Jonathan Eats Honey – OMFG!

Yay! Killing people is so cool!

Back in the days of King Saul (and many centuries afterward) the Israelites were almost constantly at war with the Philistines. One day when they were facing off in preparation for a fight, Saul’s son Jonathan and his armor bearer snuck over to the philistine camp. When they arrived at the enemy garrison the Philistines saw them and said, “Come over here. There’s something we want to show you.”

Jonathan took this as a sign that Jehovah was on his side and he and his armor bearer attacked the Philistine army. If you have trouble visualizing this, just remember the huge fight scene near the end of Mr. and Mrs. Smith; the movie that brought Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie together and left Jennifer Aniston a wealthy divorcee. In that scene Brad and Angelina kill a few hundred assassins by standing together in the middle of a warehouse and shooting at the assassin army (clearly the least effective assassins on the planet). If that doesn’t work for you, imagine Aragorn and Legolas from the Lord of the Rings killing a huge horde of orcs without getting hurt.

Anyway, after Jon and his slave killed a whole bunch of Philistines, the entire army began to shake uncontrollably and started to run away. The Israeli army noticed the confusion and disarray among the Philistines and attacked. Even the Israelites that were fighting for the Philistines switched sides and it did not go well for the enemies of King Saul that day; thanks to Jonathan.

Here’s the thing though, by killing people all day you can really work up an appetite. King Saul was lame though and earlier had told everyone they couldn’t eat anything that day on pain of death, because he thought it would help him kill more Philistines. Well, Jon didn’t know this and when he was walking back to the Israeli camp he saw a bunch of honeycomb on the ground and ate some.

Of course the jerk-face egomaniac Saul found out his son Jonathan ate some honey and sentenced him to death. Saul’s subjects were really upset by this and started to yell at the king. They said mean hurtful things like, “Jonathan saved us all today and made the Philistines lose the fight. Jehovah will be very angry if you kill him. After all, Jehovah is the one who helped Jonathan kill all those Philistines.”

Because Saul was a spoiled bully, he didn’t know what to do when he didn’t immediately get his way. He ended up dropping the whole thing and walked away.

Moral: If you just go around making up reasons to kill your friends and family all the time, you’ll regret it eventually.

Ref: 1 Samuel 14

David vs. Saul – Michal tricks her father

Everything considered, I’d much rather have Michal on my team than Saul

After David won the hand of King Saul’s daughter Michal by giving Saul all those Philistine foreskins, Saul decided (once again) that David needed to die. To this end Saul gathered up his servants and his son Jonathan. He told them they needed to kill David.

Now Jonathan was a huge fan of David. Indeed I’ve heard it suggested that they were secret lovers. Anyway, Jonathan went to visit David and told him that Saul was trying to have him killed (again). He told David to hide in a secret place, then he would take his father Saul to a field by that secret place where they could talk about David, then he would tell David what was decided.

Jonathan told his father not to kill David because David was a good guy and had even killed Goliath. He said that it would be a sin to spill the blood of an innocent man. Well, this convinced Saul to not have David killed and Saul swore in the name of the Lord that David would not be slain. Jonathan let David know about Saul’s change of heart and once again David was allowed to hang out around Saul.

This much safer arrangement lasted until after the next war with the philistines. David distinguished himself in the field and Saul remembered that David was a famous war hero. Because Saul didn’t want anyone other than himself to be famous, the next time he saw David he tried to kill him with a javelin. David was smart enough to flee after the javelin throwing incident and hid in his house.

Saul sent messengers to David’s house to keep watch over it and kill David in the morning. David’s wife Michal was smart enough to know what was going on so she helped David escape out the window during the night. Then she made a fake David out of a small statue and a goat hair pillow. The next day when the servants knocked on the door Michal told them David was sick and couldn’t get out of bed. After they reported this to Saul they were sent back to carry the bed to Saul so he could kill David himself.

It didn’t take long for Saul to figure out it wasn’t really David in the bed (think the ring wraith scene in the prancing pony where they stab the pillows). He immediately demanded to know why his daughter Michal had deceived him. Michal answered him by saying, “I had to do it. David told me he would kill me if I didn’t help him.” Of course this was a blatant lie but I guess Michal didn’t want her dad to kill her for helping her husband escape death.

What awesome family dynamics, eh?

Ref: 1 Samuel 19