What happened after David slayed Goliath and became king?
What about Moses after he led his people out of Egypt?
Not all of it was admirable, even though they are some of the most revered figures from
the Bible.
After God created Adam, he recognized that he needed another human, so he made Eve out
of Adam's rib.
This first couple lived together with the animals in the Garden of Eden in perfect communion,
but then they were deceived by the serpent to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil, which God had told them to stay away from.
God then brought down upon them the consequences of their actions, as they were banished from
the Garden.
They literally had everything, but they decided that they wanted the one thing they couldn't
have.
Their greed and desire to be like God led to The Fall: the curse upon humanity in the
form of sin.
In this way, Adam is seen as what Christian theologians call a "type."
He was the first human made in God's image and the origin of sin.
Adam and Eve are humanity's forebears, lovingly created, but now all of the evil that's now
present in the world is on their hands.
The Book of Genesis speaks of Abraham's strong faith and obedience towards the call of God,
even to the point of being willing to sacrifice his own son, Isaac.
In certain modern interpretations, this is enough reason to avoid thinking of him as
a significant leader or moral figure.
But this story can also be interpreted as something more complex beyond the binary of
"right" and "wrong."
"This is my son, sir.
We were playing a game.
All right?
It's called 'Burny Burny, Cut Cut.'"
Even if you can look beyond the difficulties of this one act, it's hard to also look past
Abraham's other character flaws.
On two separate occasions, he tricked rulers into believing that his wife Sarah was his
sister, which was only partially untrue.
She was his half-sister, or perhaps his niece, depending on the interpretation.
Either way, his deceit was exposed by God in both situations, and the rulers who took
Sarah in while thinking she was unmarried either suffered due to this deceit or feared
the consequences that they would've suffered.
Abraham's decision not only forced his wife into compromising situations but would've
brought complete ruin on those rulers.
If you're familiar with Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, you probably know about
his near death at his father's hands or the deceit of his own son, Jacob.
As Isaac's story demonstrates, being a "promised one" isn't always all it's cracked up to be.
When you consider him as an example of a type, he's a rather pitiable one within the greater
narrative of the Bible.
Though, according to Herbert Lockyer's book All the Men of the Bible,
"To the credit of Isaac it must be said that he was the only one of the patriarchs who
had but one wife."
Clearly, Isaac was singularly devoted to that wife, Rebekah.
But alas, he ends up following in his father's deceitful footsteps to protect himself from
being killed on account of his wife.
When approached by "the men of the place" about his beautiful wife, he declares Rebekah
to be his sister, just as his father had with Sarah.
As recounted by Genesis Chapter 26, a king named Abimelech noticed Isaac "showing endearment
to Rebekah his wife" and confronted him about it.
As Bible.org notes,
"[Abimelech] viewed the taking of a man's wife as sin, and one of great consequence.
Abimelech seemed to regard marital purity higher than Isaac did."
It's never a good sign when a political ruler has better ethics than a supposed man of faith.
Isaac's son Jacob is known as the father of the 12 tribes of Israel, which were named
after his sons.
He's also the only person in the Bible who wrestled with God, or an angel of God.
The tribes that emerged from Jacob's lineage eventually formed the nation of Israel, which
would divide and unite numerous times throughout history.
Scholars don't fully agree how these divisions came about or how consolidation took place.
But it is clear that this nation of people becomes the people of God, or the Hebrews,
a central collective identity within the scope of the entire Bible.
Despite this origin story, Jacob was far from a saint at any point in his life.
He was overly controlled by his mother Rebekah, who viewed Jacob as her favorite son ahead
of his older brother Esau.
Jacob was quite selfish, even though he was faithful to God.
He wouldn't give his brother food without negotiating for Esau's birthright, and he
also stole Esau's blessing by impersonating him before a blind Isaac.
As noted by the Theology of Work Project,
"Courageous and astute decisions that result in success may be rightly praised for their
sheer effectiveness.
But when profit comes at the expense of exploiting and deceiving others, something is wrong."
Other than Jesus, Moses is probably the famous name from the Bible.
As Herbert Lockyer writes in All the Men of the Bible,
"It would take a volume in itself to fully expound the virtues and vicissitudes of Moses
the historian, orator, leader, statesman, legislator and patriot.
His greatest honor, however, was the privilege of being known as 'the friend of God.'"
Furthermore, Moses' first major act was freeing the enslaved Hebrews from the Egyptian pharaoh,
a story which has endured for millennia in various forms.
"Pharaoh, if you don't let my babies go right now, things are going to get really bad around
here."
"Go ahead, make my day."
But for all of Moses' great qualities, he too wasn't just a simple hero, as he was also
often known for his anger and his dependence on himself instead of God.
When the Hebrews wandered in the desert for 40 years, two separate generations were under
the leadership of Moses during this time.
In both the Books of Exodus and Numbers, Moses strikes water from a rock, but in the second
of these instances, he's talking to a new generation and he doesn't give due credit
to God.
As noted by Jewish studies scholar Deborah Miller,
"Instead, [Moses] calls them 'rebels,' distancing the people from himself and, by association,
from God; disdaining their legitimate needs; and losing the opportunity to attribute the
provision of water to God."
