Elisha the Vindicative
2nd Kings Chapter 2
23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. 25 And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.
Critique
Elisha is out hiking up a mountain to hit his 10,000 steps when a pack of surly teenagers, presumably playing hooky from temple, poke a bit of fun at his male-pattern baldness. Elisha decides that the appropriate response is to basically summon a pack of cave bears to brutally maul them to death. He’s like a chaotically evil shadow druid with a receding hairline.
Isaac the Oblivious
Genesis Chapter 27
When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau his older son and said to him, “My son”; and he answered, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Behold, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. 3 Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, 4 and prepare for me delicious food, such as I love, and bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die.”
6 Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “I heard your father speak to your brother Esau, 9 Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats, so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father, such as he loves. 10 And you shall bring it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.” 11 But Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, “Behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.
15 Then Rebekah took the best garments of Esau her older son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob her younger son. 16 And the skins of the young goats she put on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck.
18 So he went in to his father and said, “My father.” And he said, “Here I am. Who are you, my son?” 19 Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau your firstborn.”
21 Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Please come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not.” 22 So Jacob went near to Isaac his father, who felt him and said, “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” 23 And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands. So he blessed him.
Critique
Were hairy hands the ancient industry standard of a secure biometric identification system? Isaac clearly recognized that it was Jacob’s voice but the only true way to confirm the identity of his son was whether or not he was a SMOOTH MAN. This is how Jacob literally describes himself in multiple translations of the bible (I double-checked) and thus am now co-opting that description for myself.
Solomon the Baby Cleaver
1st Kings Chapter 3
16 Then two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. 17 The one woman said, “Oh, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. 18 Then on the third day after I gave birth, this woman also gave birth. And we were alone. There was no one else with us in the house; only we two were in the house. 19 And this woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on him. 20 And she arose at midnight and took my son from beside me, while your servant slept, and laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast. 21 When I rose in the morning to nurse my child, behold, he was dead. But when I looked at him closely in the morning, behold, he was not the child that I had borne.” 22 But the other woman said, “No, the living child is mine, and the dead child is yours.” The first said, “No, the dead child is yours, and the living child is mine.”
And this is why you always mark the kid.
24 And the king said, “Bring me a sword.” So a sword was brought before the king. 25 And the king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.” 26 Then the woman whose son was alive said to the king, because her heart yearned for her son, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means put him to death.” But the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him.” 27 Then the king answered and said, “Give the living child to the first woman, and by no means put him to death; she is his mother.”
Critique
In an alternative take, Solomon was actually going to chop the baby in half for the two alleged mothers, but then the wet nurse saw what was about to happen and also claimed the child was hers. At that point it just became too much of a chore because it’s really hard to cut a baby into perfect thirds, I mean it’s really hard to divide anything into perfect thirds, much less a squirming baby, so Solomon just gave up.
You have to think that somebody in the crowd eventually realized that, “By Shaddai he’s actually going to bisect that baby”, so they just threw themselves into the mix.
Hey remember that time back in the Bible where Solomon was like “you got me… bisectionally!” and then Conan the librarian chopped a baby in half. Pretty sneaky sis.
Also can we talk about a world that exists where prostitutes are actively fighting to keep a kid?
The really funny thing about that parable is that it’s designed to illustrate how wise Solomon was, but I guess he was hedging against both women being satisfied with half a baby. I don’t know that seems like a dangerous assumption to me, even 50% of a baby is still several pounds of baby. It’s a great deal at just pennies a day!
Kind of a hack job of a solution to the problem though, but what do you expect from Solomon, famous for cutting corners and also children.