§ Stories

The parts of the story that come after the part everyone remembers.

Full retellings, grounded in the text, with the historical context left in rather than trimmed out.

01

The assassination hidden in plain sight in the book of Judges

Buried in the early chapters of Judges, long before Samson or Gideon, is one of the most detailed and least-discussed scenes in the entire Old Testament: a planned, close-range assassination of a…

Judges 3 · 7 min read
02

The massacre David called off — and the woman who talked him out of it

Years before he was king, David was a fugitive commanding a few hundred armed men in the wilderness, surviving in part on the goodwill of local landowners he and his men had…

1 Samuel 25 · 8 min read
03

The prophet who won everything and then asked to die

A day before this story starts, Elijah had just won the most lopsided contest in the Old Testament. Four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal built an altar, danced, cut themselves, and…

1 Kings 19 · 7 min read
04

Jonah got his sequel — and skipped it

Everyone knows the fish. It's the part of Jonah that ends up in every children's Bible and every Sunday school flannelgraph. What almost never gets told is what happens after Jonah gets…

Jonah 4 · 7 min read
05

The riddle Samson bet thirty men he couldn’t lose

Before there was a haircut, there was a riddle. Long before Samson lost his strength to a woman named Delilah, he lost thirty sets of clothing to a riddle he told at…

Judges 14 · 8 min read