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

by David Plotz

  But our God is a recycling God, and His redemption is also depicted in environmental terms. His salvation of Israel is represented as a Greenpeace, complete with lush grasses, fruiting trees, and abundant rains. I suspect Joel is a favorite book of the budding religious environmentalist movement, Creation Care.

  the book of amos

  Dentistry must not have been a divine priority. God lists all the suffering He has inflicted on His people. He says He blighted orchards, sent plagues, caused droughts, starved towns, destroyed cities, cleaned teeth—excuse me? Yes, the Lord, like the British government, considers white, cavity-free, periodontally sound chompers to be a punishment. “I . . . have given you cleanness of teeth in all your towns, and lack of food in all your settlements.”

  Actually, I suspect “clean teeth” is a version of “empty stomach.” It signifies hunger rather than hygiene.

  My goodness, Amos can write! He describes the Day of Judgment as a world in which terrors never end: “As if a man should run from a lion and be attacked by a bear; Or if he got indoors, should lean his hand on the wall, and be bitten by a snake!” Isn’t that creepy? The success of horror movies depends on their ability to tamper with our sense of relief: just when the heroine believes she has finally found a haven, evil strikes. That is exactly what this verse captures: you’ve finally escaped the bear and found shelter in the safety of home, but then a snake bites you.

  Even better, Amos delivers an invocation of justice so magnificent that Martin Luther King Jr. borrowed it for both the “I Have a Dream” and the “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” speeches: “Let justice well up like water, righteousness like an unfailing stream.”

  the book of obadiah

  One chapter. Yup. The whole book is one measly chapter. It’s about Jacob and Esau. This nothing-burger rates inclusion in the Bible, yet the Hanukkah story doesn’t.

  the book of jonah

  At last, a minor prophet who’s not minor at all. It’s been seven books and a trip to Israel since I’ve read a Bible story that I was familiar with. The last one was Solomon threatening to cut the baby in two, in 1 Kings. So, howdy, Jonah! Greetings, whale!

  It’s even better than I remember from Hebrew school. God orders Jonah to Nineveh (near what is now Mosul, Iraq) to warn that the Lord is going to brimstone the city for its sins. Like some folks recently, Jonah isn’t thrilled about his assignment in Iraq. So he goes AWOL, jumping a ship bound across the Mediterranean for Tarshish. The aggrieved Lord sends a mighty storm, and the sailors pray for rescue. But as the ship tosses, what does the prophet do? He heads belowdecks to take a nap! Jonah’s snoozing signals his deplorable tendency to flee from difficulty, to avoid trouble at all costs.

  It doesn’t work, of course. The captain wakes him up. The sailors cast lots to determine who caused their misfortune, and Jonah comes up snake eyes. At last, the prophet faces up to his duty. He offers to be chucked overboard to appease God. The sailors are reluctant— admirably reluctant—to toss him, and they try to row their way out of the storm. These sailors are the uncredited heroes of Jonah’s tale, brave, moral, careful. Finally, after pleading not to be held responsible, they throw him into the sea, and the storm lifts.

  The Lord “provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah.” The word “provided” is marvelous, with its echo of “providence.” That’s because the fish is not the punishment: the fish is the salvation. Jonah spends a long weekend in the big fish, praying the whole time. He thanks God for rescuing him from the edge of death. God commands the fi sh to spit Jonah up on the shore. This story gives biblical literalists fits—you can’t imagine the somersaults some perform trying to find a fish with the right specs—but I am not going to spend any time arguing with them about the truth or science of Jonah. I don’t believe a word of it. It’s impossible. But hey, that’s why they call them miracles.

  My childhood memory of Jonah stops with him gasping on the beach, but the story continues, and actually gets even better. The regurgitated prophet makes his way to Nineveh, stands in the middle of the city, and announces that God’s going to smite it in forty days. The people of Nineveh heed his warning. The king wears sackcloth, squats in ashes, and orders the entire population to fast in order to gain God’s mercy. Why do the Ninevites even pay attention to Jonah? It makes no sense. He’s a foreigner—he may not even speak their language—he prays to an alien God, and he’s a stranger. How could he mesmerize an entire city? His success seems especially unlikely given our recent experience with prophets: from Isaiah to Jeremiah to Obadiah, prophets are notable principally for being ignored. It’s inexplicable that Jonah would be the exception to that rule.

