1 Kings 17-22: Ahab v. Elijah!

Ready to hear about a prophet you've actually heard of?  Well, look no further, because Elijah the Tishbite is here!  Now, I think "Tishbite" is a really funny word.  But even people with funny names can serve God and do awesome things.  Check this out.  The first thing Elijah does ans go to Ahab and tell him that there is not going to be rain or even dew unless he says so, and that it's going to last a few years.  Luckily, God has a secret hiding place for Elijah where he can get food and water.  First God uses ravens to give Elijah food, but later he uses more traditional means, namely, a person.  There's a widow in a place called Zarephath that God wants to provide for him.  But when Elijah finds her, she's getting ready to bake the very last food she has in her house, and there's only enough for her and her son, and after that they're just going to starve to death.  So Elijah says something really inconsiderate considering that: he asks the widow to make food for him first, and then for her and her son, and he tells her that she won't run out of flour or oil.

Now, if I were in this widow's position, I would probably think this was a crazy guy.  Maybe she knew who Elijah was.  But amazingly, she immediately does exactly what Elijah asked, and sure enough, her flour and oil jars don't run out for the entire length of the drought.  You know how I said maybe she knew who Elijah was? I'm not sure, because once the miracle happens, then she says "Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth."  She didn't know that for certain before, but she still obeyed.  Now, I have a feeling that if she'd made food for herself and her son first, and then for Elijah, the results would not have been the same. What do you think?  Also notice that the miracle allows the widow to continue making bread, but nothing else.  Elijah doesn't promise for a stray deer to wander onto her property, or for a vegetable truck from the future to slip through a wormhole and land on her doorstep.  Sometimes God's miracles are overwhelmingly huge, and sometimes God's miracles are just keeping us alive.

Now three years have passed, and God tells Elijah that he's finally going to send rain, but first he's got a project.  On his way to tell Ahab, Elijah runs into Obadiah.  Obadiah is one of Ahab's people, but he worships the true God and even saved the lives of 100 prophets when Ahab's wife Jezebel (we'll hear more about her; she's a real gem) is killing them all.  Remember that fact, by the way.  So anyway, Elijah has Obadiah tell Ahab that he's on his way, and very reluctantly, he does.  Elijah tells Ahab to assemble all the people of Israel, including the prophets of Baal (all 450 of them) and the prophets of Asherah (all 400 of them) on Mount Carmel.  So he does, except the prophets of Asherah don't show up for some reason.

This is my favorite story in this book.  Elijah calls the people out and says they need to decide whether to follow the LORD or Baal, and they're going to have a test to see which one is the true God.In true Mythbusters fashion, Elijah sets up identical experiments: two altars, two oxen, no fire.  The god who sends fire from heaven to burn the offering, is really God.

The prophets of Baal spend all day long trying to get Baal to answer him.  They take so long, in fact, that Elijah starts making fun of them.  They even cut themselves because they believed that Baal was drawn to the scent of blood (part shark?).  But the Bible tells us "there was no voice, no one answered, and no one paid attention."  Whatever celestial beings may be up in heaven, Baal is not one of them.

Then it's Elijah's turn, and he tips the scales against his favor by dousing the entire altar with several gallons of water.  He prays one time, in two sentences, and immediately fire comes from heaven and not only burns the offering, but also burns the wood, the stones, and the run-off water that Elijah had poured on the altar.  That would have been freaky.  The highly intelligent people of Israel immediately cry, "The LORD, He is God!"  I'm glad they came to that conclusion given the evidence.  So then Elijah takes all 450 prophets of Baal down the hill and kills them, and he tells Ahab that it's going to rain pretty hard soon.

Ahab goes home to the wife and tells him what the big mean prophet did to him.  Now, Jezebel is a witch.  She's not even Jewish.  Jezebel sends a sweet little note to Elijah that basically says, what you did to the prophets of Baal, may the gods do all that and more to me if I don't kill you by tomorrow.  Now, Elijah has been pretty tough up to this point.  He's faced down 450 prophets of Baal and an evil king without so much as flinching.  He knows God is on his side.  But one telegram from the wicket witch of Israel, and Elijah runs for his life.  He runs to Beersheba, and then he goes into the wilderness, and finally he walks all the way down to Mt. Sinai (also known as Horeb).  So it's no wonder that when he gets there, the first thing God says to him is, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"  Elijah whines that he's done everything for God and Israel has been bad and has killed all the prophets and he's the only one left and they're trying to kill him too.

Now, remember that guy Obadiah?  Thanks to him, there are at least 100 prophets of God alive still.  Maybe Elijah just doesn't know about them.  But the person who wrote this book knew about them, so somebody knows what he did.  Do you ever feel like you're the only one of your kind?  Like you're the only person in the world trying to do the right thing and follow God and you're all by yourself?  I've felt like that.  But the truth is, you're not alone.  Chances are, there are other people in the exact same situation, but you might have to look for them.  This is why I think that it's important for Christians to be part of some kind of church.

God does something interesting next.  He tells Elijah that he's going to pass by.  There's a huge earthquake, but God's not in the earthquake.  Then there's a fire, but God's not in the fire.  And after that there's a tiny, tiny wind - my Bible says "a gentle blowing," and others call it a "still, small voice."  When Elijah hears it, he knows that it is God.  Now, I don't know exactly why God did this, but I think it means that God doesn't always appear with a band, like He did at Mt. Carmel.  Maybe God is telling Elijah that He's going to provide for him the same way He provided for the widow at Zarephath - not with a lot of fanfare and bells and whistles, but by just quietly keeping him going.

So God doesn't even answer Elijah's pity party, except to say that when all is said and done, there will still be 7000 in Israel loyal to Him.  Instead of a "poor baby" and a pat on the back, God tells Elijah to go all the way back to Israel, and stop in Damascus to anoint a new king over Aram (not part of Israel), a new king of Israel, and a new prophet/apprentice for himself.  God says that Hazael (new king of Aram) will kill a bunch of people, and the people Hazael doesn't kill, Jehu (new king of Israel) will kill, and the people Jehu doesn't kill, Elisha (new prophet) will kill, and after all that there will still be 7000 followers of God left.  So Elijah goes back and does those things.

In the next chapter, Israel has a couple wars with the aforementioned country of Aram.  At the time, the king is named Ben-hadad.  Ahab actually wins, and Ben-hadad escapes.  His servants tell him that the Israelite kings are merciful.  Isn't that cool, that even though Israel has turned bad, they still have a good reputation?  Anyway, so Ben-hadad goes groveling to Ahab, and Ahab makes a covenant with him and lets him live.  But then a prophet tells Ahab that he was supposed to kill Ben-hadad and now he and Israel are going to be in trouble because of it.

Next, we have a lovely story about Ahab.  It seems there's this guy named Naboth who has a vineyard near Ahab's palace.  Ahab wants the vineyard, not because it's a good vineyard - he wants to turn it into a vegetable garden - he just wants it because it's close to his house.  Naboth says no, because it's his inheritance.  That might not make a lot of sense to us today - I mean, I were Naboth, and the king offered me money and a better vineyard for it, I would say sure! but inheritance and land were really important to people back in the day.  They were things you just did not give away.

