Judges 17-18: An idol is stolen, and I'm not sure why I'm supposed to care

Now we move on to some guy named Micah.

Micah's story starts with him confessing to his mother that he stole 1100 shekels of silver from her. But she's not in the slightest bit mad, for some reason: “The LORD bless you, my son!” She took 200 shekels of the silver and had an idol made out of them, to put in Micah's house. We've already seen how much God loves it when his people make idols, so I'm sure this will end well.

Apparently this silver idol will fit in well with the rest of Micah's household decor – he also has “some household gods” (whatever that is), a shrine, and an ephod (apparently some sort of priest garment?). The Bible also says “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.” I will take that to mean that this is not supposed to be an example of good behavior? Lol.

Then Micah takes in a Levite, so now he has a live-in priest for some reason. This guy never gets a name, he's just “the Levite”. Okie then.

Then we meet the Danites, one of the tribes of Israel who were “seeking a place of their own where they might settle, because they had not yet come into an inheritance among the tribes of Israel.”

Now, there is a general lack of any clear time-frame for the entire Bible so far, but I was of the impression that since at least the beginning of Judges (which seems to be several generations ago), the Israelites were in the promised land, and that this whole covenant God made with Abraham thing had been fulfilled. But apparently not. Why is God so very horrible at keeping promises?

Anyway, five Danite scouts or spies or something come to Micah's house and spend the night. While there they talk to “The Levite”, who tells them that God says “Go in peace. Your journey has the Lord’s approval.” Yeah God, finding them a place to live was supposed to be your job, remember? Pretty magnanimous of you to “approve” of them doing it for themselves.

The five scouts moved on to some other place called Laish, which they quite liked. So they went back to their people are were like, “Come on, let's attack them!” Because that is the solution to everything in this book.

600 Danite men armed for battle head out, and on the way they stop by Micah's house to steal that silver idol from the previous chapter. While they are there “The Levite” confronts them, and they suggest that he join them and be their priest instead: “Isn’t it better that you serve a tribe and clan in Israel as priest rather than just one man’s household?” Can't argue with that, I guess. So he goes with them.

Micah gets some of his neighbors together and goes after the Danites, and has this silly argument with them.

Danites: “How dare you try to fight us? Waaah!”
Micah: “You broke into my house and stole my stuff, of course I'm going to fight you.”
Danites: “But we don't want to fight you!”
Micah: *Goes home*

After that very exciting confrontation, the Danites go on to Laish. And they kill everyone there so they can build themselves a city there, it's just like every other Bible story so far, and I'm simultaneously bored and horrified by it.

It goes on for some time about how the Danites used the idol they tool from Micah's house, so apparently that's important.

Well, that's the story of Micah. I don't know what that was all about. I thought that Micah, with his house full of idols and false gods, was going to get the old “wrath of God” at some point, but that didn't really happen.

Maybe it's a story about how you can have all the outer paraphernalia of religion, but all of that can be gone in an instant, and you need to have something more. (At one point, Micah says this: “You took the gods I made, and my priest, and went away. What else do I have?”) Hey, I'm trying to be generous.

Judges 15-16: Apparently, it is possible to kill 1000 people with a donkey jawbone

Previously, Samson threw a fit because some people cheated to solve his unsolvable, “skittles out of a grizzly bear” cheat of a riddle, so he killed a bunch of people, “gave away” his wife to someone else, and stomped off home to pout.

Now, Samson decides he wants to visit “his wife”, who is not actually his wife anymore. He tries to get in to see her, but her father turns him away. Before you start getting visions of a father in Bible actually acting like a decent human being toward his daughter, this is what he says, “Isn’t her younger sister more attractive? Take her instead.” In other words, “Hey you murderous psychopath, can I interest you in marrying or possibly just fucking my youngest daughter?”

