Retelling the Bible, Season Two

By W Scott McAndless

Retelling the Bible is a podcast in which W. Scott McAndless retells stories from the Bible in engaging and innovative ways. This is a collection of the original transcripts that he used to record the second season of the podcast in 2018. We hope that this new print edition will provide people with new and exciting ways to engage with these ancient stories that still remain vital today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W Scott McAndless
• Release date: Sep 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005048969

W Scott McAndless

The Rev. W. Scott McAndless has been an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church in Canada for two decades. He presently serves the congregation of St. Andrew’s Hespeler Presbyterian Church in Cambridge, ON. Canada. He lives with his wife, two daughters and their dog Minnie in Cambridge.

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Retelling the Bible

Season 2

The Transcripts

By W. Scott McAndless

Copyright © W. Scott McAndless 2022

All rights reserved.

Forword

This book is a collection of the transcripts that were used to record the second season of the Retelling the Bible Podcast (written and recorded in 2018).

The original scripts have been edited to fit this format and have only been proofread by myself. You will likely find some errors in these texts, but I hope there is nothing that distracts from your enjoyment of these incredible biblical tales.

I retell these stories because I love them. They are tales filled with meaning and they remain relevant today many centuries after they were first told. I particularly love to try and understand these stories by looking at them from a different point of view, often from the perspective of a neglected or forgotten character. Such an approach, I believe, can help us to keep them fresh and engaging.

I do not pretend that the way that I have told these stories is the only or best way to tell them. I have tried to stay informed about scholarly theories regarding their original composition and done some work to recover the original cultural context in which they circulated. I have also sought to tell them dramatically and relate them to contemporary concerns and struggles.

Others might tell these same stories very differently. In fact, I hope that they do. Interacting with these stories creatively is, I believe, one way to respect and honour them.

W. Scott McAndless, Cambridge ON. 2022.

Contents

2.1 The Old Prophet

2.2 A Bridegroom of Blood.

2.3 What happens on the threshing floor

2.4 A Suicidal Herd of Pigs

2.5 When Saul became Paul

2.6 Lookie what I found!

2.7 Nice flock of sheep you got there.

2.8 100 prophets, two caves

2.9: When the donkey is the smart one

2.10 Gomer’s Me-Too Moment

2.11 The women formerly known as the daughters of Lot

2.12: The Seventy-Seven times Avenger

2.13 The Endor Witch Project

2.14 A Tale of Two Couches

2.1 The Old Prophet

¹¹ While Jeroboam was standing by the altar to offer incense, a man of God came out of Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel and proclaimed against the altar by the word of the Lord, and said, O altar, altar, thus says the Lord: ‘A son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name; and he shall sacrifice on you the priests of the high places who offer incense on you, and human bones shall be burned on you.’ (1 Kings 13:11-12)

So begins one of the strangest stories in the entire Old Testament, told in the 13th chapter of the First Book of Kings. The story is clearly told from a one-sided perspective – from the point of view of the southern kingdom in Judah and from the point of view of those who declared that the only proper place to worship God was in the temple at Jerusalem. But, just as clearly, not everyone saw matters in the same way. Certainly, the people who lived and worked and worshiped at Bethel would not have agreed with the assumptions behind this story. Neither would have Jeroboam, the king who ruled in the north.

We might not agree with that other point of view, of course. But I think it might be fascinating to hear it, so I think I’m going to tell it…

This is Retelling the Bible

Episode 2.1 The Old Prophet

Bethel was a holy place – everyone knew it. I mean, the name of the place meant House of El, and El was the name of a very powerful God respected by all the people. There was a great standing stone there, it weighed many tonnes, and the story was that it had been put in place by the Patriarch Jacob after he had had a dream and had seen the truth: that this place was actually a secret portal to the house of El in the heavens.

So, as long as anyone could remember, people had come from all around to worship El at Bethel. They would marvel at the great stone and wonder how it was possible that Jacob could have set it up himself. They would make their offerings at the old stone altar (people said that it had been built by Jacob too) and feast on their portions with their family. They would also come to seek a word or a prophecy from El. That was where the old prophet came in.

