The readings - Day 93 - 1 Samuel 25-27
The nice thing about actually keeping up with the readings and posting with them on time is that I have the luxury of much more bite-sized posts, at least for now.
I'm a big, big fan of the storylines that are involved with David's rise to power, as you may have gleaned from yesterday's post.
In the "times have changed" department, I should mention that one of the things I'm most looking forward to in life is getting to tell youngsters (grandchildren and the like) that I'm older than the Internet, and watching their tiny brains smolder and spin as they try to grapple with the very notion of a world without it.
You know what you could (apparently) do before the Internet was around? You could be on the run from a king who desperately wanted you dead, while being accompanied by around 600 men at all times, along with their possessions and (presumably) families. Oh, and you can get married. Twice.
The whole Nabal/Abigail story is another interesting one, and another one that I can't help but categorize as yet another biblical undermining of the patriarchal alignment of the society in which all these stories take place. Nabal is clearly a buffoon. Remember the thing about names being important? (On that note, what were his parents thinking?) His servants think he's nuts, and his wife, Abigail, about which the text has nothing but glowing things to say, agrees with them.
I can't help but think that there is a fascinating amount of middle eastern cultural traditions stuff that ought to be appreciated in the whole exchange between David's servants and Nabals when it comes to their requests for some goodies. Alas, I don't know any of it. I'm sure it's there, though.
So David demands some stuff from Nabal, whose flocks, etc, David's men have been protecting for some time, Nabal plays dumb, so David immediately sets out with all of his dudes to slaughter Nabal and everyone who lives with him. Really.
Anyway, so Abigail proves that she's the brains of the operation and whips up an enormous meal (enormous will have to do, but I can't help but think that a meal of five entire sheep needs a somewhat more expansive adjective) for David and his entire posse and heads out to meet them before they arrive. She gets there, David's happy, everyone's happy, Nabal's partying with his crew and wakes up to the news that his wife saved him from David's onslaught and he dies.
David hears that Nabal's dead and decides that the sheep were really good, so Abigail becomes his wife.
---
I also like how, after yet another "I could have killed you but I didn't" run-in with Saul, David finally wises up and acknowledges that one of these days his luck's going to run out and Saul's going to get him, so he bolts over to the Philistines' region to hang out there for a while.
BONUS LEVEL: not only is he now hanging out with the people he single-handedly defeated, but he's living in the same town that Goliath was from. That's king material, right there...
David = awesome
ReplyDelete