Ecclesiastes 12:9-14 and Job 42:7-17

And now for something totally random. Why? Because I feel like it, I’m bored, the Winter Olympics are godawful dull and I REALLY don’t want to get into the claim by Arab-Americans that bias and bigotry, not security concerns, are behind the uproar over a deal that would give an Arab Company from the UAE control over commercial operations at six U.S. ports. No, its security concerns all right. Trust me on that one.

These passages, Ecclesiastes 12:9-14 and Job 42:7-17, strike me as tails tacked on to the books long after the original authors of Ecclesiastes and Job ceased to wander the Earth.

The style of these passages is so jarringly different from the rest of the book they purport to bring to a close, that when you read them, it’s like finding vinegar at the bottom of a bottle of fine wine. There ain’t no way the same men that wrote Ecclesiastes and Job wrote these closing passages.

I find this to be especially true with Ecclesiastes and it sort of annoys me as I think this is my favorite book in the bible. Oh boy, let’s do Most Favorite and Least Favorite things in the bible! Or at least let’s do it for the Hebrew Scriptures as there’s more to choose from there. The envelope please!

Most Favorite Book: Ecclesiastes minus Ecclesiastes 12:9-14 which I don’t think was part of the original anyway.

Least Favorite Book: Hmmm, I’ll have to go with Joshua as I remember the first time I read it I declared Joshua a war criminal and the book on the verge of being pornographic.

Most Favorite Character: King David. Who else? If he was good enough to be God’s favorite, who am I to pick someone else?

Least Favorite Character: Jephthah. The man was an idiot, a complete idiot. I always pictured him as the stereo-typical all brawn and no brains type.

Most Favorite Story: David and Goliath although I do understand that David technically had the advantage. The range of his weapon was greater and he could carry a lot more stones than Goliath could spears. What I liked was that David, with no battle experience at the time, didn’t go running off screaming in terror when Goliath took his first step toward him.

Least Favorite Story: Jephthah and his Daughter. I have nothing good to say about this story just like I have nothing good to say about Jephthah. I have to admit though, that the Rape of the Concubine is a close second.

Least Understood Story: Judah and Tamar. In my opinion this is the weirdest tale in the whole book. I don’t get it at all. It’s stories like this one that lead me to believe that most of the tales are based upon some actual event. No one could make something this ridiculous up! What was really scary the last time I read the story of Judah and Tamar was that I immediately realized that it probably was thought to be from the J source. I checked and I found out that I was right or at least that's the category the story has been placed in by biblical scholars that hold to some form of the Documentary Hypothesis.

Story that Raises the Most Eyebrows: David and Jonathan. What was going on here we wonders, yes my precious we does? These two sound like they would have given Alexander and Hephaestion a run for their money. A close second is David and Bathsheba. Shame on you Davey, shame on you!

Most Favorite Quote: Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! – Ecclesiastes 9:4

Least Favorite Quote: Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys – 1 Samuel 15:3

Quote that has caused the Most Misery: When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, "Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers." – Genesis 9:24-27. This passage was used first to justify slavery and later to justify segregation.

Biblical Name I’m Most Likely to use for a Character in a CRPG: Elhanan. He was a member of David’s Guard and he slew Lahmi, the brother of Goliath, in battle. As a matter of fact I’m playing a Warrior Nord named Elhanan in Morrowind at the moment.

Ok, that’s enough of that, I’m tired of this game. Let’s remember that my opinions tend to be quite elastic on topics like this and next week I might give different answers to some of these questions. It might well depend upon what was the last thing I read as every time I read a book of the bible, I trip over something that either I hadn’t noticed before, or I hadn’t understood the significance of before.