One is reading the Bible. It’s frightfully good, you know.
-VS Naipaul
I’ve been reading the Bible, and doing it the way they say you shouldn’t do it, reading it straight through.
It’s tough going, and there’s a lot I don’t get. I may break down and get one of those “How to Read the Bible”-type books. I dislike the How to Read genre only slightly more than the How to Write.
I’m well into the historical books and am pretty worn out by the villainy and massacre. If you told me that reading the historical books of the Old Testament made you laugh, I would probably run for my life.
At least until the other day. For there I was, chuckling at this passage. It’s from 1 Kings, when Solomon is building the temple. He’s buddies with King Hiram of Tyre, who’s been a big help. When it was all done, Solomon wanted to say thanks:
10 Now it happened at the end of twenty years, when Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the LORD and the king’s house
11 (Hiram the king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress and gold, as much as he desired), that King Solomon then gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee.
12 Then Hiram went from Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given them, but they did not please him.
13 So he said, “What kind of cities are these which you have given me, my brother?” And he called them the land of Cabul, as they are to this day.
The footnote says Cabul means “good for nothing.” I looked it up and, sure enough, it’s still called that. You’d think at some point there would have been a rebrand.
The other thing I like about this story is that it has a happy ending, which, believe me, doesn’t always happen in Kings:
14 Then Hiram sent the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold.