Good Book

by David Plotz

  Daniel, who’s one tough cookie, resolves not to assimilate and not to betray God. He refuses to eat the trayf Babylonian food, and persuades their supervisor to let him and his three pals subsist on beans, while all the other boys gorge on the king’s bacon cheeseburgers and lobster rolls. But God loves their kosher diet, and they prove healthier, stronger, and wiser than the young courtiers. Daniel gains special favor for his ability to interpret dreams and visions.

  CHAPTER 2

  Nebuchadnezzar has a disturbing dream and orders his magicians to explain it to him—or be torn limb from limb. The problem is that he refuses to tell them what happened in the dream. So, they first have to guess what his dream was, then interpret it. Impossible!

  Well, not so hard if I were king, because I have the most literal dreams in the world. My wife could do this guessing-interpreting thing in a snap. Let’s say I was anxious that our car was having problems; my morning conversation with Hanna would go like this.

  David: Hanna, guess what I dreamed last night?

  Hanna: I bet you dreamed that the car was having problems and needed to go to the shop.

  David: You’re right! How did you know? What do you think it means?

  Hanna: What it means, sweetie, is that you think the car is having problems and needs to go to the shop.

  The pagan magicians fail at the guessing game, naturally. So, Nebuchadnezzar flies into a rage and—like Pol Pot—orders all the wise men in the kingdom killed. But before that happens, Daniel visits the king and offers to interpret the dream. Aided by God, Daniel says that the king dreamed of a great statue of gold, silver, and bronze that was crushed by stone from a mountain. Then he says that the dream means the king’s empire will be destroyed, and eventually another kingdom will rise to rule the earth. Nebuchadnezzar is so impressed that he appoints Daniel and Daniel’s friends as top officials.

  CHAPTER 3

  Nebuchadnezzar, who appears to be painfully literal-minded, commissions a statue ninety feet high and orders his subjects to worship it. Anyone who doesn’t bow down will be tossed into a fiery furnace. A few Babylonian anti-Semites inform the king that the Jews refuse to worship the statue. (Note the echoes of the book of Esther, in which Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman. Perhaps it is more accurate to say: note the echoes of Daniel in Esther. Daniel seems to have been written first.) Daniel’s three friends are singled out for their refusal to bow down. Nebuchadnezzar orders them tossed into the furnace. They say that God will protect them. He orders the furnace turned up to extra-crispy—it’s so hot that even the Babylonian guards are incinerated by the radiant heat. But when the three friends are tossed in, they relax in the blaze as though in a sauna. They emerge from the fire unscathed, and accompanied by a mysterious fourth man ( Jesus, according to many Christians). Nebuchadnezzar is astonished, promotes them, and makes blasphemy against the Lord a capital crime.

  CHAPTER 4

  A weird chapter: All of a sudden, Nebuchadnezzar himself is the narrator. He has another dream, about a tree that’s chopped down. Daniel is summoned. Anxious, he tells the king that he wishes the dream were about someone else. But it isn’t. The dream means that Nebuchadnezzar himself will be chopped down by God. Sure enough, a year later the king is walking on the palace roof, congratulating himself on his power, when a voice from heaven rings out, “The kingdom has passed out of your hands.”

  At this point, Nebuchadnezzar goes cuckoo crazy, completely nutso. He becomes a homeless loon, eating grass like a cow, growing hair like feathers. It’s very like The Madness of King George. After seven years, Nebuchadnezzar’s sanity returns, as suddenly as it was taken away. Why does he get his marbles back? Because he embraces the Lord. Yes, his majesty Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, the sacker of Jerusalem, the scourge of the Jews, the villain of the books of Kings, Isaiah, and Psalms, has suddenly become a worshipper of God! It’s like Pharaoh coming to a seder.

