Q 01/05

Which refrain, repeated three times in David's lament for Saul and Jonathan, became a proverb for any downfall?

A) How the mighty have fallen

B) The Lord gives and takes away

C) Vanity of vanities

D) A time to weep and mourn

Answer · why

A) How the mighty have fallen

How the mighty have fallen opens, punctuates and closes the lament, which David ordered taught to Judah as 'the lament of the bow'. Its line 'Tell it ...

Q 02/05

With which blunt rebuke did Nathan turn his story of a rich man's stolen ewe back on King David?

A) Thou shalt not kill

B) You are the man

C) Go and sin no more

D) Here I am, Lord

Answer · why

B) You are the man

'You are the man' landed seconds after David had sworn the thief deserved to die; Nathan then told the king the stolen ewe was Bathsheba and the killi...

Q 03/05

What did Hanun, the new king of Ammon, do to the envoys David sent to console him on his father's death?

A) Threw them into a dry cistern

B) Cut off their right thumbs

C) Shaved off half their beards

D) Sent them home on donkeys

Answer · why

C) Shaved off half their beards

Hanun shaved off half their beards and cut their robes off at the buttocks, a humiliation David answered by telling the men to wait at Jericho until t...

Q 04/05

What did David do, baffling his servants, the moment he learned the infant born to Bathsheba had died?

A) Tore his robe and fasted

B) Shut himself in the palace

C) Washed, changed and ate

D) Ordered seven days of mourning

Answer · why

C) Washed, changed and ate

He washed, changed and ate after a week of fasting prostrate, explaining 'I will go to him, but he will not return to me', a line still read at funera...

Q 05/05

Why was Jonathan's son Mephibosheth lame in both feet, a condition dating from the day Saul fell?

A) Born with a club foot

B) His nurse dropped him fleeing

C) Wounded by a Philistine archer

D) Crushed by a chariot wheel

Answer · why

B) His nurse dropped him fleeing

His nurse dropped him fleeing when he was five, the day word came from Jezreel that Saul and Jonathan were dead, so the one grandson of Saul whom Davi...