Tag Archives: promises

The Story of King Solomon—
The Wisest Man in the World

December 30, 2023Bible storiesanimals, bathsheba, betrayal, blessings, buildings, creation, david, death, failure, false accusation, family, food, foolishness, god, heaven, idols, immortality, incest, infidelity, injustice, jealousy, marriage, money, murder, music, overreaction, pagans, pointlessness, polygamy, promises, prostitution, reputation, sacrifice, selfishness, slavery, solomon, temple, virginity, war, wealth, wisdomR. A. Absalom

When King David was old, he had trouble staying warm. His attendants solved that problem by finding a hot girl to lie next to him in bed. Her name was Abishag, but he didn’t shag her. One day, David’s wife Bathsheba came to his room with a complaint.

She said David had promised that her son Solomon would be the next king. But now another son of David, Adonijah, had made himself king. Then David had Bathsheba come to his room, and he declared Solomon to be the new king of Israel.

When Adonijah heard about that, he was afraid Solomon would kill him. Solomon decided not to kill his brother for trying to become king. But then when Adonijah tried to marry Abishag, Solomon did kill him, because he thought that meant Adonijah was trying to become king. After David died, Solomon also killed a man David had sworn would not be killed, because Solomon was a wise man.

One night, after Solomon sacrificed at an unauthorized altar, God offered to give him anything he wanted. Solomon asked for wisdom, because he was young and inexperienced and ignorant and didn’t know right from wrong. God was so pleased that Solomon hadn’t asked for money that he made Solomon the richest king of all time, and he also made him the wisest person of all time. Solomon later asked God to let him live as long as the sun and moon endured. But apparently God didn’t like that request as much.

After he became wise, Solomon suggested cutting a baby in half. Then he wisely decided not to let the baby be raised by a prostitute who thought his idea was a good one. (He gave the baby to a different prostitute instead.)

King Solomon ruled over many other kingdoms in addition to Israel. During his reign there was peace for Israel, except when there wasn’t. He wrote thousands of songs¹ and proverbs, and studied plants and animals. People came from all over the world to hear his wisdom. But wisdom was beyond him.

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The Story of the House of Saul—
The Children's Teeth Are Set on Edge

September 20, 2023Bible storiesbetrayal, david, evil, famine, foolishness, genocide, god, injustice, massacres, prayer, promises, punishment, revenge, reward, saul, scapegoatingR. A. Absalom

During David’s reign, there was a famine in Israel. After it had gone on for three years, David asked God why there was a famine. God explained that he was punishing dead king Saul for trying to kill all the Gibeonites after Joshua had promised they wouldn’t be killed.

King David asked the remaining Gibeonites how he could make amends. They said they would like it if he helped them kill seven descendants of Saul. (Whose whole family had already been killed off.)

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The Story of David and Bathsheba—
The Only Thing David Ever Did That God Didn't Approve of

June 14, 2023Bible storiesbathsheba, buildings, david, deception, envy, evil, failure, family, hypocrisy, illness, infidelity, injustice, joab, judgment, marriage, mistakes, misunderstanding, mourning, murder, nudity, promises, punishment, scapegoating, secrets, sex, spying, uriah, warR. A. Absalom

King David heard that Nahash, the Ammonite king who had wanted to gouge out the eyes of all the Israelites, had died. So David sent diplomats to tell Nahash’s successor how sorry David was that such a kind man had died. But the Ammonites assumed that David’s men must be spies plotting to overthrow them. So they sent the diplomats away half naked, and started a war with Israel. David stayed home while he had his commander Joab go out and lead Israel in fighting the Ammonites (which God had commanded them not to do).

David was walking around on the roof of his palace one night, when he saw a beautiful woman taking a bath. He learned that her name was Bathsheba, and that she was the wife of Uriah, one of David’s chief warriors, who was away fighting in the war. David had Bathsheba brought to the palace, had sex with her, and sent her back home.

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The Story of David and Jonathan—
The Gay Story

November 14, 2022Bible storiescircumcision, coercion, david, deception, demons, discrimination, envy, escape, failure, family, food, foolishness, gentiles, god, homosexuality, idols, in-law-cest, jonathan, love, marriage, massacres, michal, mistakes, moral influences, murder, music, nudity, overreaction, philistines, pointlessness, poverty, promises, reputation, rescue, reward, samuel, saul, self-defeating, tests, warR. A. Absalom

Saul hates David, Saul’s children love David

After David killed Goliath, women from all over Israel started singing and dancing and claiming that David had slain tens of thousands, but Saul had only slain thousands. This made Saul jealous and angry at David, and they became enemies.

