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

by David Plotz

  The Lord rages against Solomon’s idolatry and vows to take the kingdom away from his descendants. Jeroboam rebels against Solomon. The Lord ordains that Israel be split, with Solomon’s heirs ruling only Judah, and Jeroboam controlling the rest of the country. This division—the end of the unified kingdom of Israel—is the enormously high price the Chosen People must pay for Solomon’s idolatry.

  chapters 12–14

  There’s no sorrier figure than the incompetent son of a powerful man. King Rehoboam has inherited none of his father Solomon’s gifts. Instead, Rehoboam is an Odai Hussein / Kim Jong-il type of son— megalomaniacal, jealous, incompetent, and surrounded by moronic yes-men. As soon as Rehoboam is crowned, his Israelite subjects petition him to reduce the forced labor Solomon imposed on them. Rehoboam’s older advisers urge him to lighten the burden, assuring him that this will guarantee the Israelites’ loyalty.

  But the king’s dumb homeboys—literally, “the young men who had grown up with him”—tell him, in the crudest possible way, that he should overwork the people instead. They advise him to tell the Israelites: “My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins. Now whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.”

  Look at that first sentence again. “My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins.” I wonder if the word “loins” is a translator’s euphemism. Think of a male body part that is similar in shape to a finger and that an uncouth young man might brag about. Translators, am I right? The last sentence is also memorable: “I will discipline you with scorpions.” It’s a creepy reminder that horror-movie-style sadism has been around as long as there have been young men.

  Rehoboam orders the Israelites to work harder (shades of Egypt here). That turns out to be a disastrous public policy. All the Israelites, except the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, rebel against Rehoboam, stoning his minister of forced labor to death and then inciting a civil war between Israel and Judah that will persist for centuries.

  After the revolt against Rehoboam, the other ten northern tribes choose the rebel Jeroboam as their king. He’s no prize, either. Jeroboam worries that his Israelites will keep making pilgrimages to the Temple, which is in Jerusalem, the capital of Rehoboam’s Judah. These pilgrimages, he fears, will make his subjects side with the rival king against him. It’s a choice between securing his power or honoring the Lord. Guess which he chooses. Jeroboam casts two golden calves and installs these idols in new temples that he builds at Bethel and Dan. More golden calves? The Israelites have learned absolutely nothing!

  Yet God doesn’t react to the two new golden calves with the genocidal rage he displayed when Aaron made one calf at Mount Sinai. The Lord is oddly quiet—and this raises a puzzling question about Him. In Genesis and Exodus, God retaliated as rapidly and ferociously as an assistant principal in a junior high school cafeteria. Utter a stray oath—He’d smite you. Light the wrong incense—He’d smite you. Grumble about Moses—the earth would swallow you up. He overlooked no misdemeanors; He gave no second chances. But here we have the king of Israel—the divinely anointed ruler of God’s own Chosen People—rejecting the Lord in favor of golden calves, thus breaking the Bible’s most important law, and He doesn’t even toss a lightning bolt. Something has radically changed in the relationship between God and His people.

  Why has the Lord withdrawn from the action? I can think of several reasons. First, like any good parent, He may have realized it’s time to cut the apron strings. When they were in the wilderness, the Israelites really needed Him, so He was a daily, hectoring presence in their lives. Now they’re rich and secure in Israel, and He’s giving them space to make their own mistakes. Second, maybe He’s disgusted with them. The Israelites have blown countless chances to obey His laws, and He’s sick of dealing with them. Rather than smiting or haranguing them, He has decided enough is enough. He’s done with them. They can worship calves, marry idolators, break the Sabbath, whatever—it’s not His problem anymore.

