by God
15 Once a day for six days did this hour-long circumnavigatory ram-jam session take place; then, on the seventh day, it was repeated seven consecutive times;
16 And by the thirteenth march, that priestly horn septet had evolved into quite a tight little ensemble, I must say.
17 Lo, they actually made those shofars sound halfway decent, which is nearly impossible; for I once beheld Miles Davis attempt to play one at his record company president’s grandson’s bris, and he gave up after 45 minutes, having produced no sound but the squeal of a screech-owl passing a kidney stone.
18 Still, they were but amateur musicians; the important thing was not that they played well, but that they played with gusto; and even more importantly, that they played loud;
19 Loud enough to conceal the sound of the sledgehammers wielded by the 60 Israelite spies who’d been hiding in Jericho’s catacombs all week.
20 By the end of the final march the wall was ready to fall; but to let the army feel like they had played a part, Joshua bade them let out a war cry; and this appeared to be the cause of the collapse, at least to anyone who had not spent the last week pouring hundreds of gallons of smuggled lye into subterranean boreholes.
21 Let it be: what matters is not the method, but the outcome; and by sunset the Israelites, working together, had conquered the town, destroyed every living thing in it (including the children), and burned it to the ground.
22 Yea, it is amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who takes the credit.
23 When the last ox had been gored, Joshua looked at me and said, “Capturing Jericho proved little challenge, O LORD.”
24 “I am glad thou feelest that way,” I responded, “for it will be all uphill from here!”
25 He tittered; I thought it deserved better.
CHAPTER 2
1 Of Joshua there is little else to say, other than that he continued besieging, burning, and massacring his way through Canaan, obliterating its inhabitants and all record of their existence from the face of the earth, until he died peacefully at 110, surrounded by his grandkids.
2 But in these historical books there are three other figures, a brief mention of whom I have been advised would not be unhelpful in the moving of precious units.
3 The first of the three is the last of the judges chronicled in the book of that name; leaders who served not only as dispute-arbiters, but as a kind of intertribal prime minister in the days before the monarchy.
4 There were 14 such judges, of whom the wisest, bravest, and most respected was the fourth, Deborah; the greatest female leader in the entire Old Testament; though also, technically, the worst; for she was the only.
5 (Verily, I have never divined what it was about the ancient Jews’ rigidly patriarchal polygamous society that made it so hard for its female chattel to succeed therein;
6 Especially since women were regarded as clean, uncursed, and fit to appear in public nearly three-quarters of the time.
7 In any case, it is a shame that Deborah turned out to be the last female judge for the next three millennia; for she was great.
8 Yea, everybody liked Debbie.
9 Easy on the eyes, too!)
10 Then came Gideon, the one with the trumpet; then Abimelech; then Tola, Jair, Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon.
11 They kept a low profile.
12 But then came the final judge, Samson; the mighty Samson; the legendary Samson; the earthshaking Samson;
13 Who tore apart a lion with his bare hands; who killed 30 party guests for cheating on a riddle; who single-handedly pulled the gates of Gaza out of the ground; who tied 150 pairs of foxes together by the tail, fastened torches to them, and set them loose in his enemies’ wheat fields; who slew 1,000 Philistines with a donkey’s jawbone...
14 Truly, one reads Judges 1–12, and it is alliances this, and trade missions that, and altar-buildings and sacrifices, yahweh yahweh yahweh;
15 And then one arrives at Judges 13, and thinks, “Whoa, when did my Bible turn into a comic book?”
16 Samson was the most accomplished Judge, more so even than Deborah; for though he lacked her wisdom and compassion, he rendered his decisions with a chest-beating, club-wielding, Schwarzeneggerian finality that tended to dissuade the losers from filing an appeal.
17 I did not converse often with Samson, for my intervention was seldom needed during his forceful reign; nor was he one for small talk, his outside interests being limited to stonelifting and squinting in incomprehension.
18 Samson was more than just a hero, he was a superhero; and like all super-heroes, his birth was divinely prophesied, and his strength was beyond that of mortal men, and he fought for justice, and had a hidden weakness whose exposure would lead to his downfall: Nazirite.
19 Yea, he was a Nazirite: an ascetic consecrated unto my service from before birth, and thus sworn by oath to abstain from alcohol, avoid dead bodies, and leave his hair and beard unshorn; which he did . . . until she walked in.
20 Of course I mean Delilah; an unscrupulous, conniving harlot; a mistress of seduction who verily was not even all that comely, though she had a reputation for being most adept at “anointing the tent pole.”
21 The treacherous harridan plotted against Samson from their first night together, when she asked him, “If thou lovest me, tell me by what means canst thou be subdued.”
22 And he said, “Tie me with seven new bowstrings and I will become as weak as any man.”
23 Then he fell asleep; and she bound him with seven new bowstrings; whereupon he woke, and snapped them like straw, and mocked her.
24 And the next night she asked, “Tease me not: this time tell me truly by what means canst thou be subdued.”
25 And he said, “Tie me with new ropes and I will become as weak as any man.”
26 Then he fell asleep; and she bound him with new ropes; whereupon he woke, and snapped them like flax, and mocked her.
27 This went on for 827 consecutive nights.
28 If that is not the definition of a dysfunctional relationship, I know not what is.
29 But finally Delilah wore him down, nagging him into revealing his Naziritic oath, and thereby the source of his strength; and quickly ensued the famous denouement:
30 She cut his hair while he slept, and the Philistines captured him, and blinded him, and brought him into their temple; whose pillars he leaned upon until the entire edifice collapsed, killing him and all within;
31 Leaving the final lesson of the saga of Samson—rabbi, champion, patriot, last of the judges of Israel—all too clear:
32 Never feel too embarrassed to ask for another stylist.
CHAPTER 3
1 Not long thereafter emerged David, and after him his son Solomon, the two most accomplished men of ancient times; kings, warriors, musicians, poets, psalmodists, lovers; their peers called them Renaissance men, which back then made them extremely ahead of their time.
2 David first rose to prominence as a harpist: he was a child prodigy whose father Jesse made him practice eight hours a day until his fingers bled; Jesse himself having once been a promising young harpist, until his career ended in a freak scything mishap.
3 In this way David came to the attention of the moody King Saul, who took solace in the lad’s honeyed glissandi after a hard day’s smite.
4 David also gained the friendship of Saul’s son Jonathan, who, if not in love with David, certainly kissed him a lot.
5 One day David went to visit his brothers, who were soldiers in Saul’s army, in the Valley of Elah, and this is where his famous battle with the Philistine Goliath took place.
6 And here I must rush to the defense of this unfairly maligned man; for though not a Chosen Person, and destined to lose, Goliath’s giant stature concealed an even bigger heart.
7 Goliath was a faithful husband; Goliath was a devoted father; Goliath was a trusted friend; Goliath was a community activist; Goliath worked with troubled youth in inner-city Gaza; Goliath was cofounder of t
he Philistine Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
8 Goliath was as universally beloved a figure as the Middle East has ever produced; and when the young, brash, arrogant David agreed to accept his challenge to fight him, everybody was rooting for Goliath—even the Jews, though they would never have admitted it.
9 The outcome was preordained, of course; David had to win, and the Philistines had to be defeated; but never have I felt more sadness about ending a life, as I did when I guided that rocket-grenade from David’s specially-designed slingshot to Goliath’s forehead.
10 Rest in peace, Goliath; thou art missed.
11 Saul soon grew jealous of the newly famous David, and tried to have him killed; but he failed, largely due to the intervention of Jonathan, who, if not in love with David, certainly sodomized him a lot.
12 Eventually both Saul and Jonathan were killed by the Philistines, and David was anointed king, a post he filled for 40 years—there is that number again, 40; I must ask a master Kabbalist why it keeps cropping up throughout my career; Madonna, I await thy call.
13 David led his army on a series of military triumphs; he conquered the Philistines, and made the Moabites pay tribute, and even took bronze vessels from the servants of Hadadezer of Zobah; and back then, nobody took bronze vessels from the servants of Hadadezer of Zobah.
14 He also had eight wives, the most famous of them being Bathsheba; he coveted her but she was married, so he sent her husband Uriah to war and told his commander to abandon him on the battlefield, “that he may be smitten, and die”; well played, Dave.
15 But it was a grievous sin nonetheless; and as is written I punished David by killing their infant son; tragic, to be sure, but then again I am not the one who chose to be born to David in this illegitimate fashion.
16 David and I had our disagreements over the years, but I loved him, and he loved me; for he wrote many of the psalms in my honor in the book of that name; they are all wondrous, one great psalm after another; I listen to them whenever I am down and in need of a picketh-me-up.
17 I have no favorite, but humanity seems especially fond of Psalm 40 (that number again!); for from it derives the lyrics to U2’s popular concert-closer “40.”
18 (I am of two minds about Bono; he has written great music, and does noble charitable work; but he is a bit smug; and then there is Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
19 Even ignoring the public brouhaha and the safety issues, the score itself is mediocre at best: musically forgettable, lyrically craftless, and betraying a failure to even recognize, much less solve, the practical problems of writing stageable songs within a musical-theater context.
20 I have six words for thee, Bono: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.)
CHAPTER 4
1 David was succeeded by his and Bathsheba’s better-fated second son, Solomon; who has justly gone down through the ages as a model of wisdom.
2 For I came to him one night in a dream, offering to bestow a gift; and he asked not for wealth or honor, but for wisdom, and a discerning heart whereby to govern his people; and I was so pleased by his request, that I not only granted it him, but also the wealth and honor he had not asked for.
