A lot of millennials grew up hearing some classic Bible stories from their parents or grandparents. Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, David and Goliath, Jesus and His death on the cross, and many others top the list of Biblical stories that most of us have heard but that don't sound too crazy out of the ordinary (but that's definitely just because we've heard them so many times because I think we tend to forget just how crazy it is that Jesus was dead and now He's not, but I digress). But I'm here to tell you about a bunch of stories that you may have never heard of, and that you would definitely think wouldn't be part of the Bible, but that definitely are.
1. 2nd Kings 2:23-24
At the beginning of 2nd Kings 2, Elijah gets taken up into heaven by a whirlwind and doesn't actually die but starts eternity off with God in heaven anyways. As if that wasn't weird enough, Elisha, Elijah's protege, is walking away from the situation and suddenly finds himself surrounded by a bunch of 8th-graders who start mocking him and telling him to "Go up, Baldy" (because he really was bald) and basically said that he'd never be as good as Elijah and also that he was wrong for being bald.
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Evidently not much has changed with middle-schoolers.
But the craziest part is that since they decided to mock a man of God like that, Elisha decided their best fate would be to be mauled to death by a couple of bears. And that's exactly what happens. Look it up. It's real, I promise.
2. Judges 3:12-23
This one is really more funny than weird, but I'm including it anyway. Eglon, the king of Moab, was crazy fat. He was approached by this guy named Ehud who was evidently an assassin (who's in charge of the king's security?), and he'd made this beautiful double-edged sword that was 18 inches long. He decided he'd save Israel from Eglon's oppression by killing him with the sword, but he didn't plan well enough for the fat situation, and Eglon's stomach literally swallowed the whole thing up all the way to the hilt. And as if that wasn't enough, Eglon pooped himself from his surprise at the fact he'd just been gigged by an assassin and Ehud ran for the hills. Since the doors to the king's chambers were locked and his guards smelled the crap, they thought that he'd been taking a dump, so they didn't come in for hours, not until they thought it had been suspiciously long since they'd heard from him.
3. Ezekiel 4:1-16
Ezekiel is pretty famous for the valley of dry bones that God takes him to see in chapters 36 and 37 of his book, but a lot of people fail to read the first 16 verses of chapter 4 and they totally miss one of the craziest things God has ever asked a person to do. God tells Ezekiel to lie down on his left side for 390 days, and then on his right side for 40, and the whole time he's only allowed to eat bread that he cooks over a pile of human poop, which Ezekiel wasn't a huge fan of so God let him use cowpies instead.
4. 2nd Kings 6:1-7
This last one really shows how weird the books of 1st and 2nd Kings can really be, but at the same time it's really stinking cool. Elisha was with some people he knew and they were cutting down trees when all of a sudden, one of their axe's heads fell into the water next to them. This really sucked for the guy who had that axe, since it wasn't actually his axe and he'd pretty much just thrown the only part of that axe that was worth anything more or less down the drain. But in a crazy weird turn of events, Elisha threw a piece of wood over the place that it fell into the water and suddenly the axehead floated right up to the top.
There are a ton more crazy stories all over this great book, and if I were to tell you them all, I'd probably get in trouble for copyright infringement because I'd basically just be rewriting the whole Bible here. What's awesome about every single one, though, is that no matter how wild they seem, there are always elements in the story that point to Jesus and HIs amazing love for us. Take some time yourself and look them up! It's a way more interesting book than you might think!
