Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible

by David Plotz

  A messenger brings David the news of his death, which prompts his famous cry of mourning: “My son Absalom, O my son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son.” Again, we feel the force of repetition in the Bible, though it’s slightly different here. Usually in the Bible, the name is repeated. Here it is “my son” that gets doubled up. The plaint suggests that David is mourning the loss of a son, any son—not that David had a special love for Absalom, who, after all, was a scoundrel. (William Faulkner, unlike the Bible, doubles up Absalom’s name for the title of his book. I don’t know why, because that’s another book I’ve never read.)

  As David keeps weeping and keening, Joab rebukes him. Joab complains that David cares more for the son who hated him than for all the soldiers who love and fight for him. Joab says, “You have made it clear today that commanders and officers are nothing to you. I am sure that if Absalom were alive and the rest of us dead, you would have preferred it.” Joab tells David to pull himself together and start appreciating his loyal soldiers. Joab is an awful man in many ways—violent, impatient, suspicious—but he’s one of the Bible’s great pragmatists. He is more interested in results than in methods, more interested in rough honesty than foolish sentiment. In this way, he is arguably the first true Israeli.

  When David recaptures Jerusalem, he locks his ten unfortunate, now slightly used, concubines in the palace, keeping them under house arrest till they die. The sexual taboos were rough, back in the day.

  chapter 21

  Giants. Lots and lots and lots of giants. David is challenged by the Philistine giant Ishbibenob, but the king is too old for slingshots. He ducks combat and has someone else fight in his place. Then we learn that maybe David didn’t even kill the Philistine giant Goliath. According to verse 19, someone named Elhanan killed Goliath. What are we supposed to make of this unexplained contradiction? Could there have been two giants named Goliath? And now here’s a third enemy giant. He’s my favorite one yet, because he has six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot.

  chapter 24

  The book of 2 Samuel finishes with a baffling story. It’s a flashback to early in David’s reign. The Lord orders David to take a census. David does so, but when he finishes, he feels guilty for having done the count. The Bible doesn’t explain, doesn’t even hint at, why David would feel bad for taking a census. Then it gets even harder to follow. The prophet Gad informs David that the Lord is furious about the census—but this makes no sense, since He ordered it. Gad tells David he can mollify God’s anger by choosing one of three punishments—the divine retribution version of Let’s Make a Deal. Behind curtain number one: three years of famine for Israel. Behind curtain number two: three months harried by enemies. Behind curtain number three: three days of pestilence.

  Perhaps figuring that three days is a pretty short time, David picks the pestilence. But he forgot the kind of God he is dealing with. This is no seventy- two- hour flu. The Lord’s angel kills 70,000 Israelites in three days. David, seeing the carnage, begs the angel to lay off the Israelites and punish him instead. “I alone am guilty, I alone have done wrong; but these poor sheep, what have they done?” (I think “sheep” is meant as a compliment to his people, referring to their gentle, innocent spirit, not their stupidity.) David finally ends the plague by building an altar in the barn of a local farmer.

  This is a confusing incident all the way around: the Lord exacts terrible revenge for no apparent sin. The only way the story would make sense is if the Lord didn’t order the census. In that case, the census might be David’s attempt to aggrandize himself at the Lord’s expense. Then David would feel guilty, the Lord would be rightly angry, and the punishment would be deserved. But if the Lord ordered the count, then David is being punished for obedience. And the Lord and His prophets have told us repeatedly that obedience to God is the highest good.

  TEN

  The Book of 1 Kings

  Kings of Pain

  In which David dies and is succeeded by Solomon, the world’s wisest man; He builds the Temple, marries 700 wives, welcomes the queen of Sheba, and almost cuts a baby in half; Israel splits into two kingdoms after Solomon’s death, a mostly wicked Israel in the north and a mostly faithful Judah in the south; there are lots of really terrible kings; the prophet Elijah battles evil King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.

  chapter 1

  ike my grandma, old King David is always cold, no matter how many sweaters he’s wearing. Unlike my grandma, King David has procurers who find the hottest young virgin in the land and order her to cuddle up with him. But when they bring lovely Abishag—nice face, shame about the name—to his bed, David doesn’t even make a pass at her. David—who used to unsheath his sword for anything in a skirt, who picked up not one but two of his wives at funerals, who had so many concubines that he could cast off ten of them and not miss a beat—can’t even wink an eye at the foxy, naked virgin in his bed. These verses tell us everything we need to know about the state of David’s kingship: the royal scepter is limp.