  CHAPTERS 5-6

  Fast-forward several years. Nebuchadnezzar’s son, King Belshazzar, holds a swanky banquet for 1,000 nobles, gets ripsnorting drunk, and tells his servants to bring out the gold and silver vessels looted from the Temple in Jerusalem. Bad idea. As the Babylonians toast their idols using God’s cups, a ghostly hand appears in the room and scrawls a message on the wall of the palace (the original “writing on the wall”). It’s a Stephen King moment, not least for the king, who is so scared that “his knees knocked together.” None of Belshazzar’s magicians or scribes can read the message. Finally the queen, who has more common sense than the rest of the court put together, tells the king to call Daniel. The king promises Daniel power and glory if he can read the inscription. Daniel first rebukes Belshazzar for rejecting God, reminding him how idolatry drove his father, Nebuchadnezzar, crazy. Then Daniel translates the mysterious words, which are: “God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end…. [Y]ou have been weighed in the balance and found wanting…. [Y]our kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.” Strangely, the king isn’t perturbed by Daniel’s dire prophecy. He even makes good on his promise and names Daniel as one of his top ministers.

  But Belshazzar is killed that very night, and Darius the Mede (of Persia) conquers the kingdom. Darius retains Daniel as his adviser. Daniel is at least the third such biblical hero to rise to prime minister in a foreign land. (Joseph and Mordecai are the others.) It’s a curious role. I wonder if there is something in the nature of Judaism that makes this ministerial position so suitable. Perhaps Jews, when they’re in the minority, must always balance power and modesty. Their learning (or, in this case, divine inspiration) prepares them for positions of authority, but their status as outsiders bars them from the top job. So they settle into power behind the throne. (See Henry Kissinger.) Or maybe I am making too much of a few examples.

  In yet another Haman-like attempt to “entrap the Jew,” envious Persian ministers scheme to oust Daniel from Darius’s court. They have Darius issue a decree barring his subjects from addressing prayers to anyone except Darius himself. The penalty: a night in the lions’ den. Daniel, though aware of the law, prays to God anyway. His rivals catch him and bring him to the king, who is dismayed that his favorite is in trouble. But the king can’t undo his own law and has Daniel sentenced to the lions’ den. (The king actually seals the mouth of the den himself, with a stone.) Darius can’t sleep, and when morning comes, he races to the den and rolls back the stone—um, does this remind you of another Bible story?—and finds Daniel, fit as a fiddle. Daniel says that God sent an angel to shut the lions’ mouths.

  I always thought the story ended here, with Daniel’s rescue and Darius’s turn toward God. But, like many of the Bible stories I thought I knew but didn’t, the lions’ den has a gruesome coda. As soon as Daniel is rescued, Darius orders the arrest of the “men who slandered Daniel.” (This, of course, is an unfair characterization of them. They did not slander Daniel. Daniel broke the law about prayer. It was a stupid law, but Darius signed it. They were just enforcing it.) The men—and their wives and children—are sentenced to the lions’ den. “They had hardly reached the bottom of the den when the lions overpowered them and crushed all their bones.” Good God. Add this to the biblical roster of excessive revenge and collective punishment.

  CHAPTER 7-12

  The rest of Daniel is a letdown after the preceding melodrama, though its prophecies are apparently important to Christianity. The second half of the book largely consists of trippy visions: winged lions and ten-horned beasties; a huge ram attacked by an enormous goat; a man with a body like beryl, a face like lightning, eyes like torches, etc. These visions are all about geopolitics and the end of days. Long story short: after a lot of geopolitical maneuvering, a great prince named Michael will show up, the dead will awaken, and the righteous will triumph. Do I even need to mention that there will be “appalling abomination[s]” all along the way?

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah

  Coming Home


  In which the Persian emperor encourages Jews to return to Jerusalem, where they rebuild the Temple; the scholar Ezra restores God’s law and rails against intermarriage; the general Nehemiah rebuilds the city walls, over the objections of Arab neighbors.

  The books of Ezra and Nehemiah recount much the same event—the repopulating of Jerusalem—from slightly different angles. The book of Ezra is told by a holy man. The book of Nehemiah is told by a politician. The first is more concerned with God and faith; the second with men and deeds. The books aren’t hugely interesting—though at this late stage in my Bible reading, I must confess, Ezra would have to invent cold fusion and conjure up a magical army of Penélope Cruz look-alikes to get me really excited.

