The Bible is filled with heroes, men of honor, and adherents to the path of righteousness. It's also filled with bullies, jealous A-holes, and genocidal maniacs. And the line between them is sometimes as thin as the pages that describe them.
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00:00The Bible is filled with heroes, men of honor, and adherents to the path of righteousness.
00:05It's also filled with bullies, jealous a-holes, and genocidal maniacs. And the line between
00:10them is sometimes as thin as the pages that describe them.
00:13Most of Moses' stories in the Bible feature him ordering mass deaths. Your mind probably
00:18goes to the let-my-people-go part, but he let a lot of people go from breathing anymore.
00:23Several passages feature him murdering his own people for daring to doubt or distrust
00:27the absolute faith he demonstrates. One time, he butchered an entire tribe because they
00:31were too hot to handle.
00:32That one happened in Numbers 25, which details an Israelite who slept with a Midianite woman.
00:37In retaliation under God's orders, Moses sent soldiers to butcher every Midianite. Well,
00:42almost everyone. He told his soldiers,
00:44"...now kill all the boys, and kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for
00:48yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."
00:51In other words, everyone died except the virgin women, who became trophies of war instead.
00:56The Lord has spoken!
00:59Enlightenment thinker Thomas Paine might have summed it up best in The Age of Reason, writing,
01:03"...among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the
01:06name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses."
01:10It's worth noting that Thomas Paine hated everything, especially religion. But still,
01:15Moses did a lot of killy-killy on the way to the Promised Land.
01:19You know Samson and his hair transformation that sapped his strength. But what about the
01:23one where he beats 1,000 people to death with a donkey's jawbone?
01:29This story of understrained death and mayhem begins, as it often does, with a wedding.
01:33In Judges 14, Samson is getting married to a Philistine woman. For no apparent reason,
01:38Samson gives his 30 groomsmen a riddle they couldn't possibly know the answer to. It's
01:42not even a riddle. It's just a random description of stuff in the desert.
01:46But the prize is 30 sets of fine clothing, enough to bankrupt the groomsmen, so they
01:50get Samson's wife to beg him for the answer, which she relays back to them. Well, Samson's
01:55not one to shirk a bet, so he pays them, by murdering 30 strangers and stealing their
02:00clothes. Things only escalate from there. Crops get burned, wives get burned, and it
02:04all culminates in Samson picking up that jawbone and killing everyone. It's ultimately the
02:09story of a bully with superpowers, and how riddles are terrible.
02:13Noah comes across as a pretty decent guy because of the whole Ark thing. However, the story
02:17takes a bizarrely dark turn towards the end. After the floodwaters recede, Genesis 9 explains
02:23that Noah became a grape farmer and took a liking to wine. One day, Noah got a little
02:27faded and passed out in his tent, naked. His son Ham spotted his naked father by mistake.
02:32He went and told his brothers, who politely walked up to Noah backwards and covered his
02:36body with a blanket. It sounds like everyone was being really helpful. But when Noah woke
02:41up, for some reason he went into a rage and cursed Ham's son, Canaan, to a life of servitude.
02:47Scholars have put forward a lot of theories, and some think that there are a few phrases
02:50that do some serious heavy lifting. In the King James Version, the passage is worded
02:55such that Ham, quote, "...saw the nakedness of his father." That specific phrasing is
02:59curious because later in Leviticus, we get this alarming little passage,
03:03"...and the man that lieth with his father's wife hath uncovered his father's nakedness."
03:08In other words, it's theorized that while Noah was passed out drunk, Ham slept with
03:12Noah's wife, or even Noah himself, according to some explanations. Whatever the interpretation,
03:18Canaan was probably like, what did I do?
03:21Jacob was a trickster, no doubt about it. In Genesis 25, he was making a pot of stew
03:25when his twin brother Esau came home starving. Normally, you'd just give your brother some
03:30soup. Instead, Jacob convinced Esau to trade his entire birthright for the meal. Later,
03:34when their father Isaac became old and blind, Jacob deceived his father to take advantage
03:38of this unfair trade. Jacob dressed up like his brother to trick Isaac into giving him
03:42the blessing meant for Esau. Set aside the fact that he didn't need to dress up to fool
03:46a blind man. When Isaac realized he'd blessed the wrong son, he acknowledged the trick and
03:51decided he could do nothing about it. Needless to say, Esau was pretty ticked off.
03:56Jacob, let me see you here again, and I'll show you what it is to have to fight like
04:01a man.
04:02Jacob stole everything from Esau, but it didn't end there. He later had a few wives and a
04:06bunch of kids, but he loved one more than the others. His favoritism was so clear that
04:11his children sold his preferred kid, Joseph, into slavery to spite him. Historians debate
04:15whether Jacob existed, and there's reason to hope that he never did.
04:20Just as a refresher, Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel. Cain became a farmer, while his
04:24younger brother Abel tended to a flock of sheep. They both made an offering to God,
04:28but God liked Abel's offering more than Cain's.