Samson decides he needs to “get even” with the Philistines (his former wife's people). For what, I'm not quite sure. So (just like anyone would do when they want vengeance over some imaginary offense) he gets 300 foxes, pairs them off, ties their tails together, somehow attaches a lit torch to each pair, and sets them loose in the Philistines' grain, olives, and vineyards, burning them all down. Why was tying 300 foxes' tails together a necessary component of burning all of their crops? I have just so much to learn about mass crop destruction.

The Philistines are pissed. Samson's ex-wife's father tells them “Samson did it.” So the Philistines burn Samson's ex-wife and her father to death. Even though Samson is the one they are pissed at. Why? Who knows. I guess “shoot the messenger” is part of Biblical morality now?

So clearly Samson requires even more revenge now. “He attacked them viciously and slaughtered many of them.” This seems less like “vengeance” and more like “escalation”.

Samson hides out in a cave, and the Philistines go menace Judah. The people of Judah go find Samson and tie him up to deliver him to the Philistines. But while they're on the way, “The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. The ropes on his arms became like charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands.” Oh look, a miracle.

Then this happened: “Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men.” I need to know: how does one kill 1000 people with the jawbone of a donkey?? How do you even kill one person with the jawbone of a donkey? And why on earth did there just happen to be a “fresh jawbone of a donkey” just laying there? That seems...improbable.

“Then Samson said,

'With a donkey’s jawbone

I have made donkeys of them.

With a donkey’s jawbone

I have killed a thousand men.'”

What a goddamn poet.

Apparently, killing 1000 people with a donkey jawbone is thirsty work. Samson “cried out to the LORD”, and God made water come out of a hill. Oooo.

Some unspecified time later, Samson “spends the night” with a prostitute in Gaza (I guess God is cool with his people visiting prostitutes, FYI). The people of Gaza find out that he's there, and decide to kill him at dawn. What has Samson done to piss off the people of Gaza? Who knows.

Anyway, Samson doesn't wait around til dawn, in the middle of the night, he “got up and took hold of the doors of the city gate, together with the two posts, and tore them loose, bar and all. He lifted them to his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron.” Samson just cannot help but to do everything in the most dramatic and over-the-top fashion possible, can he?

So that's the entirely of this little story. Mmm-kay then. I guess it's just to further illustrate how unusually strong he is? Or maybe to further illustrate that Samson is the type of guy who will just up and steal your city gates for no apparent reason?

“Some time later”, Samson falls in love with Delilah. The Philistines (who are apparently still angry), tell her to find out the secret of Samson's strength.

“So Delilah said to Samson, 'Tell me the secret of your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued.'“ What a clever and sneaky plan, Delilah.

Samson is not fooled by this great display of subterfuge (although it wouldn't really surprise me if he was that dumb), and he lies to her. He says that if he is tied up with 7 bowstrings, he will become weak. So she tries it, and he breaks free.

This goes on and on – she keeps asking him directly, without any attempt whatsoever at cleverness, and he just keeps lying to her. She tries whatever it is, and it doesn't work. “With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was sick to death of it.”

I have to wonder: why did Samson stick with a woman who's obvious sole purpose was to find out his weakness and destroy him? What kind of toxic, unhealthy relationship is that?

Anyway, eventually, Samson is worn down, and he tells he that if he got a haircut he would lose his strength. So he falls asleep, and she cuts his hair. Surprise! I just don't get why he would tell her that, or why he would have stayed after he did.

After his haircut, the Philistines captured him, “gouged out his eyes” (gross), and put him in prison. The Philistines were so excited that they finally caught Samson that they had a party. They brought Samson out of prison to “entertain” them. Samson prayed, “Please, God, strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” Always with the vengeance. I had this crazy idea that God didn't support vengeance in his followers, but I guess all that “forgiveness” stuff wasn't until the New Testament.

Anyway, God gave him the strength to push down some pillars, collapsing a temple on himself and 3000 Philistines.

So that's the end of Samson. It seems to me like it could be a story about how stupid and self-destructive vengeance is. He lost one riddle, and he kept escalating it from there, until he ended up imprisoned, eyes gouged out, and crushed under a collapsed temple.

