Day 107 1 Kings 18-20

            God told Elijah to go meet with Ahab.  Elijah sent a message that he would be on Mt. Carmel and that Ahab should bring all the priests of Baal and Ashera and the whole nation of Israel out to watch what was going to happen.  Once there, he challenged all the priests of Baal and Ashera to light on fire a sacrifice that they had prepared.

            They prayed and chanted and cut themselves for half the day before Elijah finally prepared his own sacrifice and set it up on a little altar that he repaired with some stones.  Even after pouring a ton of water over his sacrifice, Elijah prayed to God and fire rained down from the sky and consumed his offering.  Now that the crowd was won over, Elijah told them to grab all the priests of Baal and Ashera and kill them.

            Elijah then told Ahab to hitch up his chariot so he could get home before the rains started.  This is during a huge drought without a cloud in the sky, so that’s quite a warning.  Then, just to make sure he’s got everyone’s attention, Elijah ran all the way back to the nearest city ahead of Ahab’s chariot.

            Once she found out what happened, Jezebel sent a message to Elijah that she was going to have him killed for what he had done to all her favorite prophets, so Elijah ran away.  After wandering the wilderness in despair for a long time, God spoke to him and told him to anoint new kings of Aram and Israel and a new prophet to succeed him.  Among the three of them, they’re supposed to kill pretty much everyone in Israel except 7000 men who have never worshipped an idol.

            A little later the current king of Aram starts stirring up trouble in Israel.  He captures Samaria and demands Ahab give him treasure and his best wives and servants.  Ahab agrees to this, but then refuses when the king of Aram further demands that he and his men get permission to loot the homes of Ahab’s officials.  It’s pretty clear at this point that he’s just trying to pick a fight.

            Ahab’s in luck though because God hates Aram at this time even more than He hates him, so a prophet comes to tell Ahab that God’s going to hand Aram’s army over to him.  They beat Aram once, but the aramian advisors think that they only lost because the God of Israel is a god of the hills, so they can win if they go back next year and fight the same fight again, but in the plains this time.  They were mistaken however, even though they had a way bigger army than Israel, they get routed in the next battle too.  Rumor has it that kings in Israel are open to negotiation though so they try to reason with Ahab, which works just fine actually.  Ahab lets them go after a treaty is formed with Aram.

            If you’ve been following along this far, you know that God hates treaties.  When God hands an army over to you in battle, it’s because he wants that army to not be an army anymore.  You’re supposed to destroy them and eat their children and kick their puppies.  So that same prophet confronts Ahab again on his ride home and tells him that God is going to take his life in exchange for the king of Aram’s life, which rightfully belongs to God.

            Ahab sulks back to his castle.

Day 100 1 Kings 1-2

            David is really old now and one of his sons, Adonijah start setting himself up as the new king.  Once he hears about what’s happening though, David quickly makes his other son Solomon king before Adonijah gets back to Jerusalem.  That goes pretty well, with Adonijah stepping down and immediately recognizing his younger brother’s rule.  All he asks is that Solomon not kill him and Solomon says that he will be just fine as long as he’s a helpful part of the kingdom and doesn’t try to do sneaky political stuff.

            David dies around this time, but he gives Solomon some peculiar advise.  David’s rule was marked by astounding forgiveness and grace.  Every time something aweful happened, as soon as they got it sorted out, David’s men would want to go kill everyone who had stood against them and David would say something like “No way, we’ve won.  This is a time for celebration.” And let everyone go about their business for the most part.  Apparently he’s been taking good notes though because now he tells Solomon to start off his kingship by killing a bunch of these guys that David spared before.  All those times he swore not to kill somebody, he just filed it away so he could have his successor kill them decades later, which is kind of like what a sociopath would do.  David’s really old and near death now though so maybe he’s just getting jaded.

            Amidst Solomon having all these guys killed, Adonijah shows up again trying to marry the concubine assigned to keep David warm at night.  That’s not a euphemism, she was just supposed to lay down with him and keep the bed warm because he was too frail to keep himself warm anymore.  They never had sex so it isn’t taboo for David’s son to marry her, just a little bit weird.

            Solomon sees this as a political move though, which it probably was to be fair, and has Adonijah killed.

            This seems like a rocky start to Solomon’s rule, but I guess everyone knows he means business now.

            This is the 100^th passage which means I’m almost a third of the way through the Bible.  I had no idea what a commitment writing this was going to be, but I’m glad to have some accountability at least.  I don’t think I ever would have made it through Numbers if I didn’t feel obligated to post something about it online.  I’m feeling very thankful for those four or five guys in India, Russia and Washington who are regularly reading my entries.  Thanks guys.

Day 98 2 Samuel 19-21

            David mourns the loss of his son, but his army is disheartened by his sadness.  One of his generals chews him out for it, telling him it’s obvious to the men that David would rather all of them had died and they’d lost the battle.  He told David he loves those who hate him and hates those who love him, and that if he doesn’t go out and act thankful and happy in front of the men, he’s not going to have any men left by morning.

