, and their future of wealth, betrayal, and punishment.

Moral: You (yes: you) are too stubborn to be blindly obedient like you should be, so you’ll be beaten down into the dirt for your sins.

* (1) Hittites, (2) Amorites, (3) Canaanites, (4) Perizzites, (5) Hivites and (6) Jebusites

Next up: Joshua