How the Great Have Fallen

This week in Come Follow Me we read about David's reign as king of united Israel, and his ultimate fall from grace when he commits adultery with Bathsheba and arranged the murder of her husband. I have always hated the fact that Israel's greatest king and the ancestor of Jesus ended his reign in such an unrighteous way. His whole life David tried to be faithful to the Lord, and then at the end he fell to temptation.  

This year as I read the story I kept wondering why the writers of the Old Testament included it at all. Yes, Bathsheba was the mother of Solomon, so she was pretty important in Jewish history. For Christians, Jesus was a descendant of this unholy union. I just wondered why they wanted to air their dirty laundry.  They could have said, "David married the widow of his general Uriah who was killed in battle," which would have been entirely factually true, even if incomplete. If they had, we would have all felt better about King David.  

Then I began to think of other prominent Biblical leaders who were generally revered, but also have one story where they behaved badly. The list is pretty long.  It starts with Adam and Eve.  They were pretty righteous except for the forbidden fruit thing.  Then there was Noah, who made the awesome ark, but then was found drunken in his tent. Abraham was the originator of the covenant, but kept telling people that his wife was his sister. Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright. Moses was kept from entering the promised land because he smote the rock without giving the credit to God, and there are more.

I began to wonder if Jewish writers actually want their religious leaders to appear to be flawed in some way. These stories were passed down as oral traditions for generations before they were written down in the Tanakh. It's hard to believe, after all the retellings, that some of the "warts" would have been rubbed away by time if they hadn't specifically prevented that from happening. But why?

I don't know the answer for sure, but here are a few ideas.

1.  Flawed leaders are more relatable. By making their founding patriarchs flawed it shows all the people that they can hope, even in their flaws. You can imagine a elderly Rabi saying, "What you did was not so bad. Look at David, our greatest king. Even he had problems."  

2. They believe that there is wisdom to be gained by wrestling with the messiness. If in the stories everything is black and white, with some good people and some evil people, then our understanding of life is superficial. Real life is not like that.  There is much that is grey and there is good and evil in everyone. Avoiding that truth is not helpful. It is only by wrestling with the way things are that someone gains insight and wisdom.

3. There is one more idea that isn't as obvious as 1 and 2, but I think there might be something to it. When my husband's parents traveled in the middle east they visited a carpet weaver.  They learned from the artisan that whenever they made a carpet, they intentionally introduced a flaw into the pattern.  They did this out of respect for God. Only God is perfect and nothing man-made should aspire to be perfect like God. Maybe something like that is going on here.  Maybe there is an idea that it would be an affront to a perfect God for the Jews to portray their leaders as perfect. Not only is it not true (for no one is perfect) but it would be blasphemous. Remember when a follower of Jesus said, "Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" and Jesus responded, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God." (Matt 10: 17-18)  Even Jesus, who was the only perfect person, did not want to be called "good" out of respect for God. So maybe the writers of the Old Testament purposefully and carefully included at least one story about their revered leaders that showed their imperfections as a way to highlight the perfection of God.

In the Western culture we are raised on fairy tales.  In most of them there are clear heroes and villains.  In modern times we have stories of superheroes and supervillains.  Even when they have complicated personalities and backstories (think Batman) it is always clear who is the good guy and who is the bad guy.  Not so in the Old Testament and that makes Western readers uncomfortable. Sometimes we just have to sit in the discomfort and try to see if there is any wisdom to be found there.

How can we look at God's commandments to commit genocide?

 This week in Come Follow Me we read about the rise and downfall of Saul in the book of Samuel.  One of the most famous scriptures of this week's reading is from Samuel 15:22 "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifice, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." On the surface this looks like a great moral of the story.  Saul should have obeyed the Lord instead of disobeying him in order to make more sacrifices. 

One of the podcasters this week, however, pointed out how this simplistic view is problematic. We read the verse, but forget the commandment that Saul was disobeying. "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." (15:3)  So the thing that Saul was disobedient to was the command to commit genocide, including killing women, children and babies. It seems from the text that Saul did kill all the women and children, but was being chastised by the Lord for not killing all the animals. 

