Transcript - Brain

(76) Hebrew Bible Interpretation 1, Lecture 20 - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jobaFE-BH4I

Transcript:

(00:04) - David. So I wanna begin today with a close reading of 2 Samuel 11 which is the Bathsheba story. It begins, the setting is the season when kings go out to battle and David doesn't which is a very early signal in this story that something is a mess and perhaps something bad is going to happen. The woman David sees from his rooftop is anonymous in the story to this point and David wants to know more about her.

(00:44) Who is this beautiful woman? When she was anonymous, David didn't do anything. Just made some inquiries. Once he finds out that she's married, he's like, I'll have that one please. Well, why even ask about who she is if it doesn't matter who she is, right? David seems in this way to have more disregard for her marital status than if he hadn't asked in the first place.

(01:15) Why also we might ask, does the narrator feel the need to tell us her purity status? Right, she had just purified herself after her period. Did David know about her period status? Did he care about her purity? Not in any moral sense since purity isn't a moral thing anyway but it's important for us as readers to know her purity status.

(01:42) As you may recall from Leviticus, the period of a woman's impurity lasts seven days after she has finished menstruating. In other words, the ritual bath that concludes the period of impurity also happens to mark not coincidentally, the most fertile period for reproduction. And this alters the image in verse two of Bathsheba bathing on the roof.

(02:08) She wasn't just bathing, she was having a ritual bath. So when we read this, we almost know what's going to happen. And of course, sure enough, I'm pregnant. Now when David sends for Uriah, we don't have any idea as readers what he's going to do with him. Is he gonna tell him what happened? Is he just gonna kill him right then and there? You'll notice though that it's only once David discovers that best Sheba is pregnant that he starts to care about Uriah at all.

(02:48) Right, so we know that it's not the sleeping with her that matters, it's the pregnancy that matters. That's the driving force behind David calling Uriah to him. And you'll notice how coy David is. He calls and just you know, what's going on out there in the battlefield Uriah? Did Uriah wonder why he of all people had been chosen to deliver this message or why anyone had to be sent back from the army in the first place? Could David not just have had the messenger who he sent to get Uriah, come back and let him know what was going on out there?

(03:30) Request a report from Joab. David says to Uriah, "Go down to your house "and bathe your feet." We have to understand if you didn't yet that bathe your feet is euphemism. And if you didn't know this, feet is a common euphemism in the Bible. It looks on surface reading like a suggestion. Yeah, go relax, go, you know, go home to your wife.

(04:03) But this is not a suggestion, it's a command. Go sleep with your wife. David has called Uriah back to sleep with Bathsheba because David does not want responsibility for the child that only he knows about. He wants Uriah to think that Uriah is the father. Now surely the present from the king might have raised a question in Uriah's mind.

(04:35) Uriah, welcome home, go sleep with your wife. Here's a gift to encourage you to do so. You know, why would that be necessary unless something was up Uriah might wonder. Uriah however, directly disobeyed David's command. Perhaps he also heard it as mere suggestion. And David can't imagine that Uriah didn't go home.

(05:00) Whether he can't believe that someone just disobeyed his direct orders or he can't believe that somebody wouldn't take the opportunity to sleep with Bathsheba 'cause he certainly couldn't miss that chance. How could you not do this and Uriah's answer is, you know, the Arcon, Israel and Judah, they're all at war and my master and Joab and all of the soldiers are all encamped in the open.

(05:25) You want me to go home and like eat and drink and sleep with my wife, not a chance. Uriah is like a perfect foil to David here. David, doesn't go with the army to fight when he should. He sleeps with Bathsheba. Uriah doesn't sleep with Bathsheba. He stays with the army even near his own home. Uriah is presented to us as morally and ethically flawless.

(05:50) And you'll notice by the way that a Uriah who says, how could I go sleep with my wife? He knew what the expression bathe your feet meant. David tries again this time by plying Uriah with alcohol but Uriah remains perfect as if by this time he's like, something is up here. This is all too weird. You'd be suspicious too.

(06:13) Why is the king eating and drinking with some common soldier? Remember Mephibosheth's Jonathan son who is kept at the King's table, eating with the king especially David might not be the best sign. And of course, Uriah carries his own death sentence back with him. His death sentence is for having failed to sleep with his wife.

