After that you will go to Gibeah of God, where there is a Philistine outpost. As you approach the town, you will meet a procession of prophets coming down from the high place with lyres, timbrels, pipes and harps being played before them, and they will be prophesying. – 1 Samuel 10:5

Today's Scripture Reading (May 20, 2025): 1 Samuel 10

Sometimes, a place gets identified by a disaster. Mount St. Helens is the first volcano that comes to my mind, even though I have visited other volcanoes and have never seen Mount St. Helens up close. The reason why Mount St. Helens is the first active volcano that I think of is because I remember the 1980 eruption, which killed an estimated fifty-seven people in 1980. I wasn't living close to the mountain at that time, but I was living close enough that the news of the eruption dominated the news cycle. As I write this, we are waiting for Mount St. Helens to erupt again. Hopefully, we have learned something from the 1980 eruption that will help us this time. However, the eruption of any volcano in a populated area is a problem, and there are more volcanoes in populated areas than we probably want to know. 

Another place that I remember because of a disaster is Waco, Texas. I recently looked at the history of Waco, partially because the city seems to have returned to the news cycle for various reasons. I discovered Waco has been the site of several horrors throughout its history. In 1905, Sank Majors, an African American man, was hung by a white mob, and another man, Jim Lawyer, was whipped because he objected to the lynching. But maybe the most horrific story to come out of the Waco of that time happened on May 15, 1916. It was another lynching, but this time, it was a lynching with a difference. The victim was an African American man named Jesse Washington. Washington had been convicted of rape and murder, and the crowd took matters into their own hands. They hung Washington over a fire and lowered and raised his living body into the flames. Washington died because of the burns he received in the process, and it was an excruciating way to die. 

Even with all of this, I still remember Waco, Texas, for the confrontation between law enforcement and a radical cult called the "Branch Davidians." As a result, over eighty people died, most in a fire at the home of the cult members, which they called the "Mount Carmel Center." Every time I hear the name Waco, I remember that standoff and fire, which again was stressed by the news cycle at that time.

Samuel speaks about the "Gibeah of God." Gibeah means hill, and there were a lot of hills in Israel. Specifically, Gibeah is usually used for one of three places. Still, this mention is likely referring to Gibeah in Benjamin, also known as Gibeah of Saul, because this was Saul's hometown, or sometimes, as is true here, Gibeah of God. All of these names probably try to cover Gibeah's negative past. It was here that the rape and murder of an unnamed concubine of a Levite caused a civil war that almost wiped out the tribe of Benjamin. 

What is impressive is that this city could be rebranded and that a town with that kind of past could become known more as the hometown of Israel's first king than because of the crime that happened there. And yet, that is what happened, and Gibeah became better known as the hometown of Saul than the horror that had taken place there in its distant history.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 11