04:31Somebody's upset because God looked on my sacrifice with favor. God looked upon my sacrifice
04:35with favor.
04:36I mean, is he a total suck or what?
04:38Well, Cain got jealous and killed his brother, and afterwards, God ordered Cain to wander
04:42the Earth as an outcast. That's fitting for a Bible tale. But then God did something unexpected.
04:48He gave Cain a mark so that nobody would kill him. If anyone did kill him, they'd suffer
04:52sevenfold. So here you have what amounts to an unkillable, petty murderer with nothing
04:56left to lose. Probably someone you'd want to steer clear of.
05:01Elijah was a prophet who performed several notable miracles. And in 1 Kings, he challenged
05:04the prophets of Baal, a rival god, to a contest. Each would choose a bull, build an altar,
05:09and wait for their respective deity to burn the sacrifice. After laughing at his rivals,
05:14Elijah had a ton of water dumped on his bull and called out for fire. The Lord brought
05:18down a blaze so great that it ignited the bull and the water.
05:21The witnesses were so impressed by this feat that they immediately turned to worship God.
05:25The former prophets of Baal, on the other hand, never got a second chance.
05:29Seize the prophets of Baal.
05:31Elijah immediately had them slaughtered by all of his new converts. So, technically,
05:35the moral here is, don't cross Elijah.
05:38Elijah's protégé was a man named Elisha. After Elisha, the original, rode a chariot
05:43off to heaven, Elisha continued his work, performing a variety of miracles during his
05:47life. Most of them would mark him as a heroic and positive feature. But there was also the
05:52one time where he summoned holy bearers to butcher a bunch of children for making fun
05:56of him.
05:57Wait, what? With very little context, 2 Kings chapter 2 depicts Elijah encountering a group
06:02of local boys. They make fun of Elisha for being bald, prompting him to call down the
06:06Lord's curse on them. Suddenly, two bears emerge from the nearby forest and immediately
06:11kill 42 children. End of story. Some people just can't take a joke.
06:16David, killing a giant. Good. Killing a guy because you're lusting after his wife? Bad.
06:21In 2 Samuel 11, David spots a woman bathing, has her brought to him, sleeps with her, and
06:26gets her pregnant. That woman, Bathsheba, was the wife of one of David's soldiers, a
06:30guy named Uriah the Hittite. Hoping to hide his adultery, David immediately begins scheming.
06:35There is no shame too great. No act so vile that I would not commit it.
06:41First, he brings her husband home from war, hoping he'll sleep with his wife and raise
06:45David's eventual child as his own. That doesn't work out, so David sends Uriah to the front
06:49line and orders his commander to pull out of the fighting, leaving Uriah to die.
06:55Sometimes a charm, and this plan goes swimmingly. With Uriah out of the way, David swoops in
06:59and marries Bathsheba. But all does not end well for them. Their baby eventually dies,
07:05and a split family goes to war and pretty much ruins Israel.
07:09Biblical literalism paints Joshua as an all-powerful warrior with the Lord as beck and call. You
07:14know the song. He fought the Battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down.
07:18When Joshua led an army against five kings at the Canaanite city of Gibeon, God stopped
07:22the sun in the sky for a full day and hurled hail from above, killing more enemy soldiers
07:27than Joshua's army. Joshua 10.14 specifies that this is the first and only time God has
07:32performed this feat. Following that, Joshua 10.28-42 basically reads like bullet points,
07:37describing Joshua and his army as a wave of death sweeping across the land, killing, well,
07:42everyone.
07:43They attack a city, put the inhabitants to sword, and leave no survivors. Rinse and repeat.
07:48Joshua was a hero to his people, but God help you if you saw his army marching over the
07:52horizon against you.
07:54Kings are rarely the heroes of the Bible. Abimelech was once a broad term used to describe
07:58Philistine kings, but it also refers specifically to the son of Gideon. He became the king of
08:03Shechem. For starters, Abimelech made his way up the line of succession to the throne
08:07by killing all but one of his 70 half-brothers. Not content with the mass murder of his close
08:12relatives, he went on to become a violent despot who abused his power until the day
08:16he died. At least, he remained on the brand.
08:19According to Judges 9, Abimelech's rule faced constant challenges from his unhappy subjects.
08:24After weathering one coup attempt, he wiped out the people of Shechem and salted their
08:27fields to guarantee their starvation. He also killed at least 1,000 civilians in a massive
08:32fire, because sometimes starvation just isn't enough.
08:36Abimelech then attacked the city of Thebes, but the residents walled themselves off in
08:40a tower. While Abimelech planned his assault, a woman threw a millstone down into his skull.
08:45Humans can weigh 100 pounds easily, so you can imagine how that went. Terrified at the
08:50hits his reputation would take if he died at a woman's hands — a very strong woman
08:54at that — he asked his armor-bearer to stab him. And so he died as he had lived. A jerk.