Of course you can see all the red flags here.  Could the same God who gave the Ten Commandments including "Thou shalt not kill," turn around and command someone to slaughter women and children?  My husband made the observation that after the Ten Commandments are given in Exodus the whole rest of the Old Testament seems to ignore them. 

So how can we wrestle with what seems to be the Lord's command to break his own commandment? Different podcasters I listened to this week had different approaches that I will try to outline here.

1. Literal approach: Yes, God did command them to utterly wipe out their enemies.

    Those who take this approach within the LDS faith try to justify this by saying that the society was so corrupt that it would be unjust of God to let it continue.  Any babies born to that society were doomed to be raised in wickedness. It was better to send all the inhabitants back to God where they might have a chance to change their ways, than to leave them on earth where they would doom themselves and infect others with their wickedness. We need to take the "eternal" perspective instead of just looking at the mortal experience.

2. Historical Hindsight: No, God didn't command them to utterly wipe out their enemies, but when they looked back years later, they imagined that he did and that their failure to do so caused the moral decline of their society that lead to the Babylonian Captivity.

    Those who take this approach say that this history was written during the Babylonian Captivity when the people of Israel where looking back and trying to figure out what went wrong. They see their main sin as turning to idols.  They think, "If only we had utterly destroyed the people of the land, we would not have been tempted to worship their gods and depart from the true worship of Jehovah." Because they believe that would have worked, they project that belief on the past.  They imagine that God did tell them to destroy the other nations, and their failure to do so was their downfall.

3. Historical Hyperbole: God told them to take other lands, but the strength of the command was intensified in accordance to local history-keeping customs.

    I have heard the scholarly opinion that the text of Samuel, (and Kings and Judges) follows the style of other ancient texts from that time period.  It was the style of historians in that era to exaggerate the nature of their conquests.  Not only was a town "conquered," but it was "utterly wiped out."  We use similar ways of talking in English.  When one sports team thoroughly defeats a rival, they might claim "We totally destroyed them" when in reality, no one was destroyed, just defeated. In this opinions the command to destroy women and children is not really what happened, but is told that way to reflect the weightiness of the event.

4. These stories are not histories, but parables.

Believers in this approach don't believe that these narratives represent any real historical event, but are merely symbolic parables constructed by the captive Jews to explain both their own origins and their sad decline into captivity. Saul is not a historical personage, but a character type: someone who started out strong but was corrupted by his own pride. The whole story is a cautionary tale, full of symbolism.  God's command to kill all men, women, children, and animals represents our need to purify ourselves of all our sins, both big and small. We must kill our imperfections no matter how animalistic or innocent they might appear. 

I don't know what the real answer is but I will give my opinion.  I am not a believer in #1.  I can't bring myself to believe God commanded a righteous nation to commit such terrible acts of violence.  Not only would innocents be lost, but the attacking armies would have suffered huge mental consequences of such an act. I don't think anyone can stab a baby and come through emotionally and spiritually intact.  Would God destroy the souls of his servants by making them destroy the bodies of their innocent victims?

I am also not a really going for #4 either.  I do think there must have been some historical basis for the stories in the history books of the Bible. The stories are to complicated and messy to be entirely made up. There is some (though not a huge amount) of archaeological evidence that support the Biblical accounts. Some place names have been found and some names used in the Bible have been found on a few inscriptions. 

So that leaves me considering #2 and #3.  I personally believe that a combination of these two are the most likely answer.  I think there is a literary tradition here that needs to be taken into account.  The stories of the Old Testament really do resemble in tone and language other stories of the same period. They had a culture and morality that wasn't the same as ours and they reflected that culture. I also think that the writer(s) of Samuel were trying to look back and figure out what went wrong so that they could make better decisions in the future. They project their ideas onto the story and claim that commandments came from God. Why else would have Saul failed, unless he disobeyed God?

The final question then, is if these records do not accurately reflect God's real dealings with his people, are they of any value?  That's another hard questions.  I guess my answer is that as I read the Old Testament I do feel inspired by some of the stories and thematic elements. I feel inspired by Joseph's persistent faithfulness.  I feel compassion and kinship with characters who sometimes are righteous and sometimes fall short. I see the good examples and the cautionary tales and examine my own life. This year, especially, I have been encouraged by God's patience with Israel and his unflagging attempts to help and save them despite their wickedness and hope the same efforts will be made for my own imperfect soul.

