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cincinnatus_c
Today's set of words that I would have thought were etymologically related but actually are not: salve (in the sense of, e.g., stuff you rub on bee stings, or, in my grandfather's usage, viscous fluid substances you put on food) and salvation.
Today down the pipe from biblegateway.com: the book of Ruth, which is the first of the mercifully short books, and a welcome return to humanity after God and his people have been on a very long rampage. You know how I said reading Exodus after Genesis was kind of depressing ... well, it sure doesn't get any better through the next several books about the Israelites on the warpath. There are a bunch of interesting things I would've liked to have stopped to explore on the way--Balaam, for instance, is a mightily curious figure, both in that he is a non-Israelite who follows Yahweh and in that, after his refusal to do the king's bidding and curse the Israelites and his blessing them instead at the direction of God, he becomes the subject of a weird revisionist history in which Moses (maybe, it occurs to me, seeing him as a rival?) blames him for leading the Israelites astray and so bringing down the wrath of God upon them, such that the Israelites eventually end up killing Balaam (among many others) as an apparent act of righteous retribution. Earlier this week I read the Samson stories, which are horrendous--I had forgotten about the story of Samson tying seven foxes' tails together, setting them on fire, and releasing them into the Philistines' fields to destroy their crops--and weird. The way the story goes, Delilah doesn't trick Samson into telling her his weakness so that she can deliver him to the Philistines; she tells him that that's what she plans on doing, and then after he gives false answers twice so that she demonstrates that that's absolutely what she's up to, he gives her the real answer. So what gives?
"What gives?" is really one of the main themes in my mind through all of this. In my last bible post I said that there seems to be more to the story of Judah and his sons and Tamar and her sons than meets the eye. I was already thinking that the book of Ruth echoes that story before that becomes explicit near the end--and then at the very end it is specified that Boaz, the wealthy man who ends up marrying Ruth after she goes to Bethlehem with Naomi and gleans in his fields, is a descendant of Tamar's son Perez, the one of the twins who stuck his hand out first, had a red ribbon tied around it, and then pulled it back in so that his brother is fully born first. [Edit, April 17/18: I got mixed up here; Perez is actually the brother who is fully born first, not the one who sticks his hand out first.] Ruth, like Tamar, is a widow. Naomi, her mother-in-law, says that it is impossible for her, at her age, to have any more sons to take the place of Ruth's dead husband. But Boaz is the brother of Naomi's own dead husband. By rights, apparently, Boaz should take Naomi--except that, as he says, there is a relative "even closer" than he is to Ruth, which would mean also to Naomi. So he offers this closer relative, who turns out to be another brother (who is "even closer"--why? because he is the eldest? or because he is closest in age to Naomi? or some other reason?), the right of first refusal to buy Naomi's husband's land, and thereby--and this is somehow taken for granted as going along with it--the right to marry Ruth. This other brother refuses, because, he says, taking on this inheritance would (in an un-specified way) jeopardize his own inheritance. And so Boaz buys Naomi's land and takes Ruth as his wife.
One funny thing about Ruth: in the NASB, the section of the book where Ruth decides to go with Naomi to Bethlehem rather than stay in Moab, her birthplace and homeland, is given the heading "Ruth's Loyalty". The loyalty presumably referred to is Ruth's loyalty to Naomi. After Naomi's two sons have died in Moab, Naomi tells her two daughters-in-law to go home to their mothers' houses. At first they both refuse but then Ruth's sister Orpah leaves them. Naomi says to Ruth, "Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; return after your sister-in-law." Orpah's different kind of loyalty shows up a different kind of disloyalty on Ruth's part. Ruth still refuses to go home, and says the best-known lines of the book, her oath of loyalty: "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me." "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge" is inscribed on the inside of my parents' wedding rings; my mother's name was Ruth, and she, like the biblical Ruth and like me, was an adoptee. It may be largely or wholly due to that wedding ring inscription that I vaguely assumed for a long time that Ruth had said those words to Boaz. But in fact she says them to Naomi. Loyalty is a complicated thing.
One last thing: through all the prescriptions for carrying out sacrifices from Exodus onward, I first had the horrible feeling that the tabernacle/temple is a slaughterhouse, and then gradually developed the understanding that the tabernacle/temple is exactly a slaughterhouse. The Israelites in these books are portrayed as a herding people, like Abel, who as a matter of course will frequently kill and eat their animals. The tabernacle/temple is primarily the place where that killing will be sanctified. I don't think it ever says anywhere that you ought not to eat any animal whose killing has not been sanctified in the temple, if a temple is available, but that is the impression I was left with. And then I read this in Howard Adelman's blog last week, in his review of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missourri: "God is death. Humans must be wedded to life. The rituals of death, of sin and guilt need a place, a temple, where they can be disposed of. If a rabbi reminds me of the sensuousness, the incense and the smoke, the vibrancy and the flavours of a place of temple sacrifice, then that rabbi is totally out of touch with the function of the temple and the meaning of its absence. For without a temple, all responsibility rests on each and every one of us to be accountable for the commissions of sinful acts that thrust shards of guilt deep into our souls."
