This is the part where things get weird, because they decided to jump back and retell all the lineage from Noah to David for like 10 pages. Then they start back over the story of Saul.
So we begin back at Saul. Actually at the very end of Saul. Saul asked his armor bearer to kill him and he didn’t want to, because he was nervous. Saul fell on his own sword just to, and i quote, “make sure these uncircumcised fellows won’t come abuse me.” After Saul killed himself his armor bearer decided that he was kinda boned, too. So he killed himself. David then became the king and took over Jerusalem and renamed it the City of David. It’s only called the City of David like 2 or 3 times ever in the whole bible. So anyways, at one point David asked for some water in the middle of a battle. Three of his men ran across enemy lines to get him some water and when they came back he wouldn’t even drink it. He was like, “You guys risked your lives for this water, so I don’t want it.” What a dick.
Anyways, so we all know about Joab, David’s general. But there were some other badasses. There was Abishai, Joab’s brother, who killed 300 men with a spear. I’m guessing these two must have had a shitty childhood based on 2 things.
1, How good they are at killing.
2, Because everyone back then had a shitty childhood and adulthood, because life sucked ass.
Benaiah was also a badass. They said he beat a lion to death on a snowy day. This is pretty remarkable seeing as they lived in one of the hottest places on Earth and Lions hibernate when it snows. He also killed some Egyptian guy with the dude’s own spear. It doesn’t say why. I’m sure there was little to no reason. Because of this, David made him his body guard.
Then it goes into the names of all of David’s best warriors with no record of what they did for a while. Then it says, “He had a great army! Like the army of god!” And there’s an asterix that says, “Or A great and mighty army.” So he had a great army similar to either a great and mighty army or an army similar to the army of god that apparently wasn’t his own, but comparable. It’s kind of a weird thought that god’s army would not last more than a day against even a random american street gang today thanks to technology increases in weaponry.
Anyways, David and his mighty army went to go re-capture the Ark of the Covenant that was apparently missing at this time. He was gonna bring it back to Jerusalem but decided against that. This is probably the most boring book of the bible I’ve gotten to so far. Then he decided to bring the ark to Jerusalem. David celebrated, got drunk, pissed his wife off, and sang a big long song thanking god for giving him the power to go get the Ark that god commanded them to be in possession of. That’s like me asking you for a sandwich, then giving you tips on how to make the sandwich, and you singing a song thanking me for helping you make me a sandwich.
And as we covered before, David conquered a bunch of different warring tribes and fucked up the Ammonites because they shaved his messengers and cut their robes so their asses would be bare. Then they went to war with the Philistines because they seem to enjoy going to war with the philistines. The Philistines had a champion who had twelve fingers and toes like the guy from Princess Bride and David’s brother killed him. That’s the kind of stuff historians were interested in documenting back then.
Speaking of documenting. David decided to take a census of men who were able to fight that were under his control. He made Joab go and count them all against his will. Joab counted 1.1 million. Have you ever counted to a fucking million? It takes 11 and a half days without sleeping or stopping. It says Joab didn’t include the Levites or the Benjamites because he thought it would be against god’s will, but I’m pretty sure he was just sick of counting people. Anyways, this pissed god off for some reason. So god gave David three options, Three years of famine, three months of losing battles, or three days of god just fucking sweeping throughout the land killing and plaguing anyone he goddamn pleases.
David chose three days of god fucking up whomever he wanted saying, “I want to fall to you, god! Because you are merciful, please don’t let me fall into the hands of humans!” God was like, “I don’t know what I’ve ever done to get called ‘merciful’ but okay. I’ll do it.” So god straight up killed 70,000 Israelites with a plague. Then he sent the angel of death to fuck up Jerusalem even further, but changed his mind at the last minute when he realized that killing people made him sad. Again, I have no idea why David getting a census of his military pissed god off this bad, but it totally did.
David got all the elders and himself to wear burlap sacks instead of clothing, then he shouted to the sky, “God, I was the one who fucked up. Why are you killing all these people? They didn’t do anything wrong!” God said, “Yeah, go build me a altar on the exact location that Araunah the Jebusite has a threshing business set up. It has to be right there, no where else. Or I’ll keep fucking shit up.” David bought Araunah’s business and land at full price even though Araunah offered just to give it up for free for some reason.
Then David started planning the temple he was gonna build. Then, even though it pissed god off to get these numbers, they list all the census results for like 10 more pages. This book skips over all the rest of David’s misdoings, his son’s incest rape that tore his family apart, skips Absolom altogether, and the details of his life leading up to his death. It just ends with David dying and Solomon being the new king.
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