Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible
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nine truly hellacious divine punishments
1 Baldhead: Young boys mock the prophet Elisha, shouting, “Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!” He curses the boys, at which point two bears rampage out of the woods and maul forty-two of them (2 Kings 2).
2 Preparation H: After the Philistines capture the ark of the covenant, they all get terrible hemorrhoids (1 Samuel 5–6).
3 Slaying of the firstborn: The last and worst of the ten plagues (Exodus 12).
4 Pillar of salt: Lot’s wife, disobeying orders, turns around to look at Sodom’s destruction and is salinated (Genesis 19).
5 Meat is murder: When the Israelites complain that they want meat instead of manna, a furious God sends a The Birds–like infestation of quail. As the greediest Israelites gorge themselves on the fowl, God strikes them down with a plague, killing them with the meat “still between their teeth” (Numbers 11).
6 Snakes on a plain: When the Israelites complain again about manna, God sends a plague of vipers (Numbers 21).
7 The earthquake: When Korah rebels, Moses proposes a showdown at which God will judge which of them is the true prophet. “The ground under [Korah and his supporters] split apart and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, with their households and all Korah’s men and all their possessions. They went down alive
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into the grave, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them” (Numbers 16).
1 Playing with fire: When Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu present the wrong incense at the altar, God incinerates them (Leviticus 10).
2 Leprosy: Miriam criticizes Moses for marrying an African woman, so God eats away her skin with “snow white scales” (Numbers 12).
the eight trippiest and most important dreams
1 Ezekiel dreams of beasts with four faces—human, ox, ea gle, and lion. They have wings, spinning wheels for legs, and a sapphire throne over their heads (Ezekiel 1).
2 Joseph dreams that his brothers are sheaves of grain and stars bowing down to him (Genesis 37).
3 Daniel dreams of a beast with ten horns, including one horn with eyes and a mouth that speaks (Daniel 7).
4 Jacob dreams of a ladder up to heaven, with angels scurrying up and down it (Genesis 28).
5 Pharaoh dreams of seven gaunt cows eating seven fat ones, and seven parched ears of corn eating seven healthy ones (Genesis 41).
6 Zechariah has visions of a giant flying scroll and a woman in a lead-sheathed tub (Zechariah 5).
7 Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a huge statue that is crushed into dust (Daniel 2).
8 One of Gideon’s soldiers dreams of a loaf of bread toppling the enemy’s tents—a signal that Israel will be victorious in battle ( Judges 7).
nine weird laws
I could reprint all of Leviticus and Deuteronomy here, but let me just give you a few favorites instead.
1 The no-polyblend rule: “You shall not put on cloth from a mixture of two kinds of material” (Leviticus 19).
2 The test for an adulteress: She must drink a cup of bitter water. If she’s innocent, it won’t harm her. If she is guilty, her abdomen will swell and her thigh will “sag” (Numbers 5).
3 The unsandaled one: If a man refuses to marry his brother’s widow, she should pull off his sandal and “spit in his face.” His house shall be known as “the family of the unsandaled one” (Deuteronomy 26).
4 A ball in the hand: If a woman grabs a man’s testicles during a fight, her hand is to be cut off (Deuteronomy 26). You can see why they have this law, because . . .
5 . . . No one with damaged testicles can be admitted to the congregation (Deuteronomy 2).
6 If a priest diagnoses someone with leprosy, the leper’s clothes shall be rent, “he shall cover over his upper lip, and he shall call out, ‘Impure! Impure!’ ” (Leviticus 13).
7 If you find the body of a murder victim in the countryside and the killer is unknown, the elders of nearby towns mea sure the distance from the corpse to their village. The elders of the closest town then have to find a heifer—not just any heifer, but one that has never worked—break its neck, and wash their hands over the dead cow while declaring, “Our hands did not shed this blood” (Deuteronomy 21).
8 A soldier who has a nocturnal emission is unclean, and must leave the army until he can repurify himself (Deuteronomy 23).
