20 Bible Stories That Get Darker When You Read The Whole Passage

In the biblical story of David and Goliath, David refuses King Saul’s armor before fighting Goliath, the Philistine champion, using a sling. A single stone hits Goliath on his forehead. This is a knockdown, not a kill. David runs to the body of the fallen giant and kills him by decapitating him with Goliath’s own sword. Also, the size of Goliath varies between versions. In the standard Hebrew Bible, he is nearly ten feet tall, while in the Dead Sea Scrolls he is less than seven feet tall.

The Bible doesn’t say that the forbidden fruit Adam and Eve ate was an apple, just “fruit” (Heb. peri). Eve wasn’t the only one at fault; Genesis 3:6 says Adam was right there with her when the serpent tempted her, and he said nothing when she handed him the fruit. It was Jerome’s Vulgate translation that added the apple, using a pun on the Latin word for evil, malus, which also means apple.

The Magi who visit Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew are never referred to as kings or counted as three; the text only says they offer three gifts. They show up at a house, where they find a “young child,” not a baby in a manger, which implies that months or even years have passed. Later, King Herod orders the massacre of all boys in Bethlehem who are two years old and younger.

Delilah, the Philistine woman who Samson loved, gets a big reward for betraying him, but she doesn’t actually do the clipping. Instead, she brings in a fellow to cut Samson’s hair when he is lying asleep on her knees. Samson is an Israelite hero who took a vow not to have his hair cut, but he has been breaking that oath left and right: touching corpses, drinking wine, visiting brothels. The great haircut scene was just the most recent violation.

Jesus tells the parable of the Prodigal Son to the Pharisees and scribes, who were upset that he would hang out with “sinners.” And at the end of the parable, after the younger brother comes back and everyone throws a party, the last third of the parable shifts to the older brother, who is angry because he’s never been given even a young goat to celebrate. The father keeps pleading with him, but the story ends. It just stops. The brother is still outside.

When a lawyer asks Jesus the question, “Who is my neighbor?” he is trying to test Jesus and justify himself. First-century Jews and Samaritans were fierce religious and ethnic rivals. In the parable Jesus tells in response, the priest and the Levite walk by a man who has been beaten and left on the road, but the Samaritan stops to help him. When Jesus asks who acted as neighbor, the lawyer can’t even bring himself to say the word “Samaritan.”

In the story of Noah’s Ark, the animals don’t all enter the ark as single pairs. Noah takes just one pair of everything else, and seven pairs of the clean animals that are approved for sacrifice. He will need them once he disembarks. The story also doesn’t stop with the rainbow. After disembarking, Noah plants a vineyard, becomes drunk, and uncovers himself in his tent. When Ham, Noah’s son, sees him, Noah puts a curse on Ham’s son, Canaan.

In the infamous story of the prophet Elisha and the bears, the people making fun of Elisha are not necessarily infants or small children. The Hebrew word used for them can also refer elsewhere to youths or young men. The encounter takes place near Bethel, a major religious center of the Northern Kingdom. They mock the recent ascent of Elisha’s mentor, Elijah, who had just been taken up to heaven, by saying “Go up, baldhead,” possibly comparing Elisha to Elijah’s departure. Elisha curses them, and then two bears maul 42 of them.

In the Book of Daniel, Persian officials plot against Daniel, another high-ranking official, by tricking King Darius into signing a law prohibiting anyone from praying to any god but the king. The law was specifically targeted at Daniel because he continued to pray toward Jerusalem. Overnight, an angel protects Daniel in the midst of the lions. When the ordeal ends, King Darius does not merely condemn the men who brought false charges against Daniel, but has them thrown to the lions along with their wives and children.

The Book of Jonah says Jonah is swallowed by a “great fish,” which is never referred to as a whale in the Hebrew original. After Jonah warns Nineveh, the capital city of the ruthless Assyrian Empire and arch-enemy of Israel, the people of Nineveh repent, and God spares them. Jonah is enraged, explaining that’s why he ran in the first place: he knew that God is “gracious” and feared this exact outcome. Then he pouts even more over a withered plant than over God sparing the city.

