|
Hello, and welcome to the twenty-seventh installment of NotWriting.com, an
open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be
writing.
Around
Christmastime, while thinking of Baby Jesus and the Three Cheapskates
(come on, myrrh?), I became filled with a desire to better
understand the Bible. Seriously. Although I majored in
philosophy and religion as an undergraduate, my reading of the Bible up to
that point had always been piecemeal and mainly restricted to the New
Testament. I was determined to become a dedicated student of the
Good Book.
Reading the
Bible Cover-to-Cover
About a week
after the celebration of Christ's natal day (my father-in-law, a San Francisco litigator, once pointed out to me that a person has only one
day of his birth; the rest are actually celebrations of the original natal
day), I was discussing religion with a friend when I mentioned how much it
bothered me that most people talk out of their asses on the subject.
In a flash of writing avoidance, it came to me: I would read the Bible
cover-to-cover. I was determined to know the Bible inside-out, if
for no other reason than to be able to catch people trying to bullshit.
Not a very Christian motivation, I realize, but you can’t embark on
something this big without some kind of goal. After all, it’s
probably going to take me a year.
So I started
reading. As of today, I’m about 1/4 through the Old Testament, and I have
to say, some of the stories are pretty good: Adam and Eve screwing up, God
deciding to wipe out all life on Earth except Noah and the Gang, and Moses
telling the Pharaoh to take this job (building the pyramids) and shove
it. Granted, I’ve read only a small portion of the Good Book so far, but
if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share a few of my humble observations with
you.
Smite: A Mighty
Little Word
First of all, my
renewed interest in
the Bible has given me a favorite word: smite. It’s a verb,
and basically on every other page of the Old Testament, the LORD smites
some dumb, vain, or arrogant bastard. Or a whole group of ‘em—like the
Philistines.
From the First
Book of Samuel (Samuel I):
15:3. "Now
therefore go, and smite Amalec, and utterly destroy all that
he hath; spare him not, nor covet anything that is his; but slay both
man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."
From Samuel II,
the LORD Strikes Back:
23:10. "And when
the men of Israel
were gone away, he stood and smote
the Philistines till his hand was weary, and grew stiff with the
sword:
and the Lord wrought a great victory that day: and the people that were
fled away, returned to take spoils of them that were slain."
Here’s a definition from the American Heritage Dictionary:
smite:
v. 1. To inflict a heavy blow on. 2. To kill as if by
blows. 3. To afflict.
Now here’s its conjugation:
Principal Parts: smites, smiting, smote, smitten/smote
Infinitive: to smite
Perfect infinitive: to have smitten
Present participle: smiting
Past Participle: smitten or smote (nice to have a
choice here)
| |
|
Present |
I, we, you,
they smite |
|
|
he, she, it
smites |
|
|
|
|
Present
Progressive |
I am smiting |
|
|
we, you, they
are smiting |
|
|
he, she, it is
smiting |
|
|
|
|
Future |
I, he, she, it |
|
|
we, you, they
will smite |
|
|
|
|
Past |
I, he, she, it |
|
|
we, you, they
smote |
|
|
|
|
Past
Progressive |
I, he, she, it
was smiting |
|
|
we, you, they
were smiting |
|
|
|
|
Present
Perfect |
I, we, you,
they have smitten |
|
|
he, she, it
has smitten |
|
|
|
|
Past Perfect |
I, he, she, it |
|
|
we, you, they
had smitten |
|
|
|
|
Future Perfect |
I, he, she,
it, we, you, they |
|
|
will have
smitten |
|
(The above are
for the active voice only, and I left out the imperative and subjunctive mood
stuff. Don't like it? Sue me.)
Basically, when
the LORD smites you, it’s like having a giant, invisible hand
walloping you in the head and therefore killing your ass. However, there’s another
sense of the word smite, which we will get to in a
moment. In the meantime, here are a few example sentences:
Nobody smites those Philistines like good old David.
The LORD smote them, and boy, were they sorry!
I
will smite that son of a bitch if it’s the last thing I do.
By the time we break for lunch tomorrow, we will have smitten the
entire backward bunch of ‘em.