  THE BOOK OF EZRA

  Chapters 1–4

  Having conquered Babylon, Emperor Cyrus of Persia invites all Jews to return home to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. More than 40,000 Jews return, and quickly rebuild the foundation of the Temple. They hold a buoyant, song-filled celebration. The oldest Jews, the ones who can still remember worshipping at the original Temple before Nebuchadnezzar sacked it, weep with joy when they see the new foundation. The younger Jews, meanwhile, shout with joy. This leads to a lovely verse: “The people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shouts from the sound of the people’s weeping.” Isn’t it wonderful the way memory, sorrow, joy, and the passage of time are all rolled up in that single sentence?

  Chapters 5–6

  There’s a stop-work order on the Temple, because neighboring tribes object to the new building. (Even before zoning laws, there was NIMBY.) The new provincial governor, who doesn’t want to be stuck with a half-finished building, overrules the neighbors. The empire mandates the death penalty for anyone who tries to stop the project. (A provocative idea: I’m surprised Phoenix or some other pro-growth city hasn’t experimented with capital punishment for enviros and other bulldozer-blockers.) The Jews finish the Temple and celebrate the first Israeli Passover in a long time. This is the Temple that stood until the Romans sacked it 500 years later, the Temple where the miracle of Hanukkah occurred, the Temple where Jesus routed the money changers.

  Chapter 7

  The emperor dispatches the Torah scholar Ezra to Jerusalem, authorizing him to appoint judges and collect taxes. The emperor also declares that the Torah is the law of the land. It’s the first official establishment of the Jewish faith outside a Jewish kingdom.

  Chapters 9–10

  As soon as Ezra arrives, he discovers that the earlier Jewish returnees—even the priests—have committed an abomination by marrying local Canaanite girls. The “holy seed” of the Jews has been contaminated. Aware of the Torah’s teachings on mixed marriage, Ezra is beside himself. He tears his hair and beard out, apologizes to God for abandoning His commandments and polluting His land, and begs Him to have mercy.

  What follows is an extraordinary (though appalling, for reasons we will discuss) act of collective responsibility. While Ezra is weeping and “throwing himself down before the house of God,” all the Israelites gather to discuss their sin. They agree that they’ve wronged God with intermarriage but decide that there’s still hope for Israel. In an astonishing consensus, they agree to banish the alien wives and the children of intermarriage. This will restore the Jews’ blood purity and mollify God. In a rainstorm, all the Israelite men swear an oath to ditch their foreign wives. Then the book publishes a long, long list of men, followed by this verse, the final line in Ezra: “All these had married foreign women, and they sent them away with their children.”

  This is one of the very few times in the Bible that the Israelites accept responsibility for their sin and take strong, difficult measures to appease God. Yet it’s also horrifying. I don’t want to get self-righteous here. I took enough anthropology and history classes in college to know that group solidarity and blood purity are important to almost all cultures at almost all times. Only a few, rare societies, such as ours, welcome mixing and difference. So I know I’m imposing my patchwork-quilt idealism on my ancient ancestors when I say that it’s sickening to imagine the wives and children expelled from Jerusalem for an accident of birth. (These days, the rabbis would enlist those gentile wives to bring the bagels for a post-Shabbat brunch.) This is yet another reminder of the Bible’s radical morality. God does not put families first. He will let them be destroyed to preserve the faith.

  THE BOOK OF NEHEMIAH

  Chapters 1–2

  Nehemiah, the Jewish cupbearer to the ruler of Persia, is heartbroken to learn that Jerusalem is a shambles. He’s so sad that he can’t even bear a cup without getting weepy. Rather than throwing him into a lions’ den or impaling him on a stake—the usual response of Persian monarchs to dour underlings—Emperor Artaxerxes asks Nehemiah what’s wrong. Nehemiah explains that he’s bummed about Jerusalem. The king agrees to let Nehemiah return to rebuild the city and its walls. (The action of Nehemiah comes after the events of Ezra: The Temple has already been rebuilt in Jerusalem, but the city lies undefended.)