So Ahab goes home to mope, and delightful Jezebel hears the story and says she will get the vineyard.  Unlike Ahab, though, Jezebel is not a fair player.  She just sets up for Naboth to be murdered, and that's what happens.  So then Ahab gets his precious vineyard.  But then Elijah comes back and tells Ahab that, like Jeroboam and Baasha before him, every male in Ahab's family is going to be cut off, and that dogs are going to eat Jezebel's body.  Then the Bible has rare bit of commentary: "Surely there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the LORD, because Jezebel his wife incited him."  How would you like that legacy?  Ahab, it seems, didn't so much set out to do evil, as he let evil happen and didn't say a word.  He married a woman who served false gods, he let her set up 850 false prophets who ate at her table, he let her go after Elijah, and he had to have known what she was going to do to Naboth.  Ahab sold himself to the devil so that he could plant a vegetable garden next to his house.  What a dip.

Fortunately for Ahab, he realizes he's a dip.  When Elijah tells him this, he tears his clothes and puts on sackcloth and fasts.  Beloved Jezebel probably kicked him and told him to get up and be happy, but if she did, he finally didn't listen to her.  Anyway, God is so impressed by Ahab's humility that He decides to be merciful and not to cause this rampant destruction in Ahab's days, just in the days of his son.

Finally, another war with Aram.  Israel and Judah go out together.  The king of Judah at this time is Jehoshaphat, who's a good guy, and he wants to ask one of the LORD's prophets whether they'll win.  All the other prophets in the world are telling them that they're going to win.  But along comes another prophet, named Micaiah, and he says they're going to lose.  What's weird about this story is that the people act like it's Micaiah's decision for Aram to win.  When he comes to the king, the messenger tells him to prophesy favorably because that's what everybody else has been doing.  And when he does otherwise, Ahab tells Jehoshaphat, see, I told you he'd say something negative.  And he has him thrown in prison until his safe return.  But I guess he's going to stay there a while, because just like Micaiah said, Aram wins - I assume the king of Aram is the same one that Ahab let live - and Ahab gets randomly shot  and killed.

Last of all we hear more about this Jehoshaphat guy.  He was the son of Asa, a good king, remember?  Jehoshapat is also a good king.  Finally! Asa has succeeded where so many other leaders of Israel have failed, in raising a godly son.  So Judah is on the mend.  In contrast to that,. Ahab's son becomes king, and he's bad just like his father.  Ahab's humiliation may have been sincere, but the text doesn't say anything about repentance or about Ahab serving only the LORD after this point, so in the end, nothing changes in Israel.

2 Samuel 11-21: Things Go Downhill

In an effort to catch up to where I've read, I'm doing a very large section today.  The good news is there's a theme to these 11 chapters: bad stuff happens.

Now, I am going to disagree with the heading my Bible has for chapter 11.  It calls this chapter "Bathsheba, David's Great Sin."  I would like to inform Zondervan that Bathsheba was not a sin, she was a person; David sleeping with her and murdering her husband, was a sin.  Remember what I said about David and his relationship with women?  This is the part where we see what happens when power goes to a guy's head and when he gets into the habit of having any woman he wants, no matter how recently widowed she is (Abigail) or who else she's currently married to (Michal, although to be fair she was David's wife first).  As much as I love David, at this point he's gotten kind of fat and lazy.  He's supposed to be out at war (apparently it was a regular yearly function for kings, maybe like the Olympics?).  But he stays home - mistake #1.  He's checking out his view and he sees a lady on the roof taking a bath.  Why she was taking a bath on the roof, I have no idea.  Now, I don't want to be too hard on David.  I'm sure it would have been hard not to look.  But he was a married guy - actually a multiply-married guy - and he could look at any of them any time he wanted.  But instead of remembering that, he kept looking at Bathsheba - mistake #2.  Then he asked about her and found out she was married, to one of his best soldiers, no less (he's listed at the end as one of the "mighty men"), which should have been a major red light, but no, he invites the married woman to his house - mistake #3.  He sleeps with her, mistake #4.  When she gets pregnant, he tries tricking her husband into sleeping with her, but he is too honorable to have a good time while his fellow soldiers are at war.  Uriah is a more righteous dude than David is at this point.  So David arranges with dear Joab for Uriah to die in battle - mistake #5.

Now David's got a dead guy and a pregnant widow on his hands; at least he has the decency to marry her after her period of mourning is over (a courtesy he didn't make with Abigail, but her husband was a jerk and it doesn't say anything about mourning him).

Anyway, you know what happens.  His pastor comes and tells him a story to get David to realize what an idiot he is; he wises up and repents.  God forgives him, but there is a consequence: Bathsheba's baby dies.

But since Bathsheba isn't David's only marital sin, she's also not his only problem.  Some time after that, one of his sons falls in love with one of David's daughters (they're half-brother and sister) - yet another reason why polygamy is a bad idea.  He rapes her and sends her away in disgrace.  The woman's name is Tamar - ironically, the last Tamar we saw in the Bible was also a victim of incest - and she happens to have a big brother named Absalom.  Ring a bell?  It should.  Absalom kills his half-brother (Amnon) for raping his sister, and then he gets banished.  But clueless David only cares about how much he misses Absalom, so he mopes around until Joab convinces him to un-banish Absalom.  Then Absalom starts a conspiracy to take over the crown.

Absalom gets pretty much all Israel (minus Judah) to support him, and things get tense to the point that David has to evacuate Jerusalem and go into hiding again.  David goes on the run once more.

Remember our friend Meph from last time?  He has a servant - well, he was really Saul's servant - named Ziba.  Ziba comes to David and tells him that Meph has stayed in Jerusalem thinking he was going to reclaim Saul's throne.  David then decrees that all Meph's property will go to Ziba.  This story really discouraged me because I liked Meph, but the story isn't over yet; there's a twist later on.

David passes some city and a guy curses him.  One of his followers requests permission to impale him, but David says to just let it go.  Around this time, Absalom enters Jerusalem.  It looks like he's going to become king.

Then Absalom's people get advice from two counselor-type people.  One of them, who is like a really important prophet , tells Absalom to sleep with David's concubines, and so he does - in view of all the city.  This is actually a fulfillment of something God told David would happen as a result of his sin with Bathsheba.  But this prophet also tells Absalom to send an army after David's men until they run away and David is left alone.  Absalom considers this, then gets advice from another guy.  The other guy says David's men will never desert, and that Absalom himself should ride in battle with everyone in the whole country and basically overwhelm David's tiny crew.  Absalom decides this advice is better.  Then the author gives us a little commentary: he says that the first guy's advice was actually better, but that God was planning to thwart the good advice and bring calamity on Absalom.