He was smiting a pair of Jehovah’s witnesses when his neighbor came
by with an axe handle to help out.
Over the years, she has smitten many men with her feminine wiles.
The last example brings up another point about smite: it doesn’t
have to literally mean “killing by blows”; it can mean “to afflict” or, in
a figurative sense, “to inflict a heavy blow on.” A beautiful woman (or a
beautiful man, if that’s your thing) can smite somebody,
effectively putting that person in a daze, as if s/he’d been walloped by
that invisible hand mentioned earlier.
Then there’s the
form of smite that we’re most familiar with—when
it’s used passively. Instead of you being the one doing the
smiting, you’re being smitten by someone else. Usually there’s
some sort of love or lust involved. A couple examples:
She winked at me and instantly I was smitten.
Eliza has been smitten by men many times in her life, and most
recently by a metrosexual named Bruce.
Bob? Oh, he’s with Angie, being smitten as we speak.
So, all ye who
read this, go forth and do some smiting of thy own. Help bring
back smite!
“It's my way, or the
highway,” sayeth the LORD
By far, the most
vivid realization I've had since I began my cover-to-cover Bible-reading
project is this: In the Old Testament, not only is the LORD mean,
spiteful, jealous, and covetous of burnt offerings, He is the
quintessential micro-manager. Everywhere you turn—whether
tramping around in the Garden of Eden, pimping out Abraham’s handmaiden,
or appearing to Moses in a burning bush—God’s
popping his head out, saying, “Hey, what’s going on? Any offerings for
me? Don’t forget your good buddy the LORD!”
In page after
page, the LORD details how everything should be done. This is not unlike
being at the office, trying to finish up a report ten minutes before a meeting, and
having the BOSS right behind you, looking over your shoulder. At best,
it’s disconcerting; at worst, it’s downright scary.
Take Passover,
for instance. God basically tells Moses, “Look, this Pharaoh guy?
Yeah, he's gotta
go. Here’s the plan…” The gist of God’s message to Moses is pretty
simple: "Go home, cook a lamb, and smear some of the lamb’s blood on the
doorposts outside. That way, when I come in the night and kill all of
Egypt’s first-born, I’ll know where your people are and will pass over
your houses. Pass over, get it?"
But the LORD
won’t let the issue go. Noooo, He has to micro-manage the whole thing,
right down to how the lamb should be cooked and eaten: “They shall eat the
flesh that night, roasted; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they
shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled with water, but roasted,
its head with its legs and its inner parts.” (Exodus 12:8-9).
|
CREATION OF MAN: In which God gives Adam
the finger. Something about this image has
always made me uncomfortable. Maybe it's
because Adam looks pretty blasé
and God
seems a little too interested in giving Adam
whatever He's got in his finger. Adam looks
pretty happy being naked and stupid; maybe
God should leave him the heck alone.
In page after
page, the LORD details how everything should be done. This is
not unlike being at the office, trying to finish up a report ten
minutes before a meeting, and having the BOSS right behind you,
looking over your shoulder.
HA, HA: Moses thinks he's cute
until God reaches out of the
clouds and swats his ass. |
SLIGHTLY GRAVEN IMAGES: Three of the
pictures I found when I did a search on Google for
images with "God" in the title. Guess they never heard of the Second
Commandment.
|
However, if
Moses thought that was the end of God’s meddling, he was in for quite a
surprise once they got to Mt. Sinai. There, the LORD goes on and on about
the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle, how they simply must
use acacia wood, the dimensions of the things in cubits, yada yada yada….
Frankly, it’s
really got to bother God that He can’t micro-manage like He used to. The
world’s just too big now, even for Him. Sure, He could do that tramping
around in the woods, peeking out of the trees stuff when there it was just
Adam and Eve or Moses and his people, but try that today with FIVE BILLION
people on the planet. God must look back wistfully on those days, when
life was simpler and He could control more.
- 30 -
|
|
GOD: "Would somebody
please get this cherub
off my shoulder?"
Above: The author, still not writing. He's
expecting God to smite him at any moment
for the contents of this week's column.
|
|
©2004 Chris Orcutt and notwriting.com. All rights
reserved. |
|
|
|
