1 Samuel 15 ended last week’s section with the Lord’s rejection of Saul as King. This week, chapter 16 opens the second half of 1 Samuel with the Lord’s anointing of David as King, a move that will provide a violent tension till the death of Saul and the end of the book.

From a storyline perspective this saga is bittersweet. On the one hand, civil unrest lingers on like a bad smell, fuelled by the aggressive debacle over leadership. There is, however, in David, some hope for a better future. He may be young and unlikely, but he has guts, resilience, and, most importantly, humility.

Having whizzed through the epoch of the Judges we’re back into slower history again with the accounts of 1 and 2 Samuel. This week we’re looking at 1 Samuel 1–15 which is the story of the prophet Samuel, the Ark of the Covenant, and the rise and fall of King Saul.

Samuel is important in Israel’s history as the last of the Judges. As a powerful prophet his reputation as a leader was clearly strong, but his sons – like many a Judge’s son before him – let him down. To add insult to injury (and somewhat ironically) Samuel himself, in his childhood brought a damning message to Eli the Priest on account of his wayward sons (Chapter 3). With this all clear from the first few chapters of 1 Samuel it is understandable that Israel, without lasting quality in Priest or Prophet would look for a King.

As the epic histories wind ever on, our attention is drawn right in to the very personal situation of a particular Israelite family. Set in the time of the judges, Ruth provides a narrative of hope against the background of the Judges account that laments Israel’s failures so bitterly. With this tiny book we find, I believe, something brilliantly subversive. Here, amidst tales of male heroes routing their enemies we find Ruth, a foreign women, hailed to Naomi as ‘better to you than seven sons’ (4:15). Amidst the Law of Moses – which on several occasions shocked us with its sexist bent – and the tales of Joshua’s cultural genocide, this small story is a beacon of hope; like a tiny grain of yeast that could work through all the dough.

The story of Ruth is simple enough. A desperate Moabite widow with no protection or financial future captures the desires of a gentleman of Bethlehem and he ‘redeems’ her, he ‘buys her back’. A classic ‘chick-flick’, the drama has a happy, and apparently very romantic, ending.

Back into the History section again and we have to adjust to a change of pace. Whereas Exodus to Joshua covers a period of maybe sixty, seventy years, Judges deals with several hundred. And it is a totally different style to what we’ve read so far. Flitting here and there, re-telling the legends of old, never quite saying anything but often implying much, we’re found laughing, crying and, much of the time, staring blankly in confusion at why such a large section of Israel’s history would be remembered this way.

What I like about Judges is the brutal honesty about the state of life after Moses and Joshua. Ever since Exodus we’ve been reading Israelite experience through the lens of its leadership as they desperately work to create a Yahweh-identity among the wandering community. Now they’re settled and their leaders have gone we see the uncertainty this giant family has in their Suzerain. Only one generation need pass and he is forgotten.

This is a creative re-reading of John's Gospel. I'll be updating this throughout the next few weeks, adding to the story. Please feel free to contribute your own re-readings, either in the comments below or in the Community readings forum.

In the beginning, when it was dark, and the deep ocean of possibility lay still and tranquil, there was God; hovering, brooding over the surface of all that was about to be, deep in prayer, deeply dreaming. Then came the Word. Spoken from the aeons of memory in visionary motif it leapt like breath from her mouth and called to the sea. ‘Be made’ his shimmering eyes proclaimed, as the waters stirred and took shape. Torrents danced to the left and to the right as citadels of liquid life spiralled around their heart. In the energy, the ecstasy, the love of this communion, the spirals tightened like a spring. God, invested in this shrinking potential, became like the most imperceptible dot on a horizon; like the first speck of sunrise at a new dawn. Then the whole universe was filled with light; from one end to the other, as far as there are ideas to imagine and worlds to create. The sound of the Word was deafening. The Spirit of life flowed like a membrane over what had become and flooded existence with oceans of presence. And God saw all this and sang with joy, because it was good.

As we leave Israel to settle herself in new surroundings, we sidestep again for a week to the co-current Psalms that run alongside the normal readings. Following from the last post on the Psalms back in January, we’ll look specifically at Book II and III, Psalms 42 – 89.

With two children demanding entertainment, my mind has been thrown back to the songs of my childhood. Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, Row, Row, Row the Boat all come flooding back. There is a tradition in Britain of some really quite random nursery-rhymes that are still sung today, generations after their composition.

Yet one of the amusing features of this hallowed collection is the depressing end to which so many of the characters succumb. The forever broken Humpty Dumpty, the starved and frightened Little Miss Muffet, a serious head injury to Jack, a perpetually frustrated Incy Wincy Spider, a King without a nose and my sister-in-law even claims to have learnt a song about a Mummy ladybird who returns home to find her babies have all been eaten! One can’t help thinking, ‘who would burden little children with such mordant woes?!’

