The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses

Via Crooked Timber, here are the 9 most Badass Bible Verses. For some reason, they didn't teach in Quaker Junior Meeting about the prophet Elisha, who was shouted at by some young people, and responded by summoning two bears to rip them all to shreds (II Kings 2:23-24), or what Saul required David to bring him before he was allowed to marry his daughter (1 Samuel 18:25-27), or about Elijah:

"The situation was that people of Israel had taken to Baal worship, a faith that added a lot of whores to its rituals and thus gained immediate popularity. Elijah (not the one with the bears, that was Elisha) decided that the people had to choose between Baal and God.

Rather than write a series of books or give a bunch of boring speeches, Elijah invited 450 Baal prophets to a contest, where both sides would set up an animal sacrifice. Whichever God could rain down fire on its sacrifice would be the one everybody worshiped.

It's brilliant in its simplicity, and we're surprised religious debates were ever carried out any other way after that. You can raise all the intellectual challenges you want about faith and the origins of the universe, but at the end of the day, you have to worship the god who can set you on fire. It's common sense.

We like to think Elijah stood in front of the howling column of heavenly fire, straightened his robes, turned to the crowd and said, "Thus, my opponent's argument falls." Then, he finished the debate in the way that all debates should be finished: by having the losers slaughtered."

But I still think Samson should have won:

"[His] story involves a feud with the Philistines, people who lived in part of what is now Israel and embraced the long tradition of going to war with the Jews. Or, specifically, the Philistines went to war against just Samson. And, they pretty much lost. On this particular day, the Philistines had burned Samson's wife to death, and sent some men to capture him. Specifically, they sent 3,000 men."

<...>

Finding the fresh jawbone of an ass, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men. Then Samson said:

"With an ass's jawbone, I have made asses of them,
With an ass's jawbone, I have killed a thousand men".

(Judges 15: 15-16)