Judges

The Book of Judges has to be the most blood-soaked chronicle of mass-murder in all the OT books.

It starts with the sack of Jerusalem:

And the men of Judah fought against Jerusalem, and took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and set the city on fire. (1:8)

Its not clear why the Hebrews should be smiting Jerusalem. What did it do wrong? Anyhow the remaining local residents then become slaves:

“When Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not utterly drive them out…the Canaanites dwelt among them, and became subject to forced labor … the inhabitants of Beth-she'mesh and of Beth-anath became subject to forced labor for them.”

Other nations seek to develop friendly trade relations – but God’s chosen People worked exclusively via war, treachery, enslavement, debt-enslavement and plunder, vividly told in the Book of Judges. In vain do we seek through all the OT books, for any honourable means of earning a living or acquiring wealth.

Betrayal of Trust

A no doubt edifying murder story concerns the king called Eglon, of the Moabites. A Benjamite ‘deliverer’ Ehud is raised up by the Lord (Chapter 3)

 And Ehud made for himself a sword with two edges, a cubit in length; and he girded it on his right thigh under his clothes. And he presented the tribute to Eglon king of Moab. Now Eglon was a very fat man. And when Ehud had finished presenting the tribute, he sent away the people that carried the tribute. But he himself turned back at the sculptured stones near Gilgal, and said, "I have a secret message for you, O king." And he commanded, "Silence." And all his attendants went out from his presence. And Ehud came to him, as he was sitting alone in his cool roof chamber. And Ehud said, "I have a message from God for you." And he arose from his seat. And Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly; and the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not draw the sword out of his belly. (3:20-23)

Presumably the moral of this story, is Don’t trust a Hebrew. Ehud used the trust of the king to kill him what he was defenceless.

Hebrew Hospitality

Another gruesome regicide is described with relish in the next chapter. A king called Sisera is fleeing after just having lost a war, and arrives at the tent of a woman called Jael, who invites him in with soothing words–

 And Jael came out to meet Sisera, and said to him, "Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me; have no fear." So he turned aside to her into the tent, and she covered him with a rug. And he said to her, "Pray, give me a little water to drink; for I am thirsty." So she opened a skin of milk and gave him a drink and covered him. And he said to her, "Stand at the door of the tent, and if any man comes and asks you, `Is any one here?' say, No." But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, till it went down into the ground, as he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died. (4:18-22)

The king pays with his life for the mistake of trusting a Hebrew. Jael, because she had no qualms about violating principles of hospitality in killing a defenceless man in her tent while asleep, is praised as a heroine for her treachery:

"Most blessed of women be Ja'el,
the wife of Heber the Ken'ite,
of tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked water and she gave him milk,
she brought him curds in a lordly bowl.
She put her hand to the tent peg
and her right hand to the workmen's mallet;
she struck Sis'era a blow,
she crushed his head,
she shattered and pierced his temple. (5:24-6)

A most blessed woman. Seymour Light turned another page, of these infernal chronicles.

Daddy comes Home

A moving tale of child-sacrifice by Jepthath tells how he burnt his adoring young virgin daughter as sacrifice to Yahweh: “And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD, and said, "If thou wilt give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the LORD's, and I will offer him up for a burnt offering." (11:30)

Yahweh accepts the deal, and helps Jepthah to ‘smite’ ‘twenty cities’ with ‘a very great slaughter’ (11:33)

Great.

On returning home, the first thing he sees is, predictably enough, his young daughter coming out to welcome him home.

So therefore she has to be burnt.

She is burnt.

The moral here is, Be careful welcoming your daddy home, if he’s a Hebrew.

Wiping out thy Neigbour's City

Chapter 18 sounds like modern Israeli foreign policy: ‘The Danites came to La’ish, to a people quiet and unsuspecting, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and burned the city with fire (Ch18, 27), re-naming the remains of the city ‘Dan’, and lived there. The story is told in a very normal manner.

                                                

Isaiah

Opening the accursed Book of Isaiah, Seymour Light read: ‘When darkness covers the Earth’ and ‘thick darkness the peoples’ - then ‘the wealth of nations shall come to you:’ 

 Your gates shall be open continually; day and night they shall not be shut; that men may bring to you the wealth of the nations, with their kings led in procession. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish; those nations shall be utterly laid waste.

