When Saul heard their words, the Spirit of God came powerfully upon him, and he burned with anger. He took a pair of oxen, cut them into pieces, and sent the pieces by messengers throughout Israel, proclaiming, “This is what will be done to the oxen of anyone who does not follow Saul and Samuel.” Then the terror of the Lord fell on the people, and they came out together as one. (1 Samuel 11:6, 7 NIV)

Saul is the next King, and he’s already ruling by terror. The Lord warned the Israelites about wanting a King, and it appears He was right.

These four chapters are mainly about the Lord telling Samuel to choose Saul, and about yet another massacre of Israel’s enemies. Of course, these enemies deserved it this time, since they would only accept a surrender if they could pluck out everyone’s right eye.

I’m glad I live in the US in the twenty-first century.

Next: 1 Samuel 13-14.

… What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel? And they answered, Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried about unto Gath. And they carried the ark of the God of Israel about thither. And it was so, that, after they had carried it about, the hand of the Lord was against the city with a very great destruction: and he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts. (1 Samuel 5:8, 9 KJV)

Also known as “hemorrhoids”.

Because Eli’s sons roasted the lamb rather than boiling it, the Philistines defeat the Israelites and capture the Ark of the Covenant. They learn that it is cursed, and whichever town they bring it to has a plague of fatal hemorrhoids. So each town that gets it passes it to the next town.

As I was reading this section, I imagined Benny Hill running at double speed bringing the Ark from town to town. Two chapters of slapstick, with it ending with the Philistines sending it back on a cart with golden mice and golden hemorrhoids, pulled by two cows that “went straight up the road toward Beth-Shemesh, mooing as they went.” (1 Samuel 6:12 CEV)

Of course, comedy turns to tragedy when, after seventy locals celebrated the Ark’s return, they look inside, and get killed by the Lord for being nosy.

The Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark should have read their 1 Samuel. But I think Spielberg made the right choice in melting their faces rather than showing fatal hemorrhoids on-screen.

The end of today’s reading has left me with a cliffhanger. Samuel’s sons turn out to be typical sons of the ruler — they were dishonest and took bribes. The people asked Samuel to appoint a King, and when he asked the Lord for advice, He said, “if that’s what they want, that’s what they’ll get.” I suspect things will not turn out well.

Next: 1 Samuel 9-12.

At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family—from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons blasphemed God, and he failed to restrain them. Therefore I swore to the house of Eli, ‘The guilt of Eli’s house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering.’” (1 Samuel 3:12-14 NIV)

This is yet another story about how a group of Israelis are given power, and go mad with power, but there is one good boy who does things right. I’m getting bored with it. I’m even bored with the fact the The Lord is going to punish Eli’s ancestors forever, and his great-great-grandchildren three thousand years later are going to end up in Treblinka because Eli’s sons roasted the sacrificial lamb rather than boiling it. Mark Bittman would understand.

Next: 1 Samuel 4-8

ps. I’m typing this on an iPad. His vision and taste made the world a richer place.

If you ignore typical subjugation of the women in this book, this is certainly the sweetest, nicest book I’ve read since I started.

Naomi’s husband dies, and her two sons die, so she tells her two daughters-in-law to go back to their old homes to find new husbands. One goes, and one stays. That’s Ruth.

One day, she’s following the harvesters picking up missing grain for herself, and the owner, Boaz, tells everyone to let her be. He, like everyone else, has heard how she stayed with her mother-in-law, and respects her for this.

Several days later, when Boaz went to sleep, Ruth uncovered his feet and lay with at them. When he woke, she offered herself to him, but he was a gentleman, and sent her out early in the morning before anyone would see her.

As a reward, he later bought some of Naomi’s property, and with it, bought Ruth as well, and married her.

In the context of a misogynistic, bronze age, feudal society, this is a very liberal story. Looking back, it’s sexist and cruel.

I’m glad I was born in this society.

Next: Samuel 1-3

So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight. When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home. When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel. (Judges 19:25-29 NIV)

Then the man uses the rape/murder of his concubine as an excuse to have Israel wage a war against the Benjamites. This is the second time (so far) that a band of local hooligans have demanded a male guest be sent out to be gang-raped, and the second time the owner offered up his virgin daughter, only to be rebuffed. In the first case, the Angels did something about it. In this case, the guest throws out his concubine for the crowd.

Note that she was no even dead when she collapsed at the door, and her owner had a good night’s rest during all this. All after he’s just convinced her to return home with him.

Israel attacks the Benjamites (including the special lefty sling squad), and have 22,000 men killed. So they ask the Lord if they should attack the next day. The Lord answered, “Go up against them.” (Judges 20:23 NIV) They get another 18,000 killed. The next day, they come up with an ambush plan, and kill 25,000 during the day.

Then…

The men of Israel went back to Benjamin and put all the towns to the sword, including the animals and everything else they found. All the towns they came across they set on fire. (Judges 20:48 NIV)

This is really an overreaction.

Now that they’ve killed all the women, children, and goats, they realize that there are still men, and they now need wives (since they just killed all their women). But they swore that no Benjamite wouldn’t one of their daughters. A conundrum.

This is easily solved, if you happen to be a psychopath. Since Jabesh Gilead didn’t send an army to help with the extermination, they send an army there, and kill everyone but the female virgins. All 400 of them they send to the widower Benjamites. Problem solved!

But there’s not enough women to go around, so the Israelites tell them to kidnap the Shiloh women when they are dancing at the festival. Somehow, this seems like a good idea.

My summary of Judges is that it’s the parody book of the Bible. All the stories are told in the same style, with the same characters, but are just mockeries of what’s come before. Was it written by Graham Chapman and John Cleese?

