A Biblical Record of Major Crimes: Mass Murder and Religious Persecution

A Biblical Record of Major Crimes: Mass Murder and Religious Persecution. 

“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Truth in indirection lies.” (Emily Dickenson).

A Different Look to a True Story. Emily Dickenson’s advice was to come at the truth from different angles; reveal the truth while approaching it sideways. There are times when only an indirect story will effectively grab a reader’s attention and will inspire a fresh perspective on an ancient truth. There are occasions when coming at a truth from the side through a story will go further than a didactic, systematic study using logic and reason. We seem to be created in a way in which truth can often be better understood from the side instead of head-on through a blunt statement of raw truth. This fictional story below is intended to reveal the truth of a biblical crime story in a way that brings a fresh perspective, an unexpected layer of meaning, to a familiar story. Perhaps we can learn something new in this indirect approach to the true story of King Saul and his mass murder of the priests of Nov. (1 Samuel 21-22).

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Global Crisis. There is an alarming increase of religious persecution right now, 2025, and it is international in scale, from the most democratic countries to the most totalitarian. Remember that horrific slaughter of the priests of Nov in 1 Samuel 22, which included not only the priests but also their wives, children, extended families, and even their livestock! Believe it or not, this very type of unthinkable persecution is occurring every day right now somewhere in this world.

The Backstory of Nov. We start with David fleeing to the village of Nov, east of Jerusalem, still on the run from the crazed King Saul. Saul is at his lowest point here in every way, spiritually, psychologically, morally, and refuses to give up his mission of ridding himself of David. Nov was known as the city of priests because it held the Tabernacle at that time, so the entire line of priesthood was stationed there to conduct services of worship of Yahweh and protect Israel’s most sacred pieces of its history. The high priest’s ephod was there, for example, complete with the ummin and thurim to be consulted when the Lord’s guidance was especially sought for. The famous sword of Goliath was also housed there to prove to everyone that David’s miraculous victory over Goliath and the Philistines was indeed an historical fact. Saul’s overwhelming paranoia and conspiracy delusions was at its height, and he had lost all sense of faith in Israel’s Lord or any spiritual awareness whatsoever. With no particular reverence for the priests or what they did, there was nothing to stop him as he unthinkingly ordered this heinous massacre. For Saul knew he was finally closing in on David, and he heard his spy, the pagan Canaanite Doeg, report David’s presence in Nov. The high priest there had provided holy bread from the altar for David and his men, whispered Doeg, and handed over Goliath’s sword because David had no weapons to defend himself out there in the wilderness. It didn’t matter to Saul that the high priest wasn’t even aware of the life and death discord between Saul and David, or that what was offered to David was simply an act of innocent hospitality. Saul was profoundly unstable with visions of a treasonous conspiracy against him everywhere he went, so he proceeded to order Doeg to massacre every priest in Nov. Saul had first ordered his troop of bodyguards to do the dirty work, but they were all Hebrew, and so couldn’t even consider doing such a dastardly thing. The murderous Doeg volunteered to execute everyone who had anything to do with the priesthood in Nov, which included the 85 priests, their wives, their children, everyone in the entire city, and even the livestock! Saul was responsible for wiping out the entire line of the priesthood with this slaughter, except for one priest who was able to escape and join David’s company of men out in the wilds. David was only too happy to appoint this surviving priest as his high priest when David became king in Jerusalem, and David made sure this priest remained, in order to reestablish the line of priests needed for worship in the Temple.

The Modern Nov. Religious leaders, and Judeo-Christian believers in particular, are still to this day being targeted in the same demonic spirit as King Saul and the pagan Doeg. There are bloodthirsty enemies of Jews and Christians all over the world, including:

1. China: The Communist government aggressively seeks out the leaders of churches, pastors especially, and the country is now engaging in an unprecedented crackdown on house churches and other underground gathering places of worship. The government is oppressing the leaders, censoring their sermons, arresting them, imprisoning them indefinitely, closing the door to their church property, and even placing the pastors’ families under house arrest.
2. Nigeria: Islamists have recently destroyed at least 1,200 church buildings and murdered at least 3,100 professing Christians. They have kidnapped over 250 priests and over 350 pastors of other denominations. It has been discovered that many of those Christian leaders who have been kidnapped were subsequently executed, martyred for the Faith.
3. North Korea: A few years ago the government ordered the execution of every Roman Catholic priest in the country, so there is no Catholic church to speak of. The police force sends pastors to inhumane prison camps where they are tortured and die of injuries or starvation. Today there at least 200,000 Christians in these detention camps, living in squalor and brutal conditions, with many of them executed on a routine basis. Christian believers and their leaders are considered “enemies of the state and will not be tolerated.”
4. World-Wide. According to the latest official statistics distributed by the many agencies that carefully gather this information on the ground… 80% of persecuted religious believers are Christians; 310 million Christians face very high/extreme levels of persecution; 5,600 Christians have been killed for faith-related reasons; 6,000 Christians have now been detained or imprisoned; 7,600 churches have been attacked or destroyed; at least 4,000 Christians have been kidnapped and either held for ransom or killed.
5. Antisemitism. The evil scourge of persecuting God’s chosen people is increasing at an alarming rate around the world, primarily by Islamists, Palestinian sympathizers, and Muslim radicals. At last count there are 90 countries that continue to harass and even murder Jews. The Jews are profoundly persecuted in shocking disproportion with the global population, representing only 0.2% of the world’s population. There recently have been 9,300 incidents of antisemitism globally, a 334% increase over the past five years. The latest grotesque example is the slaughter of 16 Jews celebrating Hanukkah in Australia, a supposedly democratic country that has seen a dramatic surge of antisemitism. In the United States, especially after the Hamas atrocity in October 7, an estimate of 68% of religious crimes target the Jewish population, while Jews are only 2% of the US population. This is a 107% increase, and of course includes the massive pro-Palestinian, blatantly antisemitic marches conducted on college campuses across the country. This amount of hatred for such a small but culturally significant religious group makes no sense unless seen as a demonic oppression and an historical reality since God chose Abraham to bless the world through the Hebrew race. May there be peace in Jerusalem and around the world.