Why this story matters

(commentary on 2 Samuel 21)

(Page 3 of 3)

Should we have the audacity to question Yahweh?

Some apologists are willing to admit that the young men were sacrificed. So how do they justify this? Well, they generally use the appeal of last resort. This is to assert unequivocally that God can take the life of whoever he pleases for whatever reason he sees fit. They will often add that, because we have all sinned, we all deserve to die and it is only by Yahweh’s mercy that any of us are allowed to live at all. It's a rather negative view of humanity, though. It should be hard for anyone to look into the eyes of a six year old girl and believe she's so corrupt and evil that she deserves to die. It should be hard, but this is what some believers are forced to believe when confronted with Bible stories like this one. We're all so evil that Yahweh is perfectly justified in killing people any time he wants.

John Wesley, in his Notes on the Bible, provides an example of this, even acknowledging the likely innocence of Saul's grandons: “And whereas many of the people were probably innocent of that crime, yet they also were guilty of many other sins, for which God might punish them, though he took this occasion for it.” The quintessential hard line view of Yahweh's wrath can be seen in Matthew Henry’s commentary: "God often visits the sins of the fathers upon the children...If we cannot understand all the reasons of Providence in this matter, still we have no right to demand that God should acquaint us with those reasons.” And he further states, “It must be right, because it is the will of God.” In other words, even if we're pretty sure that killing people for something their grandfather did is wrong, we have no right to question it if Yahweh does it. If Yahweh does it it must be good because everything Yahweh does is good. It's a fine example of the logical fallacy of tautology.  

Conclusion

The only redeeming part of the story is the awe-inspiring love and devotion that Rizpah has for her two children. But really there was no need for her to suffer so much in the first place. Wouldn't the death of Saul's five grandsons have been sufficient to appease Yahweh's wrath? Why does it need to be a full seven descendents that have to die? Is seven just a nice round number? And why did any of them need to be sacrificed in the first place? The people have already been suffering for three years. Why is Yahweh only moved into action by the execution of seven people? Surely it would have made more sense to punish the real perpetrator, Saul, during his life time. There's really no way to justify this posthumous bloody revenge, other than to blithely say whatever Yahweh does is good, period.

The great playwright George Bernard Shaw was so disgusted with incidents like this in the Bible that he suggested the book should be burned: “I cannot agree that we should bury the Bible only; we should burn the Prayer Book also. It is saturated with blood sacrifice beyond all possible revision" (Everybody’s Political What’s What?, Constable and Company, 1944). Even Christian icon Adam Clarke, in his revered commentary, found the whole episode so disturbing that he suggested it must have been a terrible mistake in the Bible: "There are evidently many places in this chapter in which the text has suffered much from the ignorance or carelessness of transcribers; and indeed I suspect the whole has suffered so materially as to distort, if not misrepresent the principal facts." So either Yahweh accepted human sacrifice in return for ending a famine, or principle facts have been distorted and misrepresented in the Bible. Either way, it's a bit of a black mark on the Bible.

END OF COMMENTARY

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