Top five dumbest people in the Bible

A friend of mine who read my previous post about Bible humor pointed out that the Bible was amazingly honest about a lot of stupid people in the Bible, and even though the Bible is a mostly human document with some quotes from God, it's still quite impressive for the level of unvarnished human stupidity it covers without trying to whitewash it.

And since some of the mind boggling idiocy is funny in hindsight, I'd like to to cover the top five dumbest people in the Bible.


5. Nabal, the guy who decided to piss off David for no good reason.

This guy seemed rather appropriate to start off with, because his very name means someone who is a fool, and while his stupidity is rather brief, it's still astoundingly dumb.

During David's days wandering around as a mercenary and blade for hire, he found some really rich dude named Nabal with a ton of livestock who was currently doing a lot of harvest work, and David generously offered to provide security for his farm animals as well as farm hands in exchange for room and board for himself and his men.

David did not have a reputation for cheating on these agreements nor was he the type to force himself on people, so Nabal could have either said "thanks, but no thanks" or made the legitimate point David was basically a fugitive at the time and that he didn't want to be seen as aiding and abetting and that he wanted David and his men to leave.

Nabal did neither. Instead, he basically went out of his way to call David a worthless POS, accused him of horrible things, and was extremely nasty about wanting David and friends to get out and stay out.

This was incredibly stupid since David had a pretty decent force of armed men at this point with an impressive military reputation, and while David was the kind of guy who would have accepted a polite refusal, Nabal's refusal to be anything less than a complete and utter dick pissed off David enough he told his guys to sharpen their knives so they could be put in Nabal's face.

Enter Abigail, Nabal's wife, who realized how much of a dumbass her husband was, and as David was marching his forces to Nabal's fields, she sent herself as a messenger with a generous peace offering and told David her husband was a rude, drunk, stupid lout, she apologized for him being such a dick, and basically begged him to not go off half cocked because she was married to an idiot.

David had the good sense to back down and accept this, even thanking her for getting him to calm down, and later, as Nabal's hangover from his latest alcohol binge wore off, he basically had a heart attack after his wife informed him he barely avoided having a huge group of pissed off mercenaries turning him into a human pincushion.

He died soon after, and Abigail, who had essentially had to marry the guy because of family and not out of love, decided to hook up with David.

The moral in this one is that Nabal was Exhibit A for God's description of the kind of moron who does utterly dumb things out of arrogance and drunkeness that he generally allows bad things to happen, especially when, as I pointed out, he could have avoided all that by exercising an iota of common sense.

4. Uzziah (also called Amaziah), the otherwise good king who made God mad in the dumbest way possible.

The Bible is pretty harsh even on the good people who screw up horribly, and Uzziah was one of the people who otherwise did a lot of good things, but one stunning moment of arrogant stupidity on his part pretty much pissed all that away.

Uzziah was, for most of his reign, considered a good king by biblical standards, and essentially called a devout servant of God. Unfortunately, in his later years, he let all the praise the Lord gave him for this get to his head and did something that was basically the equivalent of cooking bacon while naked.

He tried to take on the role of high priest in the temple of the Lord.

For those who didn't read Exodus and Leviticus, he was not of the Levite clan, whom God had set aside to be his priests, so strike one for being a moron. Second, God made it quite clear on multiple occasions if anyone other than a priest approached his altar to do as the priests did, death was the consequence, so Uzziah was damned lucky God didn't just kill him on the spot, something he should have known already, so strike two.

Strike three was him essentially doubling down on his stupidity when the priests tried to tell him to leave and quit trying to do their jobs before God visited payback for his defiance on him, and instead of heeding their warnings, he starting cursing them out.

For his increasingly idiotic insistence he could do what he wanted, God struck him down on the spot with crippling leprosy, and since no one with disease was to be in the temple of the Lord, the priests wasted no time in drop kicking Uzziah out of the temple as fast as they could.

Keep in mind prior to this he had been doing God's commands faithfully for decades, and then he decided to toss it all away one day simply because he let that go to his head, and his punishment was to lay in bed the rest of days, permanently unclean and unable to stand before the altar of the Lord and crippled with agonizing pain because he refused to follow instructions not to do something God himself had made clear for hundreds of years was the most stupid thing you could ever do.

3. Ahab, the king God considered the absolute worst, the one who could have changed his ways, but didn't.

I had a hard time choosing the third most stupid person in the Bible, but after some thought, I'd have to go with Ahab, who, while not the dumbest guy in the Bible, especially since he had some moments of pulling his head out of his butt and doing the right thing, ultimately wound up still deserving this spot.

Ahab was one of the kings of Israel after the split of Judah and Israel, and Ahab's biggest mistake, right off the bat, was marrying a woman named Jezebel.