Then the second guy who gave advice goes and warns David about the advice he gave, so David is prepared ahead of time.  He tells all his soldiers to spare Absalom for his sake, and everybody knows everybody hears it.  Then somebody tells Joab that Absalom got stuck in a tree and is hanging there.  Joab tells the guy he should've killed him but the guy says no way, you heard David.  So what does our pal Joab do?  He finds Absalom and sticks him with three javelins, then has his minions finish the job.

David finds out about this, and of course he is really sad.  Joab mouths off to David and tells him not to mope about his son's brutal murder, and does Joab get in trouble? No!  David actually listens to Joab and tries to brighten up to improve his P.R.  But finally, when David gets back to Jerusalem, he replaces Joab with another army commander.  Maybe he doesn't know Joab killed his son.

Then we hear from Meph again.  We fight out that Ziba is a dirty liar and Jerusalem only didn't leave with David because, well, apparently he couldn't.  He's crippled, remember?  So David has Meph and Ziba divide Saul's property - I'm not sure why, because Ziba lied.  Maybe David couldn't tell who was telling the truth.    But Meph actually offers for Ziba to take all the land, because all he cares about is that David is home safe.  I like Meph.  I think he's a good guy.

So, we think that things are going to settle down now, but some random person revolts against David.  Amasa, the new army commander, takes all the people out.  But Joab, the little weasel, goes up to Amasa to hug him, and whilst hugging him, he stabs him with a sword and kills him.  What a jerk!  And so Joab assumes command over David's army, just like he did before.

Finally, there are some Gibeonites who have a grudge because Saul tried to kill them all, so David says he'll give them whatever they want.  They want seven men from Saul's family to be given to them to kill them, and David says okay.  What?  I don't know why that's okay, but there you go.  He doesn't give them Meph, but apparently there are 7 other relatives of Jonathan that David didn't provide for.  I find that really interesting.

So almost everything that could have gone wrong for David, has gone wrong now.  The moral of this story is, what goes around comes around.  David was messed up in his relationships with women, and it came out in his children's relationships with him and with each other.  The other moral of this story is, Joab is a jerk and he should be fired!  I am really upset that he's still alive right now.  Hopefully that won't last for long.

1 Samuel 16-20: David

Now we've reached the part of the story where David enters the scene.  This is a story that I think everybody knows, but it's really pretty fun to read because there's a lot of action in it.  It starts with God telling Samuel to stop mourning for Saul and to go anoint the next king, who turns out to be David, the youngest of eight sons.  At first Samuel thinks that one of the older sons is the chosen one - probably because Saul was a tall handsome guy, and Jesse's oldest son is a tall handsome guy too, but God says that he's looking at the heart.

Right after David is anointed as the next king, Saul has really problematic mood swings.  It says that an evil spirit from the LORD torments him.  I've always been confused as to what this means.  Is it referring to a fallen angel type being, a creature that is evil but is under God's control, as all things are?  Or is it more like the angel of death, a good being but one that causes destruction?  I have no idea.  And if it's a demon, then is it God Himself who's telling the demon to torment Saul, or is it more indirect than that?  Why is Saul getting tormented by a spirit at all just because God's Spirit has left him?  These are my questions.  But anyway, it's pretty ironic that they look for a musician to help soothe Saul, and it turns out to be David, the guy who's just been appointed to replace Saul someday.  By the way, I think this makes an important statement about the power of music and the arts, even the spiritual power of art.

Next is everybody's favorite story: David and Goliath.  When I read this story this time, I was struck by the fact that out of Jesse's eight sons, only three of them are at war.  Now what that says to me is that only those three are of fighting age.  From what I learned reading Numbers, fighting age is ages 20 and up, so there are 4 sons between age 19 and whatever David's age is.  The absolute oldest David can be in this story is 16, and that's like if his mom had a kid every 9 months. My little brother is 17.  I can totally picture him in David's role here.  He is super cute, super smart, and super opinionated.  He would have no problem going up to some hotshot gigantic Philistine and telling him to shut the heck up.  He's the kind of kid who really stands up for what he believes in, you know?  I picture David like that, only not blond.  My brother is blond.

Can you just picture a little 14- or 15-year-old kid who hasn't hit his growth spurt yet, running out to meet this 9-foot-tall Yao Ming on steroids?  Yao growls at the kid, who shouts back at him with his voice cracking, I'm going to cut your head off!  Then everybody here will know that there is a God in Israel! You would think, what a punk!  Goliath probably thought David was a punk, and he probably thought that right up until he died.

Thing is, David didn't give himself credit for what he did to Goliath.  It's clear he was pretty confident - he even told Saul that he'd armwrestled a bear and a lion before and won, but he wasn't claiming credit for those victories either.  He said that God was the one who delivered David from those enemies, and God was the one who would kill Goliath.  David had a lot of faith and a lot of courage, but not in himself - it was all in God.  What a dude.  No wonder all the screaming fangirls of Israel fell in love with him after that day.

Saul now goes through a wicked stepmother, "who's the fairest in the land" phase.  He doesn't like being #2 to this punk kid who can't even fit into his armor.  He tries various methods of getting him accidentally killed - send him on a dangerous mission, make him marry his daughter, throw a spear at him - but none of these subtle techniques seem to work.  That's partly because David has an inside man.  It's Jonathan, the honey-eater from earlier.  Jonathan and David are BFFs.  This is where we get a clue about what a great guy Jonathan is, because he knows full well that David is going to be king someday, and that is the job that he, Jonathan, has been brought up for all his life.  But he doesn't resent David.  In fact, it's his idea to make a covenant with David, swearing allegiance to each other all the days of their lives.  That's pretty hardcore.  So when David is afraid Saul is going to kill him, Jonathan finds out so he can warn David.

David has another inside man, actually an inside woman: his wife Michal.  Michal is Saul's daughter.  At first Saul tried to get David to marry his older daughter Merab, but David didn't feel worthy of the honor of being the king's son-in-law.  But Michal was violently in love with him, and Saul wanted him to kill a bunch of Philistines to marry her, so that made it okay.  Michal also helps David escape one time when Saul is trying to kill him, and I think it's pretty big of her to stand up to her dad when he comes looking for her.  Unfortunately, this is the last good thing I'm ever going to say about Michal.

So back to Jonathan.  Jonathan comes up with a plan to warn David if he finds out that Saul wants to kill him. Saul is really furious with Jonathan for being David's friend, and I kind of see why.  Jonathan is Saul's son; he's supposed to be on his dad's side.  Making Jonathan king after him represents everything they've been working for, all of Jonathan's life.  To see Jonathan so willing to give that up to some kid who smells like sheep is an even bigger blow than the son who doesn't want to go be a football player at his jock dad's alma mater because he would rather pursue a degree in musical theatre.

So you can guess what happens: Jonathan warns David, they have a very tearful farewell because they probably know they'll never see each other again, and David takes off running.  He's going to be running for quite some time.

So I think at this point we've seen Saul reach pretty much his all-time low.  I had really really liked him at first, and it makes me sad to see him turn into such a jealous paranoid freak.  I like David though, and Jonathan, and the friendship that David and Jonathan have.  I love the faith that David has in God to protect him in whatever circumstances he faces.  He's going to need that faith for the next several chapters.