‘You shall such the milk of nations’ (60:5,11-12,16)

              Nations only have a right to exist if they serve Israel.

While there are some optimistic moments in this book, Isaiah seems to have largely channelled a furious storm-god whose central motif is wreck, smash destroy. He is continually hurls powerful curses and forsees ruin. 

Children dashed to pieces

Of the Babylonians (13:16): ‘Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.’ Compare Psalm 137 ‘Happy shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!’ Again it is the Babylonians who are on the receiving end of the Psalmists’s homicidal rage. The Babylonians had a popular deity, Ishtar the Queen of Heaven who had been around for a few millenia before Yahweh - and had more of a reputation for making crops grow than He could ever manage.

Curses from Yahweh

Once the Hebrews arrived in Canaan  the ‘promised land’ they had to become farmers, and the sky-god Yahweh, associated with mountains and war, was not a lot of help in this regard:

By the eighth century, a small group of prophets wanted to make the peple worship Yahweh exclusively. But this was not a popular move. As a warrior, Yahweh was unsurpassed, but he had no expertise in agriculture, so when they wanted a good harvest, it was natural for the people of Israel and Judah to have recourse to the cult of fertility god Baal and his sister-spouse Anat, practicing the usual ritual sex to make the fields fertile.’ (Karen Armstrong, 17)

The furious curses of Yahweh were unlikely to improve crop yield - that became the problem. 

The coming wrath of the Lord will be so bad, that people will crawl into holes in the ground to escape from it!

So man is humbled,
and men are brought low --
forgive them not!
Enter into the rock,
and hide in the dust
from before the terror of the LORD,
and from the glory of his majesty.

And men shall enter the caves of the rocks
and the holes of the ground,
from before the terror of the LORD,
and from the glory of his majesty,
when he rises to terrify the earth. (2:9-10, 19)

The whole Earth is going to suffer from the ‘glory of the Lord’ like some dire radiation-poisoning.

Moaning-Isaiah has it in for the pretty ladies:

 The LORD said:
Because the daughters of Zion are haughty
and walk with outstretched necks,
glancing wantonly with their eyes,
mincing along as they go,
tinkling with their feet;
[17] the Lord will smite with a scab
the heads of the daughters of Zion,
and the LORD will lay bare their secret parts.(4:16-17)

How to wreck farms:

 What more was there to do for my vineyard,
that I have not done in it?
When I looked for it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
[5] And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
[6] I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and briers and thorns shall grow up;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it. (4:4-6)

Large-scale farmers get a curse:

 Woe to those who join house to house,
who add field to field,
until there is no more room,
and you are made to dwell alone
in the midst of the land (5:8)

As do early risers:

 Woe to those who rise early in the morning (5:11)

Plus those who reckon they are smart:

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
and shrewd in their own sight!

But Yahweh’s rage is like a force of Nature:

Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people,
and he stretched out his hand against them and smote them,
and the mountains quaked;
and their corpses were as refuse
in the midst of the streets.
For all this his anger is not turned away
and his hand is stretched out still.

Chapter 6 has quite a decent vision of God, with seraphim around Him, singing Holy, Holy, Holy etc, and Isaiah is given from them a message to humanity – but alas, it’s the just usual horror:

Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said:
"Until cities lie waste
without inhabitant,
and houses without men,
and the land is utterly desolate,
and the LORD removes men far away,
and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
And though a tenth remain in it,
it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak,
whose stump remains standing
when it is felled."

Another agricultural curse:

therefore, though you plant pleasant plants
and set out slips of an alien god,
though you make them grow on the day that you plant them,
and make them blossom in the morning that you sow;
yet the harvest will flee away
in a day of grief and incurable pain.(17:10,11)

Egypt gets the blast of Yahweh’s curse, for no particular reason:

 And the waters of the Nile will be dried up,
and the river will be parched and dry;
and its canals will become foul,
and the branches of Egypt's Nile will diminish and dry up,
reeds and rushes will rot away.
There will be bare places by the Nile,
on the brink of the Nile,
and all that is sown by the Nile will dry up,
be driven away, and be no more.
The fishermen will mourn and lament,
all who cast hook in the Nile;
and they will languish
who spread nets upon the water.
The workers in combed flax will be in despair,
and the weavers of white cotton.
Those who are the pillars of the land will be crushed,
and all who work for hire will be grieved.(19:5-9)