3 (I have wondered over the years, if perhaps he asked for wisdom knowing it would predispose me to also grant him wealth and honor; which would have meant he was already very wise; which would have made his request for more wisdom unnecessary; and therefore unwise; but therefore necessary once more...
4 Lo, this is why having an infinite mind is a pain in the ass.)
5 Solomon’s wisdom is exemplified in the story of the two women who each claimed to be the mother of a baby; he wielded his sword and lifted it as if to cut the infant in two; whereupon the real mother gave up her claim to spare the child’s life.
6 This was wise of Solomon; but it was even wiser of him to parlay that verdict into a celebratory “chamber party” that night with the world’s most grateful MILF.
7 That was another thing about Solomon; to call him a lover of women would be woefully inadequate, for as it states in 1 Kings 11:1–3, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
8 That is why he seldom left his palace; preferring to spend the day strolling in his bedclothes around his palace’s custom-built garden, complete with a grotto wherein his women would frolic.
9 He lived this way until his death at age 94, long after it had become very, very disturbing.
10 Like his father before him, Solomon was also a great writer; indeed, David only wrote half of one of the Old Testament’s poetic books, Psalms, whereas Solomon wrote three:
11 Proverbs, which is full of pithy little zingers like, “A shekel saved is a shekel earned,” and “Rome will not be built in a day”;
12 Ecclesiastes, a harsh condemnation of vanity and falsehood that was The Catcher in the Rye of the 8th century B.C. Near East;
13 And the Song of Solomon, a love poem that is as blue as the Bible gets; which believe it or not is actually pretty blue.
14 “The joints of thy thighs are like jewels”; “thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies”; “thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins”; and that is just the material that made it into print.
15 For Solomon’s original version was far more explicit, and his analogies far more graphic:
16 “Thy hindquarters are curved like half-moons”; “Thy honeypot smells like blooming hibiscus”; “The way thou workest my balls . . . man, I love the way thou workest my balls.”
17 After he recited the unexpurgated version to me I said, “Solomon, thou well knowest we cannot publish that as written; it is pornography, and even the Bible has a minimum standard of decency.”
18 “But, LORD,” he protested, “it is not pornography; it is erotica. Canst thou not grasp the difference?”
19 “No, Solomon, and it doth not—”
20 “Pornography aimeth only at arousing the senses; but erotica employeth sexuality as a window into the soul.”
21 “Solomon, whatever it is, it—”
22 “My work challenges the bourgeois sexual mores that have for too long treated our bodies as the ‘other’ rather than—”
23 “Solomon, listen: I am the LORD thy God, King of the Universe; and if thou dost not knock that thing down to PG-13 by next Shabbos, consider thyself without a distributor.”
CHAPTER 5
1 The 16 prophetic books of the Old Testament relate the lives and visions of Israel’s great men of prophecy, and are divided into two sections: the four major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel; and the twelve minor ones, nearly all of whom were never swallowed by whales.
2 (The worst part of that experience for Jonah was not the three days in the beast’s belly, but being spat up back upon the shore, haggard and covered in whale vomit... right in front of his sunbathing ex-girlfriend.
3 Awkward!)
4 Officially, Abraham is considered a prophet; so is Moses, and so, later, would be Muhammad; but they were also warriors, and diplomats, and leaders; men who did not simply talketh the talk, but walkethed the walk.
5 But these 16 prophets were cut from a lesser tunic; for they were endowed only with the gift of foresight.
6 Now, it can be debated whether it is on balance a good or bad thing to be a prophet; but there can be no debate that it is an absolute bad thing to have to spend time with one.
7 For prophets are the most unpleasant people in all my Creation; the dourest, the voidest of mirth, and the uncouthest in social graces; self-righteous and self-absorbed, yet utterly un-self-aware in matters of grooming.
8 (Isaiah, especially; by the end, his beard was so matted with food it won Buffet of the Year honors from Head Lice Monthly.)
9 And their odiousness is in direct proportion to the strength of their prophecy; the keener their tongues, the keener the longing to chop them off; the deeper their vision, the deeper the desire to stick forks in their eyes.
10 It would be different
if the content of their revelations were pleasant; but as thou hast no doubt noticed, a prophet’s vision of the future is seldom of the puppies-floating-down-from-the-sky-on-pillows variety.
11 No, it is almost always grim; and further, it is almost always explained as the mete punishment for the people’s vice; and it has ever been the case that as an oratorical theme, “Ye are iniquitous, sinners!” is not much of a crowd-pleaser.
12 And so it was with my prophets: they feared their people were wandering off the path; and they shared with them gruesome images of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the collapse of the Temple; but the people reacted with mockery, and heeded them not, and drove headlong to their fate.