  In any case, the Ninevites’ prayer works. God relents and pardons the city. This leads to the funniest part of the book. Jonah is furious when God forgives Nineveh because His mercy turns Jonah into a false prophet. Jonah has been screaming about the city’s doom, and instead nothing happens. Jonah looks like a fraud. Jonah kvetches that that’s why he fled the Lord in the first place, because he knew God would be compassionate and not actually punish the city. His pettiness— a combination of utter self-involvement and indifference to the saved Ninevites—is awful and yet recognizably human. Jonah is a character right out of a Woody Allen movie.

  Showing keen psychological perception, God decides to teach Jonah a lesson about selfishness. He sends Jonah to the desert, and provides him a ricinus plant for shade. Jonah loves the plant. God—sly deity!—then kills the ricinus. Jonah freaks out, and whines melodramatically that he’s so sad about the plant that he wants to die. At this point, God delivers the knockout punch, in the final verses of the book: “You cared about the plant, which you did not work for and which you did not grow, which appeared overnight and perished overnight. And should not I care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred and twenty persons who do not yet know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well!”

  Jonah really is the perfect Bible story. God is demanding yet merciful, wise yet tricky. The tale is suspenseful from beginning to end. The hero is deeply flawed, mostly learns his lesson, and behaves with both the grace and the selfishness that are in all of us. There is no unnecessary violence. And it’s extremely funny.

  the book of micah

  I don’t envy Micah: Jonah’s a hard act to follow. Rather than trying to match Jonah fish for fish, Micah reverts to the usual prophetic clichés, giving us the same old enigmatic metaphors about God’s coming vengeance against Jerusalem. Along the way, Micah even plagiarizes the entire “swords into ploughshares” speech from Isaiah.

  At one point, the Lord declares that he is filing “a suit against Israel.” This is the third or fourth reference to lawsuits in the Bible, and at least the second, I think, that proposes litigation between God and His people. Is the idea of God and His followers in a legal dispute unique to Judeo-Christian tradition? Do other holy texts use the same courtroom metaphor? I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s par tic ular to us, because of the fundamentally contractual nature of God’s relationship with his Chosen People. He and they are constantly making covenants.

  He promises land or redemption or love. They promise faith and obedience to law. One side or the other then breaks the contract and tries to argue its way out of the deal. I suspect that this ancient litigiousness helps explain why Jews continue to be overrepresented in legal and argumentative professions. The very foundation of our faith is contract law. After you’ve gone toe-to-toe with God in the courtroom, even Justice Scalia must seem like a pussycat.

  the book of nahum

  Never heard of him. But I’m delighted to meet him. If the Bible were a bit better organized, Nahum would directly follow Jonah, because he is a gruesome response to the jolly optimism of the whale prophet.

  Nahum begins with a spectacular litany of praise to the Lord. There have been lots of hymns to God in the Bible, but this is the most over-the-top in its hyperbolic, fl orid grandiosity. Nahum was the Muhammad Ali of
his day. A taste of his shtick: “He travels in whirlwind and storm, and clouds are the dust on His feet. He rebukes the sea and dries it up. . . . The earth heaves before Him. . . . Who can stand before His wrath? Who can resist His fury? . . . No adversary opposes him twice.”

  This patter segues into a denunciation of the Lord’s chief enemy, which is—Nineveh! Yes, the very city that Jonah helped save is now on God’s do-not-call list. Nineveh has conquered Zion, and the Lord wants payback. (Nahum does not explain how the God-fearing Nineveh of Jonah’s story has become the enemy.)