Yahweh takes a malicious credit for having sown ‘confusion’ in its government:

those who are the cornerstones of her tribes
have led Egypt astray.
The LORD has mingled within her
a spirit of confusion;
and they have made Egypt stagger in all her doings
as a drunken man staggers in his vomit. (19:13,14)

One more poisonous pipedream:

 And the land of Judah will become a terror to the Egyptians; every one to whom it is mentioned will fear (19:17)

Earth get cursed

After curses have been cast around here and there, upon all and sundry, finally the whole Earth gets one!

Behold, the LORD will lay waste the earth and make it desolate,

and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants

The earth shall be utterly laid waste and utterly despoiled;
for the LORD has spoken this word.
The earth mourns and withers,
the world languishes and withers;
the heavens languish together with the eart

 Terror, and the pit, and the snare
are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth!
He who flees at the sound of the terror
shall fall into the pit;
and he who climbs out of the pit
shall be caught in the snare.
For the windows of heaven are opened,
and the foundations of the earth tremble.
The earth is utterly broken,
the earth is rent asunder,
the earth is violently shaken.
The earth staggers like a drunken man,
it sways like a hut;
its transgression lies heavy upon it,
and it falls, and will not rise again.(24:1,3,17-20)

Isaiah praises the Lord for doing ‘wonderful things’ but these always turn out to be acts of destruction. In vain we seek for a single constructive act of Yahweh from Isaiah:

I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name;
for thou hast done wonderful things,
plans formed of old, faithful and sure.
For thou hast made the city a heap,
the fortified city a ruin;
the palace of aliens is a city no more,
it will never be rebuilt. (25:1-3)

Here is one more ‘agricultural’ curse, this time against women, who had been enjoying life a bit too much:

 Rise up, you women who are at ease, hear my voice;
you complacent daughters, give ear to my speech.
In little more than a year
you will shudder, you complacent women;
for the vintage will fail,
the fruit harvest will not come.
Tremble, you women who are at ease,
shudder, you complacent ones;
strip, and make yourselves bare,
and gird sackcloth upon your loins.
Beat upon your breasts for the pleasant fields,
for the fruitful vine,
for the soil of my people
growing up in thorns and briers; (32:9-12)

Of what use were these nightmare-delirium visions? No wonder the people kept turning to their old Astarte- Ashtoreth goddess religion, more help for actually getting a harvest.

Yahweh’s dreadful curse against Planet Earth thundered:

Let the earth listen, and all that fills it;
the world, and all that comes from it.
For the LORD is enraged against all the nations,
and furious against all their host,
he has doomed them, has given them over for slaughter.
Their slain shall be cast out,
and the stench of their corpses shall rise;
the mountains shall flow with their blood.
All the host of heaven shall rot away,
and the skies roll up like a scroll.
All their host shall fall,
as leaves fall from the vine,
like leaves falling from the fig tree.
For my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens;
behold, it descends for judgment upon Edom,
upon the people I have doomed.
The LORD has a sword; it is sated with blood,
it is gorged with fat…

a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. (34:1-8)

This is all for the cause of Zion!

Their land shall be soaked with blood,
and their soil made rich with fat.
For the LORD has a day of vengeance,

Against Ishtar

One God insults another!

Come down and sit in the dust,

O virgin daughter of Babylon;
sit on the ground without a throne,
O daughter of the Chalde'ans!
For you shall no more be called
tender and delicate.
Take the millstones and grind meal,
put off your veil,
strip off your robe, uncover your legs,
pass through the rivers.
Your nakedness shall be uncovered,
and your shame shall be seen.

Sit in silence, and go into darkness,
O daughter of the Chaldeans;
for you shall no more be called
the mistress of kingdoms.

