When I traveled to Israel a couple of years ago, I visited the museum where the Dead Sea Scrolls were being housed.
They were encased in bullet-proof glass…
But you know what really bothered me?
We weren’t allowed to take pictures.
There were signs all over the place saying something like “Photo-taking Strictly Prohibited”.
During my trip, I was trigger finger happy and taking pictures of everything and anything that caught my fancy…
And believe me, when you’re in Jerusalem for the first time, there’s a lot of things you wanna capture on film.
Heck, I was even taking pictures of the Hebrew Kellogg’s cornflake boxes in the local supermarket (lol).
But I wasn’t allowed to take a photo of one of the most revolutionary Biblical discoveries of our era.
It was killing me…
And I was severely tempted to break the law in order to get a quick snapshot.
But there was a security guard in the room eyeing me with my iPhone in my hand…
And I imagined there were probably surveillance cameras set up everywhere monitoring the area 24/7….
So even if I did manage to sneak a quick snapshot, I had nightmares about being accosted by a Mossad agent or someone knocking on my hotel room door in the middle of the night.
So in the end, I figured better safe than sorry…
And I didn’t take a picture of the scrolls sitting behind the bulletproof glass.
But I was so sorely tempted to.
Now what does this story have anything to do with 1 Samuel Chapter 11 where we’re at in our study right now?
Well, homies, there is actually a connection, so hold onto your horses while I explain.
Notice how out of the blue, we’re introduced to this fellow named Nachash, a king from the region of Ammon.
Now, don’t you think it’s interesting how we suddenly jumped without warning from Saul’s coronation to war with King Nachash?
Like there are zero transitional verses.
Well, it turns out that inside the Dead Sea Scroll of Samuel, a verse was discovered to begin this chapter that was either added by the Essenes or deleted by later Bible translators.
There’s a lot of debate on the topic and no one knows what really happened.
Anyways, here’s that verse:
“Now Nachash, king of the Ammonites, had been grievously oppressing the Gadites and the Reubenites. He would gouge out the right eye of each of them and would not grant Israel a deliverer. No one was left of the Israelites across the Jordan whose right eye Nachash, King of the Ammonites, had not gouged out. But there were seven thousand men who had escaped from the Ammonites and had entered Jabesh- Gilead”.-4QSam
Immediately after this verse, the words “about 1 month later” appear before the start of what we’ve got in our modern Bibles.
Now these extra details shed some interesting light on the situation.
First, we know that only 1 month had passed from Saul’s coronation at Mitzpah until the time he would get to prove himself as a worthy king by rescuing the folks at Jabesh-Gilead.
Second, we see that the location Jabesh-Gilead had become something of a final stronghold for the remaining members of the tribes of Gad and Reuben since they had been cornered there by Nachash and his troops.
So what’s the lesson we can take away from this?
It’s that sometimes extra-Biblical resources (especially the Dead Sea scrolls!) can greatly amplify our understanding of the Scriptures and even in some cases greatly strengthen our faith.
And that’s it for today…
Gotta run now folks!
P.S. I would’ve loved to share a photo of the Dead Sea Scrolls I took when I visited Israel. But since I wasn’t allowed to take pictures, enjoy the photo above that I pulled from a National Geographic article. I guess that lucky journalist was given special permission to take photos inside the area. Shalom.
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