5 minute Bible

"head and shoulders above the rest" by jenny downing

Just when you begin to wonder if any Bible story is really suitable for simple Sunday School reading, and have begun to suspect that the Bible has no message but: Humans are broken and need mending, humnans are sinful and therefore they keep spoiling God’s lovely world and hurting each other. Along comes a story to remind us of another truth… Just as the story of Ruth  followed the grime of Judges, so now in 1 Samuel 24 we get a story, set amid the war and political jostling of the beginnings of the Hebrew monarchy, with not one but two real heroes. Both protagonists are noble in this chapter. Both we know from other chapters are sinful broken men, but here young David and poor old, broken and probably insane, Saul both act with gracious nobility.

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Saul the hero close up by donwolf1979

Yes, like some of the Bible writers, I just can’t resist a pun, especially if it really does help carry the message :) And in this case I think it does, more specifically after we have noticed quickly some of the good stuff in the famous David and Goliath story of David and Goliath. For this podcast, perhaps as homework, you might want to play with a computer Bible… and you might also want to return to the comments, and discuss the vexed question of the nature of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit…

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I'll leave you to work out why I chose this picture for this podcast ;) photo by quapan

This is the story in which we hear the interface between Judges, “Everyone did as they saw fit, for there was no king in Israel”, and the story of the Hebrew kingdoms. In these few chapters there is loads of good stuff to notice (for a start try):

• Humour in the Bible: Part 1: Introducing Saul
• Humour in the Bible: Part 2: Still Introducing Saul
• Direct speech in biblical narratives

But this time I’ll restrain myself, and just mention one or two neat narrative details. Instead I’ll talk more about the big theological picture.

Quotation in title from Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (without apologies to Aristophanes)

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Three great chapters, full of well crafted narrative, with a stirring  song thrown in! There is too much detail to notice in the way these stories are told, you’ll have to watch for the fun yourselves. In this ‘cast I’ll focus more on the song, and not so much on its detail as overall how it works. (For more background on this see my Why Read the Bible? Dreams and visions which is part of a longer series of reflections on Lost Treasures of the Bible: reading “from another place”: reading for a change that was earlier published as part of the Fetschrift for Brian Smith:

Sutherland, Martin, and Carey Baptist College. Mission without Christendom : exploring the site : essays for Brian Smith. Auckland N.Z.: Carey Baptist College, 2000.

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There are many ways in which the story-tellers of the Bible ensure that their tellings are lively and engaging. One is through the way they report speech. There is usually more “direct speech” (where the words of a character are “quoted”) then “indirect speech” (where the teller tells us the gist of what the character said). This direct speech is often skillfully crafted to give a lively and rich portrayal of the person. The podcast begins with cases where a group of people speak (we already heard one of these in the post Humour in the Bible: Part 2: Still Introducing Saul). Another example of this is found in Jonah 1:8 though here different emotions are expressed. The book of Ruth uses skillfully differentiated speech to help portray the characters. In this podcast we’ll look at Boaz’ two speeches to Ruth from chapter 2 (Ruth 2:11-12; 8-9).

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