Judges 13-16: Samson, or Proof that God Can Use a Doofus

You're going to tell me that I'm giving Samson a hard time, but I have a hard time liking this guy, and it's not just because of Delilah.  All the good things he did were the result of his own stupidity.  Let's look at his life.

So we begin in chapter 13 with the age-old story of Israel doing evil, and the Philistines oppress them for 40 years.  Then an angel appears to a woman who has no children and tells her she's going to give birth to a son who will deliver Israel from the Philistines, but there's a catch: he is to be a life-long Nazarite.

If you remember from reading the Law, "Nazirite" referred to a certain type of vow that a person would take for a period of time, and during that time they could not drink wine or any other strong drink, and they couldn't cut their hair either.  Normally the vow and its conditions were temporary, something that an adult would choose to do.  Samson's the only person I know of who was a Nazirite his whole life.  Pretty cool.

I like Samson's parents, I think.  Or at least, I'm glad that this story's not all about Samson but that we get to see a little bit of them.  After the angel visits the woman, whose name we don't even know, she tells her husband what happened, and he prays to God that the angel will come again so that he can tell them how to raise their kid.  Isn't that great?  First of all that he believes his wife right off the bat, and secondly that the reason he wants to see the angel is not because it would be really cool, but because he wants advice.  This guy's name, by the way, is Manoah.  I like Manoah.

So guess what?  The angel does come again, and Manoah gets to meet him.  He doesn't know that it's the angel of the LORD; he seems to think he's a regular person because he keeps referring to him as "man."  So he asks the angel some questions, which the angel really doesn't answer directly.  Then Manoah asks the angel what his name is, and we get another clue that the angel of the LORD may be the LORD himself, a theophany: he responds, "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?"  the "wonderful" there means "incomprehensible."  That immediately brings my mind to Isaiah, where he prophesies the birth of Christ and says His name shall be, among other things, Wonderful.

So then Manoah wants to make dinner for the angel, and he gets some food and puts a burnt offering and a grain offering on a rock, and God sends a flame of fire down from heaven and the angel ascends in it, or something like that.  So then or told them stuff or shown them stuff. Manoah knows who he's just been talking to and thinks he and his wife are going to die for seeing God, but she says if they were going to die He wouldn't have accepted their offerings  Smart lady.

Okay, so now it's Samson's turn.  Samson gets born and grows up.  One day he sees a Philistine girl and without talking to her or anything, he goes home and tells his dad he wants to marry her.  His father says, are the pickings really that bad amongst our own people that you want to marry a Philistine?  Samson's response?  "She looks good to me."  I just have this picture of Samson talking like a stereotypical caveman and grunting.  Whatever happened to people like Isaac who trusted his dad to find him a wife, and loved Rebekah his whole life?

So finally Samson goes back and talks to her, and what does the text say?  "She looked good to Samson."  I don't think he really got much out of talking to her, personally.

Next, we find out that Samson is also kind of a pushover.  He's throwing a wedding party, because he really is going to marry this girl, and he tells all her friends a riddle that they can't guess, promising them new clothes if they can guess, but demanding new clothes from them if they can't.  I think he is purposely trying to trick them so that he'll get 30 new outfits. They talk to the bride and tell her to coax the answer out of him or else they'll burn her father's house down.  So she goes and pesters him for a whole week, and finally he cracks and tells her, so she tells the men, so they can answer Samson's riddle.  Apparently he doesn't have any extra clothes because he goes out of town and kills 30 Philistines so he can take their clothes and give them to his new wife's friends.  And he's so angry that he doesn't even go back to his own wedding, and guess what?  His bride is given to Samson's friend.  Ouch!  Can't say I'm surprised though.

So Samson waits a few months before thinking he wants to be a husband, and then he goes to visit the girl he is supposed to be married to, and her father doesn't let him see her.  He offers Samson a different daughter though.  So Samson gets angry, but he doesn't want people to blame him for killing Philistines again, so he go rounds up 300 foxes - do not ask me how - and ties two foxes at a time together with a torch between their tails, and lets them go right by the grain fields, which is ready to be harvested at this time.  So the Philistines go to Samson's non-wife and burn her and her father to death.

Samson says "I will surely take revenge on you, but after that I will quit."  What a nice guy.  So he just goes on the rampage and kills we don't know how many of them.  Then he goes and lives in a cave, until the Philistines come looking for them, and then he takes the jawbone of a donkey and kills 1000 men with it.  By the way, click here to see how this would actually have worked.

Next is the story we're all familiar with: Delilah.  But first he goes and sleeps with a prostitute, a Philistine prostitute at that.  Why can't Samson live with his own people and just go kill Philistines on the weekends or something?  Then he meets Delilah, who is also a Philistine, and falls in love with her.  Apparently the feeling isn't mutual because the Philistines pay her to find out the secret to Samson's strength.  You know the story: the first three times she asks him, he tells her something totally bogus, but the fourth time he tells her that his hair has never been cut, and so she cuts his hair off, he becomes normal, and he gets captured by the Philistines.  They gouge his eyes out, which is really really really gross to me, and parade him around at one of their parties.

Finally, finally Samson does something intelligent.  He prays.  In this story, we've seen the Spirit of God come upon Samson to endow him with strength, but we haven't seen Samson acknowledge God, in spite of being a Nazirite and everything.  In fact, he seems to be the most un-Israelite Israelite we've yet met: he doesn't live with his own people, he doesn't appear to have any kind of communication with God, and the only women he's interested in are Philistines, whom the Israelites are forbidden from intermarrying with.  But now, at rock bottom, Samson turns to God and prays that God will give him strength one last time.   True, Samson seems concerned only with avenging himself because the Philistines took his eyes, but God listens to him, and Samson pulls an entire giant house down, killing well over 3000 Philistines - and Samson.

It seems to me like Samson was really motivated by hormones, and that both got him into trouble and caused him to kill a bunch of Philistines, which was what he was born for.  And that brings me to the title of this blog.  Samson may have been a total Neanderthal without an ounce of gentleman in him, and he may have been really hormonal and made stupid rash decisions, but God used those things to do what He had always intended to do with Samson, in delivering Israel from the Philistines.  God can even turn our foolishness and our stupidity into something useful to Him.  Isn't that crazy?

Judges 6-9: The Original 300

Okay, before I start, I just wanted to say about the Spartan 300 that when the Persian army was approaching, somebody said they were so numerous that when they shot their arrows, they blotted out the sun.  One of the Spartan warriors replied to this, "Good, then we will have our battle in the shade."  I love Sparta.

*clears throat* But that's not the 300 I'm talking about in this passage.  No, these chapters are about a little guy named Gideon.