Actually, one more thing, that that reminds me of. When the Israelites are about to enter the promised land (after Moses, curiously, had granted allotments east of the Jordan to three tribes, at their request, without God's approval), God tells them that they must kill everyone currently living there and destroy their religious artifacts, because anything left of the current inhabitants and cultures will be a snare for them. But the Israelites, despite slaughtering horrific numbers of people, end up leaving inhabitants alive all over the place, again and again. The first time they do that that I recall they do it because they had sworn to God to some people that they wouldn't harm them, not knowing that they were inhabitants of the promised land whom they'd been instructed to wipe out. The Israelites let them live because they feel more bound by their oath than by God's orders. After that, usually if not always the narrative just states that the Israelites let people live here and there without specifying why, although sometimes the conquered people become bonded labourers. Setting aside that the Israelites may be motivated by their own self-interest in preserving those who remain only for their value as slaves, it strikes me that this may be a case, like that of Abraham's entreaties to God on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah, where humans are more morally advanced than God. (And then later, I guess maybe somewhere in Judges, the story becomes that God had decided to let some of the inhabitants remain to test the Israelites!)
Which, speaking of which, and maybe on the other hand: the story of Japhthah and his daughter went by a few days ago. Funnily enough, I had forgotten how it turns out. The parallels, and contrasts, with Abraham and Isaac are obvious. The essential point of contrast seems to be that in the Japthah story, God is offstage through the whole thing. Japhthah promises to God that he will offer as a burnt offering the first thing that comes out of his door to greet him when he gets home if his campaign is successful--and, you have to wonder, just what did he think was going to happen? If he had said the first thing he sees when he gets home, then he might expect a goat or something. But he says the first thing that comes out of his door to greet him. God didn't ask or tell him to do it, and God doesn't intervene to prevent him from doing it--and, you have to wonder, just what did he think was going to happen if he failed to follow through?
Currently at Havelock: -1.3. Long, slow, reluctant spring this year. Snow on the ground for what you'd like to think will be the last time this spring (and the purple finches have come right back to the feeder after yesterday's snow, just like they did the last time the snow returned, last month) but there was snow on the ground around here in the first week of May last year. Good for maple syrup, anyway, which has gone well enough this year (despite some mishaps and an ECG in the emergency room) that, unlike last year, I'm planning on doing it again next year. Three batches of fifteen gallons of sap each should yield a gallon of syrup. That seems like an OK way to cap off the winter every year.
Today down the pipe from biblegateway.com: the book of Ruth, which is the first of the mercifully short books, and a welcome return to humanity after God and his people have been on a very long rampage. You know how I said reading Exodus after Genesis was kind of depressing ... well, it sure doesn't get any better through the next several books about the Israelites on the warpath. There are a bunch of interesting things I would've liked to have stopped to explore on the way--Balaam, for instance, is a mightily curious figure, both in that he is a non-Israelite who follows Yahweh and in that, after his refusal to do the king's bidding and curse the Israelites and his blessing them instead at the direction of God, he becomes the subject of a weird revisionist history in which Moses (maybe, it occurs to me, seeing him as a rival?) blames him for leading the Israelites astray and so bringing down the wrath of God upon them, such that the Israelites eventually end up killing Balaam (among many others) as an apparent act of righteous retribution. Earlier this week I read the Samson stories, which are horrendous--I had forgotten about the story of Samson tying seven foxes' tails together, setting them on fire, and releasing them into the Philistines' fields to destroy their crops--and weird. The way the story goes, Delilah doesn't trick Samson into telling her his weakness so that she can deliver him to the Philistines; she tells him that that's what she plans on doing, and then after he gives false answers twice so that she demonstrates that that's absolutely what she's up to, he gives her the real answer. So what gives?
"What gives?" is really one of the main themes in my mind through all of this. In my last bible post I said that there seems to be more to the story of Judah and his sons and Tamar and her sons than meets the eye. I was already thinking that the book of Ruth echoes that story before that becomes explicit near the end--and then at the very end it is specified that Boaz, the wealthy man who ends up marrying Ruth after she goes to Bethlehem with Naomi and gleans in his fields, is a descendant of Tamar's son Perez, the one of the twins who stuck his hand out first, had a red ribbon tied around it, and then pulled it back in so that his brother is fully born first. [Edit, April 17/18: I got mixed up here; Perez is actually the brother who is fully born first, not the one who sticks his hand out first.] Ruth, like Tamar, is a widow. Naomi, her mother-in-law, says that it is impossible for her, at her age, to have any more sons to take the place of Ruth's dead husband. But Boaz is the brother of Naomi's own dead husband. By rights, apparently, Boaz should take Naomi--except that, as he says, there is a relative "even closer" than he is to Ruth, which would mean also to Naomi. So he offers this closer relative, who turns out to be another brother (who is "even closer"--why? because he is the eldest? or because he is closest in age to Naomi? or some other reason?), the right of first refusal to buy Naomi's husband's land, and thereby--and this is somehow taken for granted as going along with it--the right to marry Ruth. This other brother refuses, because, he says, taking on this inheritance would (in an un-specified way) jeopardize his own inheritance. And so Boaz buys Naomi's land and takes Ruth as his wife.
