Surely one of the great gifts of God is the possibility of learning new things. Thank you for opening this email. I think you may learn something new in the next couple of minutes.
Many Muslims have a soft spot in their hearts for spiders. I didn’t know this until very recently.
The story goes that when Muhammad was making the move from Mecca to Medina he hid from his pursuers overnight in a cave. When the would-be assassins came by the next morning, they saw a spider web built over the mouth of the cave and assumed no one could be inside.
Although the story comes from a Hadith that is not considered reliable, it carries a lot of cultural cache throughout the Muslim world. Can’t you just imagine a Muslim mom encouraging her child not to fear harmless spiders with this story?
Protecting the prophet not withstanding, it seems most scholars agree we are allowed to kill poisonous spiders before they kill us!
Now get this: The Talmud, roughly the Jewish equivalent of the Islamic Hadith, written a few hundred years before Muhammad was crashing in caves, records a similar story in David’s life!
Apparently he’d asked God as a young shepherd boy about the purpose for spiders. God told him the day would come when he’d understand. Later on, while fleeing King Saul, the king-to-be hid in a cave, but expected to be discovered. Out of nowhere a spider showed up, webbed up the mouth of the cave, tricked Saul’s soldiers and saved David. The spider also presumably justified the existence of arachnids to the future king.
Finally, there’s even a story floating around about a spider with a similar “cover the cave” web saving the holy family en route to Egypt. Its origins are the least reliable of the three.
Just to be safe, should we maybe agree not to kill them?