Assaulting the Jebusites and Philistines (2 Samuel, Chapter 5)

While waiting in the mulberry trees, King David and his troops awaits the sound of God 

moving through the trees before advancing upon the hapless Philistines.

Image from the Jim Bakker Show Blog

2 Samuel, Chapter 5 - This chapter is about King David rousing his troops and the subsequent assaults and victories on the Jebusites and the Philistines, along with some of the repression done by the Israelites to keep these people in line.

It starts off with some grumbling from the Jebusites, who are not a fan of David and don't want him around.  So, David takes the Jebusite stronghold of Zion, which becomes the City of David.  He rallies the people to his cause, saying in the eighth verse: "Whoever gets out of the gutter and kills the Jebusites, and the lame and blind whom I hate, that person shall be made a captain (in the army)."

As King David established his kingdom and it grew, David gathers more wives and concubines.  In other words, David has his own harem!  It doesn't say how many, but they started getting pregnant real quick.

Word of King David's rising kingdom came to the nearby Philistines, who decided to seek him out.  It isn't clear in the King James version if they were seeking him out for military means, or just to meet the new king. But what happens is that after the Philistines come and camp in the nearby valley of Rephaim, David inquires in Yahweh (aka God) what he should do.  Yahweh, of course, wants David to slaughter all the Philistines.  God and David both destroy the Philistines in the valley of Rephaim.

However, more Philistines came and once again camped in the valley.  So, God lets David in on a bit of strategy.  He advises David and his troops to go around the Philistine encampment into a grove of mulberry trees, there to await "the sound of a going" in the tops of the mulberry trees (5:23).  David follows the advice and waits patiently until indeed a rustling was heard in the trees.  He gave the orders to advance upon the Philistines and left death in his wake.

Saul bumbles again (1 Samuel, Chapter 15)

Saul grabs Samuel's robe, and accidentally tears it (15:27).

Image from HTML Bible

Chapter 15 is pretty straight forward.  Basically, God (aka Yahweh) remembers that Amalekites did some pretty mean things to the Israelites a few hundred years ago, so He orders that they should be exterminated - elderly, men, women, children, infants, livestock, EVERYTHING).

Saul does a few things wrong however, he actually let a group of people called the Kenites go, because they were actually kind to the Israelites even though they were living with the Amalekites.  I don't think this is what got Yahweh pissed off, though.  What pissed Yahweh off was that Saul didn't kill everyone.

Saul had the gall to let the Amalekite king live (though all other Amalekites were slaughtered - men, women, children), and Saul decided to keep the best of the animals.

This pissed Yahweh off to no end, and He even said that He regretted making Saul a king.  Imagine that - God has regrets!

Now, to be honest, Saul did this because the people asked.  But, this is not what the Supreme Leader asked, via His spokesperson Samuel.

When Samuel learned that Saul had not followed the God's commands to the letter, He chewed out the king, in a display that showed who the real power was.  The power isn't the king, who is a secular authority of sorts, but through the priesthood and especially via Samuel.  In the picture above, Saul is shamed for his bad behavior and grabs the mantle of Samuel's cloak, accidentally tearing it.

After tearing the cloak, Samuel sees symbolism in it and says that God has torn the Kingdom of Israel away from you, Saul, and has given it to your neighbor.

The chapter ends in a final morbid scene.  Saul, who has been stripped of his kingship, approaches King Agag of the Amalekites - their last surviving member.  "Surely, the bitterness of death has passed," said Agag.

Saul replies, "As the sword has made women childless, so too will your mother (who is probably dead by now) be childless among women."  With that, Saul cut Agag into many pieces.

Leviticus, Chapter 18 is all about sex. And it's not just about regular old hetero-sexual male-female sex - Chapter 18 covers all the OTHER stuff - the taboo stuff. It lumps homosexuality right in there with bestiality and incest.

First on the list is seeing relatives naked. It doesn't say anything about sex, it says you can't "uncover their nekkedness." I support that, it would be kind of awkward to see Uncle Billy's willy or Aunt Gina's 'gina; but is it necessary to even write this down in the Holy Bible? This is common sense stuff that should be applied to all people in casual polite society. But yea, there's crazy, gross and disgusting people out there that God created, and I guess He thought it would be a good idea to remind them not to do what He apparently knew what they'd do anyway.

The reasoning behind not uncovering the nakedness of relatives is that they are all of the same flesh. How's that even a reason? It should've said that sex with relatives has a higher chance of creating retarded offspring, or that sex with relatives is a breach of trust, or even "That's disgusting, man."

Second of all, don't even LOOK at a menstruating woman -that's just disgusting! (18:19) Bestiality (sex with animals) is also covered in Chapter 18.

Out of the blue, there is a reference saying not to pass your offspring to the fires to Molech. Basically, don't sacrifice your kid to Molech (who is a Sumerian god).

And then finally, we get to the rallying cry of the religious right. Leviticus 18:22: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. "

That's one third of their party platform, which can be summed up as follows: "God, guns, and gays."

Take note that the religious right regularly break all those other laws (keeping slaves, killing a non-virgin on her wedding night, looking at menstruating women, etc.), but they sure like to focus on this one! That's just goes to show that following the Bible literally is impossible - we all pick and choose, no matter how fundamentalist we are.

In fact, I'd argue that fundamentalists are the worst because while they do their fair share of cherry-picking, they can't even justify the reasons to favor one verse over another. Liberal and moderate Christians and Jews are at least reasonable enough to recognize there's a problem, but they'll still believe (albeit in a wishy-washy way).