As Moses stays high up on Mount Sinai, the Israelites press his brother Aaron in his role as priest to create “gods” for them to follow. He melts down gold into a calf and proclaims, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD,” using the name of the true God, Yahweh, himself. The crime is not worshipping another deity, but creating a forbidden physical image of the one deity. Moses smashes the stone tablets, burns the calf, grinds it to powder, and makes the Israelites drink it; 3,000 of its worshippers are then killed.

Ehud, a left-handed Israelite chieftain, concealed a short custom dagger on his right thigh. Eglon, the obese Moabite king, had subjugated the Israelites for 18 years. During a private audience with him, Ehud stabbed him in the gut. Eglon’s fat covered the dagger. Ehud locked the door and escaped, leaving Eglon’s servants to assume that their king was merely taking a dump.

In Genesis, Lot welcomes two visitors into his home in Sodom without initially realizing that they are angels. But when a violent mob threatens to rape the guests, Lot offers them his two virgin daughters. Sodom is destroyed, and Lot’s wife dies after looking back at the city. Lot and his daughters escape to a cave. Fearing their family line will end, the daughters get their father drunk on two consecutive nights, sleep with him, and get pregnant. Their sons, Moab and Ben-ammi, become the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites.

According to Israel’s laws, King Saul had already banned mediums, people claiming to be able to communicate with the dead, from his kingdom. When the Philistines invaded, Saul put on a disguise and visited a female medium at Endor, asking her to summon the dead prophet, Samuel. She was surprised when Samuel appeared and predicted that Saul and his sons would die in the coming battle. The following day, Saul’s sons were killed in battle, and he committed suicide.

In Genesis, Jacob is preparing to reunite with his estranged brother Esau when, during the night, a mysterious man begins wrestling with him beside the Jabbok River. They fight until daybreak. The man cannot prevail, so he touches Jacob’s hip and puts it out of joint. But Jacob won’t let him go without a blessing. The man gives Jacob a new name, Israel, which the passage connects with struggling with God and humans. Jacob names the place Peniel, or “face of God,” and leaves the encounter limping.

Jephthah, an Israelite general, makes a rash promise to the Lord before fighting the Ammonites, another nation that is Israel’s enemy. He says that if he wins, he will sacrifice the first thing that leaves his house. It turns out to be his one child, an unnamed daughter. After two months of grieving, he does it. The sacrifice is illegal according to Israelite law. The story isn’t presented as God’s doing, but rather it’s meant to show how low Israel has sunk in terms of ethics.

Rahab, the woman who hides two Israelite spies in Jericho, is called a zonah in the Old Testament and a porne in the New Testament, both translated as “prostitute,” not “innkeeper.” She helps the spies escape by hiding them on her roof among flax stalks, deceives the guards, and secures the safety of her relatives in exchange. And when the walls of Jericho collapse, Rahab and her family survive. Her descendants will eventually include King David and Jesus.

Elijah, a prophet of Yahweh, pits himself against 450 prophets of Baal, a Canaanite storm god, in a contest to call down fire from heaven. When nothing happens after several hours, Elijah taunts them at noon, using a Hebrew idiom implying that Baal is perhaps in the bathroom, relieving himself, sleeping, or traveling. Elijah douses his own altar with water. Fire still falls. Elijah has the crowd seize and kill the 450 prophets by the Kishon Valley.

Jesus comes to the outer court of the Temple in Jerusalem, which is accessible to non-Jews. The outer courtyard is bustling with vendors selling livestock and moneychangers converting money for offerings. Jesus braids a small whip of cords and drives the sheep and cattle away from the temple, knocking over the tables of the money changers. He doesn’t just reprimand the vendors; he stops anyone from transporting merchandise through the courtyards entirely.

The early Jerusalem Christians sold property to help the needy. Two members of the group, Ananias and his wife Sapphira, sold some land and kept a portion of the proceeds. They told the apostle Peter that they had donated all of the money. But Peter says plainly that the land was always theirs to keep. Keeping some of the money wasn’t the problem; lying about the donation was. Ananias drops dead immediately. When Peter questions her separately, Sapphira repeats the same lie and drops dead three hours later.

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