Of course, the lessons I was apparently supposed to learn are: don't trust women, sex = bad, obedience to God = super human strength, disobedience = weakness. Sigh.

Judges 13-14: Samson and the world's most unsolvable riddle

Well, now we're up to Samson, the guy who got a haircut and lost his strength. And that's all I know about that guy! Let's see what else happens.

Anyway, it should really go without saying at this point, the Israelites "did evil in the eyes of the Lord," whatever that means, and God manufactures trouble for them, then he feels sorry for them and sends a new leader. Samson!

Samson's mother was barren and childless, and an angel showed up and told her she was going to have a baby, so she shouldn't drink alcohol. Hey Bible, that's actually good advice! Good job. But it's not because alcohol is terrible for the health of the baby, but because Samson is going to be a Nazirite. As we learned in Numbers, what makes a Nazirite is the teetotalling and the long hair. So also, don't cut the kid's hair. Other than that, I have no idea what a Nazirite is.

So the mother (Zorah) tells this to her husband (Manoah). He prays for the angel to come tell him all about it. I guess he doesn't trust his wife, or something. Oh, Biblical marriage. The angel comes to visit Zorah again while she's out on her own. Guess that angel just really doesn't want to talk to her husband, lol. She runs to get Manoah and brings him back to the angel (I guess the angel just waited there). The angel is like "as I already told your wife, the exact same thing I said before."

Manoah tells the angel to stay while they prepare a goat. The angel says he won't eat, but he will hang out, and while they're at it they should make a burnt offering to God. When they do that, "as the flame blazed up from the altar toward heaven, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame." I guess they didn't realize it was an angel before, because Manoah says, “We are doomed to die!” I guess this is one of the parts where you die if you see God, the Bible really can't make up it's mind about that.

Anyway, they live, and Samson is born.

Some time later, Samson the eligible bachelor sees a Philistine woman he wants to marry, so he tells his parents, "go get her for me." Like some kid who wants a candy bar, for christ's sake. His parents are all sad that he doesn't want to inbreed with some relative, but they agree. On the way to Timnah, where this girl lives, Samson is attacked by a lion. He "tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat." I don't know what it's like to tear a young goat apart by hand. Is this some sort of universal experience in the bronze age? Were people reading this at the time going, “My goodness! I tear young goats apart by hand all the time, so I know exactly how easy or difficult that would be!” I assume I am to infer that Samson is unusually strong.

Then I guess they went there, met the girl, made some arrangements and left, because the next thing that happens is that Samson returns to the lion carcass some time later, and finds a bee nest in it. Does this actually happen, bee nests in animal carcasses? Oh well. Samson eats the honey. Gross.

When they (Samson and his parents) get to Timnah to claim Samson's bride, Samson bets some guys they can't answer his riddle within 7 days, the wager is 30 linen garments. This is the riddle:

Out of the eater, something to eat;
out of the strong, something sweet.

I've heard this riddle before, and I always thought it was so stupid. The answer, apparently, is "honey in a lion carcass." I'm no expert, but I thought riddles were supposed to have an actual answer that was possible to arrive at by just thinking about it. The only way this riddle can possibly make any goddamn sense is if you happen to know this story. You could just as well say "kit-kats in a bear carcass" or "maple syrup in a wolf carcass." Any sweet food that somehow made its way inside any large carnivorous animal.

Anyway, they obviously can't answer the riddle, because it's a bad riddle. They ask Samson's new wife to find out the answer, and she spends the rest of the week crying and badgering and guilt-tripping, until Samson finally tells her. So she tells her friends, who pretend they solved it.

So, Samson got super pissed. He killed 30 guys and gave their clothes to the riddlers as their reward. Because that's reasonable. Then he went off home in a huff, and his wife was “given” to some other guy, without her consent, although that should really go without saying at this point.

