Latest / We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism / Ep. 129: Weird Crap in the Bible

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Ep. 129: Weird Crap in the Bible · We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word.
• 0:26
  And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Good day, all you foolish mortals. Happy October. It is I, your friendly neighborhood, Brian. And over there is a little other ghoul named Alastair.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: If you're worried that you've tuned into the wrong program, I promise we're still We Are More and still Alyssa and Brianna.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: We are more. More. Okay. I'm done.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: We have been big time in the Halloween spirit lately.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I do want all things fall.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: It's... I feel like the last maybe week and a half, the weather has just totally turned. Because we had a lot of warm days through September. And now it's distinctly fall. The leaves are turning colors.
• 1:27
  If there's just a like a crispness to the air.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Sorry to all y'all who only experience a few seasons. We here in Michigan experience All of them.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: All of them. And extensively. Yes. Although I wish fall lasted longer. Me too.
• 1:45
  I'm kind of bummed because it... We get, like, maybe three weeks, four weeks of good fall.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: I have been vaguely annoyed by the sunshine because it's too sunny. And I know it's like, I'll never be happy. Right? Nothing is ever gonna be satisfying. But I want to throw on a sweatshirt.
• 2:04
  I wanna throw on a hat. I wanna wear a boot. But my body doesn't know how to dress right now.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: It's in a state of confusion. It's that time of year that Michigan is a train wreck when it comes to clothing. You've got some people in straight up shorts and sandals. You've got others in puffer vests and long sleeves. No one has any idea what to do with themselves.
• 2:31
  I'm wearing
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: winter on the top. Burk... Like, open Birkenstock sandals on the bottom.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know what to do. We went on a walk this morning. Because on Sundays, lot of times, we go up to the bakery that's nearby us. And I dragged Brie out of bed and forced her to take a walk with me. Yeah.
• 2:50
  And she was wearing a sweatshirt and a puffer vest. And I knew. I knew when you walked downstairs, I was like, she's gonna regret that life choice. And I did. And she did.
• 3:01
  Because then you had to carry the puffer vest, didn't you?
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's just I was like a little chilly this morning. And when I first stepped outside, I was like, yes, this is good. And then the sunshine hit. And then I wanted to pass away.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I was in a sweatshirt, and even I was hot.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I wanted to see the Lord.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Speaking of seeing the Lord. This week, we are talking about weird Bible stories because that's just kind of like... I don't know. There's so much about the Bible that doesn't get preached on because it doesn't make a good thirty minute clip or whatever. And some of this stuff, it's it's bizarre, but it was important enough that God felt the need to put it in the Bible.
• 3:45
  And I think it's fun to talk about the super super weird crap that's in there.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And also, why? It's a great question. Like, when Alyssa and I were talking about the research for this episode, I was like, but what loops it all together? Mhmm.
• 4:03
  I don't know.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's... These particular stories, it's a lot about, okay, it's weird, it's uncomfortable. Some of them are a little bit gross. But they all sort of loop together to be like, okay, sometimes God's message is unexpected. Sometimes God gives us messages through strange things.
• 4:24
  But then I think back to... We we've done this episode before with different stories. And Elijah or Elisha? One of the Eli's. And he called forth the bears to attack people.
• 4:38
  And it's like, okay, God, why did we need to preserve that story? And honestly, I don't know. I'm sure that there are theologians out there that have really great meaningful reasons. But sometimes I just think it's fun to realize that God has a little bit
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: of a sarcastic sense of humor sometimes. Have you seen those TikToks where it's kind of making fun of pastors in a way? Where they're like, okay, it's time to think and... Think about my sermon for the week. Mhmm.
• 5:09
  Let's pick the most random, bizarre story and somehow tie it into Mhmm. God's message. Right.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Because it gets your attention. Mhmm. So maybe this was just God grabbing our attention. Yeah. Forcing us to read Judges.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: It's like, hey, did you read the Bible? Because, hey, we're gonna talk a lot about poop today.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: And I think it's a big difference between... And I'm guilty of this too, so don't get me wrong. But people that know the Bible because they read the Bible or people that know the Bible because they heard it in church. Because you're never gonna hear these stories in church. Not ever.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Not once. No. And also, something that I noticed is even if you have read these sections of the Bible, they don't make as much sense to you because you're not then going to another version or looking up the original, like, Hebrew, Greek, what did this actually mean to these people at the time?