  Third—and this is the explanation I believe—we ascribe grandeur to the far past. The present, by contrast, seems mundane. The Bible was written down long after the events of Genesis, Exodus, etc.

  supposedly occurred, but right around the time of the events in Kings. As we know from various religious and mythical traditions, events in the distant past—events passed down by oral tradition—become exaggerated and aggrandized. It’s very easy to attribute ancient dramas to divine intervention. There was an earthquake or a plague? It must have been God’s revenge for a rebellion. The Israelites fled Egypt? Well then, God held back the Red Sea. The passage of time allowed the authors of the Bible to see the hand of God everywhere. But as biblical events get closer to the time of writing, there are more obvious human explanations. That was surely as true for the authors of the Bible as it is for us, and that’s probably why they imagined that God interfered so much in the Israelites’ daily lives in Exodus, but was only a shadowy presence during their own time.

  Bad King Rehoboam flouts the Lord by hiring “male temple prostitutes” who commit many abominations. Who are these prostitutes, and what do they do? Is this a Midnight Cowboy kind of situation? Is the problem their maleness or their prostitution? (On the upside, at least there’s finally a prostitute in the Bible who’s not a woman.)

  Feckless Rehoboam loses a war to the Egyptians, who seize all the trea sures from the Temple and palace—those twenty-four-carat ornaments so lovingly collected by Solomon. Rehoboam replaces what he can, but with bronze. Not gold but bronze—that tells us everything we need to know about the difference between Solomon and his son.

  chapters 15–16

  Let’s pause for a brief word of explanation. The two books of Kings are a complicated double narrative following the rival kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The southern kingdom of Judah includes Jerusalem. Israel, to the north, is home to ten tribes and the majority of the people. In general, the books portray the kings of Judah as more appealing and faithful than the vicious, idolatrous kings of Israel. There’s an obvious historical reason for this, according to most biblical scholars. The books were compiled by editors from Judah after the northern kingdom had been devastated by the Assyrian conquest. The books justify the destruction of the northern kingdom by depicting it as corrupt and godless, while admiring the pro-God policies of Judah’s kings and emphasizing the centrality of Jerusalem to the religion.

  Here’s an example. Judah’s good King Asa expels the temple prostitutes, topples idols, and even ousts his own mother, who worships abominations. In the northern kingdom, by contrast, one thuggish king follows another. Baasha slaughters Jeroboam’s whole clan. Zimri, in turn, assassinates the evil Baasha. Seven days later, Omri overthrows Zimri. Omri is a dreadful king, too. Pretty soon he dies, and his son Ahab succeeds him. Ahab’s the worst of the lot. He erects an altar to Baal and marries Jezebel. (It’s always a bad move to marry a woman named Jezebel.) Ahab “did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him.” When you consider the louts who preceded him, that’s an impressively large amount of evil.

  chapter 17

  During the Passover seder, Jews pour an extra glass of wine for the prophet Elijah and leave the door open so he can drop in. But grab a shot of Manischewitz and crack open the front door, because Elijah has come early this year! He arrives at the beginning of 1 Kings 17, sent by God to bedev il King Ahab, who, quite frankly, deserves bedev iling. Elijah shows up, warns Ahab that God will send a drought, and immediately disappears into the wilderness. He takes refuge in a wadi, one of the riverbed canyons common in Israel. In an unexplained but mesmerizing passage, God orders the ravens of the wadi to feed Elijah. The ravens deliver bread and meat twice a day, a kind of happy reversal of The Birds.

  Elijah is a proto-Jesus figure, performing miracles that Jesus will repeat in the New Testament. You’ve heard what Jesus did with loaves and fishes? Check out Elijah’s trick with flo
ur and olive oil. After Elijah leaves the wadi, which has dried up in the drought, he begs some bread and water from an old woman. She apologizes that she has no food left to give him. Her olive oil jug is almost empty, and she’s down to her last few crumbs of meal. No problem for Elijah, who conjures up a never-ending oil flagon and an all-you-can-eat flour jar. And he’s not finished. The woman’s ailing son dies, and she blames Elijah. Elijah lies down three times on the corpse and prays for God to revive the boy. God brings him back to life. Take that, Lazarus!