The next day, Saul tried to kill David twice by throwing a spear at him, but he missed both times. Since Saul wasn’t able to kill David himself, he decided to let his other enemies do it for him. So Saul offered to let David marry his daughter Merab if David fought some more Philistines. But David didn’t think he was worthy of becoming the king’s son-in-law, because he wasn’t rich and famous enough.

(Even though women all over Israel were singing his praises. Even though he had been chosen by God to become king of Israel. Even though Saul had promised to give great wealth and his daughter to whoever killed Goliath.)

So Merab married somebody else. But Saul found out that his other daughter, Michal, was in love with David, so Saul offered to let David marry her if he killed 100 Philistines. So David forgot about his supposed unworthiness, and killed 200 Philistines and brought their foreskins to Saul,¹ and then David married Michal. Then Saul found out that Michal was in love with David. Again.

But David loved Saul’s son Jonathan more than he loved women. Jonathan loved David too, so he took off his clothes and became one with him. Jonathan informed David (who had already had to dodge Saul’s spear twice) that Saul was trying to get David killed. Jonathan knew this because Saul had told Jonathan to kill David. Then Jonathan told Saul that there was no reason to kill David for no reason, so Saul promised to stop trying to kill David.

Idol threats

But then God sent an evil spirit that made Saul throw a spear at David again, so David ran away from Saul’s house and stayed at his own house. Saul sent men to wait outside David’s house that night and kill him in the morning. When David realized that Saul’s men had come to kill him, he wrote a song about it.² Then he threatened to kill his wife if she didn’t help him escape, so she lowered him through a window, and distracted Saul’s men with a decoy made from an idol that she had handy for some reason.

Saul went after David so he could capture him and kill him, but when he ran into Samuel and some other men, God made Saul strip off his clothes and lie down with the men and spend the night with them.

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The Story of David and Goliath—
David Risks His Life for Nothing

October 17, 2022Bible storiesdavid, death, failure, fighting, foolishness, goliath, ingratitude, injustice, israelites, marriage, philistines, pointlessness, promises, reward, saul, warR. A. Absalom

Goliath, a Philistine who was almost ten feet tall, challenged Israel to choose a man to fight him one-on-one. The losing nation would then become subject to the winning nation. David was told that King Saul would give great wealth and his daughter to the man who killed Goliath. So David told Saul he would fight Goliath.

Saul thought David was too young and inexperienced to do that, but David pointed out that as a shepherd, he had plenty of experience killing things. Saul let David try on his armor, but David (Saul’s armor-bearer) wasn’t used to bearing Saul’s armor. So he went to fight Goliath with no armor and no sword.

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The Story of Jonathan and the Cursed Honey—
Saul Tries to Starve His Own Army

August 7, 2022Bible storiesbad rules, curses, failure, family, fasting, food, foolishness, god, ingratitude, injustice, israelites, jonathan, judgment, mind control, mistakes, murder, obedience, overreaction, philistines, promises, punishment, rescue, saul, self-defeating, warR. A. Absalom

During a war with the Philistines, King Saul’s son Jonathan ate some honey that he found on the ground. But then someone informed him that his father had said anyone who ate anything that day would be cursed. Jonathan thought that was dumb. By depriving them of food, Saul was making his army too weak to fight the Philistines. So Jonathan sneaked away and started killing Philistines himself. Then God made the Philistines panic and attack each other so the Israelites wouldn’t have to.

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The Story of Samson’s Riddle—
Out of the Strong, Some Way to Cheat

February 9, 2022Bible storiesanimals, betrayal, blessings, coercion, death, destruction, discrimination, escape, failure, fire, food, fraud, god, hair, imprisonment, israelites, jealousy, marriage, massacres, miracles, mistakes, misunderstanding, murder, nagging, overreaction, philistines, promises, punishment, revenge, reward, samson, scapegoating, secrets, spying, teamwork, theft, wineR. A. Absalom

Samson was another judge, who saved his people when God let the Philistines take over Israel. Samson was a life-long Nazirite, which required him to abstain from wine, corpses, and haircuts.

While Samson was on his way to a Philistine city to visit a Philistine woman, he was attacked by a lion. God gave him the strength to easily kill the lion with his bare hands. Later, when he was on his way to the Philistine city again to marry the Philistine woman, he found that some bees had made a nest in the lion’s body. He took some honey out of the dead lion and shared it with his parents. But he didn’t tell anyone where the honey came from.

Samson challenged 30 Philistine men to try to solve a riddle by the end of his week-long wedding feast. They agreed that the losing party would have to give the winning party 30 sets of clothes. So Samson told them a “riddle” that they couldn’t possibly make sense of without knowing about the lion incident that no one but Samson knew about.