Unlike the Spartan warrior, Gideon does not strike me as a very brave, valiant, "it's a good day to die" type of guy.  When we meet him, he is threshing wheat in a winepress.  What?  Well, it's because the Midianites are oppressing Israel right now, and since the winepress was kind of a pit (maybe like an empty swimming pool?), he was threshing wheat in there to hide from the Midianites.  Normally, threshing wheat was a community event, maybe like a party - we'll see that when we get to Ruth - poor sad little Gideon is all by himself, hiding from the school bullies so he doesn't get his milk money taken.  Okay, so maybe I'm not being fair to him.  I'm just saying all this to make a point: Gideon is not the kill-a-few-hundred-people-with-an-oxgoad warrior, or even the shove-a-tent-peg-through-a-guy's-temple-while-he's-asleep sneaky assassin that we saw in the last passage.  He's just a regular guy trying to thresh his wheat.

So the angel of the LORD appears to Gideon, and it seems he hasn't been informed that Gideon isn't like Othniel and Shagmar and all them, because he says right off the bat, "The LORD is with you, mighty warrior!"  Can you picture Gideon turning around to see who's behind him that the shiny man is talking to?  Well anyway, Gideon's response to the angel is really interesting.  He says "Oh yeah?  If God is with us why am I threshing my wheat in a pit?  What happened to all the miracles that we heard about that used to happen?" (my paraphrase)

Note: I don't know if Gideon just hasn't read the Torah or something, but I believe that if an angel appears to you, a miracle of some kind is very soon going to happen.

In all seriousness, though, I think it's really interesting that Gideon is saying that miracles don't happen anymore, O woe is me, etc., right when God is calling him to do something miraculous.  Gideon seems to have excluded himself from that possibility.  When the angel tells him that God is going to deliver Israel from Midian through him, what does he say?  "Who me?  God is going to make me a mighty warrior like Shagmar the Oxgoad-Wielder and miraculously defeat the Midianites through me? Awesome, I can't wait!"  No, he says "I'm sorry, the warriors are in the third winepress on your right.  I happen to be the resident wimp from a family of wimps.  God must have been mistaken."

I think sometimes we have such grand, idealized ideas about the heroes of the Bible that we put them in a separate camp from ourselves.  It's like we think there's a special "hero pool" that God pulls people from, and we're not in it.  Reading through the Bible so far, though, I've become convinced of one thing: there's only one pool, and that's the pool you and I were in.  Now, there's two ways to look at that: one way is to think that means we're all in the hero pool, and that the same amazing stuff that was in Moses and Gideon is in us, and so we are capable of doing just as amazing things as they were.  The other way of looking at it is to think that all the heroes are in the "regular person" pool with the rest of us, and that they are just as unremarkable as the rest of us, but that God did amazing things through them because He is remarkable, and God can do amazing things through us too if we just get up when He calls us.  You can even look at it both ways; I'll let you decide though.

Anyway, so I'll stop ragging on Gideon because I think the "sign" thing is kind of a cool idea.  I don't know if it's because he was doubtful or because he just wanted to be sure - I mean, just because a guy is shiny doesn't mean they're the angel of the LORD - but he asked God for a total of three signs during the course of this story.  The first one is right now, when he prepares an offering for the angel, which the angel burns up.  The second and third signs are after Gideon has already gathered an army together.

Now, I heard a sermon about Gideon recently, so this next bit comes fromn that pastor, not me.  He said that when you're asking God for a sign, you'd better be already committed to doing whatever it is God's asking you to do.  When Gideon asked for the signs with the fleece and the dew, there were 32,000 people in his backyard playing football or something, ready to go to battle as soon as somebody said the word.  Gideon wasn't about to contest the results of the sign if it proved true.

So then God does one of his plot twists and trims down the army just a little - from 32,000 to 300 men.  I think it's interesting, though, that he didn't just tell Gideon to count off or have them pull straws or something, but that it appears He really was looking for a certain group of people, rather than a certain number.  First, God has all the people who are afraid go home.  Then he has the people who drink water in a more "refined" fashion go home.  I think God is trying to zero in on the people who are really committed no matter what, and ready and raring to go, like they're sitting there chomping at the bit and stuff.  Maybe God was looking for these people so that when He cut the army so absurdly small they wouldn't all get afraid and back out.  I mean, what if God hadn't eliminated the scared people? There might be some fraidy-cats in the final 300, and they would freak out and say "no way are we going to win," and run off.  Or maybe if He hadn't done the drinking thing, there would be some people in the final 300 who were kind of slow and wanted to take their time and enjoy the scenery en route to the enemy's camp.  I dunno.

So we all know what happens - the 300 people surround the Midianite camp, Gideon sneaks down and overhears some guy saying that Israel is totally going to win, and then they get pots and torches and basically just make a lot of noise, and Midian is so jumpy that they think they're being attacked so, in the confusion of night, they all start killing each other.  So Israel wins, but that's not actually the end of the story.

First of all, the Ephraimites get miffed that Gideon didn't invite them to the battle.  Gideon says Ephraim has already done a bunch of cool stuff and his little victory is no comparison, so the Ephraimites feel better about themselves and don't push it.  After that, Israel pursues Midian all over the place.  They are really tired and they stop at a place called Succoth and ask for food.  The elders of Succoth say "yeah right, whatever," so Gideon says that when he comes back he's going to beat the tar out of them.  Then he goes to a place called Penuel and the same thing happens, so he tells them he'll tear down their tower.  So he does - he captures the kings of Midian, whose names both start with Z, and returns to Succoth and beats up the elders, and then goes to Penuel, tears down the tower, and kills all the men in the city.  Now, I don't know that this was really necessary, but it appears that suddenly Gideon has become a mighty warrior - so mighty that he kills the kings of Midian himself, after asking a kid to do it and the kid was too scared - and also so mighty that Israel asks him to be their king.  But Gideon hasn't let all the gore and glory go to his head - he says no way, God should rule over you, not me.

At this point it seems that things are going rather well.  But then weird stuff happens - yeah, it's still not over.  Gideon asks for the people to give him earrings, so they do, and he makes an ephod out of the gold and takes it home with him.  Okay, no biggie, but apparently the people of Israel - including Gideon! - start using it in some kind of idolatry.  Sheesh!  Are there no decent guys in Israel?

But then we have a short story about Gideon's kids, who are really precious.  Gideon has 70 sons (from many different mothers, thank goodness), and one of them, Abimelech, wants to be king, so he goes and kills all 69 of his brothers - well actually 68, because on escapes - and the people of Shechem make him king over them for 3 years.  But then some other guy named Gaal challenges his authority, and apparently Shechem decides they like him better than Abimelech.  So they go to battle and - get this - Abimelech wins!  And he burns down the tower of Shechem with about 1000 people, men and women, inside!  At this point I'm really just waiting for this guy to die.  But then, the most awesome thing ever happens.He's marching against some tower in a place called Thebez, and as he's standing under the tower, some woman who doesn't even get her name put in throws a milstone at Abimelech's head, which crushes his skull (ouch).  Only he has another guy run him through with a sword so that people won't say that a woman killed him.  But too late! It's already in the Bible!  Man, that Abimelech guy really bugged me.  I'm glad he got killed by a girl throwing a rock on his head.