Jezebel was such a nasty harridan she's now an actual word for every woman who acts just like her in modern day, which should give everyone a clue she was bad news. She was the daughter of the king of Sidon and Ahab married her as part of a political alliance. Unfortunately, due to fact Ahab was totally spineless, he let her get away with whatever she wanted, which included inporting tons of pagan priests and idols, persecuting the prophets of God just to please her, and basically doubling down on pissing off God time and again to the point God decided to punish all of Israel with a total denial of rain for three years until He was acknowledged as the only deity with any legitimacy.

Around the time of the showdown on Mount Carmel, where God proved yes, he is GOD, and Baal was little more than a powerless statue, Ahab should've rolled back his prophet persecution pogrom, right?

Nope. Because Jezebel was pissed that the priests of Baal were executed for being false prophets (even though they had been proven so beyond all doubt), Ahab basically let her continue to persecute the prophets of the Lord, with Elijah, the guy who proved God was the only true god, at the top of the shit list.

Despite this, Ahab was not a total idiot. He did have some moments of common sense and trusting on God instead of stone statues and carved tree trunks, but he still continued to piss off God by basically rolling over and playing dead for Jezebel's God hating wishes and running Israel into the ground by not putting a stop to the rampant paganism.

This eventually came to a head when Ahab wanted the lands of a guy named Naboth, Naboth said 'sorry, not selling my family land", Ahab went home butthurt, and then he was stupid enough to follow a plan Jezebel cooked up to frame Naboth for trumped up BS, kill him for it, then take his lands.

Before we go on, we need to explain a few things here. Way back when the Promised Land was taken by the Israelites, every family got their own portion of the land they could pass down the family line, and according to the laws of God, the land could not be permanently sold or transferred, and one could refuse to lease out their land if they chose, as Ahab wanted it as a permanent possession and the law of God did not allow him to do that.

After this, Elijah showed back up again as Ahab and Jezebel were surveying the lands they got over Naboth's dead body, and God was so cheesed off he had Elijah tell Ahab his family lines would be utterly destroyed, his blood would be licked up by the dogs, and that Jezebel would not have a decent burial, instead, dogs would eat her corpse, which was the biblical equivalent of God teabagging your dignity even in death.

Ahab had one of his rare moments of realizing what a stupendous jackass he had been, completely humbled himself before God, and proved so willing to say he was sorry that God granted him a bit of a mercy, saying he was still gonna wipe out Ahab's family, but only after Ahab croaked.

Up until Ahab's death, he mostly tried to do the right thing, but his penchant for being a dumbass reared it's ugly head one last time when it came time for a battle with the Arameans (i.e. - modern day Syria). He and the king of Judah Jehoshaphat teamed up for this battle and decided to get some advice from the prophets of God, who all said they'd win.

Ahab and Jehoshaphat were a bit skeptical of this, so they called in a prophet Ahab didn't usually like because he always delivered bad yet accurate prophecy, and he said the battle would be a rout and Ahab had the guy put in prison, planning to let him out after he came back from the battle just to prove he wasn't going to be defeated, even though the prophet who told him the actual truth said Ahab was not gonna come back alive.

Sure enough, despite a brief ruse where Ahab disguised himself as a common soldier, he got shot by an arrow and bled out in his chariot, and sure enough, dogs licked up his blood afterward.

Jezebel met her fate not long after, just as was prophesied, and sure enough, the same guy who had Jezebel thrown from her bedroom window to impact on the bricks went and slaughtered as many of Ahab's family as he could, and a few decades later, Ahab's family line ceased to be.

The moral in this story is that Ahab was considered one of the worst kings ever because despite his occasional moments of decency, he let himself make the dumbest decisions ever despite proof those decisions were stupid, and for that reason, he is the third dumbest person in the Bible.

2. Jeroboam, the guy who was given ten of the twelve tribes of Israel by God, and decided to screw God over anyway.

Jeroboam is an interesting guy. He's a great example of getting a windfall he never expected, then going out of one's way to spit in the face of the guy who gave it to him.

He used to be a low level pencil pusher for King Solomon, and around the time Solomon started falling away from God and racking up a lot of resentment from the Almighty, a prophet named Ahijah pulled Jeroboam aside on his lunch break one day and said he had a message from God.

Ahijah then tore ten pieces out of twelve from a new cloak, handed them to Jeroboam, and told him God was so pissed off with Solomon defying him he was going to take ten of the twelve tribes away from Solomon's family line to punish him.

Soon after Jeroboam had to go run and hide in Egypt until Solomon kicked the bucket to avoid a hit that was put out on him, and around the time Solomon's son Rehoboam was to be ordained as king, even Jeroboam showed up along with the people, who made a request that Rehoboam be less of a dick than his old man was in the end and they'd stay loyal.