            Obviously there’s a whole lot of “Oh, I knew you were going to come back the whole time my lord.  I always said you were the true king of Israel, of course” on David’s trip back to Jerusalem.  Escorting him back through the land, the armies of Judea and the combined armies of the rest of Israel are practically fighting over who gets to carry David’s tent poles for him.  Even Mephibosheth shows up again, claiming that his servant had lied and that he wanted to come out and meet David to support him earlier but his wicked servant stopped him.  David, gentle soul that he is, accepts pretty much everyone back into the fold and stops his men from killing those suspected of disloyalty.  He didn’t restore all of Mephibosheth’s lands, which he had given to his servant before, but he splits them and lets each keep half.

            There was one guy that David had to kill.  A man named Sheba was stirring up trouble and trying to incite rebellion.  David said that this guy would be even more trouble than Absolom had been and ordered his men to chase him down.  He holed up in a city, but when David’s army laid siege to them they quickly killed Sheba and threw his head out to David’s men.

            There was a famine for three years, so David asked the Lord about it and He said that it was because of the way that Saul had tried to wipe out the Gibeonites, who were descended from the Ammorites, whom the Israelites had sworn to spare back when they had first arrived.  David went to make amends with them, and they were cool about it.  They said they didn’t want riches or land or war or anything, they said they would call it even if they were given seven males from Saul’s line to kill.  David didn’t send Meshibopheth because of his oath to Jonathan, but he found seven other descendents of Saul’s and sent them.

            Israel fought some more wars with the Philistines.  David got old and can’t go fight with the men anymore.

Day 95 2 Samuel 8-12

            David conquered pretty much everyone around and collected treasures and keepsakes from his victories, including his former friends the Ammonites following a social gaffe that they tried to war their way out of by hiring an army of Aramean mercenaries from across the Euphrates.  He didn’t make that same mistake that Gideon did and display them as memorials of his own awesomeness. David dedicated all his trophies to the Lord, and everything was good for everybody under his rule.

            His sons became priests somehow.  The first Priests were related to Aaron who was a Levite.  It sounded like all priests were to be from Aaron’s family, but maybe that line was broken or they lost track of it.  It was a long time before this.  Samuel seems to represent a break in the line of priests since he was adopted and all the priests he studied under were killed.  Still, David was from the tribe of Judah.  I would think priest would have to at least be from the tribe of Levi.  Maybe that was one of the perks of being the king’s son.

            In between conquests, David tracked down that last descendant of Saul’s, a lame grandson named Mephibosheth.  He was Jonathan’s son so this gave David a great way to honor his promise to Jonathan that he wouldn’t wipe out the whole line of Saul.  He set Mephibosheth up with all of the lands that had belonged to Saul and put some servants to work on the land to keep Mephibosheth rich and fed and invited him to eat at his own table with his family any time.

Day 91 I Samuel 25-27

            David petitioned a wealthy Calebite to give his men some supplies, citing the good treatment this guy had received from David’s men at some earlier time.  The Calebite tells David’s men to get lost.  Several things all happen after that in rapid succession.

            First, The Calebite’s wife, Abigail, heard about what had happened, correctly surmised that David was going to swoop in and wipe them all out, and started frantically scrambling to collect bread and oil to run out and give to his army.  Next, David’s messenger’s return with the news from the wealthy Calebite and David immediately rounds up four hundred men to go stomp on this guy.  Abigail and David end up meeting partway, but not until after David had just sworn something along the lines of “May God deal with me however harshly He sees fit if even one male is left of his by morning.”  Of course then Abigail shows up and smooths everything over and it would be pretty ridiculous for David to go wipe out Abigail’s family after that.  It seems for a moment like David has really put his foot in his mout.  He’s sworn this oath to God, but he did it in ignorance, and now there’s no way for him to do what’s right and still uphold his word to God.  Remember what happened to Saul’s army after Saul’s son Jonathan broke that stupid vow that he didn’t even know about.  He just ate some honey off the ground after Saul had sworn that no one would eat anything, and God allowed the Philistine army to escape annihilation at the hands of Israel because of it.

            David doesn’t even seem to register this problem though, and merrily goes back to his camp with Abigail’s supplies.

            As always, God has David’s back on this one though.  When Abigail returns to her husband, he is very drunk and the news of what had happened that day stopped his heart.  Vow fulfilled, David sends word that he would like to take Abigail as his wife.  She accepts.

            David has another encounter with Saul, much like the last one.  Saul catches wind of David’s camp and takes an army to go catch him.  David sneaks in with a couple other guys during the night and steals Saul’s water jug and his spear from right next to his head as he’s asleep.  His men try to get David to kill Saul, but he’s still not okay with killing ‘God’s anointed’ so he just leaves and then comes back in the morning to tell Saul about how he could have killed him again, but didn’t.  Saul again admits David’s superiority in all things and then leaves.

            At this point, it’s pretty clear that Saul’s not going to stop being a problem any time soon to David goes to live among the Philistines.  King Achish gave him and his men a small town to call their own an they spent the next year and four months raiding the country side from there.  They would go into a town and be sure to kill everyone in it before looting all their goods and animals.  That way, when the king asked where they had gone raiding, David could lie to him and say they went out into the Negev somewhere.  David told Achish that he was going into Israel a lot to raid the towns there, which he was pretty happy with.  He figured that with David stirring up all this trouble among the Israelites, they would all hate him forever and he would have to stay and be a loyal subject forever.