He lived nearby and would set up shop every day when the people came into the holy place. After they had offered their sacrifices, the people would come and visit his little booth. They would ask him the questions that burned upon their hearts. Will I be able to marry this woman? Will the olive harvest be good this year? Will my father recover from his illness? That kind of thing. And he would give them the God’s answer. For the simple questions – the yes/no type questions – he would usually employ the urim and the thummim, a pair of oddly-shaped stones that he kept in a pouch on his breast-piece. He would cast them for the petitioners and read the answer for them.

But he really relished in the more complicated questions. For them he would consult the God and El would inspire him to give answers. Of course, it always worked best when he answered the questions in ambiguous ways. It was also way more fun that way. People would leave thinking they had one answer, but only later realized that they’d gotten another. You will get what you deserve, he’d once told a man who’d asked if he would get a fair price for his barley. The man left happy; he shouldn’t have.

He charged more for the complicated answers, of course, but he often did well enough from the urim and thummim answers too, so that, overall, he had made a good living at the sanctuary of Bethel over the years. He couldn’t complain. He’d even been able to raise a family on it; he had two sons who he was training to take up the family trade someday.

But then David had come along. He was a nobody, really, just the youngest son of a nothing family in the hill country of Judah. But he was handsome and a ruthless fighter and somehow he had managed to come to power in the south and then consolidate his rule over the territory around Bethel and even farther north as well.

David might have been an effective warrior, but he had no respect for the old ways. He certainly didn’t respect the hallowed sanctuaries in places like Bethel and when he conquered a new city called Jerusalem, he tried to establish a new kind of worship there. He took the traditions of the Jebusite people who lived in the city and combined them with the faith of his people in the hills and set up an altar to their God named Yahweh. He even made the Jebusite priest, a man named Zadok, the great priest of the God Yahweh.

That in itself had not been a problem for the old prophet. There had always been rival sanctuaries and high places. They would come and go with some becoming very popular for a few seasons, but Bethel was an ancient holy place and somehow people always found their way back here. The business always came back to town.

The old prophet’s problems really started when David died and passed his kingdom on to his son, Solomon. Solomon was not the fighter that David had been but (by El’s grace) he didn’t need to be. The region had gone through an unusual time of peace – perhaps because of all of the treaties Solomon made with his neighbours by marrying their daughters.

What Solomon was, however, was a ruthless administrator. He enslaved half the countryside for his projects, the biggest of which was a new sanctuary for Yahweh in Jerusalem. The place got rave reviews: it was big, it was beautiful, an entire building made all out of stone. People went up just to see it. That was when the old prophet began to experience some difficulties.

The priests in Jerusalem began to preach that their God, Yahweh, was the same God who was worshiped at Bethel. So why go to Bethel anymore? Jerusalem could be a one-stop shop, conveniently serving all your worshipping needs. And there was just enough resemblance for people to buy the story too. Yahweh, like El, was apparently an invisible deity – or at least one who didn’t like to have his picture taken or statues made of him. So, it wasn’t as if anyone could tell them apart just by looking. There was one key difference however, at least it was important to a lot of people in the north. El, though invisible, had always been said to ride on a calf, a sign of his strength and power. So, in his sanctuaries, the worshipers would always know that he was invisibly enthroned above the great bronze calf that would be set up there. It was how they knew he was there. It was tradition and, in the mind of the old prophet, tradition mattered.

This Judean God, this Yahweh, however, didn’t ride around on a calf. He rode on the backs of cherubim – winged heavenly creatures with many faces. I mean, it was ridiculous, everyone knew that real Gods rode calves, but that is what those weird southerners believed. So, in this temple in Jerusalem, rather than a good old fashioned bronze calf, King Solomon had set up a great golden box, topped with golden cherubim. By all accounts (at least the ones the old prophet heard) it was a gaudy mess, but he guessed that there were some people who liked that kind of thing.

People, buying into this idea that El and Yahweh were, in fact, the same deity started to go up to Jerusalem more often, especially when Solomon put on his big sacrifices and festivals. People like to be entertained. The old prophet watched as his beloved sanctuary at Bethel fell into disuse and disrepair. But he vowed that he would never go to Jerusalem – not that he could really afford the journey these days as his revenues fell to almost nothing while presumably the prophets in Jerusalem did a booming business.

But eventually King Solomon went the way of all flesh. By the time it happened, the old prophet at Bethel had become the very old prophet at Bethel, but when he heard the news that the king was dead, he danced in ecstasy as if he were a lad of but 9 years. He knew in his heart that something was about to change, and he knew that it was a word from El. This was confirmed when it turned out that Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, was an even worse ruler than his father had been. Before long, the region around Bethel and all of the north were up in arms against him. They were led in their revolt by a charismatic young leader named Jeroboam.

So it was that the north broke away from the south and Jeroboam was crowned king. By this time, the old prophet was far too old to care much about the politics of the situation apart from one thing that mattered very much to him: Jeroboam’s religious policy. One of his first acts was to finally restore the old sanctuaries in his territories that had fallen into decay over the last decades. It was the happiest day of the old prophet’s life when he saw the king’s builders arrive in Bethel to repair the old building and rebuild the old altar. Best of all, they brought with them a brand-new calf, cast out of beautiful gold, to be set up in the centre of the sanctuary – a place where the great God, El, could be invisibly enthroned once again.

Before long, the old prophet was delighted to see the pilgrims flock back to the holy site. He rejoiced to see smoke rise again from the altar most every day. He enjoyed the party atmosphere as families sat down together to dine on their portions of the lambs, calves and birds that they had brought. They were often in such a good mood that they joyfully invited him to share in their feasts. And every night he went to sleep content. His purse was heavy with the silver his prophecies had earned him and the sweet smell of burnt flesh was in his nostrils. Life was good again and he had King Jeroboam to thank for it.

King Jeroboam himself came down to Bethel on the day that the new golden calf and other improvements were dedicated. He must have brought dozen sacrificial animals with him. It was glorious; blood flowing everywhere. And people flocked from all over the countryside to see the spectacle and join in the feast that the king would give afterwards. The old prophet was up before dawn welcoming people to his booth, casting the urim and the thummim, collecting generous gifts from the supplicants. Even his sons were kept busy with the more routine questions. Happy days were here again!

And then, right in the middle of the festivities – at the very moment when Jeroboam was holding the knife at the throat of the fifth and biggest bull so far – there was disturbance at the edge of the crowd. A wild-eyed young man wearing a rough coat spun out of camel hair pushed his way to the front. He was so angry that you could see him visibly shaking from the other side of the circle around the altar. He also was clearly in that state of ecstasy that prophets often went into when they spoke a word of their God. The old prophet shuddered; he had a bad feeling about this.

O altar, accursed altar, I bring you a word from Yahweh, the new arrival screamed as foam and spittle flew from his mouth. I declare, o altar, that you will be broken down stone by stone and your ashes spread out on the ground. Yahweh has spoken! His accent, and of course his use of the name of Jerusalem’s God, immediately marked him as a southerner in everyone’s minds – no doubt from Jerusalem or somewhere nearby.

Jeroboam was furious! He immediately called out to his bodyguard, pointing at the man. Seize him! he cried. But almost as soon as he had said it, the old prophet could tell that the king was having second thoughts. His accusing finger dropped. He was still a new king – still consolidating his power – and he knew that there were some under his domain who had bought into the line coming out of Jerusalem that Yahweh and El were one and the same God. To kill this prophet from the south might be satisfying, but he also risked creating a martyr out of him and creating sympathy for his position.

His government was young, and he still had some reluctant subjects. The king thought that it might be better to win this prophet to his side – to ply him with food and drink and gifts – and get him to recant his dire prophecies in that way.

You are mistaken, young man, he said in a honeyed voice. This is a holy sanctuary that has stood here from ancient times. Come, a feast has been prepared. Sit with me and we will discuss your errors like civilized men.