The Philistine men realized that Samson was unfairly trying to take their property. So they threatened to burn down his new wife’s house unless she told them the answer to the riddle. Samson’s wife cried constantly for the rest of the week until Samson gave her the answer. Then she told the answer to the men, and the men gave the answer back to Samson.

Samson knew those 30 Philistine men must have cheated, since there was no other way they could have possibly solved his “riddle”. But he gave them the promised 30 sets of clothes… which he got by killing 30 other Philistine men.

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The Story of the Levite’s Concubine—
The Most Pointlessly Evil Story in the Bible

January 10, 2022Bible storiesdestruction, discrimination, escape, evil, failure, family, foolishness, god, homosexuality, hypocrisy, injustice, israelites, kidnapping, marriage, massacres, moral influences, murder, overreaction, pointlessness, promises, punishment, rape, revenge, scapegoating, tribes of israel, violence, virginity, warR. A. Absalom

A Levite man’s girlfriend broke up with him and went back to live with her parents. But then he followed her to her parents’ house and took her back. On the way back to the man’s home, they stopped for the night in Gibeah, a city of the tribe of Benjamin, and stayed in an old man’s house.

Some of the Benjamite men from that city came and surrounded the house. They told the old man to send the Levite man out so they could have sex with him. The old man said he couldn’t let them have sex with his guest, because that would be outrageous and vile. So he offered to let them rape his daughter and his guest’s girlfriend instead.

The Levite man thought that was a good idea, so he sent his girlfriend outside. The men of Gibeah spent the whole night gang-raping her to death. Then the man went home, and he chopped up his girlfriend into a dozen pieces and had them distributed all over the country.

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The Story of Jephthah’s Sacrifice—
The Stupidest Story in the Bible

December 18, 2021Bible storiescanaanites, child abuse, evil, family, foolishness, injustice, jephthah, marriage, massacres, mistakes, moral influences, murder, pointlessness, promises, rescue, sacrifice, theft, virginity, warR. A. Absalom

The people of Israel angered their God again by serving other gods. So God let the Ammonites take over Israel, and he said he would never save his people again. But his people insisted on being saved, so the never-changing God, who never listens to sinners, changed his mind and appointed a new judge to save Israel: Jephthah, the leader of a gang of scoundrels.

Jephthah asked the Ammonite king why he was attacking Israel. The king explained that the Israelites had stolen the Ammonites’ land, and the Ammonites wanted it back. Jephthah was like, that never happened, what would you know about that? The king ignored him.

So Jephthah went to attack the Ammonites, which God had forbidden the Israelites to do. He promised that if God helped him disobey God in this way, he would give God whatever met him at the door when he came home, as a burnt offering. The all-knowing God knew what would happen if he did this, but he wanted that burnt offering. So he helped Jephthah destroy twenty Ammonite towns, and he didn’t warn Jephthah’s family to stay indoors.

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The Story of the Gibeonite Deception—
The Colonists Get Rid of the Natives

October 5, 2021Bible storiescanaanites, catch-22, deception, destruction, escape, failure, fire, fraud, genocide, god, israelites, joshua, massacres, morality, obedience, promises, punishment, slavery, theft, warR. A. Absalom

After destroying Jericho, the Israelites next went to the city of Ai, killed everyone there with swords, stole all their belongings, and burned down the city. When the nearby people of Gibeon heard about that, they figured out a way to keep the same thing from happening to them. They asked Joshua to make a treaty with them.

God had forbidden the Israelites to make a treaty with the people who lived in the land they were taking over, so when Joshua asked, the Gibeonites said they lived far away. So Israel made a treaty of peace with Gibeon and swore not to attack them.

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Reductio Ad Absalom

For the message of the cross is foolishness.

Tag Archives: promises

The Story of King Solomon—
The Wisest Man in the World

The Story of the House of Saul—
The Children's Teeth Are Set on Edge

The Story of David and Bathsheba—
The Only Thing David Ever Did That God Didn't Approve of

The Story of David and Jonathan—
The Gay Story

Saul hates David, Saul’s children love David

Idol threats

The Story of David and Goliath—
David Risks His Life for Nothing

The Story of Jonathan and the Cursed Honey—
Saul Tries to Starve His Own Army

The Story of Samson’s Riddle—
Out of the Strong, Some Way to Cheat

The Story of the Levite’s Concubine—
The Most Pointlessly Evil Story in the Bible

The Story of Jephthah’s Sacrifice—
The Stupidest Story in the Bible

The Story of the Gibeonite Deception—
The Colonists Get Rid of the Natives