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9. If husband says his new wife is not a virgin, her parents must display the “evidence” at the gate of the city. If she’s a virgin, he is to be fi ned and punished. If she’s not, she’s stoned to death (Deuteronomy 22).
the six most important business deals
1 The Cave of the Patriarchs: When Sarah dies in Hebron, Abraham pays 400 shekels to a Hittite to buy a grave site for her. This land became the “Cave of the Patriarchs” and Arabs and Jews are still fighting over it (Genesis 23).
2 The first case of eminent domain: King Ahab and Queen Jezebel covet Naboth’s vineyard. (They want to plant a vegetable garden there.) They have him framed for blasphemy and stoned to death, and then seize his land (1 Kings 21).
3 Property rights for women: After their father dies, Noa and her four sisters petition Moses to be allowed to inherit his land. God and Moses decide that women without brothers can own land when their father dies (Numbers 27). This episode has been referred to as the world’s first lawsuit.
4 Maoist economics: During the Egyptian famine, Joseph distributes grain to starving peasants, and seizes their land in return. He turns freeholders into sharecroppers, and transforms Egypt into a totalitarian command economy (Genesis 47).
5 She’s my sister: Abraham and Sarah, by pretending that she is his unmarried sister, con first Pharaoh and later King Abimelech out of livestock and silver. So the first business deals in the Bible are swindles (Genesis 12 and 20).
6 Land for peace, take one: King Hiram of Tyre (Lebanon) supplies Solomon with gold and cedar wood for the Temple. In exchange, Solomon gives Hiram twenty Galilean towns. It’s Israel’s first land-for-peace deal, and it’s a fiasco. Hiram thinks the towns are awful (1 Kings 9).
six abuses of animal rights
1 Samson ties torches to the tails of 300 foxes and sets them loose in Philistine fields and orchards ( Judges 15).
2 The first thing Noah does after he makes landfall is build an altar and sacrifice animals (Genesis 8:20).
3 The prophet Balaam beats his donkey when it refuses to move. An angel is blocking its way, but Balaam can’t see the angel. Eventually the donkey complains and the angel appears to Balaam (Numbers 22).
4 David cuts the hamstrings of hundreds of the enemy’s chariot horses (1 Chronicles 18).
5 At the party for the dedication of the Temple, Solomon sacrifi ces 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep (1 Kings 8).
6 The high priest Aaron puts his hand on the head of a goat, confesses all of Israel’s sins to it, and exiles it to wilderness—as the “scapegoat” (Leviticus 16:2).
the ten most important meals
1 Eve’s apple: It probably wasn’t an apple, because apples don’t grow where we think the Garden of Eden would have been. It might have been a pomegranate (Genesis 2).
2 Manna: “A fine flaky substance,” which tasted like either olive oil or honey. Probably yummy for a couple of days, but the Israelites ate nothing else for forty years (Exodus 16).
3 Ezekiel’s bread: He bakes it from wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and farro, and lives on it for 430 days (Ezekiel 4). You can try it for yourself: Food for Life sells “Ezekiel 4:9” bread in yuppie markets everywhere.
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4. Jacob’s pottage: Esau sells Jacob his birthright for a bowl of red lentil stew and some bread (Genesis 25).
5. Quail: Sick of manna, the Israelites demand some meat for a change. Their complaints infuriate God, who decides to give them so much meat it will make them sick. A huge
flock of quail kamikaze outside the camp, and the Israelites start to gorge themselves on the meat. God strikes the greedy ones with a plague, and they die with the flesh “still between their teeth” (Numbers 11).
6. David’s cakes: When he brings the ark to Jerusalem, David gives all his subjects “a loaf of bread, a cake made in a pan, and a raisin cake” (2 Samuel 6).
