True confession: I’ve been listening to the Bible on cd.

I feel guilty about this because it’s a text, and I feel that studying it properly involves the physical object. But have I just been cowed by the evangelical tradition of “the quiet time”? The “daily devotion”? It conjures up a picture of me at the kitchen table in the early morning with my Bible.

That’s where, when, and how I’ve met with God for the last however many years. But I stalled out sometime over the last year or two, and got to a place where I’d read a few verses, secretly looking forward to whatever devotional book was waiting for dessert. Oswald Chambers, or Elisabeth Elliot, or Streams in the Desert, or Daily Strength for Daily Needs - they all seemed more interesting than the Word of God.

I sweated through a biographical survey of the Bible last year, and was trying to read it this year from cover to cover, but it was an eyes only activity. My eyes passed over the pages. Finally I pulled out this audio NIV version, and it’s been a refreshing reminder to me that the Bible was orally transmitted for many centuries before our literate era. It’s wonderful to hear it, listening as I walk in the mornings. I listen for 45 minutes or so, the way you listen to a symphony, appreciating the overarching themes, the crescendos and diminuendos, the developing beauty of the story. All of this I’ve not really experienced in my technique of examining little bites under a microscope. Invariably there will be sections I want to pull out the Bible and look at when I get home from my walk. But hearing it in bigger chunks is really a wonderful treat. I’m into II Samuel now.

I have to admit that mixed with the beauty of the story is its violence. There were no smart bombs or sanitary medical facilities or machinery to create the illusion of distance. Saul dies by falling on his sword, then recruiting a passing Amalekite to finish the job before the Philistines torture him. David kills this man for assisting, as he later kills the men who murder Ishbosheth out of a misguided impulse to protect David’s kingship. And against the backdrop of what’s happening in Kenya, what’s happened in Bosnia and Rwanda and countless other places, I wince over the passages where Israel is instructed to destroy the entire Amalekite nation, including women and children and even animals.

Mired in these stories, I remind myself that Jesus breaks the mold, redefining the “chosen people” to include not just one ethnic group but all who walk by faith, and teaching that he who lives by the sword will die by the sword. God didn’t send a savior till “the fullness of time had come,” meaning that these ancient cultures weren’t yet ready for Jesus; they didn’t have the categories they needed yet to comprehend redemption. But the stories are still hard to read in these days when I’m able to imagine so clearly, thanks to current events, what it was like. Even in our allegedly advanced era, fallen human nature is primitive, and shockingly brutal. 

But even though it’s not an easy read, the purposefulness and sovereignty of God are the overriding themes. On a more encouraging note, my thoughts go often to two passages that seem particularly pertinent for my family these days. Both are about David. One is when as a nomad in hiding from Saul, he asks Nabal for some assistance and is refused. “Why have I protected this guy’s property against thieves for so long?” he asks himself. “Tonight, we destroy him, and take what we need.” But Abigail intercedes, and David’s response is, “Thanks for keeping me from doing something I’d really regret later.” God strikes Nabal dead within hours.

The other episode is where David is about to go to war alongside the Philistines. The commanders send him home, not trusting him, and it turns out that 1.) he actually has important business to attend to at home, because the Amalekites have raided and carried off his family; and 2.) the Philistines kill Saul and Jonathan in this battle. God apparently didn’t want David mixed up in Saul’s demise in any way – either by fighting for the Philistines, or by betraying them and trying to defend Saul because he was ”God’s anointed.”

In both instances, God wanted to take care of David’s enemies himself, and David was simply in the way. These were times when David was thwarted in perfectly justifiable undertakings, not because God didn’t care about justice, but because He wanted to bring it about Himself – whether because David was an obstacle, or simply because God had the desire to demonstrate His love by bringing rescue unassisted. Either way it’s encouraging in these days when justice seems so slow in coming.