Judges 10-12: Fucking human sacrifice

Now we've come to one of my favorites... the story of Jephthah.  It's much like that one time when Abraham almost killed Isaac, except if he had actually killed him.

But first, the usual bullshit... the Israelites "sin" and are generally "evil," God gets pissed and sends a bunch of people to attack them.  The Ammonites in particular are being a nuisance in Gilead, and the people there decide that, for whatever reason, they absolutely need Jephthah to lead the attack against them.  Some time ago, Jephthah's brothers chased him away because his mother was a prostitute (obviously), but these people win him to their cause by saying he gets to be leader of Gilead if he'll do it.

So Jephthah and the leader of the Ammonite army exchange some messages... Jephthah wants to know why the Ammonites are attacking Gilead, they say it's because the Israelites stole their land back when they first left Egypt and they want it back.  Jephthah says, "We didn't take your land, our god gave it to us!  Why don't you just take whatever your god gives you, and be happy with that!"  No problem with that, clearly.  Oh, your god gave you the same land that our god gave us?  Now I'm at a complete loss for what to do, I guess we should just bludgeon and stab each other to death now.

So that's what they do.  Right before the battle, Jephthah makes this promise to God:

If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.

What a fucking moron.  Maybe it was way more common back then to have, like, goats or chickens coming out of your door to greet after a hard day's battle, but isn't much more likely to be his wife or daugther?  Or maybe a servant?  Some sort of human, for the burnt sacrifice?  Hmm.

Anyway, the Israelites win the battle and Jephthah goes home.  And guess who comes out of the house first?  His only daughter!  Surprise!  He allows her to go off into the woods with her friends for two months to mourn her virginity, or something.  I figured this was a flimsy pretext she came up with to get away, and it worked!  Run, girl, run!  But no, for some stupid reason she comes back to her stupid, murderous father, and "he did to her as he had vowed. And she was a virgin."  Well goodie, at least she was a virgin.  What the fuck does that have to do with anything.

Great biblical morals in this story.  Jephthah murders his daughter as a human sacrifice to God, and God doesn't say anything about it whatsoever, meaning that he either approved or wasn't paying attention.  Either way, I'm disgusted.  As usual.

Here's a great video about this story:

After that, Jephthah leads another battle against Ephraim, for some reason.  They won (even though Jephthah is fresh out of daughters to murder) and killed everyone who lived there, including the one guy who tried to pretend he was from somewhere else, but he couldn't pronounce "Sibboleth" correctly.  Then Jephthah dies and it lists a few people who ruled after him.  Very exciting.

Judges 9: Abimelek is almost killed by a woman...the horror!

So, Gideon is dead and the Israelites are back to their horrible wicked ways. His son, Abimelek, decides he wants to be the leader now. To prevent his 70 (!) brothers from getting in the way, he murders them all, except for the youngest, Jotham, who escapes.

The people crown him their king. (I was wondering why they would want the horrible guy who murdered 70 of his brothers to be the king, but we learn later than they helped. So, that's great.) During the ceremony, Jotham shows up and tells a confusing parable (which, apparently, are not only for Jesus). It's about some trees who want to pick out a king, and they go around asking various trees if they'll do it, and they refuse. Finally they ask the thornbush to be the king, and it agrees, but promises to burn down the cedars of Lebanon, whatever that is. Whatever that's all about... I guess Abimelek is the piece of crap thornbush of the story. Or something.

Shockingly, Jotham fails to persuade the people that Abimelek will be a bad king (I'm just assuming that was his goal, I have no idea what's going on), probably because they didn't know what the crap he was talking about. So Jotham runs away and hides for 3 years.

Meanwhile, Abimelek is king, and God "stirs up animosity" between Abimelek and the people. He does it to avenge the 70 murdered brothers; in typical fashion, God chooses to exert his supposedly omnipotent power, not when it might have actually done any good, but for revenge when it's too late.

