Detail from Sennacherib's Lachish frieze showing prisoners being impaled

Today’s is a grim reading. But such brutality was not unusual in the Ancient Near East. The Assyrians, for example, when they captured the Judean city of Lachish after a siege in 701BC impaled the surviving leaders outside the city, and left a mass grave of 1,500 people (mainly women and children).

Despite what one might even see as gentle treatment of the city by the Babylonians in 586, the fall of Jesusalem marked Hebrew thought deeply because it was God’s city, their last toehold of political independence in the promised land and Yahweh’s holy temple that the Babylonians destroyed. In doing so they also destroyed many Hebrew’s faith in Yahweh, and thus shaped our Bibles. Many of the prophetic books either warn of the coming desctruction, or seek to cope with the exile of the leaders and their resulting loss of faith in Yahweh.

Today’s reading therefore tells the core event that helped shape much of the Old Testament.

Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio

Banana plantation at the foot of Mt Carmel

Since this is a gripping, but well-known, story what I’ll try to do in this podcast is show you how a bit of context (see here for more on context and understanding the Bible).

I’ll also tell you God’s two nicknames, in some religious traditions knowing all a god’s names is really important, in Hinduism the god Vishnu has 1,000 names, in Islam there is a tradition that God has 99 names. Yahweh the God the Bible talks about has kicknames as well as formal names!

Forrested crest of Carmel from the Eshkol Tower of Haifa University

A couple of photos to illustrate the geography

:)

Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio

Photo from The Russian Institute of Radionavigation and Time, http://www.rirt.ru/

Solomon’s prayer understands that Yahweh is a different God, the gods (like Ba’al and his crowd) lived in the sky – and lanced thunderbolts down on people they disliked – heaven/sky was like the earth only bigger and better.

When Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev said “Gagarin flew into space, but didn’t see any God there“. Solomon’s prayer sees the stupidity of Krushchev – how could the creator of universes be see from a measly 302Kms from earth? But even this is not the real difference. This Yahweh is a God who’s name means “being with you” cf. E100-17: Exodus 3-4: Getting the holy between your toes! Yahweh wants a relationship, loves us, and is therefore a jealous God
cf. E100-21: Exodus 19:1 – 20:21: The Ten Commandments.

The story of Israel’s ancestor, Jacob, was bookmarked by two nighttime meetings with God, the second time he was given the name “Israel”. Solomon’s story also has two nighttime meetings with God, in the first he got his wish, and chose wisdom, in this reading after dedicating the temple in a dream God warns Solomon that all his promises to the chosen people are conditional on Israel’s obedience. Therefore they provisional and as we will see are only really fulfilled in Jesus.

Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio

The judgement of Solomon by Gaetano Gandolfi (1734–1802)

In just two chapters we get some of the most beautiful and inspiring, and some of the grubbiest and most bloodthirsty stories in the Bible. It is no wonder that telling the stories of David (with Saul and Solomon and perhaps the rest) as a serial, like a soap opera has the audience panting for more :)

In this podcast I’ll again point to clues to how we can, and (often of more use) how we should NOT “read” Bible stories.

I’ll also make a shameless plug for my Not Only a Father an online book about the use of motherly language and imagery to describe God in the Bible and in later Christian theology, which you can discuss, argue with or ask questions about as you read – and if you can’t see how that connection fits this passage… then listen to the podcast ;)

Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio

Bathsheba goes to David by Francesco Salviati (1510–1563)

These two chapters mark the turning point in David’s story.

They offer vital clues also to how we “read” biblical narratives.

• Nathan’s story within a story provides hints, abouit the nature of narrative meaning
• David’s strange behaviour  during his child’s illness and on his death provides both a clue to an interpretative rule, and some good practice :)

.

Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio

So this is a good selection to understand what is going on:

1. Even the great king David is human and fails (spectacularly)
2. Solomon is seen at his best – asking for and displaying wisdom not wealth or power;
3. building the temple and expressing fine theology
   not as the king who began to lose an empire, and introduced idols to the temple
4. Elijah and the fight on Mt Carmel is an archetypical story of the conflict between belief in gods and in God
5. Then the final reading tells the ghastly and traumatic story of the fall of Jerusalem and the end of Israel as a political entity – but worse of the temple and crown promised by God!

Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio

by didbygraham

Bible stories, with a few exceptions (maybe some parables for example) do NOT have nice neat “morals”. If you want to say “and the moral of the story is…” don’t read the Bible. But by contrast if you want people with real depth, who make it difficult for us to work out what their motives are, and therefore hard to simply place them in appropriate “boxes”, the Bible is the book for you :)

In this reading we’ll notice depth and complexity in two of the less central characters, Michal and Nathan. In that complexity we may find clues to living our own, often also complex, lives…

Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio

"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.

Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio

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…

Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio

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)

.