Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

In Judges 14, Samson initiates a battle of wits with the Philistines through a riddle contest—a playful competition that resembles how the Hebrew prophets employed categories of humor, such as taunting, sarcasm, satire, parody, and irony to deliver their messages. In this context, the Hebrew word ḥîdâ, commonly translated as “riddle” or “ambiguous saying,” is a humor device that includes prophetic overtones. To dismiss Samson’s ḥîdâ as a riddle requiring a single correct answer misses how the ḥîdâ functions on multiple levels, including that of a prophetic jeer denouncing the exploitative and violent material consumption practiced by the Philistines upon Samson’s people.

This article examines the intertextual parallels between the books of Esther and Revelation through the primary lenses of humor and trauma, with additional attention to horror. As readers will see, both Esther and Revelation function as books of excess, employing comic hyperbole to lampoon imperial adversaries and culminate in excessive fantasies of revenge. They both also complicate tidy readings of resistance through their mirroring of the imperial structures they each seek to overthrow. As books that blend humor, trauma, and horror in excessive measures, Esther and Revelation illuminate how their ancient authors utilized comedic narrative to respond to imperial domination, how trauma’s effects simultaneously seep through their literary constructs.

This essay explores comedic twists and turns in two episodes in Acts depicting unusual nocturnal transits through open spaces: a basket drop through a city wall (9:23–31) and a sleepy fall out of an apartment window (20:7–12). Both incidents teeter precariously—and hilariously—between life and death. The first one involves Saul’s narrow escape from death, and the second Eutychus’s miraculous revival from death. Suspense is evoked and resolved in a bizarre array of undulating movements (up/down, in/out). Humor thus opens fresh, creative ways to navigate life’s challenging course.

This essay explores the generative role of humor in biblical interpretation, arguing that humor disrupts expectations and invites openness to new meaning. Through close readings of stories like Jonah, the Emmaus disciples, Balaam’s talking donkey, and the prodigal son’s elder brother, it demonstrates how biblical texts and their interpreters use humor to resist premature closure and foster creative engagement. The essay further suggests that interpreters are called to “play in the ruins” of these narratives—dwelling with ambiguity and surprise. In doing so, humor becomes a vital theological resource for encountering grace in unexpected places.

This essay challenges Reinhold Niebuhr’s claim that laughter belongs only in the “outer courts” of faith and must fall silent in the Holy of Holies. Through historical, theological, and cultural analysis—as well as lived pastoral experience and an unapologetic dash of humor—this essay demonstrates that humor is not merely permissible within the sacred but essential to it. Laughter offers perspective, strengthens community, disarms power, loosens our grip on rigid certainties, and opens a pathway to forgiveness. Most important, humor functions as a spiritual life-support system in moments of profound suffering, where despair threatens to eclipse faith. In such spaces—which are themselves the true Holy of Holies—laughter becomes a courageous act of hope. Ultimately, this essay contends that humor is not a threat to holiness but one of its deepest expressions.