After Rehoboam shot himself in the foot to the point he should have died from shock and blood loss, Jeroboam took advantage of this, walked out with ten of the tribes, and the kingdom split, with Jeroboam running Israel, while the remaining tribes established Judah.

It was at this point Jeroboam decided to go full retard. Since Judah had the temple of the Lord, he was worried everyone making regular pilgrimages there would make everyone in Israel defect from him, so he established altars to idols as a substitute.

Needless to say, God was infuriated this guy chose to grab the bottle of stupid pills and upend the whole thing, so a prophet was sent to call Jeroboam out.

Jeroboam pointed a finger in the direction of the prophet for the guards to kill the guy.

And that's when the hand he used withered into uselessness and the pagan altars split open like busted watermelons.

Jeroboam had the good sense to realize "okay, God ain't kidding", so he did the necessary groveling to get his hand back to normal and let the prophet leave without harm.

Then he went right back to doing what he did to piss off God and kept going until sometime later when his son fell ill, so he sent his wife in disguise to see the prophet Ahijah again to ask if the son of Jeroboam would be alright.

Ahijah immediately saw through the disguise courtesy of the Lord, and Jeroboam got the message via his wife God was MAD, and because Jeroboam had to be an idiot who betrayed his Lord and literal benefactor, his own son would die, and the rest of his family line would be wiped out, and just to rub salt in the wound, the only member of his family Israel would mourn over was his son, because unlike his father or his other family members, he was the only person who God thought had any good in him.

Sure enough, Jeroboam Jr. died, Jeroboam himself followed soon after, and several stupid kings later, his family line was indeed wiped out.

The moral to this monument to stupidity was that he was basically handed a free lunch, then went out of his way to screw over the guy who gave to him, knowing well in advance this was a really stupid idea.

Basically, don't be that guy.

1. The Dumbest Moron in the Bible, the One and Only Rehoboam, son of Solomon, the guy who knew he'd lose everything if he decided to be stupid and did it anyway despite knowing it was pants on head retarded.

And here we are, the stupidest man in the Bible, the son of the ironically smartest mortal in the Bible, and as we'll see, the brains were NOT hereditary.

Anyway, before we go into Rehoboam proving to the world why he's a gold medalist in the Darwin Awards, we need a little background first.

His dad was Solomon, the guy who asked God for wisdom, got it, then promptly quit relying on it and living like some indolent pimp with a hoarding fetish, picking up tons of foreign wives and letting them shit up his kingdom with idolatry, buying himself all sorts of expensive crap and working people to death on ridiculous construction projects, and generally just being a rich jackass.

God was not pleased with this, to the point he had the prophet Ahijah tell the second dumbest man in the Bible he'd get most of Solomon's kingdom later to make Solomon pay for being an idiot. And, even though Solomon put out a failed hit on the guy who was going to screw over his descendants, he knew he had screwed up epically, to the point the book of Ecclesiastes is one long admission by Solomon he had been a total idiot.

Once Solomon died, all the crap he had pulled had ground down the loyalty of the Israelites, and most of them were ready to tell his son to go screw himself unless things got better.

And so, with Jeroboam himself as mentioned above present, they presented Rehoboam an ultimatum:

Either be less of a dick than Solomon was or most of us walk out of here and leave you holding the bag.

Showing that maybe he had inherited an iota of wisdom from dear old dad, he asked them to give him three days to think over his response.

He first asked all the smart people in his court how to answer, and their answer was the obvious one: Give the people what they want, it's in your best interest.

Then he asked all the rich snobs who didn't have to work a day in their lives and didn't care how many people worked to death to make them comfortable how to answer, and their response was to tell the people he was gonna be an even bigger jackass and if the people didn't like it, he was gonna make them regret crossing him even more than they ever regretted serving under Solomon.

His answer to the people was the one that was peak retard, and before we continue, we need reflect on a few things.

He knew his people were ready to revolt. He knew someone was promised to take most of his people away if he answered poorly, and he knew God himself had said this very day would come and that God was bent on punishing him and anyone else in Solomon's family line if they didn't do what was smart.

He knew all this, and he still chose to tell the people he was going to be the biggest jackass on the planet.

As mentioned in the section about Jeroboam, we all know how that turned out, and Rehoboam still didn't really get a clue through the rest of his reign over a mere shadow of the people he used to rule over.

In summation, he's the biggest idiot in the Bible because he knew without question being a fool would cost him, was given an extremely easy way to avoid the worst, and the advice he was given that was good only a brain-damaged moron would reject.

Unfortunately, Rehoboam just happened to be that mentally defective.

And given the sheer magnitude and sheer avoidability of his titanic folly, he earns the award of dumbest person in the Bible.

And if anyone else is in any way capable of wisdom, do yourself a favor, never be this stupid, if only to avoid paying a price as obscenely high as this fool did.