(06:39) Presumably had Uriah slept with Bathsheba as he was supposed to, he'd still be alive today. Not today. (audience laughing) But David's really doing something terrible here, right. It's not enough to even to put your right in the front lines, right? He wants to have him right put in the front and then everyone fall back from him.

(07:00) Right, that's pretty nasty. It's not clear that Joab had actually does that though. It looks like Uriah's dies in the fighting before there's any need to isolate him. And Joab sends a report of the battle to David. He says, when you're finished the King might get angry and like about all the people who have died.

(07:22) If he gets angry, then you should say to him, Uriah was among the ones who was killed. You know, so David, Joab had perhaps worried that David might be angry at the unnecessary loss of life when he only wanted to kill the one dude. But Joab recognizes that when he hears about Uriah, David probably gonna settle down a little bit.

(07:42) The messenger who was sent back in turn, doesn't actually give the message he was supposed to, right. He doesn't save the mention of Uriah until David gets angry. Right, which was Joab sent to do. Joab was like, tell him what happened and then when he gets angry, tell him about Uriah. The messenger is smart.

(08:03) He puts Uriah in the message to begin with, right. He's no dummy, right. Let's do it before or say it before David has a chance to get angry. And David of course has no reason to get angry nor is he angry. He's rather bly the bad the sword will kill whoever it kills. Maybe it's intended to mean that it's a fine thing that other people died alongside Uriah and Joab's actions were actually much better for David than David's own intentions were and David seems to realize this, let's not worry about it.

(08:35) Don't be distressed about it. This is all fine. David actually seems in rather good spirits about the whole thing. When Uriah's wife heard that her husband, Uriah was dead, she lamented, notice how Bathsheba's described here. Not by her name but by her relationship with Uriah. The narrator is quietly criticizing David.

(09:00) And we may notice now that when David is speaking to Uriah, he just says, go sleep with your wife. He doesn't say, go sleep with Bathsheba that might've been something of a giveaway. How's he supposed to know her name? And when the period of mourning is over, David has her brought to the palace. David's now twice brought Bathsheba to him after a designated period of time to sleep with her after her period of impurity which he may have known about at all and to marry her after her period of mourning and these two sort of

(09:32) these two periods mark the frame of the story, its beginning and its end. So the various implicit critiques of David in 2 Samuel 11 are made explicit in what follows of course, Nathan's famous parable about the rich man and the poor man which I'm not gonna go into "cause it's relatively famous. God's condemnation of David, "The sword shall never depart from your house.

(10:02) " And the punishment, what you did in private will be done to you publicly, right? You took someone's wife privately. Your wives will be taken from you publicly. And what's more, the child born of this sinful action will die. And so it happens but Bathsheba bears Solomon which is pretty important. And the story finally comes to a full conclusion.

(10:31) Joab does what David commanded and attacks the city. Joab is a loyal soldier. And he lets David take the credit by swooping in at the last moment to like finally capture this city. You should really probably come like be the one who walks in the door. Otherwise people are gonna think that I'm the one who did it.

(10:53) He is the one who did it. So it's a relatively cheap victory for David. Just a brief side note before I move on, you'll notice that what we have here after, last week when I was talking about how the text is pro David and all about making David look blameless even when he clearly seemed to be blamable, blameworthy blameful, to blame.

(11:19) Here, suddenly we have a story that seems very clearly to be written to blame and is explicit about it, right. Like David does bad things and the narrator constructs the story that's clear. And then we have the prophet coming in and laying it on him. Right, so we may consider that what we're looking at here is something of a turn in the way that David is presented in the text, right.

(11:41) David's rise needed to be explained right in the face of evidence that it was seemingly just a straight coup. The rise of Solomon well, similarly needed to be explained. And part of Solomon's rise involves David's fall. We now get into the succession history proper, so-called succession history. Why, because now we have the proper successor to the throne born, Solomon.

(12:14) And from here on, the driving question of the text is how Solomon David's youngest son became king. And notice that the question only emerges from the established fact that Solomon did in fact become king, right. How can that be? Solomon had multiple older brothers who were in line for the kingship. So again, the story, the text needs to explain to us this seemingly unusual phenomenon.

(12:42) How did the youngest son end up king? How were his older brothers removed from the line of succession? First, Amnon, the story of Amnon involves two of David's sons Amnon and Absalom who are half-brothers. As you'll recall, Amnon falls in love with that's maybe not the right phrase, Absalom's sister Tamar.