Now we get a little story that is, I suppose, the main result of this civil unrest. Someone named Gaal moves to a town called Shechem, which is under Abimelek's juristiction. At some party Gaal gets the people all riled up, saying that some other guy should be the leader. Viva la revolution! This guy Zebul hears this and, being loyal to Abimelek, sends him a message telling him to come attack Gaal. So they come the next morning, Gaal and his people fight them, and they (Gaal et al) are all killed or chased off.

You'd think the story would be over now, wouldn't you? But no. Abimelek has to destroy the entire city and kill everyone there, even though they had next to nothing to do with Gaal's harmless little comment. The next day he destroys the city when everyone goes out to work in the fields. The survivors go to some stronghold (Helm's Deep?). Abimelek goes there and sets it on fire with everyone inside.

Having utterly destroyed Shechem and all of its people for their tangential involvement with Gaal and his drunken boasting, he goes and attacks some city called Thebez. I cannot figure out what this place has to do with anything, other than Abimelek is on a roll and it's the next random target. All the people in the town lock themselves in a tower, and some woman drops a big stone on Abimelek and cracks his skull. Abimelek asks one of his men to kill him, so that no one will ever say that he was killed by a woman. Wow. Misogyny taken to the extreme, I guess? I don't even know what to say about that.

Judges 6-8: Did Gideon get away with building an idol?

So, as per usual, the Israelites are "evil" for 7 years, and God makes the Midianites oppress them. The Israelites ask God for help, and he sends another leader, Gideon. An angel appears to Gideon, and says "the Lord is with you." Gideon is like, if God is with us, then why do our lives suck so badly? Smart man. I like him already. The angel's proof that God is with them is that he will give Gideon the strength to overcome the enemies that God himself sent. Yep, impeccable logic, that.

Gideon, however, is still not convinced. He asks the angel to wait while he prepares an offering. He puts his offering on a rock, and when the angel touches the rock with his staff, the bread is consumed with fire and the angel vanishes. Now he is convinced! And also freaked out, because apparently you can't see God and live, so he thinks he's going to die now. But God is like, relax! You're not going to die.

Yep, it just keeps switching back and forth about whether you can see God and live. My guess is that you die after looking at God if God already wanted to kill you anyway.

Also, as usual, the bible can't seem to tell the difference between angels and God. I still haven't figured that one out.

Anywho, God tells him to destroy his father's alter to Baal (the main competitor god) and build one to him in its place. So he does this, the people find out it was Gideon and they tell his father to bring him out to be killed. His father is like, “What the hell kind of crap god is Baal if he can't even defend his own alter?” This is a truly excellent point, and everyone clearly saw the truth of his words and did not kill Gideon. Actually, I'm not sure why they didn't kill him, but that's what I like to think.

So Gideon summons a bunch of the Israelites to him to attack the Midianites. But first, he asks God for more proof that he's doing the right thing...he tells God he's going to put some wool out overnight, and if only the wool is damp with dew and the ground is dry then he'll believe him. And guess what, that happened. The next day he says he's going to leave the wool out and this time he wants dew on only the ground, and guess what, that happened too. Fairly smart actually, to make sure that the wool wouldn't just soak up the dew whether God was involved or not.

Now that Gideon is good and convinced, we can get on to the part where they lay waste to those Midianites for their horrible crime of being a pawn in God's stupid "fuck with the Israelites" game. But first, God is concerned that the victory won't glorify him sufficiently, so he reduces their number from 32,000 to 300.

God wakes Gideon up in the middle of the night and tells him to go attack the enemy, who are apparently “thick as locusts.” If, God says, he is nervous for some silly reason, he should go spy on their camp. He goes and overhears one guy telling another guy about a dream he had in which a loaf of bread knocks down a tent, and they decide that obviously it all means that God is on the Israelites' side. Clearly the bread had no yeast in it.

So, I guess hearing that his enemy was scared of him made him feel better. He attacks, and what an attack it is. His 300 people stand around with trumpets in one hand and torches in the other (so apparently no weapons) and just wait while their enemies kill each other. Some of them run away and they are killed by Israelites, and a bunch of other people are killed too. Great.

