The Bible You Thought You Knew

Many psalms are laments in which a psalmist complains about various kinds of crises.  Thought the laments are often bitter, typically toward the end of the psalm God either intervenes to deal with the causse of the complaint or God’s intervention is anticipated.  That is not the case in Psalm 88.  In this lament, there is not amelioration or anticipation of amelioration.  The psalmist prays persistently, but there is no resolution.  At the same time, the psalmist refuses to give up.  Regardless of how bad things are—he seems close to death—he continues to cry out to God.  Ironically, laments only make sense if one believes in God.  If there is no God, there is no expectation of how things should be.  They just are!  Laments underscore how profoundly the lamenter holds on to God.  And, the lamenter continues to pray regardless of the answer.

Based on 1 Kings 3.  This story begins with a mixed introduction of Solomon.  On the one hand, he is depicted as righteous as King David, his father.  On the other hand, we are told that he married Pharoah’s daughter and engaged in pagan practices.  Still, in a dream God asked him what he would like.  Realizing the arduous task of being king over Israel, he asked for a wise and discerning mind.  God granted this, and wealth to boot.  Solomon’s wisdom was soon tested when two prostitutes claimed ownership of the same baby.  Solomon used his wisdom to figure out who the real mother was.  This decision made his wisdom legendary.

The story is based on 2 Samuel 20.  In this somewhat obscure story a man named Sheba foments revolt against David.  This was right after Absalom, David’s son, had rebelled against his father.  Though Absalom was unable to stay in power, he had greatly weakened his father.  Because of that, Sheba tried his hand at removing David from the throne.  But this time, David did not have to leave Jerusalem.  Eventually, Joab, a military officer, chased Sheba and found him holed up in Abel.  While threatening the city, a wise woman in the city negotiated with Joab.  Eventually, she agreed to deliver Sheba in exchange for Joab’s withdrawing his troops.  The woman persuaded the people in the city to sacrifice Sheba, which they did by decapitating him and throwing the head to the invading troops!

Based on 2 Samuel 12.  In this story, in the aftermath of David’s affair with Bath-Sheba and his having her husband murdered Nathan the prophet confronts David.  But he does so indirectly.  Nathan tells David about two men, one rich and one poor.  In this story, the rich man callously exploits the poor man.  David is outraged at the rich man and insists that the man pay fourfold for what he has done.  Nathan lets David know that he is the man in the story.  David, too, will pay fourfold.  Though David’s sins are forgiven, the consequences remain.  Eventually, David loses three sons and has to deal with his daughter’s Being raped.  Even forgiven sins often have consequences.

This story is based on Numbers 20.  This is a famous incident in which God wants Moses to “speak” to a rock so that Israel will be supplied with water.  Instead, Moses strikes the rock.  Both Moses and Aaron (his brother) were involved.  And, both incurred God’s anger and punishment.  The punishment was that neither would be allowed to enter Canaan, the Promised Land.  As it turns out, though, it seems there was another reason that Moses got into trouble.  This time, at least, Israel did nothing wrong.  But Moses did.  He accused Israel of being rebellious when he was the one being rebellious.

It is based on Exodus 19.  This story recounts Israel’s first experience as soon as it got into the wilderness after being rescued from Egypt.  Moses makes several trips up and down the mountain to communicate with God.  God wants the people to prepare for a theophany, in which God will come in a thick cloud, accompanied by smoke, fire, thunder, and other phenomena.  Moses is instructed to prepare the people for this by consecrating them.  There are requirements to be observed, since getting close to a holy God can be dangerous.  Eventually, God comes to the mountain and speaks to the people directly.  This is one of the few times that God does not speak through a mediator.  What he says is the ten words, or ten commandments.  This theophany emphasizes the significance of those commandments.

This podcast deals with Esau, one of the most disliked characters in the Bible.  Famously, Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of soup and later was cheated out of his father’s blessing.  This outraged him, and further led him to plot his brother’s murder.  Esau had twenty years to wallow in his rage.  Yet, when the time came to meet his brother after two decades he was the model of acceptance, forgiveness, and grace.  There is almost nothing in the story that gives us so much as a hint as to what transformed Esau.  All we have is a detail that when he realized that his parents were upset with his wives, who were outside of the family, he married Abraham’s granddaughter.  There is some ambiguity as to whether this was a move to endear himself to the family or aggravate the situation.  I suggest the former.  Regardless of the reasons for his transformation, though, the scene in which he reconciled with Jacob is perhaps the greatest example of reconciliation in the whole Bible.

The story is found in 1 Samuel 12.  In this incident, the prophet addresses “all Israel.”  Mostly, he calls them to repentance and urges them to live righteous lives.  But the prophet also lies in his address!  He criticizes the people for responding to a threat coming from the Ammonite king, Nahash.  According to Samuel, when this king threatened Israel, they asked for the prophet to anoint a king.  But that was not true.  It was when the people saw that Samuel was old and that his sons were corrupt, that they asked for a king.  In this speech, Samuel does not even mention his sons’ corruption.  Even a great prophet like Samuel has to be discerned when he speaks, since he does not always speak truthfully.

In this Podcast, I explain how the first, foundational part of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, called in Hebrew Torah, was five books instead of four or six.  Some have argued that this foundational part of the Bible should be a Hexateuch—that is, the first six books—because the promise of land is so prominent in Genesis and Joshua (the 6th book) describes Israel’s getting the land.  Others have argued that the Torah is a Tetrateuch, or the first 4 books, because the vocabulary and outlook of Deuteronomy is replete in Joshua through 2 Kings, but is not found in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.  Despite these hypotheses, the canonizing community made sure that the Torah was five books.  In effect, they took the first book of the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy) and made it the last book of Torah.  Why did they do that?  Because the Torah ended when Israel did not have the land, the monarchy, or the temple, the very situation they experienced in the Exile.  It was in that period that decisions had to be made about how to “shape” Scripture.

Psalm 91 is the polar opposite of Psalm 90.  This is because, if taken literally Psalm 91 would eliminate any need to complain or lament the way Psalm 90 does.  In Psalm 91, the Lord’s protection makes those who love God immune from injury or death in war, from disease, from being harmed by wild animals, or even from being subject to the effects of gravity!  Clearly, the people who wrote and canonized a psalm like this were not naïve.  They experienced reverses in warfare, were subject to the ravages of disease, did not blithely pretend that there was no such thing as gravity, and did not pretend that wild animals could be dangerous.  This is why the Psalm has to be carefully appropriated.  The Devil made no headway when he quoted this psalm when tempting Jesus.  Psalm 91 is not about whistling by the graveyard; instead, it is about hope.