  Oh, also, Samuel died.

Day 87 I Samuel 13-14

            Saul was king for 42 years.  During that time the Philistines were a big problem.  Fearing an Israelite rebellion, they barred any Israelite from becoming a blacksmith so they had no weapons.  Anyone who wanted to get their metal tools sharpened had to have it done by philistines out of town.  With God on their side though, it doesn’t matter much what they have for weapons so Saul went to war anyway.

            They had things set up so Samuel would come in and petition God for victory before the battle, but he was late so Saul gave an offering in his place.  When Samuel arrived, he was angry at Saul for doing that and told him that his line could have ruled forever, but now it was going to end with him.  As far as punishments go for offering improper sacrifices though, saul seems like he got of kind of easy.  The last people to screw up the burnt offering were killed with fire from God on the spot.

            The battle looks bleak.  Saul’s army is outnumbered, but his son Jonathan crept around to a Philistine outpost and killed about 20 men, throwing the Philistines into a panic.  They ran away, and Saul was going to pursue them, but some divinations revealed that Jonathan was a little bit cursed, so they shouldn’t go.  His faith was exemplary and he hadn’t broken any commands, but Saul had made some vow on behalf of the rest of the army saying that cursed is anyone who eats before they win the fight.  Jonathan hadn’t heard that vow so he ate some honey off the ground on the walk back.  So, the Philistines live to fight another day.

Day 83 Judges 19-21

            A Levite in the land of Ephraim had an unfaithful concubine.  Ephraim seems to be over-represented in this book.  The concubine runs off to her father’s house and the Levite goes after her.  After staying for a few days, they head back home, but by the time they reach Jebus, the sun is starting to set.  The Jebusites are not Israelites so the Levite does not want to stay there.  They press on and make it to Gibeon, which is a Benjaminite city, so they are Israelites.

            No one would take the Levite and his party in for the night though so they were ready to stay in the town square for the night.  Luckily an old Ephraimite man came in from the fields and invited them into his house.

            Now this story plays out exactly like the story of Sodom and Gomorrah for a little while.  The wicked men come and want to have sex with the Levite, but the head of the household in stead offers them his daughter.  This time though, the wicked men accept the offer and the host’s daughter and the Levite’s concubine are both dropped outside in the crowd and the concubine is raped to death by the mob.

            The Levite slung her body over the back of his donkey the next morning, took her home and cut her into twelve pieces which he sent to the heads of the twelve tribes.

            All of Israel came together and met so the Levite could tell them the story of what had happened.  They told the tribe of Benjamin to hand over the men of that wicked town, but they refused and mustered an army.  They were beaten though and most of the town was killed.  All the men of the other eleven tribes swore that they would never give a daughter in marriage to a Benjaminite.

            What happened next is a little unclear, but it sounds like there was an assembly sometime later and everyone felt bad for the tribe of Benjamin because they had no women and would die out.  Now no one from Jabesh Galead bothered to show up to this meeting, so the rest of the assembly went in and killed all the men and all the women who weren’t virgins there.  I’m not sure what tribe Jabesh Galead was a part of, but I think they must have been Israelites because they were expected at the meeting.  The Israelites gave the women who weren’t killed to the Benjaminites, but there weren’t enough to go around.  The solution they came up with was to wait until the next big festival and have all the available girls run around through the fields and the Benjaminites hide in the grass waiting for them.  Then the Benjaminites could steal some women and they would have Israelite wives without anyone having to break their vow.  If any of the girls fathers started asking questions about what happened to their daughters at the festival, the tribal elders would let them know that they had been given to the Benjaminites but don’t worry because the vow hadn’t been broken.

            This is the last story in Judges and I’ve got to say, I don’t think I’ve taken away a single message or lesson from this entire book.  It’s interesting to read, but no one seems to be following the law, even when the book seems to imply that they’re doing the right thing.  The first story didn’t make much sense, and then each one after that made progressively less.  There’s a recurring assertion that this was the time before Israel had a king and people did as they pleased.  Is this whole book just a statement about what a mess things are when we try to govern ourselves without anyone who has a direct line to God?  I would certainly accept that teaching but isn’t that kind of what we’re trying to do now?

Day 82 Judges 16-18

            Some time later, Samson went to Gaza and saw a prostitute he wanted to spend the night with.  The Philistines still hated him though so when they found out about it they shut the gates of the city to trap him so they could kill him.  Samson just tore the gates off the wall and carried them off when he felt like leaving.  This kind of scenario was not uncommon with Samson.

            Eventually he fell in love with a Philistine woman, a different Philistine woman than the one from before though.  Her name was Delilah and shortly after they started sleeping together, some Philistine leaders promised to pay Delilah if she could learn Samson’s weakness.

            Three times she asked him the secret of his strength and each time he lied to her, and when she tried to weaken him and called the Philistines, he broke free and killed them all.  I mean all of them except her.  Finally the forth time, when Samson had had a lot to drink one night (again, breaking his vow to never drink) he showed incredibly poor pattern recognition skills and told her the truth, that he was a Nazarite and that he could never cut his hair.

            So, of course, Delilah cut his hair.  The Philistines came to capture him, he fought back, but his strength was gone and he was taken.

