4 Best Over-Reactions in the Bible

The Bible is ripe with stories of people over coming impossible odds through faith and devotion. It is also highlights stories of people going absolutely bonkers for seemingly no reason. What follows are four of the best over-reactions found in the Holy Bible.

There are many great passages about revenge in the Old Testament, and while Jesus taught to love the sinner but hate the sin, God taught that you best keep your ass in check or He would check it for you.

One such case is with Elijah, a noted wise man. While traveling to mount Carmel for official wise man business he is followed by a group of children from the city and teased about his baldness. After offering absolutely no warning Elijah cursed them “in the name of the Lord,” summoning two bears out of the woods to maul forty-two children to death.

So sayeth the Lord.

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This raises a few questions:

-If Elijah is so wise, why is his first solution to mild name calling to summon bears? This is the Bible, after all. Couldn’t he have just smacked them around a la Bing Crosby?

-Footnotes found in most modern translations helpfully explain that Elijah didn’t summon the bears to eat children because they took shots at his chrome dome but rather he really loved God and felt that they were mocking Him. If that’s’ the case, why don’t people pull this trick off more often? Like, why not just flood Sodom with bears instead of blowing it to ashes?

-If there’s only two bears and forty-two children, what are the other children doing while the bears systematically eat all of their friends? It’s seems like a lit of people could avoid the wrath of God if the just ran away.

Judges chapter 9 is the feel good story of the year. A man and his wife (lovingly referred to as a “concubine”) are wandering the streets of Jerusalem when they decide to seek shelter. Thankfully, they find a man kind enough to let them crash on his couch. However, whilst crashing a group of men approach the home owner and demand to see his guest so that they can sex him something fierce. But that’s not kosher and so he refuses, offering his virgin daughter instead and proving that there’s a precedent for that sort of thing. However, this still doesn’t satisfy the mob so he then offers his lodger’s wife instead, which they accept. The woman is brutally raped and left for dead on the man’s doorstep. Meanwhile, I think the lodger is owed a free breakfast or something.

You call this service?

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In response to seeing his dead and violated wife the lodger does the only logical thing one can do in such a situation: cuts her into twelve pieces (bone and all) and has a piece sent to each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Allegedly this was done because no such crime had ever been committed in Israel before and by sending bits of his wife to the tribes they would rise up as a collective for vengeance. Ignoring the fact that he has no idea what happened or who even carried out the deed, this is a fool proof plan worthy of a Batman himself.

So sayeth the Lord.

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Perhaps the saddest part of this story is, had he simply asked the home owner what happened there was a chance he could have gotten a straight answer instead of shipping chunks of his dead wife via UPS and scouring the sands for gangs of roaming, distinguished rapists.

Even Jesus Christ, the embodiment of love, peace, and redemption, is not above a good smiting.

After casting the money changers from the temple Jesus could go for a snack. En route to his next destination with his disciples he sees a fig tree in bloom. Once he approaches it, however, he finds that there are no figs, defying both science and the will of His divine hunger. Not one to be embarrassed by a fruitless tree in front of his posse, Jesus promptly curses the tree, causing it to wither and die immediately.

You see this, Judas? You see what I'm doing here? This could be you, pal. Watch yourself.

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The finer details of the life and times of Jesus are oddly absent from the accounts we’re given, so you would think that the details we do have would be really important. You would think that, but then we get hit with this story of our Savior getting pissy at a tree with the message being that if you put all of your faith in Him you can correct slight irritations with deadly curses.

The really confusing part of the story is that when retold in the book of Mark it’s made a point that it isn’t the season for figs. It’s not entirely unreasonable to think that a man who can foresee his own betrayal, death, and resurrection could also keep track of a farmer’s almanac, but even if he couldn’t he can clearly command the tree to bend to his will, so why not just tell it to fork over some fruit? Not only have you not solved your hunger issue but by holding a grudge against a tree you come off as just a bit petty.

David, young and in love, wants to marry the daughter of King Saul. Saul has no problem with this because hey, David is a charming dude. He demands no dowry but makes the stipulation in order to wed his daughter David must bring him the foreskins of one-hundred Philistines by the next day. Why one-hundred? Do you really want to know what a man could possibly do with one-hundred foreskins?

Answer: magic.

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David finds absolutely nothing wrong with this request. Apparently he’s so in love that what he’s being tasked with is well within the realm of reason for him. So he saddles up with his boys and goes on a magical, horrifying journey. But somehow during all the bloodshed and wang touching David loses track of the people he’s killed and ends up with two-hundred corpses on his hands. Oops!

Suddenly, King Saul is filled with regret.

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Rather than let half of his victims die with some sort of dignity David goes all in and collects all two-hundred foreskins and presents them to King Saul. Now technically David didn’t meet his request and their agreement should be off, but you don’t tell a man who took the time and energy to cut off two-hundred individual foreskins that he can’t get what he wants. David gets married, Saul get his foreskins, and everyone lives happily ever after, presumably never talking about the incident again.

Author: Ben Dennison — Copyrighted © roadtickle.com