Back in February, Evangeline was puzzled by the bizarre encounter between God and Moses recounted in "Zipporah at the Inn." Other times, the girls have alternately been grossed out or entertained by some of the stories contained in the book of Judges. And tonight, the part of the Bible that came real to Evangeline was in 1 Samuel 7, just before Samuel leads the Israelites against the Philistines at Mizpah.
Contextually, this battle takes place about 20 years after the Israelites suffered the crushing loss of the Ark of the Covenant to the Philistines; and after the Philistines sent the Ark back rather than endure the plagues the biblical account lists them suffering after the ark was captured. (Among other things, their god broke, their cities were plagued with rats, and a bunch of people suffered terrible hemorrhoids.)
The story in 1 Samuel 7 represents a turnaround in Israel's fortune. They've regained the ark, they've stopped worshiping the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and by the time the chapter has ended, they're going to have broken free of their Philistine rulers, at least for a while. It's an inspiring story.
"A suckling lamb?" she interrupted. "It was still drinking its mother's milk?"
"Well, yes," I said, and started to explain the Israelite sacrificial code. "They would offer a young lamb that had never eaten anything but milk, because it was valuable, and --"
"That's horrible!"
She was crying. It was past bedtime, and she'd had a busy day, but this caught me completely off-guard. A dozen different responses jostled on my tongue. The theologian wanted to explain the typological importance of the lamb as it foreshadowed Christ's sacrifice; the former evangelical wanted to explain that this is the cost of our sin; the religion scholar wanted to explain the significance of animal sacrifice in the religion of ancient Israel.
Another voice was considering how my daughter was anthropomorphizing a sheep, and projecting her own imagined fear onto a farm animal 3,000 years ago. Those responses and others jostled on my lips for a chance to be uttered, and all died there as a wiser part of me put the Bible down, and wrapped my arms around her.
"You're right," I said, as she cried silently over something that happened all the time in the lives of the ancient Israelites. "It is horrible."
I held her some more, while the Bible story lay unread and unfinished on the bed, and then asked her, "Do you think God wanted these sheep killed?"
She shook her head vehemently, no.
"I think you're right," I said, certain that a few people I know would take issue with such a statement. "One of the psalmists wrote 'You do not delight in sacrifice, O Lord, or I would bring it; but a broken heart and a contrite spirit are all your desire.' I don't think God wanted all these animals killed, especially like this, and I'm glad that's done."
We finished the story, we prayed, and I left the room so she could go to sleep.
In her own way, at her own level, I think Evangeline has just begun her first crisis of faith. She's come face to face with an unpleasant situation in the Bible, one where God doesn't come across as nice as his press agents and publicists make him out to be, and she's having to figure out how and if she can reconcile it. It's a journey that may take her all sorts of interesting places once she takes her first step in earnest.
And how striking if it should begin with such an innocent-seeming story.
Copyright © 2010 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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