These two things shall come to you
in a moment, in one day;
the loss of children and widowhood
shall come upon you in full measure,
in spite of your many sorceries
and the great power of your enchantments. (47:1-4,9)

Yahweh wants to uncover her legs and strip her naked before delivering his usual set of curses. Seymour Light perused his old copy of The Paradise Papers by Merlyn Stone:

‘Exploding with derisive accusations at ‘The daughter of Babylon’, again a reference to Ishtar, [Isaiah] insulted Her for Her self-assurance and her sexuality, as well as Her magical powers and spells. Over what appears to be the independence of the Hebrew women, apparently influenced by the freedom of the women all about them, Isaiah listed all of their jewellery with the greatest contempt and then threatened, ‘The men shall fall by the sword and thy mighty in war and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground. And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man and say, only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.’

Thus the Hebrew prophet looked forward to the day of male glory when all independent women would choose to be the property of a man, as they may have forced to be in the desert..’ (p.202).

Yahweh then scoffs at and threatens the Magi of Chaldea with their star-lore:

 You are wearied with your many counsels;
let them stand forth and save you,
those who divide the heavens,
who gaze at the stars,
who at the new moons predict
what shall befall you. (47:13)
Behold, they are like stubble,
the fire consumes them;

Wealth

Isaiah promises wealth to Zion, from of course the plundering other nations:

you shall eat the wealth of the nations,
and in their riches you shall glory (61:6)

and -

I have removed the boundaries of peoples,
and have plundered their treasures;
like a bull I have brought down those who sat on thrones.

My hand has found like a nest
the wealth of the peoples;
and as men gather eggs that have been forsaken
so I have gathered all the earth; (10:13-14)

Ending

The Book of Isaiah ends by declaring that everyone will come to worship Yahweh:

all flesh shall come to worship before me,
says the LORD.

For those who chose otherwise, the last verse of Isaiah dwells on the rotting worm-infested bodies they will have, forever!

And they shall go forth and look on the dead bodies of the men that have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched.

Ah, what a glorious ending. This was an utterly material religion, whereby there was no after-life or spirit separate from the body, and so the doom envisaged for rebels had their bodies rotting in unending pain.

The Conscience of Seymour Light spoke: “Did not the Saviour read from the Book of Isaiah in announcing the start of His ministry?”

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

because the LORD has anointed me
to bring good tidings to the afflicted;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the LORD's favour,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn; (61:1-2, Luke 4:18)

Seymour Light replied: But, the Prince of Peace omitted Isaiah’s the line about ‘…and the day of vengeance of our God,’ He proclaimed no god of vengeance.

http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/gods-top-50-killings-how-do-you-rate.html

Or rather  blessed: O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock! Psalm 137:8-9 (ESV)

Jeremiah

Jeremiah: Broken promises of the Lord

 For behold, I am sending among you serpents,
adders which cannot be charmed,
and they shall bite you," says the LORD. (8:17)

Now what is he griping about, wondered Seymour Light? Like a bleak winter wind, the anger, curses and threats of Yahweh are ever sounding through the Book of Jeremiah:

 I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins,
a lair of jackals;
and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation,
without inhabitant."

 "Thus says the LORD:
`The dead bodies of men shall fall
like dung upon the open field,
like sheaves after the reaper,
and none shall gather them.'" (9:11,22)

But haven’t we heard this enough already, do we really need more?

Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will punish all those who are circumcised but yet uncircumcised -- Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert that cut the corners of their hair; for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart." (9:25,26)

So, those with stylish haircuts are going to get it in the neck.  Even getting circumcised is not enough to avert the nonstop hail of curses from Yahweh. He appears as ever-tormented, we’re not quite sure by what:

 My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain!
Oh, the walls of my heart!
My heart is beating wildly;
I cannot keep silent;
for I hear the sound of the trumpet,
the alarm of war.
Disaster follows hard on disaster,
the whole land is laid waste.

This is Yahweh speaking not Jeremiah – because it is immediately followed by

For my people are foolish,
they know me not;
they are stupid children,
they have no understanding.
They are skilled in doing evil,
but how to do good they know not." (4:19-22)

One might have thought a god would appear serene just occasionally - but, not this one. The Israelites have done something terribly shameful, but what is it?

