Bet You've Never Head of These Characters!

There are a ton of amazing, crazy, miraculous, and stupendous stories in the Bible, with hundreds, no, THOUSANDS of characters! (I'm not 100% sure about the thousands part, but maybe!)

You learn a lot of these stories in Sunday school, like Jonah and the big fish, Adam and Eve, and Moses leading Israel out of Egypt. But have you heard of these other stories?

So, the book of Judges in the Bible talks about the men and women who led Israel before Israel had a king. Samson is one of the most famous judges, and there are four whole chapters about his life in the Bible. 

But have you ever heard of another character just a few chapters earlier named Shamgar? Poor Shamgar only gets one verse! Judges 3:31, “After Ehud came Shamgar son of Anath, who struck down six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad. He too saved Israel.”

Sounds like the guy did a lot! So I dug up some more information on him: Shamgar may not have been an Israelite, because his name is not a Hebrew/Israelite name. If he was a foreigner, he probably didn’t follow God either.

That “son of Anath” part? Anath is the name of a Canaanite false goddess of war; “son of Anath” may have been a military title, showing that Shamgar was a warrior. 

Character-you've-never-heard-of #2: You know the story of Noah, the guy who built the big boat and saved all the animals from the Flood in Genesis.

But did you know he’s not the only “Noah” in the Bible? The other Noah was a woman whose father died during the 40 years Israel spent wandering in the desert. 

So on the way to the Promised Land, she and her sisters asked Moses for an “inheritance”: land to live on in the Promised Land that they could pass on to their children in their father's name.

And yep, Moses brought their question to God, and not only did God give them land, He also laid down a whole new law for Israel, all because of Noah and her sisters. You can find their story in Numbers 27.

The Bible has a lot of surprising stories maybe you haven’t heard before, just like Shamgar and Noah. Read it and find something new!

///Dylan

Sources: The Bible, Wikipedia