  But he’s not quite dead. David’s wives and kids are lobbying him furiously to settle the succession in their favor. The eldest surviving son, Adonijah, raises a militia, recruits General Joab as his commander, and holds a grand animal sacrifice to affirm his status as heir. Alarmed by Adonijah’s scheming, the prophet Nathan advises Bathsheba to push her son onto the throne. So Bathsheba “reminds” David that he had promised that Solomon would succeed him. Perhaps David actually did make this promise, but it was never mentioned earlier, and it seems more likely that Bathsheba is duping a forgetful old man. Nathan, colluding with Bathsheba, also reminds David of his supposed vow. David falls for their scam and has Solomon anointed king. This is, of course, another retelling of the story of Jacob and Esau. As in Genesis, a scheming mother gets her vulnerable, possibly senile, old husband to favor a younger son over an older one. Like Jacob, the younger son, Solomon, is a pawn, passively going along with mom’s scheme. Solomon, fated to become the wisest man on earth, reveals no wisdom at all during this drama. He manages to become king without saying a single word.

  Once Solomon is anointed, Adonijah realizes the jig is up and seeks sanctuary by grabbing the horns of the altar. Adonijah asks for Solomon to spare him, and Solomon does.

  chapter 2

  David’s deathbed is a heartfelt scene that suddenly turns Mafia. It starts with David counseling Solomon to follow the laws of Moses. Out of nowhere, David interrupts his own profound advice and starts telling Solomon which scores he should settle. Solomon should make sure to kill Joab—who has been Israel’s best soldier—because Joab committed pointless murders in peacetime that disrupted David’s diplomatic efforts. More disturbingly, David also orders Solomon to kill Shimei, the relative of Saul’s who cursed David during Absalom’s coup.

  If you remember that strange encounter, David was actually quite resigned to the curses, and seemingly untroubled by them. Later, David had even vowed not to take revenge on Shimei, saying: “I will not put you to death with the sword.” So, it’s incredibly slimy—dare I say Clintonian?—for David to circumvent this promise by ordering Solomon to execute Shimei. It reminds us just how cruel and self-centered David can be.

  Then David dies. Like Moses, Joseph, and Abraham, David is a hero who seems even larger in the real, messy Bible than in its popular image. He’s the most complete person we’ve met: flawed but wonderful, his great sins outweighed by his huge heart, his care for his people, and his passion for God. I’m prouder than ever to be a David, and I’m going to miss him.

  The drama of his family never ends. David’s not cold in the grave when his ousted son, Adonijah, visits Bathsheba. After he assures her that he has not come to kill her, he begs a favor: could she ask her son Solomon to let Adonijah marry Abishag (who’s still gorgeous and still, apparently, a virgin). Bathsheba agrees to speak to Solomon on Adonijah’s behalf. King Solomon, after assuring his mother that he will grant her any favor, explodes at Bathsheba’s
request: “Why request Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Request the kingship for him!” Let’s try to explain Solomon’s rage. First, he’s furious at Adonijah’s sexual one-upmanship—angling to bed the woman his father couldn’t bed and Solomon hasn’t bedded. More important, Solomon surely fears that Abishag’s connection to David will rub off on Adonijah. If Adonijah is permitted to take Abishag, who was more or less David’s final wife, then he will gain status: sexual conquest could preview actual conquest.

  So, Solomon orders Adonijah’s execution. Isn’t this an overreaction? Even if Adonijah was trying to score at Solomon’s expense, doesn’t this betray the safe-conduct promise he gave Adonijah in 1 Kings 1? Perhaps, but the most important lesson of 1 Kings: kill first, regret later.

  Joab, hearing of Adonijah’s death, realizes that Solomon is trying to settle all his scores at once, just like Michael Corleone at the end of The Godfather, after his father’s death. Joab flees to the altar for sanctuary. Solomon sends his hit man Benaiah, who also took out Adonijah, to assassinate Joab. Joab refuses to leave the altar and dares Benaiah to kill him on that sacred spot. Solomon tells Benaiah to go ahead and do it—an early indicator of Solomon’s own casual attitude toward the Lord. Solomon’s third victim is Shimei, who at first is merely held under house arrest. But the minute Shimei violates this arrest by pursuing some escaped slaves, Solomon gleefully takes his revenge. Enter Benaiah, carry ing a sword.

