The Bible In A Year 
1 Samuel – 2 Kings
Week 1 of 8
Readings for the Week
September 17-22, 2018
Theme of the week: This week we begin an 8 week unit on the kings of Israel.
- Monday Psalm 106, Number chapters 7 & 8
- Tuesday Psalm 62, 1 Samuel chapters 1 & 2:1-10
- Wednesday Leviticus 21 & 22,1 Samuel chapter 2:11-36 and chapters 3 & 4
- Thursday 1 Samuel chapters 5, 6, 7 & 8
- Friday Deuteronomy chapters 17 & 18, 1 Samuel chapters 9, 10 & 11
- Saturday 1 Samuel chapters 12, 13 & 14
The Bible In A Year
1 Samuel – 2 Kings Week 1 of 8
A Framework for Understanding
Why is this history so bloody?
The stories in the Hebrew Scriptures are filled with war and destruction. Often the scriptures tell us that God required the leaders to kill everyone – to utterly destroy entire populations and cities. These stories differ greatly from Jesus’ teachings to “love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.” Are we reading about the same God? Is God truly “never changing” as some assert? If so, how can we reconcile the differences in scripture? If not, can we be comfortable worshipping a God that changes?
The answers to these questions have fueled debate for centuries. Faithful Christians across the ages have come to differing views regarding the interpretation of scripture, and these passages are no different. Here are some ideas worth thinking about:
• The temptation to worship gods other than Yahweh seems to be constant – even in our day.
• The religious rites of neighboring religions often involved acts of a sexual nature –sex being as strong a motivating force thousands of years ago as it is today.
• Many people believed that the way to deal with temptation was to eradicate the temptation, so to kill those of a different religion would be to eliminate the temptation to worship other gods.
• History repeatedly demonstrates that killing people does not kill ideas.
• The stories recorded in the Bible read very similarly to the stories in modern newspapers.
• There is a thin line between faith and superstition.
The title question is important, but perhaps for Christians the more important question to ask is, “Two thousand years after Jesus’ teaching to love our enemies, why is modern history still so bloody?”