This particular wayward action would lead to God prohibiting Moses from seeing the Promised
Land.
King David is a Biblical figure who was clearly devoted to God.
He's perhaps one of the most solid examples of faithfulness within the Bible, from his
lowly roots as a shepherd to when he was chased and nearly killed by King Saul, to his time
as the king over a united Israel.
He was one of the few figures who seemed nearly perfect within the scope of the Biblical narrative,
that is, until he assaulted the wife of one of his soldiers.
As the Theology of Work Project puts it,
"Over the course of history, this encounter between David and Bathsheba has often been
described as adultery, which implies mutual consent.
However, as we examine the details, we see that it is actually sexual abuse of power,
in other words, rape.
Neither the text nor the context supports the conclusion that it was an affair between
two consenting adults."
Basically, David should've been with his troops, rather than targeting someone else's wife.
If he had learned from the mistakes of Abraham and Isaac, then it should've been obvious
what the consequences of this violent act would be in the sight of a just God.
Alas, the faithful King David gave in to his worst impulses.
King Solomon, the son of King David and Bathsheba, was given great wisdom by God thanks to his
request in the first Book of Kings for guidance in governing God's people.
This allowed him to become a great judge and leader.
As academic Jean-Pierre Isbouts notes in National Geographic,
"The Bible says that Israel grew prosperous under Solomon [...] Wealth poured into his
treasury, allowing Solomon to fulfill God's promise to David: to build a temple to house
the Ark of the Covenant."
However, it's also worth noting that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines in his harem.
These wives were probably not all for pleasure, but instead a business transaction to gain
land, resources, and more.
This despite the fact that God had already spelled out clearly to his people that man
should not have more than one wife.
As Herbert Lockyer writes in All the Women of the Bible,
[Solomon] loved many 'strange women,' that is, women of different nationalities, apart
from Israel [...] His wives turned his heart toward other gods, and because of his idolatry
accruing from such a strong female influence, God said that at his death He would rend Solomon's
magnificent kingdom in two."
Not to mention, Solomon's devotion for any one of these 1,000 women was probably nonexistent
at best.
Basically, his drive for power and greed overcame his faithfulness to God and respect for others.
Jonah was called by God to be a prophet to Nineveh.
He was one of the many prophets to have their own book of the Bible, and his is perhaps
one of the most memorable stories of all of them.
He's probably most famous for surviving in the belly of a fish for three days and three
nights.
But he's also known for being a reluctant prophet while still maintaining the esteem
that comes with being a prophet of God.
As Robin Payne notes in the academic journal The Expository Times, Jonah became a caricature
of a prophet when he ran away from his calling to preach and warn about God's judgment to
the people of Nineveh.
When he prays, he is praying for himself and not others.
He is deeply self-centered and actively wants Nineveh to be destroyed.
Yet, as recounted by the second book of Kings, he did preach the words to other people and
places.
According to Matthew Henry's commentary on BibleGateway.com,
"[It] is recorded chiefly for the sake of Christ, of whom Jonah was a type; [the Book
of Jonah] contains also very remarkable instances of human infirmity in Jonah, and of God's
mercy both in pardoning repenting sinners, witness Nineveh, and in bearing with repining
saints, witness Jonah."
According to Catholic theology, Saint Peter is considered "the rock" upon which the entire
Christian church is built, whereas Protestants would say that the rock spoken of in the Gospel
of Matthew was actually Jesus.
Regardless, Peter remains a central character within the wider universal church for both
Catholics and Protestants.
Yet even this essential figure was not free of doubt or fear.
When Jesus was delivered to the authorities to be crucified, Peter denied knowing Christ
three separate times out of self-preservation.
"I tell you I don't know him!"
Peter knew that if the authorities knew that he was one Jesus' followers, he would also
likely be executed.
Philosopher Rene Girard offered an interesting reading of this tale, in which Peter's motivation
is less about avoiding the truth, and more about the desire to be part of a community.
According to this reading, the majority "community" ends up calling us away from difficult truths
and more towards acceptance from those around us.
Paul, who was once called Saul, is the central author of most of the New Testament epistles
and one of the most influential saints of the universal Christian church.
His theological connections and reflections have been and continue to be a fountain of
wisdom to followers of Jesus throughout history.
However, Paul was notoriously self-reflective and self-deprecating about what he did before
his major conversion on the road to Damascus.
As author Mike Aquilina writes in Catholic Exchange,
"Saul, a young Pharisee consumed by zeal, pursued a program to purge Jerusalem — and
every Jewish community — of any trace of Jesus' teaching or influence."
Similarly, Herbert Lockyer describes the former Saul by noting,
"Enthusiastically Paul endeavored to stamp out the Christian faith.
There is no evidence, however, that he himself killed anyone."
While Paul may not have been guilty of violent persecution of the Christian church, he had
a clear disdain for Jesus' followers, which makes his conversion all the more surprising
and his legacy even more intriguing.
So while he wasn't always a great person, few characters in the Bible demonstrate the
mercy of God more effectively.
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