            The Philistines put out Samson’s eyes and threw him in jail.  Later, they brought him out at a party to dance for their entertainment.  Samson prayed to God and was given back his strength just long enough to push over a pillar and topple the building they were in, killing himself and all of the Philistines.

            It seems to me in this reading though that Samson still didn’t learn anything about humility to God or glorifying God.  His final prayer isn’t apologetic for any of his own sins or even about showing God’s power to the Philistines or helping the oppressed Israelites.  Samson asks for the strength to take revenge on the Philistines for putting out his eyes.  But it still works.

            Man, God must have really hated Philistines.

            Okay, next judge:

            Micah and his mother made an ephod and a bunch of household gods.  Just to round out their collection of blessings, Micah also hired an errant Levite to be their household priest.  I guess an ephod is an okay thing to have now.  I know idols are forbidden, and you can only worship God properly with the help of some priests at a stone altar at the temple, but maybe an ephod doesn’t count as an idol.  I understand the desire for a physical object to focus your worship, but these ephods seem like bad policy, especially when it’s surrounded by other little idols.

            I guess I’m not in any position to judge the practice of displaying ephods though when I go to a church with an 18 foot tall cross hanging over the stage.

            So Micah’s got all his god ornaments in order and everything’s going great when some scouts from the tribe of Dan come through looking at land.  The Danites still haven’t received their inheritance so they’re looking around for land to conquer.  These scouts stay with Micah and they get a blessing from his priest before heading out again.  With this blessing, they find some nice land just past the lands of the tribe of Ephraim.

            The scouts return home and report what they saw and the Danites move out to conquer this good land.  On the way, they stop by Micah’s house, take his ephod and his household gods and convince his personal priest to come with them.  Micah and his neighbors go out and yell at the Danites about taking all of his stuff, but they tell him to go back home before they get angry and kill him.

            The Danites conquered the land and made a city  there named Dan (named after their ancestor, Dan).  They used Micah’s idols the whole time they were there.

            So, is this story about Micah being punished for having such a materialistic faith?  Is it about the dangers of investing too much in physical idols when they might be lost?  Is it just a sad story about a nice guy who got all his silver stolen by the Danites or a happy story about God providing blessings and silver for the righteous tribe of Dan?  I have no idea.  This one’s a little too foreign for me to make sense of I guess.

            That’s okay though, it doesn’t all have to resonate perfectly.  There’s so much different stuff in here that I’m pretty comfortable chalking one up to our cultural differences every once in a while.

            That seems to be happening a lot in this book though.

Day 81 Judges 13-15

            Ah, Samson.  Samson was super-strong, you probably already knew that, but there’s far more to his story.

            Before Samson was born, an angel came to his parents and told them that he was to be a Nazarite.  I think that vow was outlined in Leviticus.  Nazarites have three major rules: don’t drink any fermented beverages or anything that comes from grapes, don’t ever touch anything dead, and don’t cut your hair.  What’s different about Samson though is that he wasn’t just a Nazarite for a couple months like most people who took the vow, he was to be a Nazarite for life.  This is notable because, for his entire life, Samson was a terrible Nazarite.

            First, he decided he was in love with a Philistine woman, which was frowned upon by his family to say the least.  He demanded that his father procure this woman for him though and so he did.

            On his way to visit his future wife once he killed a lion with his bare hands.  That’s pretty amazing, but then when he went back through there again later to actually marry his betrothed, he saw that some bees had moved into the lion carcass.  He grabbed a handful of honey on his way by to snack on, breaking his vow to never touch dead things.

            At his wedding, he drank a little too much (violating his vow to never drink) and made a bet with the philistine guests to solve a riddle, but they pressured his new wife to give them the answer.  Samson responded by beating up a bunch of random philistines in town, gave away his wife and went back to his father’s house implementing what we might refer to today as a tantrum.

            Later, after he’d had some time to cool down, he went back again to claim his wife.  She was now someone else’s wife though because they thought that he didn’t want her.  Samson was so angry about not being able to see his wife that he set all the Philistine’s fields on fire.

            This was the last straw for the Philistines, who rounded up an army to take Samson prisoner.  Samson hid in a cave.

            This was a real turning point in Samson’s story though.  Up until this point he’s mostly just been using his great strength to beat up people he doesn’t like or to further his own goals, but after this encounter it seems like Samson begins to acknowledge that there are some bigger issues at stake.

            Some Israelites come and confront him with the fact that the Philistines are going to take out their anger on them if Samson isn’t captured, so he agrees to let them turn him over to the Philistine army, which he then kills with the jawbone of an ass.  I’m not sure if that counts as touching a dead thing or not.

            Then he delivers one of the most disrespectful prayers I think I’ve come across so far, yelling “You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”

            But maybe the tone is changed by the translation, because God responds by opening up a spring nearby for Samson to drink from.  Or maybe the moral of this story is simply that God really hates Philistines.

Day 80 Judges 10-12

            A couple more judges came and went apparently without doing very much.  Jael’s three-verse story sounds like a nursery rhyme.  It seems like the average reign these days is only around 20-30 years as opposed to some of the older heroes of the faith who were the heads of their clans for a hundred years or more.  I wonder is people are still dying younger or if there’s a lot of political turmoil.

            Israel angered God again by worshipping other gods and the Lord again delivered them into the hands of their neighbors.  They cried and apologized and threw out their idols though, and eventually God said He would fix things for them.  Again.

            Jephthah takes the job leading Israel against the Ammonites, who are trying to reclaim the land the Israelites took from them back when the Israelites were conquering everybody.  Jephthah is told that he will be king after he rids the land of Ammonites.

            He delivers a pretty eloquent rebuttal to the Ammonite king’s claim to the land, explaining that they were given that land by their God, which is different than just taking it form the Ammonites.  Also, that happened like 300 years ago so the statute of limitations is up on this land.  The Ammonite king is not surprisingly resistant to this line of logic so Jephthah goes and kills him.

            He gets a little too excited about it though and promises to sacrifice the first thing he sees of his to the Lord as soon as he gets back home.  That thing turns out to be his young daughter.  She’s surprisingly accepting of her own sacrifice, although she does ask to go into the hills for a couple months to weep with her friends first.

            The Ephraimites were upset that they weren’t included in the fight with the Ammonites, but Jephthah kind of blows them off.  Actually Jephthah conquers the place where Ephraimites cross the Jordan river and starts killing every Ephraimite that tries to cross it.  In the 6 years he rules, 42000 Ephraimites are killed trying to cross.  That’s about 20 a day.

            The rulers stay in power for even less time now.  There’s a series of judges who all stay less than ten years.  The book is not forthcoming on how they really served the Lord, if at all, but they had lots of sons, and owned lots of donkeys.  So that’s something I guess.

Day 78 Judges 6-7

            The story of Gideon and the Midionites is one of great meaning to me, and not only because the title has such an aesthetically pleasing cadence.  God calls Gideon to raise an army to fight the Midianites who are currently oppressing Israel.  He resists at first, requiring several signs from the Lord before he accepts the task, but he eventually comes around.

            Gideon started with 32,000 men to face the Midianite army of over 100,000.  God told him to keep sending men home though until he had only 300 men left when he finally reached the Midianites.  The reason God told him to do this is because he had too many men for God to deliver the Midianites to.  God said that if a real Israelite army defeated the Midianites then they would be boastful and believe that they did it themselves, without God’s help.  In order to make His point, God had to make the army so weak that they couldn’t possibly claim credit for the victory themselves.

Day 77 Judges 3-5

            Israel sins against God and so God uses foreign kings to punish the tribes until they cry out and God sends a judge to save them.  One stabs a fat Moabite king and sinks a sword into his stomach up past the hilt.  One kills 600 philistines with an ox goad.

            I still don’t completely understand why all these foreign people were allowed to stay when Joshua conquered the land, but it’s interesting that one of the major groups working against the Israelites is the people from Sidon.  Sidon colonized Tyre, which colonized Carthage, which was the Soviet Union to the Roman Empire’s NATO back just before Jesus was born.  The Roman Empire plays such a large role in the life of Jesus and Carthage played such a large role in Roman foreign policy, it’s interesting to think of how things would be different if the Israelite armies had conquered the Sidonians.

            The first judge that warrants their own chapter is Deborah.  She’s a prophetess and a mediator of some renown.  It seems like a big deal that she’s a woman, but the text doesn’t seem to stress it much.  It’s pretty amazing that even though women were considered somewhere between pets and furniture on the scale of personal rights, God still used Deborah for such an important role.

            Deborah told the Israelite general Barak to fight a bunch of Canaanites and Barak said he would only do so if Deborah came with.  She agreed, but told him that because of his hedging, he wouldn’t get the honor for the battle, but it would go to a woman.

            It seems like she’s referring to herself here, but the way the battle plays out, the Canaanite general is actually killed by a different woman after running away from the battle.  What’s odd about this death is that the Canaanite general is killed by his host as he’s sleeping in her tent (she drives a tent spike clear through his head).  This doesn’t seem to mesh with the very strict laws about how you are to treat guests in your home.  The woman who killed him, Jael, is a Kenite, but I’m not sure if that’s an Israelite clan or not, so I guess I don’t know what here cultural rules were regarding hospitality and not braining your guests.  I thought it was pretty universal, but it wouldn’t be the first thing I’ve been wrong about so far.

Day 76 Judges 1-2

            Everyone continues to sweep across Israel driving out Canaanites.  God hands out victory after victory, including Jerusalem, which will be super-important later on.  There is a big list of places though where Canaanites are still allowed to live because they refuse to leave.  I’m not sure what that means exactly since Israel has an invincible God-powered military machine, but the Canaanites refuse to leave a few places and so they stay.  Later on they are all made to do forced labor so I guess that doesn’t count, as making a treaty with them and so is allowable under the covenant with God.

            They don’t do a very good job of breaking down all the altars to foreign gods though so an angel of the Lord, or possibly the Lord Himself depending on your interpretation, chewed them out pretty good for not completing their end of the deal.  Again though, it couldn’t have been too bad because it is also true that the nation was on good terms with God all through Joshua’s time and beyond through the reign of the elders and leaders who had first-hand knowledge of God’s work.