(13:09) And he tricks her into being alone with him by pretending to be ill. And you'll notice from her response that the crime being committed here is not incest, right. Because she says, if you just ask the king to marry me, that'd be fine. The crime is rape, right. It's rape. I'm gonna take this as an opportunity to notice some parallels between the succession narrative that we're reading now and Genesis which we read so long ago.

(13:44) Tamar is a second Dina, right. The daughter of the patriarch who is raped. This is in fact made explicit. Well, okay, here we are. Tamar is a second Dina and this has made explicit in Tamar's statement when she says to Amnon, "Such things are not done in Israel!" which is precisely what we were told in Genesis, right that the rape of Dina was a thing not to be done.

(14:16) Same wording. Tamar also has something in common with Joseph. She is the only other person in the Bible with an ornamented tunic. She also is wearing a multicolored dream coat or whatever it's called, a amazing technicolor dream coat. There it is. They're the only two people in the Bible who have one and just as Joseph has his tunic removed in a sexual crime in Egypt so she removes hers and Tamar at least shares her name with the other Tamar from Genesis 38 who was also a victim.

(14:50) But the first Tamar is heroine as well in her way and she is in fact, the ancestors of David. Just as Jacob kept quiet about Dina's rape so to Absalom keeps quiet. Though while Jacob didn't actually act leaving that to his son, Simeon and Levi, Absalom does. And just to jump ahead a tiny bit, just as Simeon and Levi are condemned by Jacob for their violence and avenging their sister so Absalom is punished by David for avenging his.

(15:19) Now let's get to that vengeance since that's how Amnon is removed from the line of succession. Absalom throws a party, gets Amnon to come, that's it. He's not the smartest of guys it seems. Gets Amnon drunk and kills him and it's that simple really? But Absalom has to now flee from David. He has after all killed David's first born son.

(15:42) Still three years later, David seems to have gotten over Amnon and misses Absalom but it's too proud to bring him back. So Joab has to make that happen. Joab having hung around with David long enough knows how to get the king to admit that he's made a mistake. What you do is you make up a fake story and you make David give a proclamation about it.

(16:04) And then you have to be like, ha ha, that was you dude and that worked for Nathan. And it works for the woman from Toccoa on Joab's orders as well, right. David says, you know, who would do such a terrible thing? And she's like, you did exactly that thing. So David brings Absalom back not to the palace perhaps but at least to his own home.

(16:28) His exile is over. Now Absalom is described to us in the text in pretty extravagant terms. He is evidently the most handsome man in all of Israel, entirely without blemish and with a serious head of hair. And this is a bit strange, he has a beautiful daughter named Tamar. Now either Absalom named his daughter after his sister or perhaps this is the remnant of a tradition in which Tamar was Absalom's daughter rather than his sister which would also explain the Amnon story just as well if not better.

(17:07) And if that's the case, then maybe what we have here is this that original tradition being adjusted to really do actually to bring out the parallels with Dina from Genesis 34, right, the sister. Now finally Absalom returns to David after setting Joab fields on fire in order to get his attention and they reconcile for the moment.

(17:31) But only through the moment, because once he's back, Absalom starts to act a little kingy. It is kings who have chariots and horses and runners. He starts intercepting people who are heading towards David for judgment and basically he's like telling everyone, hey, if you come to me, I promise I'll vote for you, right.

(18:03) I'll decide the case in your favor. And so Absalom instigates a coup against his father, David. And you'll notice where he goes to announce his kingship. He goes to Hebron where David was first anointed. The symbolism of the Axiom is relatively clear. And you'll also notice the ease with which Absalom seems to win over the populace.

(18:30) Our perspective on David through the lens of thousands of years tradition is this was Israel's greatest king. It's clear enough from the story, at least from this part that he was not maybe so beloved in his own day. And I think we can perhaps understand why. Now David knows how coups work. You win the hearts and the minds and the power follows.

(18:56) So David sees what's happening with Absalom and he reads the writing on the wall which is a metaphor that you won't understand until next semester anyway. And David runs away. David runs away from Absalom. David even recognizes in his flight that there is effectively a new king. "Go back and stay with the new king.

(19:17) " Somebody else has taken over. And even the ark is to remain with the new king in Jerusalem but he does send back a spy, Hushai. At this point in the story weirdly, Mephibosheth the lame son of Jonathan whom David has kept by his side now emerges and instead of accompanying David as he should, since he eats at the King's table and supposed to be kept by his side, Mephibosheth stays.