  Exit Shimei.

  chapter 3

  Solomon marries Pharaoh’s daughter. What about God’s laws against intermarriage? What about His fear that miscegenation would turn His people into idolaters? What about His loathing of alliances with heretics? Apparently Solomon doesn’t think that any of this applies to him: he chooses the realpolitik marital alliance over Mosaic law.

  God seems relatively unbothered because Solomon (at least for the moment) is otherwise a faithful steward. God appears to Solomon in a dream and asks what he wants. Demonstrating his canniness, Solomon says that he’s just a “young lad” and he needs “an understanding mind” so that he can rule justly over his people. This impresses God to no end: He was expecting Solomon to ask for wealth or long life. “I grant you a wise and discerning mind; there has never been anyone like you before, nor will anyone like you arise again.” But wait, it gets better: “And I also grant you what you did not ask for—both riches and glory all your life—the like of which no king has ever had.”

  Solomon’s first opportunity to show off his brains comes later in 1 Kings 3. The king is petitioned by two women fighting over a newborn. Both have just given birth. One baby has died. They both claim the surviving son. There’s no DNA testing available. What is Solomon to do? Now equipped with 100 percent divinely certifi ed gray matter, Solomon devises the fabulous sword trick. He proposes to cut the baby in half. He immediately discovers the real mother, the woman willing to give up motherhood in order that the baby might live. It’s a great stunt and reflects genuine wisdom. No wonder the Israelites soon “stood in awe of the king.”

  Here is the part of this that they forgot to mention in Sunday school. The two women are prostitutes. Perhaps the story is told about streetwalkers because it proves that Solomon cares about justice for even the lowliest of his people. Or perhaps there are just a lot of hookers in the Bible.

  chapters 5–7

  A hilariously magnificent passage pays tribute to Solomon’s wisdom. It’s essentially a list of everyone he is smarter than. His wisdom is greater than the combined wisdom of all Egyptians and all Kedemites. He’s wiser than “Ethan the Ezrahite” (the Marilyn Vos Savant of his day) and “Heman, Chalkol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol” (who were presumably the Foer brothers of the ancient Near East). He writes 3,000 proverbs and 1,000 songs. He’s a botanist, an ichthyologist, and an entomologist; a poet, a musician, and a judge; a joker, a smoker, and a midnight toker.

  Solomon’s kingdom is vastly bigger than David’s, stretching all the way from Iraq to Egypt. Fulfilling a prophecy given to David, Solomon erects the first Temple. To build it, he imports cedar trees from Lebanon, signing a deal with King Hiram of Tyre. As payment for the materials, Solomon gives twenty Galilean towns to the king. This is the first recorded example of Israel trading land to its neighbors, and it doesn’t go any better than the modern swaps. Hiram complains that the towns are dumps.

  These chapters include the particulars about the construction and interior decoration of the Temple—interesting more for Architectural Digest subscribers than the casual reader. By far the most remarkable detail is this: the Temple is only sixty cubits by twenty cubits— ninety feet by thirty feet—much smaller than your average McMansion, and an anthill compared with the size of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. It seems especially paltry when we learn that Solomon has built a palace for himself that is more than twice as big.

  chapter 8

  Like every building dedication in the 3,000 years since, the opening ceremony of the Temple has a big crowd, too many dignitaries, long speeches, and bad weather. (The cloud caused by the Lord’s presence prevents the priests from performing the service.)

  Solomon delivers a phenomenal speech—a long plea to God that is one of the most persuasive prayers in the Bible. A skilled debater, Solomon begins by acknowledging that God doesn’t have to dwell here in the Temple or even notice the Israelites at all. He’s God—He can do what He wants. Solomon acknowledges that even the universe can’t hold Him, so it’s silly to expect Him to bother with this little house in a suburb of Jerusalem. Still, Solomon begs, could You please be merciful enough to pay attention to the prayers from the Temple, to “heed and forgive” the worshipping Israelites? When an injustice has been committed, could You please listen and judge the evildoer? If the Israelites abandon You but then repent, could You please answer their prayers? If there’s a drought, or a famine, or even “mildew,” and the Israelites beseech You for help, could You please take action? He goes on in this vein for quite a while, building up to this final prayer, which is the most compelling of all:

  When they sin against You—for there is no man who does not

  sin— . . . and they repent and make supplication to you . . . oh

  give heed in Your heavenly abode to their prayer and supplication.