One of the best things about being a dad to a toddler is getting to read childrens’ books. One of the favourites in our household at the moment is Mr Silly from the Mr Men series. For those of you who perhaps opt for something a little more sophisticated in your bedtime reading, let me remind you: Mr Silly lives in a place called Nonsenseland. And in Nonsenseland the grass is blue and the trees are red, the Zebra crossings are spotty. In Nonsenseland you post letters in telephone boxes and make calls from letter boxes. Which is all well and good. Until Mr Silly leaves Nonsenseland and goes to Sensibleland to buy a hole to plant his tree. There he meets the (nauseating) Miss Wise who can’t understand him and his funny ways. The story ends with Mr Silly, holeless, eating spam roly poly.

We have no time to look at the obvious literary merits of Mr Silly. Another time. Another community of readers! My point is simply this - that with the final chapters of Luke we are entering Nonsenseland. Certainly it was nonsense for the first readers. As we have tried to show in the previous chapters, Jesus is not the Messiah Jews were expecting. The things he did and the stories he told were shocking and surprising. He was not telling a completely new story - the plot and characters were familiar – the ending, however, was certainly not.

This is it! Finally after months of waiting and preparing, the time for conquest of the Promised Land is here. Through the story of Joshua we read of Israel’s gradual domination over the land sworn on oath to their Fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

If reading the book of Joshua isn’t an emotional rollercoaster, you haven’t read it properly. Immersed so deeply as we now are with the story of this wandering people, we cannot help but brim with pride and relief at the capture of the lands they so desperately sought, not to mention the safeguarding of the faith in Yahweh, still new in the ancient world. Yet at the same time, we grieve with the peoples of Ai, Jericho, Hebron, Jarmuth and others. Genocide of this nature reminds us of the shock felt at the Rwandan and Bosnian massacres of the 1990’s. How can God’s people claim this barbaric work was the Lord’s?

Joshua is a book that should offend us to our very core. But we cannot just write it off as nationalistic propaganda, though that is indeed what it is! Our wrestling with the Bible is like Jacob’s wrestling with the Lord at Peniel. We may come away limping, but we will be the better for it.

With Luke 19-21 we reach the final stages of Jesus ministry and we are back where we started: Jerusalem, and the temple. It is no accident that Luke begins his gospel with all the action happening in Jerusalem and, as we shall see, it is certainly no accident that he takes us back there in these final chapters. The story we have tracked over the past month or so continues and reaches a climax – all the threads that Luke has slowly been weaving start to come together. We will have to wait for the unveiling of the final tapestry but in these chapters all the jigsaw pieces which Luke has been carefully introducing and positioning, fall into place.

Chapter 19 sees the wonderful story of Zaccheaus which in many ways acts as a summary of Jesus’ ministry. In this story we see all of the themes we have tracked throughout Luke’s Jesus story. Again Jesus is turning the world upside down; the status of the despised tax collector is reversed, rich Zaccheaus is made poor, the poor are made rich. We meet again Jesus’ use of Abraham and Son of Man language to challenge the narrow nationalism and legalism of the religious elite. And finally we see Jesus proclaiming salvation outside the cultic obligations of the temple. In 10 short verses, the Zacchaeus story brilliantly sums up Jesus’ ministry.

After almost four months (including a not-so-brief foray into Job) we have finally come to the end of the Pentateuch! We started with a promise on faith to the family of a wandering nomad and now stand expectantly on the borders of the Promised Land waiting with the Israelite children for the next phase in their historic story.

This last section of Deuteronomy, from chapters 27-34 – the passionate end to Moses’ speech and to his part in the Israelite journey – is, arguably, the best moment in the Old Testament for us to explore what has been a dominant theme from the beginning and will continue right through to the New: Covenant.

A covenant in Old Testament terms is a very particular type of binding agreement. In those days nations would forge covenants with each other to ensure military protection. The most relevant of these is the Suzerain-Vassal treaty in which the Suzerain, the large powerful protector agrees to ally itself to the smaller, weaker Vassal in return for absolute allegiance. Elaborate blessings and curses like that found in chapters 27-28 were common, placing the Vassal at the disposal of the Suzerain’s might, promising countless rewards for absolute allegiance but disastrous afflictions for wavering loyalty. Empires such as Assyria and Babylon would play Suzerain to many of Israel’s neighbours over the course of her history, but as we have read over and over again, Israel was instructed to ally itself to no one else but Yahweh.