(19:48) Right, Mephibosheth believes that this coup is a sign that his line of descent will regain the kingship. So you see Mephibosheth was never really a friend of David's. He was biting his time hoping for David to be overthrown and that's understandable since David has killed his entire family. On the way out of town, David is insulted by Shimei.

(20:12) Now, insulted might not be the right word. The Lord is paying you back for all your crimes against the family of Saul whose throne you seized. You are a criminal. In other words, Shimei is vocalizing in the text exactly what I said last class which again, since we are now in the part of the text that is a little less pro David and little more fall of David, right.

(20:43) We can see that it seems like people at the time seemed to understand and recognize what David had done also. David however, in this moment recognizes that he is essentially powerless and let's Shimei go for now. Absalom then fulfills the curse that God laid on David after the Bathsheba episode. Absalom lay with his father's concubines with the full knowledge of all Israel.

(21:12) This is more than a fulfillment of a prophecy. This is a standard symbolic act of coup. If you can get away with sleeping with the Kings' concubines then the king has no power. You have effectively become king with all of the Royal privileges. Now the spy Hushai does his work. He convinces Absalom to lead the fight against David himself and Hushai sends word to David telling David what's about to happen.

(21:46) And when the battle does come, David prevails, but he had given instructions beforehand, do not kill Absalom. All the troops heard the king give the order about Absalom to all the officers. When all the troops hear stuff, when all of Israel hears the thing it's important, right. We've seen it before. All right, it means that we're trying to cover something.

(22:13) Joab however, then kills Absalom against David's instructions or maybe not really against David's instructions. And when David hears he mourns publicly and I think movingly, I think this is one of the great most moving verses in the entire biblical text when we don't read it with a side-eye and he's mourning so much so that Joab has to essentially snap him out of it.

(22:42) You're humiliating yourself man, right. Like if all Absalom were alive today and the rest of us were dead, you would have preferred it. So Joab says, and the text at least wants us to think. Now, David does something odd though something he's done before he takes Absalom's army chief, Amasa and appoints him in charge of his own army.

(23:08) Remember Abner, Saul's general. When Abner brought the Israelite tribes over to David, David was king only in Judah. Amasa now brings the Judaites over to David. And remember that Absalom became king in Judah first just like David did. So he's got to convince the people of Judah to return to him. So Amasa does the same job Abner did but for the south rather than for the north.

(23:43) With David back in power, Shimei returns and begs forgiveness and gets it. Perhaps David recognizing that his power is still somewhat precarious. He can't quite risk another rebellion right now. So to Mephibosheth who comes back and who gets half of his property back even after his defection to Absalom and this guy named Barzillai we find out about who had helped David during his escape is now helpful to David again.

(24:11) Why bring this up, he'll come back. And David never turns to Jerusalem in the company of the Judaites but the precariousness of his situation is emphasized by the immediate rebellion of Sheba, the Northern tribes. The Northern tribes now defect to Sheba and David realizes that this cannot be left to stand.

(24:33) In his weak position, a defection from the north is even more of a threat than Absalom had been. So he sends for Amasa to lead his troops into battle but Amasa is a little late. So he sends Joab to go after Sheba. And when Joab is sent to do a thing, you know something bad is gonna happen. Now, Amasa shows up to like help Joab out and Joab kills him in a sort of backhanded manner as it were, stabs him in the back.

(25:00) This does seem to be Joab's emo, the same way he killed Abner. Joab is just, you know, he's the hitman. Joab besieges the city where Sheba is holed up and tending to destroy it but a woman in the city promises to deliver Sheba in exchange for the city which she does. Tosses his head over the wall and all is well if you're David.

(25:31) But then there's a famine, a three-year famine. Why is there a three-year famine you might ask? Well, it turns out that back for a long ago, Saul had tried to harm the Gibeonites with whom you'll remember from the book of Joshua, Israel had made a pact never to harm. So how are we gonna make right Saul's here to for unmentioned crime? Well I mean, obviously the solution is to find seven of Saul's descendants and put them to death.

(26:07) That's what the Gibeonites say they want. Well, what's a king to do if you're a David, you say, okay, that sounds great. And David finds a seven of Saul's offspring, evidently through offspring by concubines and hands them over and they're impaled by the Gibeonites. Furthermore, he takes the bones of Saul and Jonathan and buries them in Saul's ancestral tomb along with the seven sons who just died and all is well.