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Because we're talking about hemorrhoids, people. Yeah. And a lot of poop too. So prepare yourselves. This is about to get weird.
• 6:16
  So the first story can be found in judges. It's in judges three twelve through 30. And I'm gonna butcher the names, but just go with me. Okay? No more judgment.
• 6:27
  It's the story of Ehud and Eglon. Which could be great potential baby names in the
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: year 2027. Add that to the list. Yes.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: They will skyrocket to the top of the list. Skyrocket. Just because of us.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: We're looking for biblical baby names today. And can I interest you to Ehud? Mhmm.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Okay. So the story goes that Israel is under the control of Eglon, who is the king of Moab. And they've been under his control for eighteen years. Things are not going well.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Another good baby name. Eglon. Eglon.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: So Israel cries out to God. And we've heard this story from Israel quite a few times. Right? And so God raises up Ehud, who is a Benjaminite. And there's two details in this story that become important.
• 7:19
  And they may seem crass or unkind, but it's what the Bible says. So Ehud, not so bad, he's left handed. That's important to the story. But Eglon is described as very fat. That's what the Bible says about him.
• 7:35
  Yeah. And so then Ehud being left handed is very important. But it's a stronger word in the Bible than just left handed. The Hebrew description literally has this sense of being, like, restricted or bound up in his right hand. So there's some disagreement about what this means.
• 7:58
  Now some people believe that Ehud had a disability, which I think makes this a cool part of the story to include people that we aren't normally seeing featured in these stories. It could also mean that he was naturally left handed, or it could mean that he was trained to fight with his left hand. So any of those are possible. But judges 20 describes 700 other Benjaminites with this same left handed terminology. So an interesting detail.
• 8:26
  Are they just genetically left handed? I don't know. You know? But Benjamin means son of the right hand. So basically, Ehud is a left handed man from the tribe of the right hand.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: There's a
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: lot of hands involved.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: I think maybe... Hear me out. They're known as the tribe of the right hand. They're like, we need to throw people off. Yeah.
• 8:50
  We can't have people know too much about us. So we're really gonna surprise them when we're all left handed. Surprise.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Okay. So Ehud is going to Eglon, but he's delivering Israel's tribute to Eglon. So he's going with a bunch of people and bringing, you know, goats or gold or whatever it is that they're sending. What have you. Now he puts a homemade double edged sword under his, I don't know, tunic, whatever it
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: is that he's wearing. His fashion choice for the day.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: On his right side. Now, someone who's right handed would normally put it on their left side. But he puts it on his right side. Now, the Bible doesn't say, oh, that's why he got through security or anything like that. But it's an interesting detail.
• 9:37
  So he puts it there, And they deliver all of their goods to Eglon. Eglon is like, woo hoo. Yay. And then everybody turns to leave. But Ehud turns to Eglon and says, I have a secret message for you.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Come closer. I got a secret. Promise not to tell.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: So Ehud stands up, approaches Ehud, and Ehud reaches across with his left hand and pulls his sword out and drives his sword into Eglon's belly.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: I got a little secret for you. It's pain.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Now the bible says... This is where this story gets particularly bizarre. So the bible says that the entire... The blade and the hilt, so the whole sword, disappear inside of Eglon. And this is where the fat part comes in because basically the implication is that he's so large that basically his body sort of overtakes the sword, it just envelopes it.
• 10:39
  It's not a good image. It's deeply alarming.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: But also, my gosh, the detail.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: I know. Why? I don't know.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: You could have just said, and he stabbed him, and he died.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: No. That's not... And and there's more. There's more to the story. It gets weirder.
• 10:55
  So the n r s v u e, which is many letters to say a version of the Bible, says, and the dirt came out, referring to stuff coming out of Eglon's wounds. There are also... The CEB translation says his gut spilled out. But some of the implications are like, basically, poop came out of him as he's dying. Okay?
• 11:21
  So his intestines are coming out. Everything... Stuff's coming up. Okay? It's it's a gross story.
• 11:25
  My god. It's not a good time. Trigger warning. Right. So sorry about all of this.
• 11:31
  So basically, what happens then is Ehud goes and shuts and locks the door of, I don't know, the the palace area or wherever he is, and goes out the back door and runs away. Well, the servants get there, and they're like, oh, the door is locked. The king must be pooping. This is what the Bible tells it. They think that he is relieving himself.