But from our youth the shameful thing has devoured all for which our fathers laboured, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. (3:24)

What could that be? Yahweh’s fiery wrath goes forth as usual:

 Circumcise yourselves to the LORD,
remove the foreskin of your hearts,
O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem;
lest my wrath go forth like fire,
and burn with none to quench it,
because of the evil of your doings." (43-4)

And this will bring evil and destruction: “for I bring evil from the north,
and great destruction”.(4:6) Jeremiah has finally had enough, and he answers back:” then I said, "Ah, Lord GOD, surely thou hast utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, `It shall be well with you'; whereas the sword has reached their very life.” (4:10)

Pages more about doom follow - the fire, the sword etc – and again Jeremiah reminds the Lord:,

Then I said: "Ah, Lord GOD, behold, the prophets say to them, `You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you assured peace in this place.'" (14:12)

Not so, replies, Yahweh, those good-news tidings were not from Me – they were from false prophets!

And the LORD said to me: "The prophets are prophesying lies in my name; I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name although I did not send them, and who say, `Sword and famine shall not come on this land': By sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed. (14:13-15)

Jeremiah is categorically told – its just bad news, and you have to bring it!

We finally hear what everyone has done wrong:

Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; (7:18)

The people may well have believed that Ishtar or Ashtoreth the Queen of Heaven was more help in making their crops grow, than this irate god of mountains and storms. Very occasionally Yahweh gives some agricultural advice:

"Break up your fallow ground,
and sow not among thorns (4:3)

But it’s never very convincing. He’s much more likely to blast the entire farm with a curse:

 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched. (7:18)

He is the bringer of evil:

 Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon this place that the ears of every one who hears of it will tingle. Because the people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by burning incense in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known; and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents (19:3-4).

Yahweh complaining about the shedding of the blood of innocents! Seymour Light was shocked. Was that not precisely what he has been doing and training his people to do, in page after page, book after book of the Torah? 

All this doom is too much for Jeremiah, who ends up regretting the day he was born and, cursing his own parents:

Cursed be the day
on which I was born!
The day when my mother bore me,
let it not be blessed!
[15] Cursed be the man
who brought the news to my father,
"A son is born to you,"
making him very glad. (20:14)

Yahweh realises that he has not yet cursed the prophets:

 Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts concerning the prophets:
"Behold, I will feed them with wormwood,
and give them poisoned water to drink;
for from the prophets of Jerusalem
ungodliness has gone forth into all the land."

And what did they do wrong? They have been ‘filling you with vain hopes’ explained the Lord. (23:16)

Earth gets re-Cursed

As if all the dire curses unleashed by Yahweh upon Planet Earth in the Book of Isaiah were not enough, it receives a new lot in the Book of Jeremiah. To start with Yahweh claims that:

"Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts: Because you have not obeyed my words, behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north, says the LORD, and for Nebuchadrez'zar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, and against all these nations round about; I will utterly destroy them, and make them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting reproach.
[10] Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp. 

This is retrospective prophecy, written after the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem (586 BCE), made to appear as if Jeremiah were foretelling it! Babylon will get its due reward for helping Yahweh:

This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, says the LORD, making the land an everlasting waste. I will bring upon that land all the words which I have uttered against it, everything written in this book, which Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations. (25:12-14)

This alludes to Cyrus defeating the Babylonians in 539 BCE, written after it and masquerading as prophecy. An evil scheme is devised by Yahweh for ruining the nations:

Thus the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: "Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword which I am sending among them. So I took the cup from the LORD's hand, and made all the nations to whom the Lord sent me drink it: Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, its kings and princes, to make them a desolation and a waste, a hissing and a curse, as at this day; Pharaoh king of Egypt, his servants, his princes, all his people, etc., etc.

Then you shall say to them, `Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink, be drunk and vomit, fall and rise no more, because of the sword which I am sending among you. And if they refuse to accept the cup from your hand to drink, then you shall say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts: You must drink! For behold, I begin to work evil at the city which is called by my name, and shall you go unpunished? You shall not go unpunished, for I am summoning a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth, says the LORD of hosts.(25:8-13)

How, Seymour Light wondered, can any civilised society hope to survive or prosper, taking these books packed with curses, rage, race supremacism, endless mass murder etc. as sacred texts? 
 
'Upon all the bare heights in the desert, destroyers have come; for the sword of the Lord devours from one end of the land to the other; no flesh has peace. .. because of the fierce anger of the Lord.' (Jeremiah 12:12-13)  To be sure, it is wonder that the Western World has survived this long, with so depreaved a deity-system, reflected Seymour Light.