0 1 Samuel : Cruelty & Violence

1 Samuel : Cruelty & Violence (50)

  1. "So David ... fought with the Philistines ... and smote them with a great slaughter." 23:5
  2. "The Lord killeth" -- every chance he gets. 2:6, 25
  3. "The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall he thunder upon them." If God doesn't like you, he'll send a thunderstorm your way to break your body into little pieces. 2:10
  4. "Because the LORD would slay them." Eli's sons didn't listen to him, because God had already decided to kill them. (Which he does in 4:11.) 2:25
  5. "A man of God unto Eli, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD ... I will cut off thine arm... There shall not be an old man in thine house for ever ... I shall ... consume thine eyes and ... grieve thine heart."
    A "man of God" tells Eli that God will "consume his eyes" and "grieve his heart" and make sure that all of his decendants will die young" because of the stuff his sons did. 2:27-32
  6. "And this shall be a sign unto thee, that shall come upon thy two sons, on Hophni and Phinehas; in one day they shall die both of them."
    God says he'll kill his two sons as a sign to him. (Just ot remind him of the nasty things he plans to do to him and his descendants to punish him for what his sons did.) 2:34
  7. God will punish Eli's descendants forever for the sins of Eli's sons. 3:12-13
  8. "The two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain."
    God killed Eli's sons as he promised to do. (See 2:25 and 34) 4:11
  9. God smites the people of Ashdod with hemorrhoids "in their secret parts." 5:6-12
  10. God kills 50,070 men for looking into the ark. "And the people lamented, because the Lord had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter." 6:19
  11. "And Samuel took a sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the LORD." 7:9
  12. The LORD thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them; and they were smitten before Israel." 7:10-11
  13. "And the spirit of God came upon Saul ... and he took a yoke of oxen, and hewed them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the coast of Israel." People do the darnedest things when the spirit of God comes upon them! 11:6-7
  14. "Saul ... slew the Ammorites unto the heat of the day." Then he took a little break. After all, killing is hard work. 11:11
  15. To day the LORD hath wrought salvation in Israel."
    God saved the Israelites by slaughtering the Ammonites. 11:13
  16. "Saul said, Bring hither a burnt offering to me, and peace offerings. And he offered the burnt offering." 13:9
  17. God delivers the Philistines into Jonathan's hand. And his very "first slaughter ... was about twenty men." Not bad for a first slaughter. 14:12
  18. Under God's influence, the Philistines killed each other. 14:20
  19. "So the LORD saved Israel that day."
    God saved Israel by forcing Philistines to kill each other. 14:23
  20. But later, Saul and his army kill all of those who had not already been killed. 14:36
  21. God orders Saul to kill all of the Amalekites: men, women, infants, sucklings, ox, sheep, camels, and asses. Why? Because God remembers what Amalek did hundreds of years ago. 15:2-3
  22. Saul killed everyone but Agag (the king) and the best of the animals. But still God was furious with Saul for not killing everything as he had been told to do. He said, "it repenteth me that I have set Saul up to be king." 15:7-26
  23. Saul is rebuked by Samuel for "doing evil in the sight of the Lord" by failing to kill all of the Amalekites. 15:18-19
  24. Because Saul didn't kill everyone as God commanded, God changes his mind about him being king. 15:23-26
  25. To please God, Samuel hacks Agag in pieces "before the Lord" [I bet God enjoyed that!] -- after Agag pleads with him saying, "surely the bitterness of death has past." 15:32-34
  26. After God rejects Saul for refusing to kill indiscriminately, he sends Samuel to find another king. David is chosen and anointed by Samuel, and "the spirit of the Lord came upon him from that day forward." 16:13
  27. "But the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul [since he was not murderous enough for God], and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him." But if God is good, then how could he have an evil spirit? 16:14-16, 23
  28. David kills Goliath with his sling, beheads him, and carries the head back to Jerusalem. 17:51-57
  29. David kills 200 Philistines and brings their foreskins to Saul to buy his first wife (Saul's daughter Michal). Saul had only asked for 100 foreskins, but David was feeling generous. 18:25-27
  30. "David went out, and fought with the Philistines, and slew them with a great slaughter." 19:8
  31. God will wipe all of David's enemies off the face of the earth. 20:15-16
  32. Saul kills 85 priests of Nob and all men, women, children, and animals in the city of Nob. 22:18-19
  33. "David inquired of the Lord, saying, Shall I go and smite these Philistines? And the Lord said unto David, Go, and smite the Philistines." 23:2
  34. "Then David enquired of the LORD yet again. And the LORD answered him and said ... I will deliver the Philistines into thine hand." 23:4
  35. "If I leave ... any that pisseth against the wall."
    David vows to will kill Nabal and all his men (or as he put it, "any that pisseth against the wall".) 25:22
  36. "Except thou hadst hasted and come to meet me, surely there had not been left unto Nabal by the morning light any that pisseth against the wall."
    If Abigail hadn't come and paid him off, David would have killed Nabal and any of his people "that pisseth against the wall". 25:34
  37. "And it came to pass about ten days after, that the Lord smote Nabal, that he died." This was convenient for David who then took his property and his wife, Abigail. 25:38
  38. "When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, Blessed be the LORD ... And David sent and communed with Abigail, to take her to him to wife." 25:39
  39. "And David smote the land and left neither man nor woman alive." (No wonder God liked David so much!) 27:8-11
  40. Saul visits a woman with a "familiar spirit" and she brings Samuel back from the dead. Samuel once again explains that God is angry at Saul for not killing all of the Amalekites. He says God is going to deliver all of Israel into the hands of the Philistines. (Since Saul refused to slaughter innocent people, God will slaughter the Israelites. Fair is fair.) 28:8-19
  41. "Because thou obeyedst not the voice of the LORD, nor executedst his fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the LORD done this thing unto thee this day." 28:18
  42. "The LORD will also deliver Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines: and to morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me."
    God sent a message to Saul (through a dead man brought back to life by a witch) was that tomorrow God would make sure that the Philistines kill him and his sons (to punish Saul for not killing all the Amalekites like God told him to in 15:3). 28:19
  43. David and Saul have a contest to see who can kill the most people for God, and the women act as cheerleaders saying, "Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands." 18:6-7, 21:11, 29:5
  44. The Philistine leaders didn't trust David, even though David had committed many genocides for them. They had heard about how the Israelite dancing girls used to sing about David's killings, singing, "Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands." So they worried that David could not be trusted to kill his own people. But they were wrong about that. David was always willing to kill anyone at anytime for any reason whatsoever. That's why God loved him so much. 29:5
  45. "David said unto Achish, But what have I done ... that I may not go fight against the enemies of my lord the king?"
    David was disappointed. He wanted to go kill Israelites with the Philistines. 29:8
  46. "David smote them from the twilight even unto the evening of the next day: and there escaped not a man of them, save four hundred young men."
    David spends the day killing more of those pesky Amalekites. He kills all of them except for 400 that escaped on camels. (See 15:7-8 and 27:8-9 for the last two times they were exterminated.) 30:17
  47. "Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa."
    God used the Philistines to kill the Israelite soldiers to punish Saul for not killing all the Amalekites. (See 28:19) 31:1
  48. "The Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Melchishua, Saul's sons."
    God had the Philistines kill Saul's sons to punish him for not killing all the Amalekites. See 28:19) 31:2
  49. "So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that same day together." 31:6
  50. They cut off his head ... and sent into the land of the Philistines round about ... and they fastened his body to the wall of Bethshan." Was this a part of Saul's punishment for not killing all the Amalekites? 31:9-10

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