Let’s admit it, sometimes the Bible is weird – 1st Samuel 28-30, Part 1

This week we welcome guest blogger, Kirk Marks. Kirk retired from a long career in pastoral ministry, denominational leadership and theological education. He now works in global fair trade.

Weird is one of those words of which it could be said, “We know it when we see it.” But describing or defining what makes something weird is hard to do. If something is weird, it’s more than just unusual. It’s more than unique or something we never heard of before. If something is weird, it’s just not right on some level.

Have you heard the story of the pig that was hanged for murder?  In that story, something’s not right. Something doesn’t make sense.  It’s weird. 

You’ve probably had the experience of thinking that something was weird and you didn’t understanding what’s going on. But then later on, when you have found out some more about the situation, you realized it wasn’t weird. It kind of made some sense.

Sometimes things seem weird because we don’t understand them. That was the case with US President Zachary Taylor’s death. He died from eating cherries and drinking milk.

Taylor’s death considered so weird and such a mystery that in the 1980s a historian was able to present such a compelling case that more likely Taylor was assassinated and poisoned. Taylor’s family gave permission for his remains to be exhumed, his hair to be tested for poison, and, in fact, the science proved that he was not poisoned. He did die from eating cherries and drinking milk. It’s weird, right? That’s just strange.

There’s another sense in which the word weird gets used. If you have read any Shakespeare, in Macbeth, we encounter the characters who are the Weird Sisters. And they’re not just weird, strange, odd, and ugly too.  They also have supernatural powers, which is another way that the word weird was used, more so in older times than now. Something is supernatural when it can’t be explained by natural things. It’s weird.

All of those aspects of weirdness factor into what we find in 1 Samuel 28, 29, and 30, which we’re going to talk about this week. So keep all of that weird stuff in your mind and see how some of that weirdness will play out.

There have been many times in my 30-year pastoral career where people would come to me and say, “I’ve been reading some things in the Bible that disturb me. I’m reading some things in the Bible that I think are weird, some things I don’t understand, some things I don’t get. Pastor, did you know that this was in the Bible?” The people expressing this were really disconcerted by what they found.

There is a lot of weird stuff in the Bible. Sometimes people find that a little disturbing to have the Bible described that way. Isn’t it the word of God? Isn’t this God’s love letter to us? Isn’t the Bible a unique book? I absolutely believe that. I believe that the Bible is the word of God, that it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, that it is authoritative for our faith and Christian lives.

I believe that it is indeed infallible. It never fails to accomplish what God wants to accomplish through it. But none of that changes the fact that as we, as Christians in the 21st century, read it, some of it sounds really weird to us.

I could give you illustrations of that, but we’ve already had plenty of them in this series from 1 Samuel, as we’ve looked at Saul’s rise to power in Israel, and then the life and the story of David as that all begins. There’s been some weird stuff that we’ve run into already, haven’t we?

Just think for a minute about Israel’s desire for a king.

Israel’s got this great arrangement. God’s their God, and they’re his people, and he’s given them this land, and given them laws for how to live in it, and he’s got them all set up.  But they’re not happy with that. They want a king. And Samuel, in frustration, said to them, “You don’t want a king.  You have God for your king. What do you need a king for?”

“No, no, we want a king,” the people say.

Samuel says, “You know what’s going to happen.  This king is going to tax you. He’s going to take your money. He’s going to take your harvest and your crops, and you’re not going to like that.”

They say, “No, no, we want a king.” That started something that has not stopped. Every April 15th, and every time we buy something at a store in Pennsylvania, we know what a bad idea it was to get a king who’s going do the taxing.

Samuel warned them. They said, “No, no, we still want a king.” He said, “The king is going to take your sons and draft them into the military, and take your daughters and have them work in his kingdom.  He’s going to take things from you. You don’t want this.”

“No, no, we want a king.”

Doesn’t the whole thing sound weird to you? Look how it weirdly unfolds with Saul and all the weird stuff that happened with David and his sons. Then the whole book of the Kings in the scriptures describes the strange things the kings got into. It’s weird.

It’s just a weird history. Think about David. Remember what we learned about David in 1 Samuel chapter 25?  David’s already got three wives, and spoiler alert, he’s going to get some more, and his life is going to get even weirder.  What does David want with three wives?

The Old Testament is just full of these weird situation that are very culturally different from the world we live in, things that are separated from us by lots of time and history. These events happened in a very different place in the world.

It’s so strange to us that many people, myself included, have raised the question, Is it worth it to read the Old Testament? Is it worth it to blog our way through 1 and 2 Samuel and the life of David? In the next post, I’ll try to answer that question.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash