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| King David and Mephibosheth. Image source. |
[content note: it's about human sacrifice in the bible]
I want to talk about Rizpah, who was a better bible hero than King David. (This has been on my mind since I read the book "Inspired".) I've blogged about her story before, actually, in my 2015 post The Worst Bible Story. I stand by that; this truly is the worst bible story.
Here it is: 2 Samuel 21:1-14. (Go read it or else the rest of this post won't make sense.)
I realized that, whenever I've read this story, I've always taken it for granted that it was true that killing Saul's relatives would stop the famine. (And that if they didn't kill Saul's relatives, the famine would continue.) But... let's think about this. If somebody comes and tells you "we need to kill your sons, so God will stop the famine," what would you think? You'd think this person was out of their mind, and dangerous. You wouldn't think it was actually true that killing people would stop a famine.
Yes, this is the worst bible story, but now I'm not even sure which interpretation is worse:
- God requires David to make things right with the Gibeonites in order to stop the famine. The Gibeonites want to kill 7 of Saul's male descendants. So, David agrees, and they kill them, and God stops the famine. This should cause us to ask some pretty damning questions about God's character.
- David believed that God requires him to give the Gibeonites what they ask for, in order to stop the famine. So, he allows them to kill 7 of Saul's male descendants. But, David was wrong. God had no part in this. These were senseless deaths, caused by David's religious fanaticism. (The famine ended, but it had nothing to do with that.)
And Rizpah. Read about what Rizpah did. 2 of the victims were her sons, and she stayed outside day and night to keep the wild animals away from the bodies. If we read about Rizpah's actions in any other context, we would say, "That's love. That's taking a stand for what's right." But in the bible, she's opposite King David, bearing witness to the evil that David has done, protesting against it. So when I read this story in the bible, I always thought that since David was a "good guy," that meant Rizpah was a "bad guy." And, of course, Saul was a "bad guy," so the people associated with him are also "bad guys." I read this story, years ago, and I felt annoyed with Rizpah, like, "Can she just stop it? Doesn't she know that these were people that God wanted to die?"
(Also, it is a SIN to teach kids the story of Mephibosheth in Sunday school without teaching this story at the same time. The story of Mephibosheth is all about, "look, here's King David showing kindness to a descendant of Saul. Oh how wonderful, because back then, kings used to kill all the relatives of the previous king. But David was such a good godly hero, David wasn't like that." Yeah, then go read 2 Samuel 21 and tell me if you still feel that way. And what's even worse is, this story in 2 Samuel 21 literally makes a reference to Mephibosheth from 2 Samuel 9, to point out that David didn't have him killed because he was the poster child for how kind David was to Saul's descendants.)
Anyway, let's just call it what it is: This is a story about human sacrifice.
God requires 7 of Saul's descendants to die, and then God will stop the famine.
Now, it's a little less direct than that- what God actually requires is for David to acknowledge Saul's murder of the Gibeonites, and make it up to the surviving Gibeonites. And so when David goes and asks the Gibeonites what they want, they say they want to kill 7 of Saul's male descendants. So, God didn't ask for human sacrifice directly, but God definitely could have stepped in at some point and said "okay, no, ask for something more reasonable." Instead, God agreed to the Gibeonites' terms, and treated this human sacrifice as the requirement for ending the famine.
And yeah, I know, bible commentaries on this story say "this sounds barbaric to modern readers, but in that culture, this is what they considered fair." I don't buy that. Or, rather, I can believe that it was a normal practice back then, but I do NOT believe that everyone in the bible therefore believed it was completely fine. What about the whole story about the friendship between David and Jonathan (Saul's son)? Clearly, the writer of that story was aware that a father and a son are different people who can make their own choices and disagree about things. What about Deuteronomy 24:16 and Ezekiel 18, which say that children should not be put to death for the sins of their parents? Yes, it seems it was common practice to do this, but I see people in the bible speaking out against it. There were people back then who knew it was wrong.
And, I'm specifically calling out that this is human sacrifice, because that's one of the main excuses Christians make for why it was totally fine that God commanded the Israelites to completely destroy the Canaanites. "Oh, those Canaanites, they practiced a really bad religion that involved sacrificing their children to Molech!" So, it's not okay for the Canaanites to kill their children, but it is okay for the Israelites to kill the Canaanite children? And the justification for it is that Canaanites are bad people who kill their children. Uh... okay...
The bible makes a big deal about this- about how the other religions practiced human sacrifice. Lots of bible passages about how the Israelites turned away from God and started following those other religions and sacrificing their children.
I want to point this out, because the way Christians talk about the bible, you'd think that the Canaanite religions practiced human sacrifice, but the God of the Israelites would never ever ever do anything like that at all. Well, it's not true. Look at 2 Samuel 21.
And, obviously, Genesis 22, where God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Okay, somebody's going to say this doesn't count because God told Abraham to stop at the last second, but COME ON. It's traumatizing.
(Also, if God ever tells you to kill someone, the correct answer is NO. [The Slacktivist has a really good post about this.])
EDIT: And Jephthah's daughter! I can't believe I forgot about her while writing this post. (Judges 11:29-40) Thank you to lowtechcyclist for pointing this out in the comment section.
And here's another weird little bible story they don't tell in church: 2 Kings 3. The kings of Judah, Israel, and Edom brought their armies to fight against Moab. Along the way, God did a miracle to provide these 3 kings' armies with water, and also the prophet Elisha said God would give them victory over Moab. Then, the battle starts, and those 3 kings are winning, chasing away the fleeing Moabite army. And then:
When the king of Moab saw that the battle had gone against him, he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through to the king of Edom, but they failed. Then he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice on the city wall. The fury against Israel was great; they withdrew and returned to their own land.
Uh, what just happened? That's how the story ends. That's it. I remember reading this bible story years ago, and being confused about what this part was even talking about. I didn't pay much attention to it.
But, okay, here's what it's saying: The king of Moab was desperate because his army was losing the battle. As a last-ditch attempt to turn things around, he kills his firstborn son, as a sacrifice. And, it worked! The army of Israel withdrew.
Yeah, did anyone ever tell you that there's a bible story that says human sacrifice works?
(Competition is fierce for the title of "The Worst Bible Story"...)
Did it work because the god of Moab saw this human sacrifice and then responded by intervening in the battle? Or did it work because the soldiers on both sides saw it, and it affected them emotionally?
Basically, here's what I see in the Old Testament: The writers of the bible/ characters in the bible stories are deliberately trying to establish a religion which does NOT have human sacrifice, unlike the other local religions. Over and over again, they point out how wrong it is that some religions command people to sacrifice their children. Good job. I give credit where credit is due. (They definitely believed God commanded genocide though!)
But, they didn't manage to live up to that ideal 100% of the time. There are a few bible stories where God does ask for or require human sacrifices. And there's 2 Kings 3, which tells the story of how a human sacrifice worked to turn the tide of Moab's losing battle. (To be clear, this is different from my other examples because it was a sacrifice to Moab's god, not to the God of the Israelites.)
And look at what King David did. Somebody tells him that 7 of Saul's descendants need to die in order to get God to stop the famine, and he believes it. WTF? That's the kind of God you believe in?
Rizpah is the only one in the story who acts like a human being with compassion. Not David. Not the Gibeonites. Not God. She was a loving mother, and she was the only one who took a stand against what David did.
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So if you're ever reading the bible, and you come across a verse that says, "They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind", take it with a grain of salt.
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