(26:34) This story about the famine and the Gibeonites seems relatively transparent in light of what we discussed last time. David has now killed off seven more of Saul's descendants, you know just in case which makes sense. Again, it is precarious moment, right. Like if anyone's gonna retake the north, it would be them.

(26:53) And the author frames this for us as divine justice, right. For us, a covenantal sin committed in the previous generation. Something that we had not heard of at all before it entered the story right here. Now David having been victorious against the Philistines, again, recites a Sam, an actual Sam this time.

(27:14) Sam 22 to be precise. Sam 22, not Sam 22, Sam 18. Sam 18 is identical to 2 Samuel 22. This is something we've seen before, right. Somebody, Hannah for example, right, recites what looks like a Sam. But in this case, we actually have the Sam in the book of Sam. This does provide some evidence I think of what's going on here and elsewhere I mentioned this previously, the author inserting into the narrative poems that seem to speak to the narrative situation.

(27:52) You know, appropriate moments for heightened speech which is not to say that the author of this text was like, let me flip up in my book of Sam and find the appropriate one. But that the author went to sort of the common stock of Israelite poetry, some of which but not all of which was then later included in a collection that we call Sams about what you'll learn more next semester.

(28:16) The Sam that David recites is followed by a brief poem that's designated as the last words of David but they're not at least not in the canonical texts because after we've heard some fun stories about David's various warriors, David takes a census. Why is a census a bad thing? It's clearly a bad thing here.

(28:41) We've seen before that the census in Israel was always military or you took a census in order to prepare people for military duty. And so it clearly is here, right? It's the people who are numbered are the people who are a fighting age. Obviously being mustered for military action brings with it certain risks.

(29:05) And what's more, the purity regulations for soldiers were quite high and the risk of impurity is similarly high in battle. And with that impurity comes divine punishment that might follow so it actually seems likely that in ancient Israel when Kings took censuses, that was not a great thing. It was a moment for great danger and fear.

(29:28) Now did David take a census? I don't know, but if he did, the people would have been probably angry and confused especially when they were then hit with a plague, right. We have to recognize that this story doesn't actually put David in a bad light. It is in fact intended to relieve David of the guilt for ostensibly right, calling a census.

(29:52) It's the people who seem to deserve the punishment and David just happens to be the agent of God. But David is also of his own accord and to his own credit, the one who ends the plague by buying the threshing floor of Araunah and building an alter there. And that altar will of course become the centerpiece of Solomon's temple.

(30:19) David finally is old and he can't get warm and so they find him a nice concubine to warm him up. whose name, whose beautiful name of Abishag but, and this is actually quite important. David doesn't sleep with her. This is not just a marker of his advanced age. It's also important because what we're reading here is this succession history and there can't be another son of David out there somewhere.

(30:52) Now taking advantage of David state, Adonijah who is the next in line after Absalom starts acting all kingy right. Notice he does precisely what Absalom did, chariots and horses and runners. Absalom did this at a time when David could still fight back. Adonijah waited until David was bedridden and Joab amazingly, perhaps seeing which way the wind is blowing and that David is effectively powerless at this point, Joab goes over to Adonijah's side.

(31:30) He may have been a loyal servant once but he's taken care of himself. Adonijah calls a feast to proclaim himself king but there are some people he doesn't invite. Nathan or Solomon or the fighting men. It seems like an important demission. Now we haven't heard a word about Solomon since he was born but Nathan puts a bug in Bathsheba's ear whom we also have not heard about in a long time I should note and the message that Bathsheba is to give David is somewhat interesting.

(32:11) Go to David and say, didn't use swear to me that Solomon will succeed me as king. What's up with Adonijah doing this? Did that happen? That didn't happen in the story we've read, but she's convincing David, bedridden elderly David, that this is what happened. And Nathan comes and confirms her message. And David agrees Solomon indeed will be king.

(32:44) And so Solomon is anointed. I think what's happening here is actually relatively clear. Nathan and Bathsheba acting as agents of Solomon are disrupting the natural order of Royal succession. Adonijah has every right to be king. He's next in line. But Solomon is really taking advantage of David's weakened state right, his senility.