  chapter 18

  This is a great chapter. It has the Bible’s most thrilling “me against the world” climax. When the chapter starts, the drought has not ended, and Baal-worshipping Queen Jezebel is murdering the Lord’s prophets. Elijah visits Ahab and Jezebel to rebuke them. As soon as Elijah walks into the room, he and the king start slinging insults as if they’re playing the dozens. Ahab greets the prophet, “Is that you, you troubler of Israel?” Elijah responds, “It is not I who have brought trouble to Israel, but you.” Elijah explains the reason for his visit. He wants a showdown with Jezebel’s priests, her 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah. So Jezebel’s prophets and the people of Israel gather at Mount Carmel. Elijah issues his challenge—my God versus yours, for all the marbles. “How long will you keep hopping between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; and if Baal, follow him.” Elijah proposes an incineration contest. He’ll get one bull and the 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah will get another. Each side will call on its god or gods, and whichever side can make the animal go up in flames worships the true Lord.

  The rival priests go first. They shout to Baal all morning long, to no effect. Elijah interrupts their fruitless prayers with a ripsnorting insult-comic routine, a hilarious, sardonic attack on Baal and his silence. When noon comes, “Elijah mock[s] them, saying, ‘Shout louder! After all he is a god! But he may be in conversation, he may be detained, or he may be on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and will wake up.’ ” Reading this, you can imagine exactly what kind of man Elijah was—brilliant, blunt, and sarcastic. (Oh, and even better: “on a journey” is an ancient euphemism for “in the bathroom.” Baal is on the pot!)

  The priests of Baal become increasingly frantic, cutting themselves with swords and raving to their god. But, of course, Baal doesn’t answer. Then Elijah takes center stage. A superb showman, he has the Israelites gather close around him, heightening the drama. Then he builds an altar with twelve stones—one for each tribe—and soaks the altar and the bull three times with water, so there will be no possibility of spontaneous combustion. (For all you animal rights activists, I should note that the bull is already dead.) The Lord ignites the bull, the stones, and even the water. The Israelites fall on their faces and pray to Him. At Elijah’s urging, they seize the 850 false prophets and slaughter them. Then, in a glorious denouement, a small cloud on the horizon grows bigger and bigger and bigger, and a heavy rain falls, ending the terrible drought.

  This is a marvelous story—inspiring and funny, cruel to the pagan priests yet merciful to the Israelites. And it’s told with extraordinary dramatic skill and eloquence, from Elijah’s sarcastic asides to the vivid description of the rain cloud appearing: “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising in the west.”

  chapter 19

  After Elijah executes her false prophets, Jezebel vows revenge. Elijah takes refuge in a cave till the Lord summons him to meet on a mountain. Elijah walks forty days to get there (again forty). A huge wind gusts on the mountain, then a giant earthquake shakes it, then a fire rages, but Elijah knows that none of them is God. After the fire dies down, Elijah hears a soft murmuring. That whisper, Elijah recognizes, is the Lord. This is a powerful moment. Often in the Bible, God appears in an awesome way, marking his presence with an earthquake, a fire, a plague, or a pillar of smoke. This gentle murmur reminds us that He is also a God of small things, a Lord who cares as much about the little as the great, who is—implicitly, I suppose—the God of love and beauty and not just fear and might.

  God commands Elijah to anoint Jehu as the new king of Israel and Elisha as his own successor as prophet. Elijah finds Elisha—a boy plowing a field way out in the sticks. Elisha immediately slaughters his team of oxen and holds a feast for his neighbors. This feast illustrates the carnivorous law of the Bible. Whenever the book mentions a domestic animal, you can be pretty sure that the beast is going to have a knife in its neck and its leg on a spit within a couple of verses. Vegetarians they weren’t, those Israelites.