7. Roasted grain and vinegar: Boaz and Ruth’s first meal together (Ruth 2).
8. Abigail’s fig cakes: When David threatens Abigail’s husband, she buys him off with 200 fig cakes, as well as bread, raisins, mutton, and parched corn (1 Samuel 25).
9. Lion’s honey: Samson kills a lion, and returns a year later to find bees swarming around the skeleton. He takes their honey and gives it as a present to his parents, but doesn’t tell them where it came from ( Judges 14).
10. Jael’s milk: The fleeing General Sisera asks for water. Jael gives him milk instead. Then she murders him ( Judges 5).
Ac knowledg ments
Good Book began as a project for Slate called “Blogging the Bible,” and my first and greatest thanks go to Blogging the Bible’s readers. When I started the blog in 2006, I found myself in the world’s best Bible study group. Readers by the thousands e-mailed me to correct my theology, crack jokes, tell personal stories, retranslate key passages, damn me to hell, and proselytize me. That lively, contentious conversation not only kept me going through the Bible’s dull portions—yes, I’m talking to you, Zephaniah and Micah!—but also made me appreciate and love the book more than I ever would have done on my own.
I’m not much of a God-thanker but thank God that I work at Slate, where I’m surrounded by the best colleagues imaginable. I’m particularly grateful to several of them. Jacob Weisberg encouraged me to do the blog, came up with the brilliant phrase “Blogging the Bible,” and gave me time off to write the book. Julia Turner (and her mom) gave me the book title. Julia and Emily Yoffe also read and critiqued the manuscript, a thankless job. Brad Flora and David Sessions helped me enormously with the Bible lists. Jack Shafer lent me an inspirational CD of the book of Leviticus. June Thomas encouraged me to tour biblical Israel and write about it for Slate. Emily Bazelon edited my first blog entries and greatly enriched them. Sian Gibby, the best Jew I know, challenged me to think more carefully about the Torah.
Thanks to Kelly Mason, Mark White, Aryeh Tepper, Avis Miller, Robert Alter, Mark Dever, and Jacques Berlinerblau for advice on how to read the Bible. Abby Pilgrim was a marvelous scriptural guide, and I’m grateful to her parents for playing Bible trivia with me. Ian Stern, David Ilan, and Leor Ilan gave me a great biblical tour of the Holy Land. And big Toda Rabas to Josh Block for inviting me to Israel to begin with, and to Amiram Goldblum for being my host while I was there.
Sarah Chalfant is my ideal of an agent: equal parts editor, psychologist, and negotiator. Tim Duggan at HarperCollins is not merely a superb reader and editor, but also a mensch (unfortunately, not a word found in the Bible). Copy editor Susan Gamer gave the manuscript a great read, correcting errors, improving logic, refining jokes.
My parents, Paul and Judith Plotz, didn’t give me a biblical education, and for that I am immensely grateful to them. Miriam and Eli Rosin are living proof that the Fifth Commandment should be amended to include in-laws. My daughter, Noa, asked me one hard question after another about the Bible, none more diffi cult than this: “Why are you writing the Bible again? There already is a Bible!” My son Jacob didn’t ask me any questions about the Bible, but his exuberant sweetness reminded me of why we’re commanded to go forth and multiply. And my son Gideon was born as I finished the book, allowing me to put my scripture reading to work by naming him after one of my new Bible heroes.
I must thank my wife, Hanna, for a boring reason: that she bought me a Bible and told me to write about it. And also for all the other reasons: like God at His best, she is wise, funny, just, loving, and merciful. But with Hanna, there’s no smiting.
About the Author
David Plotz is the editor of Slate. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, The Washington Post, and GQ, and is the author of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank. He won the National Press Club’s Hume Award for political journalism and has been a National Magazine Award finalist. He lives with his wife, the journalist Hanna Rosin, and their children in Washington, D.C.
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Credits
Jacket photograph © Alloy Photography/Veer Jacket design by Jarrod Taylor
Copyright
GOOD BOOK. Copyright © 2009 by David Plotz. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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