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You’re reading along in the Bible, and it’s all familiar and fine—you turn the page and… Wait … what?!
Sometimes the Bible is just plain weird. Stories that send your head spinning. Ideas that just seem … well … wrong. So what do you do when you crash into one of these episodes? I’ve got some ideas on that, but first, here are five of the strangest things in the Bible that I have struggled to wrap my head around at one time or another:
1. Psalm 137: Dash their heads. This psalm starts off all nice and lovely with the Boney M tune earworming itself into your mind. “By the rivers of Babylon…” But it ends with an absolute shocker: "Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” Is God really suggesting that violent infanticide is a good thing?
2. Exodus 4: The “bridegroom of blood”. God wants to kill Moses, but he is saved when his bride Zipporah picks up a knife, circumcises their son and touches Moses’ feet with the foreskin. Huh?
3. 1 Kings 13: Lionising a prophet. It’s a long complicated story involving two prophets, a promise, some bread and water, a donkey and a lion. Bottom line, an honorable prophet gets killed by the lion when someone lies to him. He acted in good faith, but ended up dead. Seems a little unfair Lord…
"The Bible is God’s word. It’s God’s truth about the world, himself and reality. So when I come across something that is strange, it’s often a signal that there’s something about me and my thinking that needs to change."
4. Ezekiel 1: Wheels within wheels. A vision of a bizarre chariot is carefully explained, but every time I try to picture it, my head just explodes. Tried drawing it once. The pencil broke. Maybe Erich von Daniken was right after all…
5. Ruth 4: I’ll swap you a shoe for this woman. Ruth is widely viewed as a love story; but I think if I’d gone to my beloved's family and offered to swap a smelly old shoe for my bride, my marital status would have remained unchanged—probably forever. What’s going on here? (Sidebar—what exactly does “uncovering his feet” mean in Ruth 3:7)?
Don’t Panic
It should not surprise us that the Bible is weird. It’s from different times, different cultures, and written in different languages than our own. They had a different way of life, different expectations, different jokes and expressions in that culture than we do now. In fact, because our western culture has been shaped by the words, ideas and stories of the Bible, it perhaps appears less strange to us than it really is.
Embrace the Weirdness
The Bible is God’s word. It’s God’s truth about the world, himself and reality. So when I come across something that is strange, it’s often a signal that there’s something about me and my thinking that needs to change. The Bible isn’t weird—I am. So any of the stories above pose a fundamental question for me: How does my thinking need to change?
"There are parts of God’s self-revelation in Scripture that are deliberately opaque to us. Parables, for example, force us to ponder, to think and discuss their meaning. Perhaps the weirdness is part of the point."
Ponder the Meaning
When you read the Bible, you’re reading a translation, and translations often hide things from view that are clear in the original language. And things would probably have been clearer in the original culture too. Perhaps there was an established custom or cultural expectation (like swapping sandals), which, though now unknown to us, meant that the things written would not have appeared at all odd to the book’s first hearers. Truth is, they would find you weird if they met you.
Spend Time With It
We’re used to instant clarity—it’s the mark of good communication. But what if the Bible was written for people who take their time, who ask questions, who reread again and again over the course of a lifetime? There are parts of God’s self-revelation in Scripture that are deliberately opaque to us. Parables, for example, force us to ponder, to think and discuss their meaning. Perhaps the weirdness is part of the point.
Talk it Through
It’s not just you and the Bible. God has made each of us part of what John Stott called “a hermeneutical community"—the church. Or to be less weird about it—we are a bunch of Jesus followers who get together to work out what God is saying to us through the Bible. So don’t be afraid to ask the question, raise it with others, laugh about it, research and ponder potential answers together. It’s how we grow together in our understanding.
For verse-by-verse guides to strange things in the Bible (and the not so strange parts, too) we recommend the God’s Word For You series. In each book, a trusted Bible teacher walks you through a book of the Bible verse-by-verse in an accessible and applied way.
Tim Thornborough is the founder and Publishing Director of The Good Book Company. He is series editor of Explore Bible-reading notes, the author of The Very Best Bible Stories series, and has contributed to many books published by The Good Book Company and others. Tim is married to Kathy and has three adult daughters.