            The next generation didn’t do so great though.  In fact they entered a time of wavering between breaking the law and following it.  Basically, when things were good, the Israelites would slack off and do what they pleased, worshiping other gods and ignoring their history and covenant with God.  Once they angered God enough, He would send raiders and curses and make the Israelites lose battles all over the place until they came back to Him and to their covenant out of desperation.  Then, because He promised to take them back when they asked, He would raise up judges to lead the people back into a proper relationship with God, defeating foreigners and teaching the Law.  Every time one of these judges would finish their work and die though, the people would fall back into sin.

            That last paragraph summarizes about half a chapter in the book of Judges, which seems to sort of broadly cover several decades, maybe hundreds of years.  It’s interesting to me that this complex pattern is laid out so simply.  I mean we take that kind of analysis for granted today because I can scan Wikipedia for a few minutes and find a handful of infographics outlining relevant events surrounding pretty much any theme I like, but it’s hard to tease out that kind of pattern with only the tools available to a pre-roman era anthropologist/goat-herder.

Day 72 Joshua 12-15

            Joshua led the army to defeat 31 kings in all, but when he was old, God told him there was still lots to conquer.  For the time being though, they went ahead and started dividing up the land by tribe for the inheritances.  Gad and Reuben and half of the half tribe of Manasseh set up east of the Jordan river and the other nine tribes and the other quarter tribe of Manasseh took the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean sea, although the tribe of Levi didn’t get the same kind of plot of land, but cities spread throughout Canaan.

            Caleb shows up again at 85 years old and just as strong and spry as the day Moses first sent him to scout out the promised land according to him.  He was promised a bunch of land for his faith so Joshua gives him Hebron.

            I’m glad to see Caleb get something good.  I thought it was weird that we kept hearing in Numbers about how great Joshua and Caleb were and how much faith they had, but then only Joshua got to lead the camp afterword and we never heard about Caleb again.  I guess he is a Kenizite though, which it looks like makes him not actually an Israelite.  He mentions something about his fellow Israelites though so he’s clearly part of the nation.  He doesn’t seem to have a tribe attached to his name now even though back in Numbers, he scouted out Canaan as a representative of the tribe of Judah, so I have no idea what the politics are here.

Day 71 Joshua 9-11

            The Gibeonites trick Joshua and the leaders of the camp into making a treaty with them by claiming to be from far away.  They heard about all the amazing things God has done for the Israelites and knew they couldn’t defeat them, or even survive them, so they resorted to subterfuge.  The Israelites are commanded not to make a treaty with anyone in Canaan, but they believed the Gibeonite envoy and didn’t check in with God before signing a treaty.  A little while later they came up to the Gibeonite cities and found out that they had just sworn an oath not to harm them.

            The people were kind of pissed at their leaders, but no one would violate the oath they made to God not to harm the Gibeonites.  Joshua made them wood cutters and water carriers, which I guess made an unpleasant lower class for them to occupy, but it’s better then the alternative.  A little later some other allied nations come and attack the Gibeonites, but Joshua actually brings the army to their aid and wipes out the other army.  In the process he stops the sun and moon in the sky for a day.

            They conquer all of southern Canaan down into the Negev.

            No other treaty problems came up as God hardened all the other tribes to fight the Israelites.  The only places in Canaan left with non-Israelites still alive in them were Gaza, Gath, which we think is kind of by Jerusalem and Ashdod, which is just a little north of modern-day Gaza along the coast.

Day 70 Joshua 5-8

            When Joshua first comes to approach Jericho he sees a man with a drawn sword standing in front of him.  Joshua asks him if he’s on the side of Israel or their enemies and the man says  “Neither, I’m the commander of the armies of the Lord.”  I think it’s interesting the distinction made by this guy, I assume he’s an angel or something.  He’s basically telling Joshua “Look, I’m not a part of your army, I’m not here to serve your side, but as long as you play your cards right, you can be part of my side.”

            The army marches around Jericho six times in six days blowing trumpets just like they’re told to do.  On the seventh day they march around the city seven times and when they blow their trumpets the walls collapse and the Israelite army is able to slaughter everyone inside.  God says that all the plunder of this city belongs to Him so they have to round all of it up and put it in the Lord’s treasury.

            Later, Joshua sends a small force of a couple thousand men to conquer a little city called Ai, but they’re routed and come running back defeated.  Joshua comes to God to ask why this happened and finds out that some guy kept a bunch of God’s treasure.

            Once they find this guy, Achan, and stone him and his entire family to death, God takes them back to Ai and hands the city over to the Israelites.

            Before all this though, Joshua makes camp just inside Canaan and has everybody circumcised.  They have to stay there and heal for  couple days before moving on, but fortunately the rumors about that trick with the Jordan river are spreading quickly and everyone is afraid to attack the camp during this time because of the Israelite God.  Apparently they haven’t been keeping everybody circumcised while they wandered the desert, which is surprising considering what a big deal it is to God for everyone to be circumcised.  He almost killed Moses over it that one time.

            God decrees that Jericho is never to be rebuilt, which it actually has been.  Jericho is there today, but it’s in Palestine so I guess you could say that it’s cursed because I’m sure it sucks to live there.