Then everybody goes home, end of story.

After all the awesomeness of Gideon's story, it looks like no amount of miraculous deliverance is going to cause permanent change in Israel.  It also looks like no matter how great a person like Gideon is, he can't for the life of him raise kids who follow the Lord.  I'm getting really frustrated with these people and their lack of good parenting.  Is it too much to ask for two successive generations of obedience?  But Gideon himself sort of turned against God with that ephod thing, so in spite of judging Israel and having 40 years of peace, it doesn't look like Israel is really following God that closely at any point in this story, after Midian was defeated.

Last night I said to a friend that I think the reason people live so long is because we learn so slowly.  The history of Israel is really a picture of each of us, or at least those of us who are normal.  Maybe some people follow God whole-heartedly and never turn away their whole lives, and are dramatically and permanently changed after witnessing a miracle, but I tend to repeat the same stupid stuff I've always done regardless of what God is doing.  And maybe stories like this one are in the Bible to remind me that I can't slack off after a major victory; I have to stay committed to following God or all kinds of stuff will get in the way, and I don't want that to happen.

Judges 1-5: Dynamite Dudes and Deadly Dames

Now we're in Judges, which is, in my opinion, one of the Bible's most frustrating books.  The cycle of obedience, disobedience, oppression, repentance, and deliverance, is going to be repeated many times, and by the time we get to the end of the book things are just chaotic.  But there is some really cool stuff in this book too; in fact, a few of my favorite people are in this book.

So Judges begins more or less where Joshua ended, with Joshua having just died and the people of Israel wondering what to do about the Canaanite cities that have not yet been captured.  So they start to go after some of them, and Caleb even offers his daughter as a reward for whoever will capture Kiriath-sepher.  Things seem to be going well, but then we find out that the Benjaminites don't drive out the Jebusites in Jerusalem, and that there are people among Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan that are not conquered or not driven out - in fact, the people of Dan get driven into the hills by the Amorites and they essentially lose their land.  So the angel of the LORD comes and rebukes the people for not obeying Him by not driving out all the people, and warns them that those people are going to become a snare to them.

Here's when things really start to go downhill.  We read again about how Joshua died and the people served God while he was alive and while his successors were alive, but then we read a very ominous verse: "All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel."

Time out.  Wasn't there a big push in the Law for the people to talk about the LORD constantly with their kids?  What happened?  From Abraham all the way till now, we have seen so few examples of good parents that I'm starting to think parenting skills are a genetic deformity with Israel.  So surprise surprise, Israel serves the Baals, which is the collective name for the pagan gods of the Canaanites.  And guess what? those people who didn't get driven out of the land, and a few people outside the land that God had given Israel peace with at the end of Joshua, they now are not so peaceful.

First the king of Mesopotamia oppresses Israel for 8 years.  God sends a dude named Othniel to deliver them, and for forty years things go well.  But once again, Israel is unable to make a good thing last more than one generation, because history repeats itself.  Only this time it's Moab who oppresses Israel, for 18 years this time.

Enter one of my favorite people in the Bible:  Ehud, a leftie.  He stabs the king of Moab, whom the Bible describes as "a very fat man," so deep that his blade gets lost in the king's stomach.  That's just gross, but the story is also really funny.  And after Ehud's display of left-handed cleverness, there are 80 years of peace - I think that's the longest period of rest that the nation is going to have during this whole book, so don't get too comfortable.

Next is a guy named Shagmar.  He only gets one sentence in the Bible, unfortunately.  He killed 600 Philistines using an oxgoad   I didn't know what an oxgoad was so I looked it up.  According to Wikipedia, "The goad is a traditional farming implement, used to spur or guide lifestock, usually oxen, which are pulling a plough or a cart; used also to round up cattle. It is a type of a long stick with a pointed end, also known as the cattle prod. Though many people are unfamiliar with them today, goads have been common throughout the world. Goads in various guises are iconographic device, and may be seen in the hand of Neith and the 'elephant goad' or 'ankusha' (Sanskrit) in the hand of Ganesha, for example."

Now I don't know anything about Shagmar, but he sounds pretty cool just from that.  I wonder why he didn't use a sword though?

After Ehud dies (so apparently Shagmar's oxgoad feat was during Ehud's lifetime), we have a really cool lady named Deborah, a prophetess.  She's not the judge - a guy named Barak is.  But she tells Barak to go fight Canaan, who is the current oppressor of the last 20 years.  Barak says he'll only go if Deborah goes with him.  I'm really not sure why; I guess he thought having a prophetess around would help him with strategy?  So Deborah tells him that Sisera, the army commander, will be given into the hands of a woman.  I thought that meant Deborah was going to get the credit for Canaan's defeat, but that's not at all what she's talking about.  She means, literally, that a woman is going to kill Sisera.  Her name is Jael.

Jael is probably the coolest lady in the Bible.  First, she has a cool name.  But more importantly, when Barak defeats the Canaanites and Sisera runs away, he comes to her tent, and she convinces him that she'll hide him, because apparently her husband's people has a peace treaty with the king of Canaan.  So he hides there and falls asleep, and Jael takes a tent peg and hammers it through his temple.  That's way grosser than what Ehud did.  Jael rocks!

The next chapter is a song that Deborah and Barak sing, and Jael has her own stanza.

So what do we learn about God from this passage?  One, that God is serious when he says there will be bad consequences for sinning.  Two, that God is also serious about forgiveness, and serious about keeping His covenant with Abraham.  I mean technically, God's already fulfilled the covenant; He kept His terms.  But He continues to keep it even after Israel has broken it over and over and over.  Why?  I guess because God has a plan that's bigger than Israel.  And He'll do what it takes to see that plan through, because ultimately it will save us all.

Genesis 37-46: Joseph

Joseph is one of those people that every Sunday school kid hears a sermon about at least twice a year, so I'm going to try to come up with something at least moderately original in this post.

The first thing we see about Joseph is that he's daddy's favorite. You'd think Jacob would have known better, not being his father's favorite; for that matter, you'd think a lot of kids would know better than to become their parents when they grow up. I just watched Jumanji last night, and one of Robin Williams' lines is "26 years in the jungle and I still became my father." If you don't want to become your parents, I think you have to pay attention to your tendencies and habits, because it's all subconscious. I mean, nobody really -intends- to act like their parents. It comes naturally. Okay, moving on.

The next thing we see about Joseph is that he's either stupid or full of himself, because he tells his brothers, whose dislike of him is probably blatantly obvious, about this dream he has of his brothers bowing down to them.

Here's a question. When Joseph tells his second dream to his father, Jacob says "Shall I and your mother and your brothers actually come to bow ourselves down before you to the ground?" But Rachel, Joseph's mother, never does bow before him, because she dies giving birth to Benjamin. Does this part of the story take place before Benjamin is born? Or is Jacob talking perhaps about Leah? And either way, in what way does Joseph's dream about the "moon" bowing down to him come true?

