Bible Study: Did You Even Read This Thing? Part II

Priceless poem placement.
On the right page is some sixteen-year-old's terrible poetry:

Page 151 - "Silence"

"How is it 

You're always with me; 

Yet sometimes,

I can't feel a thing?

 Never condemning. 

Never forsaking. 

You're too powerful for words; 

So gentle all the same."

And on the left hand side of the page is this gem of a story:

Numbers 16 - Basically, how the story goes:

The Levites have a rebellion. They say that Moses is acting way too chummy with God, and also they've been wandering around in the wilderness for like ever. They also want the priesthood (For some reason. The priests seem to have a high mortality rate. God kills a lot of them).

Moses tells them to light some incense, and then we'll see who's really holy. Or something.

Korah refuses. (I don't think this ends well for Korah). (Valid assessment, past self). 

Moses tells God not to accept their offerings, and tells Korah and his men to bring their incense burners the next day, and stand before God.

The next day, everyone's there, incense and all. Also, Yahweh makes an appearance, and tells Moses to get out of the way so he can smite these darn people. As usual, Moses has to persuade him not to kill everyone, just the ones that were making a fuss. Yahweh grudgingly agrees, so Moses tells everyone to get away from Korah and company, and not to touch their stuff.

Moses says, “Well, if I'm not the Chosen One, and I'm not speaking for God, then nothing will happen to Korah and his friends. But if I am, then the ground will swallow them up.”
Shockingly, the ground proceeds to open, and Korah and friends are no more. And then Yahweh burns the two hundred and fifty men that were burning the incense, and tells Aaron and friends to use the bronze to coat the Tabernacle or something.

Next day, everyone goes to talk to Moses and Aaron, being all, “You just killed a crapload of people!” And, as usual, Yahweh says, “Moses, get out of the way so I can kill everyone!” And as usual, Moses and Aaron grovel. However, Yahweh ignores them and sends a plague down on everyone. Moses tells Aaron, “Quick! Go get the incense burner and purify everyone so Yahweh won't kill them all!” So Aaron runs and starts purifying people, but the plague has already started and 14,700 people had died, not including the ones that died in the Korah affair.

Guys, guys, guys - copy editing. MAN. How did they think it was a good idea to place poetry proclaiming the goodness of God across from a page where the self-same God burns people alive for questioning Moses? Did they think it would cancel it out? It doesn't work that way! Maybe the most likely explanation for the poetry placement is that they literally could not find a page where God didn't brutally murder people. 

Come to think of it, that's probably it.

I'm thinking that the sixteen-year-old poet Anna did not actually read Numbers. I'm not feeling the whole "gentle" line...

Bible Study: WHAT.

Numbers 16. Yahweh kills 14,950 people. Fourteen thousand, seven hundred he kills by plague, and two hundred fifty he kills by burning them alive. The only reason he doesn't kill all the Israelites is because Moses and Aaron do some timely groveling, and some magic stuff with incense.

I...I don't even...I just...

Bible Study: Lord of Threats

Leviticus 26:14-46
Yahweh starts chapter twenty-six by saying how he looks favorably upon the Israelites and doesn't despise them and will help them in battle and bless them and all that jazz. I was impressed upon reading this, because normally Yahweh just talks about how he hates everyone.
One paragraph later, and he graphically details for seven paragraphs the punishment he'll rain down on them if they ever spite him. There's the Yahweh we know and love!

If the Israelites ever disobey him, Yahweh will cause:
-wasting diseases and burning fevers "that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away."
-enemies to eat your crops
-you to be ruled by those you hate
-you to run even when no one is chasing you
-your land to yield no crops or fruit
-wild animals to eat your children and livestock
-armies to attack you
-(more) plagues
-the destruction of your food supply "so that ten women will only need one oven to bake bread for their families."
-you to eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters.
-your lifeless bodies to be placed on top of your lifeless idols
-you to become scattered through all nations
-paranoia
-your children to be punished for your crimes as well! How sweet. I guess this is assuming your children weren't all eaten by wild animals or yourself?

Granted, he does finish up this diatribe with a little addendum that even while viciously torturing his people, he will not utterly reject or despise them because of that old covenant thing. Of course, I imagine his people might not find that ridiculously comforting while their eyes are falling out and they're starving to death.

Loki

I doubt anyone has read back this far (no one blames you) but a while ago, I made a post about fire gods and included Loki as one. I don't know if this is painfully obvious at all, but Loki is one of my favorite mythological characters. And with me, mythological characters are my equivalent of superheroes/athletes. Maybe I should make baseball cards or comic books for them.
(Though they already made a comic book out of the Norse stuff. ...it's called Thor.)
Anyway, I watched Thor recently (I'm slow at watching movies. I still haven't seen The Avengers or The Hunger Games or the recent Sherlock episodes). As you may guess from the pantheon, Loki is a character in this movie, and, not shockingly, because trickster gods always have to be the main villains, Loki is the main villain. This in and of itself was fairly distressing because Loki's not really the main villain type. He's sort of a chaotic neutral, bordering on chaotic evil. Oftentimes he's a complete douche bag, but sometimes he works with the Aesir and Odin in a non-murderous way. He's also wicked clever, if not always good at not pissing people off.
In the movie, the writers did manage to get one thing right: he's a bit of a misfit that no one likes. That's about it. In the movie, he's the main villain. He wears a stupid douche bag hat. Instead of disliking him or anything, the other characters just ignore him, which I think removes a lot of potential sympathy for the guy. Then he thinks up a crazy harebrained scheme that involves alienating his friends/family/colleages? and culminates in not working even a little. Then he dangles off of a cliff, which is something villains should really never do, and then proceeds to fall into the void. (You know, I have no idea how they got him back in The Avengers. I should really watch that).

See? Douche bag hat.

Basically, he makes me very sad. Granted, the movie did a few things acceptably. The actor was very good. Loki was Odin's adopted relative, and a frost giant (or something. I forget what it is in mythology). He's kind of a douche bag. But in the end, none of this makes up for the fact that he has a stupid hat, can't plan or manipulate or lie to save his life (all kind of defining trickster god characteristics, in my opinion), and he dangles off of cliffs. NEVER DANGLE OFF OF CLIFFS. What, is it too realistic or complex to have a villain be executed, or imprisoned, or run off? Why must villains always fall off of cliffs?! This is a problem, writers! You need to think of a resolution in which the villain does not fall off of a cliff!

Anyway, done ranting for a while. (At least until I see The Avengers.) And, fortunately, I doubt anyone will make a movie about Lucifer or Prometheus soon (also great mythological characters), so I'm good. There is a movie called Prometheus coming out soon, but I think that's about aliens.