Day 63 Deuteronomy 17-20

            Once in the promised land, either God or Moses wants the Israelites to pick themselves a king like the other nations.  Their king is not supposed to accrue wealth or many wives or lands though.  In other nations, the wealth of the king was supposed to reflect the power and success of the nation, but the Israelite king is not supposed to consider himself better than any other Israelite.  This seems to me to sort of beg the question, what is the king of Israel for?  They’ve got priests and Levites to interpret the Law for them and even judges to help figure out the really tricky cases in the law, so the king isn’t really necessary for that.  If the king is not supposed to be a symbolic figure head either, I don’t know what is left for him to do.

            Moses says he’s supposed to write down the entire law and read it very day and his line will reign a long time.  It kind of seems like he’s not really reigning at all anyway though, but I guess maybe they just felt the need to have a king on principle.

            Israelites are not permitted to consult spirits or practice any kind of witchcraft.  God says that it’s this kind of stuff that’s getting the other nations in Canaan destroyed, so He really detests these things.  Instead of using divination and sorcery though, the Israelites are going to have prophets.  God says He will raise up men to speak for Him and they will tell the future a little bit.  Be careful though because there will also be false prophets speaking out of turn and prophets to other gods and those you’re supposed to kill with rocks.  The test for prophets is simple enough, although it’s a little hard to check sometimes.  If what they say doesn’t come true, they’re false, kill them.

            There have to always be several cities of refuge around so that there’s one that’s convenient to get to.  The cities or refuge are only for unintentional crimes though.  If you murder someone on purpose, the elders of the city will cast you out.  It always takes more than one witness to convict someone of a crime though.

            One last thing has to do with war.  God talks about two kinds of cities the Israelite army will be attacking.  Some cities are just in the way, and they will be offered a chance to surrender.  If the people surrender, all their stuff and people are plunder for Israel.  You can take them off as slaves and keep all their stuff, you just can’t make a treaty with them because that will lead to their culture bleeding into Israelite culture which is unacceptable.

            Some cities though, are part of the Israelite inheritance and those cities don’t get to surrender.  All the men are to be killed and then all the women and children may be taken as slaves and the goods and livestock plundered, but they are not allowed to accept their surrender.  It’s pretty brutal.

Day 58 Deuteronomy 3-4

            The Israelites have been fighting different little kingdoms for over forty years now, but it’s always been merely for passage or in self-defense.  Now that they’re getting ready to move into Canaan and settle down, they’re fighting to take over land.

            Still east of the Jordan river, they defeat a series of semi-pronounceable kings and kingdoms and split the land up for the Gadites, Ruebenites and half tribe of Manasseh, because they all said they wanted the good pastureland here.  They’re told they may leave their women and livestock behind in their new cities, but their fighting men have to lead the attack once they get across the river into Canaan.

            Now, with that brief bit of action out of the way, the entire rest of this book is God telling the Israelites some last minute things in preparation for crossing the Jordan river.  First though Moses pleads with God to see the promised land.  Since God forbade Moses from entering himself after he got kind of uppity in the desert, kind of claiming responsibility for bringing forth water from a stone, Moses was hoping he might just climb up to a high place and at least see where the people were going.  That seemed to kind of irritate God, who did let him go, but only after commanding him not to speak of that matter any further.  Afterwards, God reiterated that Moses was not to cross the Jordan with the rest of the camp, but to commission Joshua as his successor.

            And speaking of God reiterating things, God, via Moses, sit the camp down to tell them they need to keep following the laws given to them after they settle down in Canaan.  The covenant is not over, it’s just getting started.  Follow the laws and teach them to your children.  It seems like the Israelites have been just barely able to keep the laws while they’ve have this big cookie hanging over their heads in the form of the promised land.  Once they actually get it, I have a suspicion they’re going to do even worse.

            I mean, I know they do eventually because I know that Canaan under Israelite rule gets conquered a bunch, by Alexander the great, the Romans, and even a few little local punks.  Even not knowing much about the history of early Israel though, I have a feeling their problems are going to start pretty much right away.

            The section headings in my Bible for the rest of this chapter run like so: Idolatry Forbidden, The Lord Is God, Cities of Refuge, Introduction to the Law.  I know Idolatry is a really big deal, but it’s interesting that that comes before the part about God being awesome.  I mean, I probably would have led with that, but I guess pedagogy was different back then than it is now.  Or maybe Moses just wasn’t working from an outline.

            The passage at 4:28-29 really speaks to me personally though.  Moses is still talking about the consequences of idolatry and he says “There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell.  But if from there you seek the Lord, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.”  I have a habit, when I see some Buddhist kid, to think that, well, at least they’re thinking about spiritual things.  I feel like that’s better than a complacent agnostic and sometimes better even than a docile self-identifying Christian.  God says that even if we’re way off base, as long as we’re truly searching for the truth, we’ll find Him.  Speaking as someone who grew up as a Buddhist and eventually found my way to Christ, this promise carries a lot of weight for me since, without it, I probably wouldn’t be here writing this.  Now that’s not to say that we should be indulging every little existential foray that crosses anyone’s mind.  There’s a big fat difference between following Buddhism or Hinduism or Taoism or Islam because you’re searching for meaning in the universe, and following them because you want to piss of your parents.  And I think it’s okay to give someone some counterpoints to chew on when they’re saying something stupid.