Next: Ruth

I have just read the most nonsensical story yet. I’ve read and reread it a dozen times, and it still makes no sense.

Micah steals twenty-eight pounds of silver from his mother, but returns it to her. In gratitude to the Lord, she uses five pounds of it to make an idol to pray to. Then Micah made some more household gods, and a robe, and made his son a house-priest. Later, a Levite comes by, and Micah hires him to be his private priest.

In the meanwhile, the Danite army is wandering around the neighborhood, looking for an unprotected town to invade. They hear the Levite singing, and make him an offer he can’t refuse. So the Levite steals the idols and the robe, and leaves with the Danites. Micah gets a posse and tracks them down, but the Danites point out their larger army, and Micah slinks back home.

The Danites go on to invade Laish, rebuild it the way they like it, and install Micah’s idols for themselves.

And the point of this story is… what? There is no point. It’s uninteresting, has no moral, and has about a dozen different instances of breaking the Commandments, yet no one is punished. I’m beginning to doubt that this book really has a message.

Next: Judges 19-21

Then went Samson to Gaza, and saw there an harlot, and went in unto her. (Judges 16:1 KJV)

Nothing wrong with visiting a hooker, it appears.

I’ve never known the story of Samson, and now that I’ve read it, I can’t believe how dumb he is. This guy, who ruled Israel for twenty years, gets hoodwinked twice, by two different women. His wife, who has no name, cried for seven days so that he would tell her the answer to a riddle, and she could give the answer to her fellow Philistines so they would win a bet. This made him so mad that he killed and robbed thirty different men.

Then the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. He went down to Ashkelon, struck down thirty of their men, stripped them of everything and gave their clothes to those who had explained the riddle. Burning with anger, he returned to his father’s home. (Judges 14:19 NIV)

When he went home, his father-in-law gave his wife to one of the Philistines. As revenge, he burned the Philistines crops. Note that this is twice that he’s punished the wrong people. When the Philistines learned who did it and why, they burned Samson’s ex-wife and father-in-law. And Samson killed a thousand of them with the jawbone of an ass.

Later, he starts sleeping with Delilah, who nags him for three days to “Tell me the secret of your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued.” (Judges 16:6 NIV). Each time he tells her a lie, she tries it, and he just tells her a different lie. Eventually, she nags him to death.

What’s the moral of this story? No matter how much a woman nags, don’t listen to her or trust her. Or maybe, don’t let another plow with your heifer?

Next: Judges 17-18.

For three hundred years Israel occupied Heshbon, Aroer, the surrounding settlements and all the towns along the Arnon. Why didn’t you retake them during that time? (Judges 11:26 NIV)

This is what Jephthah, the leader of the Israeli army asks the Ammonites who were trying to take back their land. So if a land is occupied for three hundred years without the earlier residents trying to take it back, then the victors can keep it, right? So what about Jerusalem in 1947? The Israelites had been driven out thousands of years earlier. What was their justification for taking it back?

The main character in these chapters doesn’t even have a name: she is “Jephthah’s daughter”, and he sacrifices her to the Lord. This is one of then most disturbing passages I’ve read so far.

And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.” When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. (Judges 11:30, 31, 34 NIV)

Is this Isaac and Jacob again? Nope, the Lord doesn’t argue, and He doesn’t stop it. We never even learn her name.

I’ve searched around the Web for apologists’ explanations of this story, and the consensus seems to be that Jephthah couldn’t have really burnt her, because the Lord wouldn’t have let him. All the excuses are circular reasoning, and people desperately trying to explain away r clear text.

Next: Judges 13-15

Gideon made the gold into an ephod, which he placed in Ophrah, his town. All Israel prostituted themselves by worshiping it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his family. Thus Midian was subdued before the Israelites and did not raise its head again. During Gideon’s lifetime, the land had peace forty years. (Judges 8:27, 28 NIV)

So immediately after using the Lord’s power to defeat tens of thousands of men with an army of 300, Gideon builds an idol and everyone starts worshipping it. It’s not for forty years that the Lord gets around to punishing them for this. But punish He does!

Abimelach, the bastard son of Gideon, hires mercenaries to kill his seventy brothers (Gideon had lots of wives), and make him king. They didn’t find the youngest, Jotham, who laid a curse on Abimelach and Shechem (the city that Abimelach’s mother came from). Three years later, the Lord makes the Shechem town leaders grow dissatisfied with Abimelach, which causes a war, and Abimelach burns down Shechem. But that wasn’t enough for him, so he assaulted Thebez, but when attacking a tower, “a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and all to brake his skull.” (Judges 9:53 KJV).

Thus God repaid the wickedness that Abimelek had done to his father by murdering his seventy brothers. God also made the people of Shechem pay for all their wickedness. The curse of Jotham son of Jerub-Baal came on them. (Judges 9:56, 57 NIV)

It’s a fun story, and feels like the beginning on the Iliad, where various Greeks in the siege are at each others’ throats. I’m not certain what the moral of the story is.

Next: Judges 10-12

My apologies for skipping the summer. This is harder to do than I thought. I hope the book gets better.

And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord: and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel: and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strong holds. (Judges 6:1, 2 KJV)

The people of never learn.

Eventually, the Lord feels bad for them, and has Gideon lead them to victory. Gideon, of course, doesn’t trust Him — why should he? So the Lord does some magic tricks, and proves that He has the power. Because only He can make it so that a fleece stays dry in the morning dew.

This is just ridiculous. Does the Lord also ask him to pick a card?

So after Gideon gathers ten thousand men to fight, the Lord tells him he won’t need nearly as much. But once the fighting starts, Gideon calls out the rest of Israel to fight. Wasn’t that defying the Lord?

Next: Judges 8-12.