  chapter 21

  Many Americans are outraged about a recent Supreme Court decision granting government expansive rights to seize private property. But the Bible has the world’s first such case, and gets it more right than our justices did. When the story begins, King Ahab covets the vineyard of his neighbor Naboth, wanting to turn it into a vegetable garden. Naboth, speaking for property owners everywhere, tells him to buzz off: “The Lord forbid that I should give up to you what I have inherited from my fathers.” Ahab, who lacks the single-minded obsession of his namesake in Moby- Dick, gives up and goes home to sulk. But his wife Jezebel tells him to stop moping, because she will take care of it. The queen writes a letter to the town elders, instructing them to frame Naboth for blasphemy. (Pause to consider the irony of Jezebel, who worships Baal, accusing anyone of blasphemy. Also chilling is Jezebel’s canny manipulation of the Mosaic legal code. She makes sure to get two men to testify to Naboth’s blasphemy, ensuring that the charge will stick.) The elders frame and convict Naboth, and then have him stoned to death. Ahab immediately seizes the vineyard. The Lord is appalled. He dispatches Elijah to threaten the king: “In the very place where the dogs lapped up Naboth’s blood, the dogs will lap up your blood too.” Ahab puts on sackcloth and ashes. The Lord accepts his humility and delays revenge. But make no mistake: the punishment will happen.

  chapter 22

  In fact, here it is. Ahab makes an expedient alliance with King “Jumping” Jehoshaphat of Judah to take back a town captured by the Arameans. All the prophets but one advise them to launch their

  attack. The last prophet, Micaiah, warns that the other prophesies are flawed and that Ahab will die in the battle. Ahab ignores the caution, instead sending Micaiah to prison with orders that he not be released “until I come home safe.” To which Micaiah wittily and cruelly responds, “If you ever come home safe, the Lord has not spoken through me.”

  Of course, Ahab dies in the battle. As the Lord predicted, “the dogs lapped up his blood.” Even worse, “the whores bathed” in it. Though this is an extraordinarily gruesome image, it doesn’t actually make sense. Why would a whore—or anyone—bathe in blood?

  ELEVEN

  The Book of 2 Kings

  The End of Israel

  In which the prophet Elijah is taken up to heaven and succeeded by Elisha; many terrible kings rule Israel, which is eventually conquered and depopulated by Assyria; various bad and good kings rule Judah; Josiah tries to save the kingdom by restoring God’s law, but it’s too late; the Babylonians overrun Judah and exile most of the population, ending Jewish rule of the Promised Land.

  chapter 1

  his book picks up where 1 Kings left off, with a terrible monarch. This time it’s Ahab’s son, clumsy King Ahaziah, Israel’s Gerald Ford. Ahaziah falls through a window, and as he lies injured, he asks Baal if he will recover. Wrong god. Elijah cheerfully informs Ahaziah’s flunkies that because the king prayed to the false deity, he’ll die. Hoping for a stay of execution, Ahaziah dispatches fifty men to arrest Elijah. The prophet has them incinerated with divine fire. Another fifty men are sent, and there’s another fifty-man barbecue. Elijah accompanies the third squadron back to Ahaziah. The prophet again tells the king that he’s doomed for worshipping Baal. Ahaziah dies.

  chapter 2

  This chapter starts innocently, then finishes with one of the most gruesome passages in the Bible. The Lord is preparing to take Elijah up to “heaven,” but his disciple El
isha refuses to leave his side. Elijah strikes the river Jordan with his mantle, the water parts, and they cross on dry land. (Oh, that old trick!) As they’re walking along, a “chariot of fire” swoops down and carts Elijah up to heaven in “a whirlwind.”

  Let’s consider Elijah’s unusual departure. Where did this “chariot of fire” come from? It’s a spectacular and memorable image, but it’s like nothing in the Bible so far. When biblical folk die, they just—die. Even when prophets and patriarchs call it quits, they simply expire and are buried. Corporeal ascent is a new trick. Why would Elijah qualify for special thanatological transportation when even Moses didn’t? (I assume, incidentally, that this is the source of William Blake’s chariot of fire, and the movie, and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” as well.)