            As a general rule though, I think some conflict is healthy and keeps us from getting too comfortable.  A famous Spanish priest Miguel de Unamuno said that “Faith without any doubt is a dead faith.”

Day 54 Numbers 31-32

            The Israelites take revenge on the Midianites for that stunt with Balaam and trying to curse them.  God tells them to go and kill all the Midianites, which they do, sort of.  The Israelite army gets back to camp with the spoils, but Moses and Eleazer are cross with them for only killing all the men and not the women, who were the cause of that plague before.  Moses tells them they can keep all the virginal girls, but they have to kill all the older women.  Also, anyone who kills somebody or has been near a dead body is ritualistically unclean and has to wait outside the camp for a week doing cleansing things.  This is also true for all the spoils which have to be passed through fire if they’re made out of metal and cleaned with cleansing water.

            This cleansing ritual of separating things from the population centers, passing through fire and washing with cleansing water is very cool.  The brewing of the cleansing water probably has a little more pageantry involved than is strictly necessary, but the basic concept is sound.  Ashes, specifically the rendered fat of animals, make a primitive soap.  The whole process actually sounds very effective.

            Balaam is killed in the battle.  That kind of makes me sad.  I find that I like these characters who talk to God but are not Israelites.  Balaam was obedient to God by and large, but he wasn’t an Israelite so I guess that trumps his faithfulness.  I suppose without access to the tabernacles though, he couldn’t possibly be completely right with God.  Everyone had sins to be cleansed.

            Surveying the land just east of the Jordan River before they crossed over, the Ruebenites and Gadites decided that they would prefer to set up their lands over here, just outside the land promised them by God.  Moses chews them out pretty good for that at first, because the last time people started talking about not going into the promised land God sent them back out into the desert for forty years.  The Rubenites and the Gadites tell Moses that they just like this land for grazing though and they will still come help conquer Canaan, but afterwards, they would like to please come back here.  Moses says that’s fine, but if they don’t keep their word and fight with the rest of them, then they’re all going to be killed.  Once it gets all trendy, the half-tribe of Menassah also decides to return to the eastern bank of the Jordan after their done in Canaan.

Day 27 Exodus 31-32

            God pointed out to Moses that He had blessed the Israelites with a couple craftsmen of considerable talent.  He had given the Israelites all the skill they would need to create all the things God was telling Moses to have them make, all the furniture and incense and decorations and fancy robes needed for the ark and the tabernacle.  God then reiterates the importance of the Sabbath.

            The Sabbath, by the way, is super-important.  Anyone who works or who fails to worship properly on the Sabbath is to be cut off from the people.  It seems harsh, but I guess we’ve already seen plenty of examples of how quickly the people can be led astray when there’s a bad influence around.

            In fact, we’re reminded of this again in the very next chapter when Moses comes down from the mountain with all that God said on two stone tablets.

            I wonder about those tablets, incidentally.  There’s a lot more than the ten commandments on there.  My Bible is written in tiny, tiny print and the stuff that God told Moses on Mount Mariah fills seven and a half pages, over ten chapters of text.  Single spaced.  Can you write that small on stone tablets?  Three and a half pages worth of text on each slab?  A lot of those building specifications would have been tempting to include some diagrams too.  Why stone anyway? They just came from Egypt, there must have been some papyrus in the camp.

            Anyway, when Moses comes back down with his two vary densely worded stone tablets, he finds that Aaron, in the relatively short time he’s been in charge of the camp, has forged a golden calf and is leading the people in a big pagan orgy.  Yes, this is the same Aaron who just acted as God’s mouthpiece in the court of Pharaoh himself.  Aaron who helped hold up Moses’ arms because he believed God would grant them victory over the Amalekites as long as Moses’ staff was raised to the sky. 

            The people immediately assumed Moses was dead or lost or somehow gone the second he left their field of vision, so they told Aaron to make them some new Gods to lead them.  Apparently they were tired of the one who parted the Red Sea and decimated two different armies for them.

            Moses is furious and smashes the two tablets, which seems like kind of a big deal to me no matter how angry you are, but God doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.  Aaron kind of mumbles some story about how the people are simple fools and he threw all their jewelry into the fire and out came this calf, and isn’t that a funny coincidence? *nervous chuckle*

            Moses informed Aaron and the people that no, in fact it’s not a funny coincidence and furthermore, everybody who’s still loyal to God, come stand over here with me.  All the Levites joined him at the entrance to the camp, which may have had more to do with Moses being a Levite himself than their actual loyalty to God, and then Moses told them to do a lap, from one end of the camp to the other, killing everyone.  Sons, brothers, friends, everyone.  About 3000 people in all.

            It seems like that should mean that everyone who’s left must be Levites, but I know that later they split up all the land they get according to their tribes so there must still be a few of each tribe left alive.  I guess everyone who escaped the slaughter was allowed to come back and still live in camp, or Moses must have just meant to kill everyone who was worshipping this calf.

             God threatens to wipe out everyone and just take Moses to the promised land, but Moses talks Him down and convinces Him to take everyone.  God relents, but adds that He will blot out everyone who sins against him.  Then he sets a plague on the Israelites.