  Nehemiah arrives in Jerusalem and rallies its Jews to join his wall project. But not all is milk and honey in the Holy Land. Nehemiah realizes that three non-Jewish local governors—Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arab—are seething about the plan to rebuild Jerusalem. They fear, quite reasonably, that a walled Jerusalem will be a mightier city, and a threat to its neighbors.

  Let’s pause for a moment to observe the entrance of the Bible’s first and only “Arab.” Arabia is referred to a few times in passing in various books, and anonymous “Arabians” are mentioned, but Geshem is the single named Arab. The whole scene is almost too depressing—or too funny—to believe. There is just one conversation between a Jew and an Arab in the entire Bible. When Geshem the Arab and his cronies hear that Nehemiah is rebuilding the wall, they “mocked and ridiculed” him. Nehemiah responds by saying: “The God of heaven is the one who will give us success, and we His servants are going to start building; but you have no share or claim or historic right in Jerusalem.” In what can be seen as a darkly humorous divine joke, the only Arab in the Bible turns out to be (1) an enemy of the Jews and (2) at odds with them over who should control Jerusalem. It’s 2,500 years later: Has anything changed?

  Chapters 3–6

  Under Nehemiah’s command, the Jerusalemites begin rebuilding the gates and walls of the city. Geshem, Sanballat, and Tobiah continue to mock and scheme. (To be fair to Geshem the Arab, the other two are much nastier. Sanballat, for example, mutters, “What are the miserable Jews doing?”) The three enemies harass and terrorize the Jews so much that Nehemiah has to suspend the wall project. Eventually, Nehemiah sends his men back to the walls, but half of them have to provide security while the other half pile stones. Still, they manage to complete the wall in just fifty-two days. Nehemiah is the biblical role model for our ambitious big-city mayors, undertaking massive construction projects, fending off sniping critics, rallying the little guys without losing the elite—a Fiorello La Guardia of the Levant.

  Chapter 8

  Ezra kicks off the celebration of the wall’s completion by reading the whole Torah to the assembly. The book inspires the Israelites, who realize while they listen that it’s time for the holiday of Sukkoth, which they haven’t kept for generations, although Sukkoth is mandated by the Torah. The whole country stops to observe the holiday—the same holiday that Jews celebrate today. It’s fascinating, and rather humbling, to realize that once more the book guarantees Jewish survival. By reading the Torah, the Jerusalemites are able to make themselves Jewish again.

  Chapter 13

  The most interesting parallel between Nehemiah and Ezra is found in the last few verses of this final chapter. Like the book of Ezra, the book of Nehemiah ends with an uproar over intermarriage. Nehemiah notices that Jews are marrying Moabite and Ammonite women, and their kids can’t even speak Hebrew. He gets the Jews to promise to stop intermarrying. Nehemiah cites the example of King Solomon, who despi
te being beloved by God and the smartest man in the world, was brought low by marrying foreign women. Nehemiah beats up, curses, and pulls out the hair of some of the intermarrying sinners. But let’s notice how the episode does not end. In Ezra, all the foreign wives and children were exiled. In Nehemiah, there’s no such purge. The Israelites promise not to sin in the future, but, unlike Ezra, Nehemiah doesn’t break up the families. The infidel wives and half-breed kids get to stay. Perhaps that reflects the difference between the zealous priest and the pragmatic governor. The holy man Ezra can afford to be uncompromising in the service of God. But Nehemiah has to keep his citizens happy and maintain civil relations with his idolatrous neighbors. Nehemiah knows what every office-seeker since him has learned: a politician doesn’t have the luxury of idealism.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The Books of 1 and 2 Chronicles

  Return of the Kings

  In which the events described in the books of Samuel and Kings are recounted again.

  The Christian Bible locates the two books of Chronicles with the other historical books in the middle of the Old Testament. But Jews shove Chronicles into the trunk, at the very end of our Bible. The Jewish way makes more sense, I suspect. That’s because Chronicles is largely a rehash of other books, mostly Samuel and Kings, but told more quickly and with less flair. It doesn’t rate a place of honor.