Thursday, August 29, 2013

David's Foreskin Bride Payment

So the story goes (1 Samuel 1 17-39) ...  King Saul once more promised a daughter, this time Michal, to be David's as a wife with a condition that in the performance thereof would get David killed. The bride price was 100 foreskins of the enemy - the Philistines.  Before the day set for the wedding, David and his men (essentially a gang cartel) set off and killed two hundred Philistine men, cut off and kept their foreskins. Upon their return, David counted them all out to King Saul and the wedding took place as planned the next day.

The logistics seem improbable.  Granted that David's bachelor party the day before his wedding was a raid on the enemy.  Where did they so conveniently find two hundred Philistine men to kill and cut off their foreskins - down the block at the local town square?  Didn't the Philistines live in the territory of King Achish? Some distance and time would be involved in traveling to and from the land of King Achish in order to hunt down two hundred Philistines to kill. Following each kill, David and his men surgically excised only their foreskins?  Was there no intervention from other nearby Philistines?

A sword could be used to easily chop off the entire gentile region of a dead body but removing only the foreskin would take additional precision and time.

Okay, David goes the extra mile and gets two hundred, one hundred more than the one hundred asked for.  Nothing odd about having a little extra flesh here, perhaps foreskins is just a simile.

The count off with King Saul must have been interesting. How long would it take to count out two hundred foreskins amid a bloody hairy pile of cocks and balls? Foreskin one, Foreskin two, ... Foreskin 99, ...

All this is a day...

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