  Nahum is both the Muhammad Ali of the Bible and the Ernest Hemingway, because he can also write in a spare, compelling style. From Chapter 2: “Desolation, devastation, and destruction! Spirits sink. Knees buckle. All loins tremble. All faces turn ashen.” From Chapter 3: “Ah, city of crime, utterly treacherous, full of violence, where killing never stops!”

  God promises to “lift up” Nineveh’s skirts and humiliate her, also to devour her, also to scatter her people like sheep. The final verse of the book encapsulates the stiletto genius of Nahum. Discussing Nineveh’s destruction, he writes: “All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For who has not suffered from your constant malice?” What a shame this book isn’t better known; it’s so muscular and brilliantly written.

  the book of habakkuk

  Give Habakkuk credit for posing one of the most important theological questions of the Bible: If you’re so good, God, why are you “silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?” This is probably the biggest question there is about God, and one that still puzzles many believers today. Even so, Habakkuk is a whiner and gloomy Gus, griping about how long he has to cry to the Lord for relief. Eventually, he decides to stand in a watchtower until God answers his complaint.

  the book of zephaniah

  They call these twelve the “minor prophets,” but that term doesn’t do justice to the dinkiness, the negligibility, the puniness of Zephaniah. He’s not minor-league; he’s Cape Cod league. His three, mercifully short, chapters are third-rate Isaiah, a completely familiar prophetic poem: God’s going to destroy mankind to punish worshippers of Baal. He will trash the Israelites, the Moabites, the Ninevites, etc. Then He’ll redeem Zion. Nothing you haven’t heard forty-seven times, and better, before.

  the book of haggai

  A confusing but lively story, whose chief lesson is: rebuild the Temple, guys!

  the book of zechariah

  Enter Satan. In a dream, Zechariah sees the high priest of Israel facing off against Satan, who goes by the professional wrestling–style nickname “the Accuser.” This makes sense because, according to the footnotes in my Bible and my Hebrew-speaking wife, “Satan” does not mean devil or Antichrist or anything like that. It is just a Hebrew word meaning “accuser” or “adversary.” The Accuser is no horn-sprouting, pitchfork- wielding, brimstone- stinking, red- satin dev il. He appears to be more like God’s lawyer. He’s “standing at His right hand”—God’s right-hand man. The Accuser doesn’t say a word in the chapter. In fact, he just stands by while one of God’s angels cross-examines Joshua. Still, it’s momentous to witness Satan’s fi rst appearance. Question: How did this abashed, impotent Accuser turn into His Satanic Majesty? (Christian readers may be wondering why I’ve overlooked the appearance of Satan in the book of Job. As Jews read the Bible, Job comes after the minor prophets, almost at the end of the book. So we’ll get to it later.)

  Zechariah, who’s prone to seriously weird visions (a giant fl ying scroll and a woman in a lead-sheathed tub representing wickedness), declares that a man called “the Branch” shall rebuild the Temple and rule Zion. David Koresh’s Branch Davidians—who believed the Branch is Christ—took their name from here.

  That’s not the only proto-Christian prophecy in Zechariah. Another is that the new king of Israel shall ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. The more I read of the prophets, the more it becomes clear that the Christian tradition borrows heavily from them. (I know, I know—this is a blindingly obvious observation.) Why does Christianity tell stories about Christ riding a donkey, or coming from Bethlehem, or suffering for our sins—all notions forecast in the prophetic books? Perhaps because all those stories about Christ are true. Or perhaps because the early Christian writers wanted to place Christ emphatically in the Jewish prophetic tradition. They could do this by matching up his biography to predictions in the Hebrew Bible, legitimizing Christ as a Jewish messianic fi gure.

  the book of malachi

  The final prophet! Hallelujah!

  God is sick of our heresy and backsliding, our feeble sacrifi ces and worthless professions of faith. “You have wearied the Lord with your talk,” Malachi chides. When the Lord’s redemption comes, the good will finally take their revenge: “You shall trample the wicked to a pulp.”