Remember Reuben? He slept with his father's . . . concubine I guess. That apparently got him disinherited (as we'll see in chapter 49). I wonder if that shook him up a little, because when the rest of the brothers decide to kill him, Reuben plans to save Joseph's life (unlucky for him it doesn't work out that way). If I remember right, this may be one of the first acts of self-sacrifice anybody we've read about so far has made. That's positive. But of course, Joseph gets sold into slavery (to Ishmaelites . . . go figure) while Reuben's off doing who-knows-what. Rotten luck.

Then the story skips off to Judah, the fourth-born. At some point, and I'm not really sure what point that is, he gets married and has three kids, and the first two are evil so God kills them, and his daughter-in-law Tamar gets passed from son to son until Judah doesn't want to give her to the third kid because he thinks he'll die too. So what happens is Judah ends up accidentally sleeping with Tamar (accidentally meaning he didn't know it was her, he thought she was a temple prostitute . . . shows what kind of guy he was), and she winds up pregnant, and he almost kills her but then she reveals to Judah that he's the father, so he goes "my bad" and doesn't kill her. He also doesn't sleep with her again. Rather decent of him. So this odd little story doesn't seem to have any huge significance, except that one of Tamar's sons (she has twins) winds up in Jesus' genealogy too. Another unlikely character - an illegitimate kid. Jesus has a muddy pedigree.

So then we go back to Joseph, and we all know the story about Potiphar's wife. You really can't blame Potiphar for believing his wife's lie about Joseph. I mean, she is his wife after all, and I'm sure if she was your wife you'd rather believe she was innocent too. Anyway, God has a really wacky way of getting Joseph where He wants him. You'd think Joseph could just as easily go before Pharaoh as the servant of Potiphar, captain of the bodyguard, but no, he has to go to prison first. It probably did a good blow to that ego of his.

Skipping ahead just a bit, have you ever noticed that whenever one of God's boys is around and the king has a dream, none of the magicians can interpret it? That can't be a regular occurrence or else the king just wouldn't have magicians. I'm sure they came up with something every other time, but for some reason this time they couldn't make up an answer (and it's not nearly as hard as Nebuchadnezzar's dream - remember, he made the Magi tell him what the dream was first; he was a smart guy). Anyway, so that's another God thing I bet.

I watched a History Channel special about "prophecy" once, and it looked at future prophecy from lots of different religions. From Judaism, the example they picked was Joseph. What really weirds me out is that the narrator says "Joseph is unclear about the source of his prophetic knowledge" (or something to that effect). But both times Joseph is approached with a dream - first by the cupbearer and baker, and then by Pharaoh - he says very explicitly that "interpretations belong to God" (40:8, 41:16, 25, 28, 32). This is why I take everything the History Channel says with a grain of salt.

We finally find out that Joseph is 30 when he stands before Pharaoh. He's been in Egypt for 13 years (he was 17 when the story started). We don't know how much of that time he was in Potiphar's house and how long he was in prison (except that it was more than 2 years), but I imagine he probably spent a fair amount of time in both places, because it takes time to rise through the ranks like he did.

I'm not really sure why Joseph pulled that prank on his brothers like he did. Was it to pay them back, or was it just for fun, or did he really plan to keep Benjamin with him in Egypt? I don't know, and the text doesn't give any clues. But as you know, the story turns out okay and they all come to live with Joseph in Egypt (Goshen, to be precise). A few observations:

1. How old is Benjamin when all this happens? It's now at least 7 years after Joseph became second-in-command, so even if Benjamin was a baby when Joseph was sold, he's 20 now. Everybody talks about him like he's a little kid. Is that a translation error, I wonder? Because in the list of people who come down to Egypt, Benjamin has 10 sons already. That's a lot for a 20-year-old. Unless they were born in Egypt and I'm just reading the text wrong. Anybody have an idea?

2. Egyptians are snobby people. It's "detestable" to them to eat bread with Hebrews (why Hebrews, I wonder?), and shepherds are detestable to them too. I'm sure they had sheep in Egypt. What's up with that? On the other hand, that's how Jacob's family all ended up in Goshen, because they had to live apart from the Egyptians.

3. I wonder why it's Simeon who Joseph holds hostage while his brothers go back to Canaan. Maybe he was the meanest one. He and Levi, remember, were the ones who killed the Shechemites. He seems like a pretty reckless fellow; maybe it was his idea to kill Joseph.

4. Reuben and Judah both show maturity and selflessness in this part of the story. Reuben tells Jacob he can kill both his sons if Benjamin is harmed in Egypt. That's a pretty bold move, considering all that's happened to them so far. Judah later says Jacob can hold him personally responsible if Benjamin doesn't come back, and when Joseph says Benjamin will be his slave, Judah begs to take his place.

I'm stopping here because that was pretty long. Next time I'll wrap up Genesis. Only 4 chapters left. Yay!

Genesis 27-31: Jacob and the Family Dysfunction

Okay, so it's been way too long since I wrote one of these. I'm in Genesis 36 right now, but I'm breaking Jacob up because there's soooo much to talk about.

Very brief summary: Jacob tricks his twin brother Esau out of his birthright and his blessing. Esau decides to kill Jacob, so he runs away to his uncle Laban. Jacob wants to marry his cousin Rachel but Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Leah first. Leah and Rachel squabble over children and get into a baby-making contest (Leah wins). Then Jacob has some not-quite-fair dealings with Laban to build up his own flock. Then they leave, and Rachel steals Laban's household gods. Laban chases them, they make a covenant, and then they leave and go their own separate ways.

Okay, so I'm about halfway through Genesis, and I really don't like this patriarch family one bit. Abraham and Isaac were bad enough, but Jacob is a whole 'nother story. He cheats, his uncle cheat, his mom cheats, his wife steals, his wives fight over him, and his brother wants to kill him. What is God thinking using these idiots? It's amazing He got anything at all done with them. It's like trying to teach little kids something and all they want to do is beat each other up. You won't get very far. So the fact that God succeeded not only in keeping these bozos alive but in building a nation out of them is very impressive.

An observation from Gary Smalley and Dr. John Trent (they're psychologists or something) is this whole issue of the "blessing." Isaac and Rebekah played favorites with their kids, and their kids knew it. I don't really blame Jacob for wanting to get some kind of affirmation from his father, because he probably never did all his life until he pretended to be his brother. Parents should be really conscientious about making sure all their children feel equally loved. Isaac only had one blessing to give; I think you should have an individual blessing for each of your kids.

I could go on all day about this, but let's move on.

I do feel bad for Leah. I bet it really sucked to know that the only way her dad could marry her off was by tricking a guy into thinking he was marrying her little sister. I'm glad she had a lot of kids, and I'm glad that God used her, not Rachel, to continue the line that eventually went to Christ.