  What grabs me in that verse is the parenthetical “for there is no man who does not sin.” The greatness of Solomon’s speech (and of Solomon generally) is his forthright acknowledgment of human frailty. God has often been impossibly demanding, issuing perfectionist laws and smiting humans for even minor transgressions. Solomon, by contrast, marries the ideal and the real. He’s making a much more sophisticated religion. His prayer doesn’t claim that the fallible Israelites are better than they are or pretend that they can follow God’s laws steadily. The other lawgivers (notably Moses) begin with an assumption of perfect behavior and warn of the consequences of failure. Solomon begins with an assumption of failure and seeks mercy.

  chapter 10

  Welcome to Israel, queen of Sheba. She hears of Solomon’s wisdom and travels all the way from—well, where is Sheba, anyway? Ethiopia?—to test him with hard questions. Sadly, the Bible does not record what Sheba’s questions were, only that Solomon answered all of them easily. I’m very curious about what she asked. Were they savant-type questions like: What’s the cube root of 98,543,306? Or SAT questions like: On the basis of the data supplied, what is the average speed of the oxcart between Jerusalem and Bethel? Or Philosophy 101 questions like: If God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, why does evil exist? Or Jeopardy-style questions like: Category is Patriarchs—he was the king duped by Abraham. Or trick questions like: Which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold?

  The queen is so impressed by Solomon’s wisdom that she is “left breathless.” Is this a euphemism, too? Are we supposed to think she checked out more than his IQ? They lavish gifts on each other; then she heads home.

  Solomon is wise, but he’s not frugal. He blings out his throne: ivory
covered in gold. His cups were gold; his knives and forks were gold (and thus probably got all bent out of shape by the dishwashers). “Silver did not count for anything in Solomon’s days.”

  How can he afford it? Perhaps because he is the first successful international arms merchant. His dealers import chariots from Egypt at 600 shekels each, then resell them to the Hittites and pocket the profi ts.

  chapter 11

  It’s not just Sheba and Pharaoh’s daughter who catch Solomon’s eye. He “loved many foreign women.” Like Samson, he doesn’t really dig Jewish girls, preferring the transgressive thrill of the pagan. This preference gets Solomon into trouble, as it did Samson. Right after mentioning Solomon’s love for foreign women, 1 Kings 11 restates God’s warning to the Israelites not to consort with them, “lest they turn your heart away to follow their gods.” But Solomon won’t listen. With 700 idolatrous wives and 300 infidel concubines, Solomon finds himself corrupted in his old age. He starts worshipping the abominable Ashtoreth, Milcom, and Molech.

  Solomon’s idolatry raises a fundamental question about the difference between wisdom and faith. If Solomon were truly wise, presumably he would not build shrines to rival gods, because he would know—thanks to his great brain—that the Lord would punish him. Such idolatry is a terribly unwise move. The Bible clearly distinguishes Solomon’s incomparable intellect from his unreliable faith. His mind is brilliant, but his soul is weak. Solomon’s intelligence, like Samson’s strength, is a godly gift that doesn’t produce godliness. In fact, it may do just the opposite and encourage Solomon to stray: why does he need God when he’s got an IQ of 194? The story of Solomon can be seen as the opening salvo in the war that still rages between reason and belief. Which does God ultimately favor? As I argued back in Genesis, God clearly feels fondly toward clever people. Particularly in the early books, He consistently favors smart people over moral ones. But now it’s not so clear. God loved David more than He loves Solomon, presumably because David was always faithful to Him. Yet that’s not the whole story, because though God loved David better, Solomon’s rewards are greater: He’s richer; his land is peaceful; he builds the Temple. And now consider the third variable: morality, which is separate from faith. Although David was more faithful than Solomon, he was also less good. David commited unspeakably immoral acts (see Uriah the Hittite), whereas the idolatrous Solomon lives a pretty righteous life. Except for taking a few scalps at the beginning of his reign, Solomon lives well and rules marvelously. Add it all up, and who wins? The Bible seems to side with David, whose unswerving faith counts more than Solomon’s goodness and wisdom.