2. All in the Family
The previous Badass Bible Passage, #18, in Part 1, introduced the idea of children being punished for the sins of their parents. Although the Bible in a few places says that this should not happen (e.g., Deuteronomy 24:16), this is hardly an ethical standard that is consistently maintained. So here are a few more.
18. Achin’ Achan (Joshua 7:24-25)
One of most impressive family execution scenes is in Joshua 7 and this gets to #19 on my list. The Israelites are off on their genocidal invasion of Canaan, having liquidated almost the entire population of Jericho. They now turn their attention to Ai. Alas, a certain Achan has stolen some of the loot from ill-fated Jericho, and God is pissed. The attack fails and by going through an elaborate ritual of picking straws, Achan is revealed as the culprit.
Then Joshua and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, the silver, the mantle, the bar of gold, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent and all that belonged to him; and they brought them up to the valley of Achor. 2And Joshua said, “Why have you troubled us? The LORD will trouble you this day.” And all Israel stoned them with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones.
The online Sunday School site, ebibleteacher, says that the story is teaching about stealing. What is worse, the site only says that the Israelites executed Achan and burned his stuff. It carefully omits the execution of his children! Here are their recommended discussion points.
1. Talk about how foolish Achan was to risk his life and everything he had for some gold and silver and something to wear. How can people be foolish in the same way today? Look up “covetousness” in a dictionary, then find the Scriptures that tell about it. (Use a concordance.)
2. Joshua did not know about Achan’s sin until God told him. Is it possible to hide our sins from others today? From God?
3. What did Ai’s victory over Israel show? How does God help us fight our battles today?Now, isn’t this site lying through omission about God, or are they just “stoned”?
17. Haman and his Kids (Esther 9:9-10)
Ok, Haman is a bad guy. He wants to kill all the Jews and skewer Mordechai. So who really cares if the same happens to him when his evil plot is discovered? By biblical standards, he bloody well deserved it. But have a look here, the vengeful Jews attack their enemies who would have been more than happy to carry out Haman’s evil plot but then they also turn on:
Parshandatha, Dalphon, Aspatha, Poratha, Adalia, Aridatha, 9 Parmashta, Arisai, Aridai, and Vaizatha, the ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Jews’ enemy; but they did not lay their hands on the plunder.
Well, at least they didn’t screw with the plunder. Are we to believe that these ten people were all as guilty as Haman? Really? How old were they? We are not told. No where in the story are we told that they helped their dad in any way?
16 Bloody Jehu (2 Kings 10)
We’ve met Jehu before. He is the guy that the now-defunct band Drive Like Jehu is named after. He’s also the guy that killed Jezebel in Part 1. As I said, he went on a bloody rampage to win himself the throne. This was at the behest of a prophet’s apprentice who declared him king of Israel. So he kills King Joram, the king of Judah for good measure, not to mention Jezebel and then really goes on a rampage. In 2 Kings 10, he sends threatening letters to the royal city of Samaria. The elders of the town, quaking in their sandals, side with the rebel and at slaughter the 70 kinfolk of Ahab (Joram’s dad). Verses 7-11 read:
And it came about when the letter came to them, that they took the king’s sons, and slaughtered them, seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, and sent them to him at Jezreel. When the messenger came and told him, saying, “They have brought the heads of the king’s sons,” he said, “Put them in two heaps at the entrance of the gate until morning.” Now it came about in the morning, that he went out and stood, and said to all the people, “You are innocent; behold, I conspired against my master and killed him, but who killed all these? … So Jehu killed all who remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men and his acquaintances and his priests, until he left him without a survivor.
OK, so he gets his way and implicates a lot of other people along with him. Nice guy. A little later he comes across 42 kinsmen of the now-very dead king of Judah. They get to have a family reunion… So too do more relative of Ahab. Jehu then hatches a cunning plan, and invites all of Ahab’s priests and prophets of Baal to a big revival meeting. Needless to say, they is a great smiting. At the end we read (2 Kings 10:30):
And the LORD said to Jehu, “Because you have done well in executing what is right in My eyes, and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in My heart, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.”
Well, God is happy, that is nice. But Jehu does piss him off in the end by not removing the heterodox shrines that existed in Israel.
In a little ironic twist, the book of Hosea goes all moralistic and seems to condemn Jehu. In a weird scene, the prophet Hosea is told to marry a hooker. The resulting kids are given horrible names that predict doom on the nation. THis is what Hosea 1:4 says about the first kid:“Name him Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.
Hmmm. I though God wanted all that bloodshed?
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