I think one of the Old Testament's biggest strengths is that it forces us to struggle with the messiness of mortality. No one is perfect. No civilization is completely righteous. Some good people do bad things, and some bad people do good things. It is the way people are. It is complicated and there are lots of grey areas, and there are lots of things we don't understand. Why pretend there isn't? So we wrestle and try to find our own way of hope in belief and faith.

Ruth and Hannah as Types

 I didn't post anything about the book of Judges last week since I did a pretty good post about it in 2022 and didn't have anything new to add. 

This week, however, I have two different things I wanted to post about. I did a post about Ruth in 2022 that covers the basics of the story. One thing I would add to that which I didn't know before, was that one reason Boaz might have been more compassionate toward Ruth is that he understood what it meant for a woman to be a foreigner and convert in Israel.  We learn from Matthew 1:5 that Boaz' mother was Rahab, the "harlot" who hid the spies of Israel in Jericho, and by so doing so was spared and protected when Joshua stormed that city.  Even though Boaz in the book of Ruth seems pretty well of, it might have been difficult for him to find a bride since his mother was foreign and a former prostitute. His kindness to Ruth may reflect his feelings toward his immigrant mother. 

The main thing I saw in the stories of Ruth and Hannah this time was that they can be seen as types.  I wrote before how Sarah's life foreshadowed the future of Israel. Sarah was "sold into Egypt" when her husband claimed she was his sister years before Joseph was sold into Egypt. The fact that the Lord remembered her and provided a way for her to be redeemed foreshadowed Israel's eventual escape from Egypt. This seems like a bit of a stretch unless you remember that throughout the Old Testament the Lord compares his relationship with Israel as a marriage. Later Jeremiah is even commanded to marry a harlot as a symbol of Israel worshiping other gods. I think both Ruth and Hannah's stories foreshadow things that are about to happen to Israel.

First let's talk about Ruth.  She is a Moabite, that is, not a member of the covenant family.  She marries an Israelite and comes to start to understand what Jehovah worship is. When her husband dies, she decides to stay with Naomi and follow the God of Israel rather than the gods of her own culture. Together they go back to Bethlehem and there she impresses and marries an Israelite man and through her the Davidic line is perpetuated.  How does this reflect what is happening is Israel?  Just as Naomi and her family left Bethlehem and traveled to pagan Moab, Israel has left their covenant with the Lord and has gone after idols. They leave because of a famine in Israel. We learn in the book of Judges that there was a famine of righteousness in Israel.  None of the Judges are without flaw, and the final judge, Samson, has truly left the covenants of Israel to follow a foreign path of violence and disregard for the law.

Israel needs a new system of government.  Later in 1 Samuel, we learn that they ask Samuel to find and anoint a king for them because they want to be like other nations (1 Sam 8:20). They are bringing in a foreign form of government just like Naomi is bringing in a foreign bride for Boaz. I think it is no coincidence that it is through Ruth, a foreign import into Israel, that the new foreign form of government, the Kingship, is established though David, her descendant. In other words, just as Naomi went into a foreign land and brought back a bride for Boaz, Israel looked to their foreign neighbors to replace the system of Judges with a King. 

Hannah likewise foreshadows  things that are about to happen in Israel.  Eli is a true High Priest, but his sons are corrupt.  The name Eli, means, Our God, so even though Our God is faithful, his sons, the house of Israel, and particularly the priests of Israel, have become corrupt.  God seeks a true priesthood but cannot find it among the priestly caste. Israel is barren, like Hannah, but when they pray for a king, just as Hannah prays for a son, the Lord grants their request.  Hannah gets a son, and Israel gets a king.  But Hannah doesn't get to keep her son.  After a few short years, he is given up to a lifetime of service in the temple as Hannah promised. Likewise, Israel does not get to keep its kingship.  Saul, David and Solomon rule over Israel as a united kingdom, but on Solomon's death the tribes of Israel fragment, and never again is Israel united under one ruler. In other words, even though Hannah rejoices at having a son, and Israel rejoices in having a king, for both the joy is short lived. 

It isn't as close of a connection as the story of Sarah predicting the story of Israel, but I still think in both cases,  God is using the marriage relationships described in these stories as symbols of his relationship with Israel.