(33:10) After all we're even told that David didn't care that Adonijah was acting like the king. He was supposed to be the king. Now, Solomon instead gets in David's ear and has him change the succession order. This is essentially a coup just not one that's quite as dramatic as David's. Now, when Adonijah hears what's happened, he's terrified and rightly so, right? Solomon and Nathan and all those fighting men from the army that Adonijah forgot to bother with.

(33:53) And you'll remember that Solomon's mother Bathsheba was once married to a fighting man himself. So there's some loyalty there. Adonijah is terrified but Solomon treats him leniently. I don't have a slide for that. Solomon treats him leniently letting him live if he behaves himself. Solomon is now officially king and David, the King emeritus, not a title that's supposed to exist gives Solomon some instructions.

(34:33) Obviously his first words are the Deuteronomistic instructions, right. Be strong, keep the charge of the Lord your God walking in his ways and following his laws, his commandments, his rules, and his admonitions as recorded in the Torah of Moses in order that you may succeed. Having read all of the story of David, we can be like, dude, what? Like when this was not anything that David has ever cared about, this is a wonderful example of the historian framing a story, turning David into a model of obedience to Torah when in fact, like it just never happened.

(35:11) It never happened, it was never mentioned, right. But our historian comes in here in a speech and reaffirms what's going on. But there's another set of instructions regarding some individuals from David's history. You know what Joab did to me, you know what he did to Abner and Amasa, that bastard. He killed them staining the girdle of his lawn.

(35:41) So act in accordance with your wisdom, what you think is right but you know, let's make sure that he doesn't die peacefully. David didn't punish show up for any of that stuff but Solomon could take care of that. Then there's Barzillai, remember him. He was always good to me. They befriended me, take care of him.

(36:08) Remember Shimei that guy who insulted me, I swore to him, I will not put you to the sword but that was just me swearing. Don't let him go unpunished. You're a wise man. You'll know how to deal with him. This is a fantastic moment. If only because it has such a specific cultural parallel that I'm desperately hoping it's gonna work.

(36:42) Come on, oh no, it's not gonna work. Damn it, that's supposed to be a clip from the Godfather. (audience laughing) It's like hit or miss with the embedded media I'm afraid. Anyway, it's the orchard scene in the Godfather for those of you who are Godfather fans when he's like about to die and Al Pachino is like, I'll take care of it Pap.

(37:05) I'll take care of it and then does, that's a real shame. That's a great moment when it works all right. That's my last Godfather analogy for whatever it's worth but it's such a good one. Now after David's death, Adonijah goes and does something incredibly stupid, he asks Bathsheba, can I sleep with Abishag, David's concubine? Remember what sleeping with the Kings concubine symbolizes.

(37:38) Solomon sure does, right. And this act costs Adonijah his life or so the story goes. Do I think at a Nigel was really so dumb? No I don't know? Do I think that Solomon was looking for any excuse he could to get rid of the person who was really supposed to be in line for the throne? Sure, and Solomon takes care of the rest of the business.

(37:59) Joab knows exactly the kind of trouble he's in. So he tries to find sanctuary in the tent of meeting, right. Grasping the horns of the altar in the tent of the Lord. That doesn't work. Solomon's like, I don't care, go kill him. Shimei is confined to his house. Don't ever go anywhere but like three years later, Shimei is like, maybe I'll just go get a bite to eat or the pub and indeed he also is killed.

(38:32) And with all of David's leftover work completed, the job is done. Now you'll discuss what happens to Solomon from this point forward, the good and the bad in section this week but you notice that just about everything we read today is justification for why Solomon the youngest of David's sons became king. And you might consider how this resonates with so much of what we read back in Genesis.

(39:04) With the younger son always seeming to be the recipient of the promise and overtaking the older son. And I, for one do not think that that is coincidental. I'm gonna leave that sort of dangling elusive remark and ask, I have actually left time for questions which is amazing. It would have been less if I'd gotten the video to play such is life.

(39:31) You can go find it yourself I'm sure. Just find the orchard scene in Godfather. Questions about David last week, this week or anything else that we have covered. Yes, please. (speaking in a low tone) You're asking a question about something that we haven't read yet, aren't you? (speaks in a low tone) (laughing) Right.

(40:01) It's a good, you know, I'll ask the question anyway. Why does Solomon spend so much time talking about the temple and we had all these incredibly detailed instructions and descriptions of the temple. This is not like stuff we've been reading but it is like stuff we've read. It's very much like what we saw back in Leviticus with the building of the tabernacle which you all skimmed.