Now that things are all peachy again, the Israelites ask Gideon to lead them. He says "no!" and then proceeds to be the leader anyway. He got some of the gold from all their killing and looting, and makes what sounds suspiciously like an idol ("Gideon made the gold into an ephod, which he placed in Ophrah, his town. All Israel prostituted themselves by worshiping it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his family."), but apparently God doesn't care. He doesn't say anything about it, at any rate.

So, while Gideon lived (4o years) everything was great! Then he dies, and immediately the Israelites start worshipping Baal again. Sigh. This whole story is so lame (still). The Israelites turn from God for some reason, God punishes them but for some reason doesn't destroy them entirely even though he would clearly like to, then the Israelites come back to God for some unknown and unfathomable reason. Repeat forever. This shit has been going on since Exodus, it sucked then and it sucks now. The characters suck, the plot sucks, and there's no motivation for anything that happens.

Furthermore, God promised them such horrible doom (eating their own babies and such) if they ever turned from him. They have done that several times now, and basically all God has done about it is to send some people with chariots to generally be a nuisance now and then. Where's all the doom? I was expecting doom. Seriously.

Judges 3-5: God hires an assassin

Chapter 2 was like an overview of the many years after the conquest of the promised land. It said basically that God kept giving them leaders, and while the leader lived things were more or less OK, but as soon as they died the Israelites were right back into their "evil" ways...I guess until God picks out the next leader (which you'd think he could have done more quickly, without such a big gap for "evilness" inbetween, but whatever). Starting in chapter 3, we get some details.

We get some detail about the assassination of Eglod, which is at least a story. At some point, the Israelites let some foreigner (gasp!), Eglod, be their king. They didn't like him apparently, because they "cried out" to God, and he sent an assassin, Ehud. He went to see the king with a short sword hidden under his clothing, and told him that he had a "secret message" for him. So the king sent all this people away (idiot). When they're alone, Ehud says he has a message from God, and stabs him in the stomach. BAM!

Next time someone says they have a message from God, look out, they may be about to stab you. You never know.

And now for the clever escape...he closes the door when he leaves, and all his servants assume the king is going to the bathroom, so they wait "to the point of embarrassment." Meanwhile, Ehud gets away. How exciting. They should make that into a movie! Anyway, then he convinces the Israelites that they should attack Moab, and they kill everyone there, just like the old days.

Ehud is leader for a while, and things are good while he's alive. After he dies, the Israelites start being all "evil" again. God gets pissed, again, and gets some people with chariots (oh god no, chariots!) to "cruelly oppress" them. This goes on until the Israelites "cry out" to God, which apparently takes 20 years.

At this point, the Israelites happen to be lead by a woman, Deborah. I cannot express how surprised I am that there was ever a woman leading the Israelites. Anyway, she says that they need to go attack these people with the chariots. This whole story is really confusing and poorly written. Deborah tells this guy Barak that he needs to go attack the chariot people, who she will be leading (how the hell does she intend to pull that off? who knows.) and thus they will win. Barak says that he will only do it if Deborah leads their people with him. She agrees (but what about her mighty and nonsensical plan?), but warns him that he will get no honor from this. Because there was going to be honor for Barak in leading an army into a sham battle against a force that Deborah has already co-opted. Whatever. I clearly don't understand "honor."

They go, there's a battle, and with God's help they kill everyone except the leader, Sisera. So, apparently God can handle the chariots, he's just chosen not to all this time. Great. Anyway, Sisera gets away and makes it to Jael, who is the wife of some ally, and he takes a nap in her tent. While he's sleeping, she drives a tent peg through his head. We never get to find out why she would do this and ruin her husband's alliances, she just does it for no apparent reason. Good story-telling, that.

Then Deborah and Barak spend a chapter singing a song about how awesome they are. I don't think it's about much else.