Reading the Bible

   The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has four books which they call the Standard Works. They are the Bible, The Book of Mormon,The Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price. Members are encouraged to read and study them. A few months ago I was asked to read The Book of Mormon. I had already read it once so I could better understand some of the General Conference talks. I reread it. Once I had finished it I decided it would be a good idea to continue reading the D&C and Pearl of Great Price. I finished them and felt I was on a roll. What could I read next? Then it hit me. I'll read the Bible. Cover to cover.
   I'd never done that before. Like all good Lutheran children,I had read parts of it. I memorized the verses I was supposed to memorize in Sunday school and confirmation class. I remember spending one confirmation class reading the Song of Solomon, but that's a story for another day. Yes, I should read the entire Bible.
   I know that I'm not supposed to say this, but I like reading the Bible. To make it easier, I decided to read five pages every day. I found myself reading more than that because I wanted to find out what happened next (or I wanted to get through the endless genealogy). You're not supposed to enjoy reading the Bible. It's a serious book. It's The Holy Book. It is not something you are supposed to enjoy. This is Serious Stuff.
   I would like to share with you a few things I have noticed about what I have read, so far anyway. ( I just finished 2 Chronicles 14 this morning.)
   Some of the people in the Bible did stupid things. Take Pharaoh,for instance. All he had to do was let the Hebrews leave Egypt. Yes, it would have been hard for awhile people would have had to do their own work or they would have needed to capture more people to be slaves. Instead he decided to resist. His poor subjects had to suffer though plagues of frogs,flies and lice. They had their water turned into blood (yuck). Their cattle died,they suffered from disease and if that weren't enough then they got bad weather,really bad weather. Hail and thunderstorm weather. Pharaoh still wouldn't budge. It took all the Egyptian first born dying to finally convince him to let the Hebrews go.
   King David was someone I was taught to revere, He was a talented guy who slayed Goliath, wrote Psalms and was a good musician on top of it. He also did something really dumb. He was enjoying the evening from the roof of his house when he saw a woman taking a bath on the roof of another. She was really good looking so David found out who she was. He found out that her name was Bathsheba and that she was married. He didn't let a little thing like this stop him and he had an affair with her. She got pregnant. He decided that the way to fix this mess was to send her husband up to the front line of the current war they were fighting. As happens in the front lines of wars, the husband was killed. Bathsheba mourned him and when she was done mourning, King David married her. Everything is all right, no one will ever know. Except someone did know, Nathan the prophet knew and he went to David and delivered the scolding that David deserved.
   I read about some interesting women in the Old Testament. When I was younger, the only ones I really knew about were Eve,Sarah,Rebekah,Rachel,Leah and Ruth. I found some other interesting women while I was reading.
   In the book of Exodus, there is a chapter about two Hebrew midwives named Shiphrah and Puah. Pharaoh takes them aside and tells them that when the Hebrew women deliver the are to kill all the boys and let the girls live. Now the two midwives were God fearing and probably ethical medical practitioners of their day and did not follow Pharaoh's instructions. When he sent for them and asked them why they were being disobedient, they told him that the Hebrew women deliver before the midwife could get to them. Well, there was nothing Pharaoh could do about that so the women went on with their lives and were blessed.
  Chapter four of Judges has a couple of interesting women. One of them is Deborah who was a prophetess and a judge. She had both a family and a job. She ordered Barak (yes, Barak is a Biblical name) to lead an army and fight the Canaanites. Barak said he would go but only if Deborah would come with him. She went with the army and they fought and beat the Canaanites. The leader,Sisera, got away.
   He ran away and came to the tent of Jael, another woman who was in the area. She allowed him to hide in her tent and gave him a bottle of milk to drink. He asked her not to tell anyone that he was hiding in the tent and then took a nap. While he was asleep, she nailed his head to the floor. (These were violent times.) When Barak came by looking for Sisera, Jael took him into the tent and showed him that she had already taken care of the enemy leader.
   I like the movie 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers'. The names of the brothers are Adam,Benjamin, Caleb,Daniel,Ephraim,Frank and Gideon. It was explained that they were named in alphabetical order to keep track of them and were given names out of the Bible. There were no names starting with the letter 'F' fso Frank's real name was Frankincense. When I started to read the Bible I noticed that there were a lot of names. None of them started with the letter 'F'. It wasn't my intent to keep track of something so trivial, but when I came across any list of names I check to see if there is one that starts with 'F'. So far I haven't found one. I still have quite a bit to go.
   By now I'm sure I've offended a few people with my somewhat lighthearted look at the Scriptures. I'm sure there is someone out there who is going to chastise me for taking this too lightly. Maybe they are right. Maybe they aren't. Either way, I'm going to keep reading.