Rachel bugs me. She was pretty, but she wasn't a very good person. When she figured out she wasn't having kids, the first thing she does is complain to Jacob. What can Jacob do about it? Nothing. The second thing she does is give her maid to Jacob to build a family through her. Um, I thought we did this already with Sarah and Hagar. Evidently Rachel missed the memo that this is a stupid idea. Oh, and guess what she names her maid's kids? "He has vindicated" and "My struggle" - in other words, "Take that, Leah!" The third thing she does is she bargains for some mandrakes, which were believed to increase fertility. So Rachel by now has appealed to her husband, her own ideas, and superstition - but not God. I'm surprised God eventually gave her any children at all. Oh, and guess what she named her own son? "I want another one." Sheesh, what a brat. Compare Rachel to Hannah, who did nothing but pray so hard she looked drunk, and promised God that she'd give her son back to Him if she ever had one. I like Hannah; I don't like Rachel.


Now it's Laban's time to shine. For some reason, Jacob notices that Laban isn't happy with him. Maybe it's because Laban's noticed that his flock are all a lot weaker than Jacob's? So anyway, Jacob sneaks away with all of his stuff (probably wasn't easy to sneak), and Laban finds out he's gone and follows him. God actually comes and warns him not to say anything to Jacob, so look at what Laban does when he meets Jacob. This is hilarious. He goes, "It is in my power to do you harm, but the God of your father spoke to me last night, saying, 'Be careful not to speak either good or bad to Jacob.'" Oh yeah, Laban, you think you're so bad. I bet Laban thought he was pretty special for God to have come and talked to him. Probably thought God was protecting Jacob from big scary Laban. Whatever. It gets better. The next thing Laban says is, "But why did you steal my gods?" In other words, he was just talking about the God of Abraham visiting him, and how that's so cool, as if Laban is now on a level with the patriarchs, and then he snaps back to "I want my action figures back!" What a loser.

What Jacob doesn't know is that Rachel stole the action figures. Why, we don't know. But we already know she was a brat, so that's explanation enough for me. Smart Rachel, she almost got herself killed. Good thing she was a woman and could make up a convenient excuse. You mention that thing and guys get terrified. Needless to say, she wasn't searched, so she got away with stealing the action figures.

Anyway, so then Laban (probably really huffy by now) says that Jacob's wives and children and flocks and everything Jacob owns really belongs to Laban, but since he's such a nice guy, he's willing to make a covenant with Jacob and let him keep all that stuff and go on his merry way unharmed. Gee, wasn't that nice of him? So they make a covenant and promise not to ever go onto each other's territory to do them harm. And they say "May the LORD watch between you and me when we are absent from the other." That phrase became a farewell saying called the Mizpah Blessing, which I think is neat.

So now we've seen Jacob's family at pretty much their worst, but there's still more to come. Luckily, though, things will start to get better soon.

Genesis 24-26: Isaac

First of all, has it really been a week? Sorry about that. I stopped reading at night because it kept me up all night, and I kind of need sleep. So I'll have to find another time of day to read it, maybe after rehearsals and stuff in the evening. Better than sitting around watching TV.

Anyway, so this little segment is about Isaac. Here's how it goes:

• Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac
  
• Isaac marries Rebekah
• Abraham dies
• a list of Ishmael's kids
• Jacob and Esau are born
• Isaac goes to Gerar, the same place Abraham went in chapter 20
• Isaac pulls the same "she's my sister" stunt that his father pulled, and gets in trouble for it
• Isaac gets rich
• Abimelech (the king) gets kind of scared of him and makes him leave
• Isaac's people fight with the Philistines over some wells
  
• Abimelech realizes it's not good to leave on bad terms with a really rich person so they make a covenant

First of all, I think Abraham must have trusted his servant an awful lot. He sent him all the way back to Abraham's old house in Mesopotamia (it says he went to the city of Nahor, which isn't in my Bible map, but I guess it's probably around Haran, which is a pretty far ways away from where Abraham is right now). And he's trusting his servant to find a wife for his son. That's kind of a big deal. Maybe his servant has really good taste, I don't know. Anyway, when the servant puts his hand under Abraham's thigh, that's some kind of covenant too. I don't remember any of the details about that custom though or else I'd elaborate. But suffice it to say, it was a really big deal.

What I find interesting about this servant is that he keeps calling God "the God of my master Abraham," and I'm not sure what he means by that. He seems to have quite a bit of faith in God himself because the first thing he does is he asks God to bring out exactly the right woman and give him a sign to know who she is. Why do you think he calls God "Abraham's God" instead of his God or just plain God? Is it because he's a servant, or is that a cultural thing, or something like that? I've just always found it curious.

This is the first time we see Laban. We'll see him again later. He seems like a decent person so far. Oh, and it really amuses me that they ask Rebekah if she'll go with the servant or if she wants to wait a few days. She doesn't really get consulted about whether she wants to go to Canaan and marry her cousin, but on the other hand, she doesn't seem opposed to it. Anyway, I think she ends up liking Isaac. It does say he loved her. And if I'm not mistaken, that's the first time it talks about a husband and wife loving each other.

I like the description of Abraham at his death: "Abraham breathed his last and died in a ripe old age, an old man and satisfied with life; and he was gathered to his people." Contrast that with the description of Sarah a few chapters earlier. Sarah lived and died; Abraham lived a full life and died satisfied.

The next thing I find interesting is that we find out Rebekah was barren. Everybody knows Sarah was barren and Rachel was barren, but we forget that Rebekah was too because the text doesn't make such a big deal of it. So the first time I read that I thought, "that's a little too coincidental for me." But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn't just a really weird coincidence that the patriarchs all picked these barren women. I think God did it on purpose. I think I mentioned in a previous post, He's very particular about choosing people who don't seem right for the job. For example, when you're trying to build a nation whose decendants will be as numerous as the stars and the grains of sand, you generally don't do it through three women in a row who can't bear children. I think God does that to show that this isn't a fluke; this is Him bringing His plan into action.

Jacob and Esau are an interesting bunch. On the one hand, you have to kind of feel sorry for Esau that Jacob talked him out of his birthright by holding food in front of his nose. On the other hand, what kind of guy is so careless about his entire inheritance that he would trade it for a bowl of soup? I wonder sometimes if Esau is the guy they're making fun of in the caveman cartoons. But I'll talk more about the twins next time.

Isn't it funny that now Isaac is pulling the same lie that his father used - twice - when he goes to Gerar? (By the way, this probably isn't the same Abimelech that Abraham met; Abimelech is just Hebrew for "my father is king" or something like that). This is part of that whole cycle of distrust/deceit thing I was talking about earlier with Abraham. Parents, be careful what kind of example you set for your kids. They'll take it and run with it. Kids, be aware that your tendency as you grow up is to become like your parents. If you don't want to become like your parents, you have to be intentional about it.

God talks to Isaac and reiterates the Abrahamic covenant (the promise He made to Abraham) with him. What's funny is that God talks to Rebekah before He talks to Isaac, at least in the story.

By the way, I think a lot of the problems between Jacob and Esau occurred because their parents played favorites. Don't ever do that. All your kids need to be shown an equal amount of love - and notice that I said "shown." If you love all your kids equally but spend way more time on one than on the others, that's not going to cut it with them.

Okay, so that's about all I have. Next time I'm going to talk about Jacob.