i was researching some bible verses for ant in another thread and came across a couple of classics that were really funny!

"I have wiped out many nations, devastating their fortress walls and towers. Their cities are now deserted; their streets are in silent ruin. There are no survivors to even tell what happened. I thought, 'Surely they will have reverence for me now! Surely they will listen to my warnings, so I won't need to strike again.' But no; however much I punish them, they continue their evil practices from dawn till dusk and dusk till dawn." So now the LORD says: "Be patient; the time is coming soon when I will stand up and accuse these evil nations. For it is my decision to gather together the kingdoms of the earth and pour out my fiercest anger and fury on them. All the earth will be devoured by the fire of my jealousy. "On that day I will purify the lips of all people, so that everyone will be able to worship the LORD together. My scattered people who live beyond the rivers of Ethiopia will come to present their offerings. (Zephaniah 3:6-10 NLT)

"You Ethiopians will also be slaughtered by my sword," says the LORD. And the LORD will strike the lands of the north with his fist. He will destroy Assyria and make its great capital, Nineveh, a desolate wasteland, parched like a desert. The city that once was so proud will become a pasture for sheep and cattle. All sorts of wild animals will settle there. Owls of many kinds will live among the ruins of its palaces, hooting from the gaping windows. Rubble will block all the doorways, and the cedar paneling will lie open to the wind and weather. This is the fate of that boisterous city, once so secure. "In all the world there is no city as great as I," it boasted. But now, look how it has become an utter ruin, a place where animals live! Everyone passing that way will laugh in derision or shake a defiant fist. (Zephaniah 2:12-15 NLT)



"I will sweep away everything in all your land," says the LORD. "I will sweep away both people and animals alike. Even the birds of the air and the fish in the sea will die. I will reduce the wicked to heaps of rubble, along with the rest of humanity," says the LORD. "I will crush Judah and Jerusalem with my fist and destroy every last trace of their Baal worship. I will put an end to all the idolatrous priests, so that even the memory of them will disappear. For they go up to their roofs and bow to the sun, moon, and stars. They claim to follow the LORD, but then they worship Molech, too. So now I will destroy them! And I will destroy those who used to worship me but now no longer do. They no longer ask for the LORD's guidance or seek my blessings." (Zephaniah 1:2-6 NLT)

good to see Yahweh can have a bad hair day too

They no longer ask for the LORD's guidance or seek my blessings.

Jeez after that rant, i wonder why

As Father Dawkins put it,

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Wherefore my bowels shall sound like a harp for Moab, and mine inward parts for Kirharesh. (Isaiah 16:11)

Maybe the driving force is laughter.

There are some howlers in Proverbs. I'll look some up tomorrow, this old girl needs sleep right now.

Good night all!

Wow, I can see why Zephaniah is never quoted in church!

I've been thinking of a subversive activity for some time. Remember people used to have bumper stickers referencing Bible verses like John 3:16 and so on. You don't see that so much any more, so maybe it would be even more effective to sport bumper stickers referencing "hilarious bible verses". Imagine a bible thumper driving behind you, reminding himself to look up Isaiah 16:11 when he gets home , reading it (see above) and thinking "Honestly Lord, WTF???" :mat18:

How about a bumper sticker that just says "Malachi 2:3"?

Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it.

LanDroid wrote:Wow, I can see why Zephaniah is never quoted in church!

I've been thinking of a subversive activity for some time. Remember people used to have bumper stickers referencing Bible verses like John 3:16 and so on. You don't see that so much any more, so maybe it would be even more effective to sport bumper stickers referencing "hilarious bible verses". Imagine a bible thumper driving behind you, reminding himself to look up Isaiah 16:11 when he gets home , reading it (see above) and thinking "Honestly Lord, WTF???" :mat18:

How about a bumper sticker that just says "Malachi 2:3"?

Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it.

That's genius!

this is one of those things where i think about how "all powerful" in the bronze age is exponentially weaker than "all powerful" in the information age.

All powerful to the imbecile who wrote those passages amounted to a very violent king who could marshal nations to rise against his enemies.

All powerful to me means a god who doesn't need to fight anything. A god who changes minds because he wants them to be changed. He doesn't want something a certain way, so it ISNT.

And in two thousand years when the universe is better understood, my conception of all powerful will seem pitiful compared to the expanded vistas of those thinkers.

These verses remind me of the way that nearly all early societies are said to have of defining themselves as "the people," with outsiders being held as something less. We usually don't see this primitive xenophobia expressed in written language, but in the case of the ancient Hebrews, we do. There must have been in this Middle East environment an intense competition for groups to maintain their territory and identity. Nothing quite like hating your ethnic neighbors for enforcing solidarity of the group.

We dismiss such ideas when they come from illiterate tribes. In the case of the old Hebrews, they've become enshrined in the scripture of the modern western world, like one huge, gaping anachronism.

There's a term used in several current fields called "path dependence." It can refer to "a specific trajectory of institutional development and consolidation that is difficult to reverse" (Wikipedia). Despite the merely timebound relevance of these OT writings, they acquired a lasting relevance regardless of their contradicting the rest of moral progress.

i had heard that the names of many native american tribes were either "the people" in that tribe's language, or that a group the europeans had contacted would name another group distinguishing them as outsiders.

for instance I had heard the name "Apache" was a yavapai word for enemy and "Ojibwe" meant "those who stammer". Like the ancient romans calling europeans "barbarians" for the way their language sounded like "bar bar bar bar" to them. (ching chong ping pang, for you modern racists.)

Johnson is correct. Barbarian came from the Greeks interpreting what the language of foreigners sounded like. The Greeks didn't stop there, though, they attempted to find out where people came from, what peoples were related to what peoples, and where languages and forms of government came from. They were Very interested in who was related to who. They also thought that different forms of government produced different kinds of people. The further someone was away from the Attic ideal of a proper Greek, the more they were a barbarian. It's important to consider that even Macedonians (not today's Macedonia but the ancient Macedonia that included large amounts of current day Greece) were barbarians but not as much as say Scythians or Persians/Medes. Hebrews were Barbarians.