  SEVENTEEN

  The Book of Psalms

  150 Short Poems about God

  In which the Lord is my shepherd.

  psalm 1

  ecause this book consists of 150 poems in no par tic ular order, there isn’t a compelling reason to start at Psalm 1 and read through to Psalm 150. You might as well start at Psalm 47 and then read 112 and then 6 and then 65 and so on. But I’m trying to march directly through the Bible, so I’ll dutifully begin with Psalm 1 and trudge forward. The fi rst psalm advises that a righteous man studies the Lord’s teaching “day and night.” It’s eleven-thirty PM, so that’s me.

  psalm 3

  The first of many psalms “of David”—psalms that King David supposedly wrote. Given David’s not inconsiderable ego, it’s hardly surprising that the main theme of David’s psalms is: Poor me, I have so

  many enemies, even though I’m such a righteous man. Thanks for killing those enemies, God!

  I love this wonderfully modern line at the end of Psalm 3, where David praises the Lord: “For You slap all my enemies in the face.”

  psalm 6

  Another psalm of David. It opens: “O Lord, do not punish me in anger, do not chastise me in fury. Have mercy on me, O Lord.” This is an interesting appeal to the Lord. God often reacts too quickly in the Bible, immediately flying into a rage at human sin and frailty. What’s so appealing about this verse is that David is not denying his own wrongdoing—he knows he’s a sinner—but he wants God to count to ten before smiting, perhaps hoping that the Lord’s fury will subside. As always, David is a superb psychologist, daring to understand, and manipulate, the Lord.

  Also, a literary point. Note that the first line—“do not punish me in anger”—is followed by a line that means the same thing: “do not chastise me in fury.” This similar but not identical repetition is a common device in biblical poetry. (Psalm 3, for example, begins: “O Lord, my foes are so many! Many are those who attack me.”) If I remember correctly from my oral literature class in college, such repetition is common in song-poems everywhere. “Oral formulaic” poems contained repetitions so that the bards who performed them could remember them more easily. When the song-poems were eventually written down, the repetitions came along.

  psalm 18

  The longest and most spectacular psalm yet, it’s actually an almost word-for-word copy of 2 Samuel 22. It opens with David rattling off an amazing series of nouns to praise the Lord: “my crag, my fortress, my rescuer, my God, my rock in whom I seek refuge, my shield, my mighty champion, my haven.”

  It then turns into a story of how God “bent the sky and came down” to rescue David. Egomaniac David, naturally, thinks he deserves nothing less, because he is a “blameless” man. “The Lord rewarded me according to my merit.”

  psalm 22

  This psalm surely has special meaning for Christians. David, complaining again, opens the psalm by crying: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” Even I know these are Jesus’s last words, according to one account in the Gospels.

  It is not the only line in this psalm that relates to the death of Jesus. David imagines his killers “casting lots f
or my garments”—which is what the Roman soldiers did over Jesus’s clothes.

  psalm 23

  Probably the most famous poem ever written: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . . green pastures . . . still waters . . . valley of the shadow of death . . . my cup overflows,” etc. A key question for a lay reader is: why is this psalm world famous and 149 others are not? I have a theory. Psalm 23 is a pacific poem. One of the revelations I’ve had in reading the Bible is that its most famous passages are almost always its most loving ones. Although there are certainly famous Bible stories that are disturbing—Noah, Sodom, etc.—the celebrated bits are far milder than the book as a whole. (“Swords into ploughshares,” for example, is the most famous verse in Isaiah, and also one of the few nonviolent ones.) Psalm 23 is another case of this whitewashing, presenting a God who is loving, forgiving, and openhearted—even though the God of most psalms, and of the Hebrew Bible generally, is quick to anger, furious, and unforgiving. This God of Psalm 23 is certainly better for marketing.

  The King James version famously and majestically refers to “the valley of the shadow of death.” My Jewish Publication Society translation instead offers “a valley of deepest darkness.” I assume my translation is more accurate, but it’s so—blah.

  psalm 25

  “O my God, in you I trust.” Let’s stamp that on some coins.

  psalm 29

  The usual formula so far is:

  Dear Lord,

  Please be my salvation and smite my enemies.

  Sincerely,