One funny thing about Ruth: in the NASB, the section of the book where Ruth decides to go with Naomi to Bethlehem rather than stay in Moab, her birthplace and homeland, is given the heading "Ruth's Loyalty". The loyalty presumably referred to is Ruth's loyalty to Naomi. After Naomi's two sons have died in Moab, Naomi tells her two daughters-in-law to go home to their mothers' houses. At first they both refuse but then Ruth's sister Orpah leaves them. Naomi says to Ruth, "Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; return after your sister-in-law." Orpah's different kind of loyalty shows up a different kind of disloyalty on Ruth's part. Ruth still refuses to go home, and says the best-known lines of the book, her oath of loyalty: "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me." "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge" is inscribed on the inside of my parents' wedding rings; my mother's name was Ruth, and she, like the biblical Ruth and like me, was an adoptee. It may be largely or wholly due to that wedding ring inscription that I vaguely assumed for a long time that Ruth had said those words to Boaz. But in fact she says them to Naomi. Loyalty is a complicated thing.
One last thing: through all the prescriptions for carrying out sacrifices from Exodus onward, I first had the horrible feeling that the tabernacle/temple is a slaughterhouse, and then gradually developed the understanding that the tabernacle/temple is exactly a slaughterhouse. The Israelites in these books are portrayed as a herding people, like Abel, who as a matter of course will frequently kill and eat their animals. The tabernacle/temple is primarily the place where that killing will be sanctified. I don't think it ever says anywhere that you ought not to eat any animal whose killing has not been sanctified in the temple, if a temple is available, but that is the impression I was left with. And then I read this in Howard Adelman's blog last week, in his review of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missourri: "God is death. Humans must be wedded to life. The rituals of death, of sin and guilt need a place, a temple, where they can be disposed of. If a rabbi reminds me of the sensuousness, the incense and the smoke, the vibrancy and the flavours of a place of temple sacrifice, then that rabbi is totally out of touch with the function of the temple and the meaning of its absence. For without a temple, all responsibility rests on each and every one of us to be accountable for the commissions of sinful acts that thrust shards of guilt deep into our souls."
Actually, one more thing, that that reminds me of. When the Israelites are about to enter the promised land (after Moses, curiously, had granted allotments east of the Jordan to three tribes, at their request, without God's approval), God tells them that they must kill everyone currently living there and destroy their religious artifacts, because anything left of the current inhabitants and cultures will be a snare for them. But the Israelites, despite slaughtering horrific numbers of people, end up leaving inhabitants alive all over the place, again and again. The first time they do that that I recall they do it because they had sworn to God to some people that they wouldn't harm them, not knowing that they were inhabitants of the promised land whom they'd been instructed to wipe out. The Israelites let them live because they feel more bound by their oath than by God's orders. After that, usually if not always the narrative just states that the Israelites let people live here and there without specifying why, although sometimes the conquered people become bonded labourers. Setting aside that the Israelites may be motivated by their own self-interest in preserving those who remain only for their value as slaves, it strikes me that this may be a case, like that of Abraham's entreaties to God on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah, where humans are more morally advanced than God. (And then later, I guess maybe somewhere in Judges, the story becomes that God had decided to let some of the inhabitants remain to test the Israelites!)
Which, speaking of which, and maybe on the other hand: the story of Japhthah and his daughter went by a few days ago. Funnily enough, I had forgotten how it turns out. The parallels, and contrasts, with Abraham and Isaac are obvious. The essential point of contrast seems to be that in the Japthah story, God is offstage through the whole thing. Japhthah promises to God that he will offer as a burnt offering the first thing that comes out of his door to greet him when he gets home if his campaign is successful--and, you have to wonder, just what did he think was going to happen? If he had said the first thing he sees when he gets home, then he might expect a goat or something. But he says the first thing that comes out of his door to greet him. God didn't ask or tell him to do it, and God doesn't intervene to prevent him from doing it--and, you have to wonder, just what did he think was going to happen if he failed to follow through?
Currently at Havelock: -1.3. Long, slow, reluctant spring this year. Snow on the ground for what you'd like to think will be the last time this spring (and the purple finches have come right back to the feeder after yesterday's snow, just like they did the last time the snow returned, last month) but there was snow on the ground around here in the first week of May last year. Good for maple syrup, anyway, which has gone well enough this year (despite some mishaps and an ECG in the emergency room) that, unlike last year, I'm planning on doing it again next year. Three batches of fifteen gallons of sap each should yield a gallon of syrup. That seems like an OK way to cap off the winter every year.