• 11:55
  And they're like, okay, we're just gonna we're just gonna wait. The Hebrew euphemism is that Eglon is covering his feet. That's what's being said there. But basically, that means they think he's Boop. He's going to
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: the bathroom. Right. Which must be something that he did fairly re... He's a regular... Hey.
• 12:13
  We know he's regular.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: So we're gonna leave him be. We don't wanna bother him in this moment.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We've been yelled at before. We're gonna leave him be. He's gotta do his business. He's playing something on his phone.
• 12:26
  We'll get
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: there when we get there. Mhmm. So the servants wait outside the door. And they wait. And they wait.
• 12:32
  And they wait. And and one version of the Bible literally says they wait until they were embarrassed. They were like, okay. This man has been pooping for too long.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: He must have eaten something that did not agree with him. Things have gone very wrong. He must have had the Taco Bell lettuce.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: He has the runs. Yeah. And so finally, they're... They get the key. They open the door, and they see him dead.
• 12:56
  He's he's just dead in there. Awkward. And basically, their politeness around him pooping allowed Ehud to escape and leave and go about his day. And there's some more to this story about about his name and things like that. But basically, this is a very strange story about God delivering Israel.
• 13:19
  And the message is the same as it often is. So Israel screws up. They're under foreign oppression. Israel cries out to God. God raises a deliverer who defeats their enemies.
• 13:31
  There's peace for a little while. And then eventually, of course, Israel screws up again because they're human and we all do. But after Ehud, Israel had peace for eighty years. My question becomes, we've heard this story from Israel a million times. Why did we need this one in such detail?
• 13:52
  We
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: needed the shock factor. We did, apparently. And to show you that God can deliver you through any circumstance. There are also arguments... And we
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: lose so much in our translations of translations of translations. Because a lot of scholars look at this story and they're like, oh, this was intentionally humorous. This was satire. The writer was making fun of this story because it's so ridiculous. But we lose that.
• 14:24
  We just read it as thou and therefore and whatever because over time, we've sort of compressed the Bible into heavily religious doctrine. Listen to some of these verses in the KJV specifically. And we don't normally reference the KJV, but the these and thous, man. This is verse 20. It says, and Ehud said, I have a message from god unto thee, and he arose out of his seat.
• 14:50
  And then later on, it says... About the servants, it says, and they tarried until they were ashamed. And behold, he opened not the doors of the parlor. It's just so poetic. And it's...
• 15:01
  It... In ways, it's beautiful. And in ways, you lose the message that the author wanted in the first place because we wanted it to be religious. We wanted it to be beautiful. And this is old English.
• 15:13
  But we wanted something spiritual as opposed to maybe what what the original author intended for it to be. Mhmm. Which was sarcasm. And I love a sarcastic Bible. Mhmm.
• 15:28
  Okay. So the next story... We've got three stories we're gonna go through today. And like I said, they're all a little weird and gross.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: A little bit nasty. So
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: the next one is first Samuel five and six. And this is about the Philistines. Always great stories. But I feel like when we think about the Philistines, we usually think about David and Goliath. A big, miraculous story.
• 15:52
  Right? That's what you hear about in Sunday school, in... From the stage, in a sermon, you know. This one, you're not hearing about so much.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: Alyssa, tell me why. I'll tell you why.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: So the story goes that Israel is in battle against the Philistines, and they decide to bring the Ark of the Covenant along. Now we know, just leave the Ark of the Covenant where it is. Stop touching it. Leave it alone. Let's just not mess with it anymore.
• 16:20
  Enough people have died. Israel has not learned this lesson. No. So they bring it into battle with them because they're treating it kind of like a supernatural weapon. They're like, alright.
• 16:32
  This is gonna bring god on our side. Not like god wasn't already on their side or god wasn't already with them. Right. But they felt the need to have this physical manifestation, which other cultures probably would have done too. It wouldn't have been uncommon to probably see an idol of some kind along with other armies.
• 16:51
  So they're like, alright. Let's be the same. We want our own idol. Yeah. And obviously, it doesn't work.
• 16:59
  And the Philistines defeat them and capture the ark, which is a big deal. This is a big deal. The ark of the covenant has not just meaning to them. It has... It does have supernatural authority in a way.
• 17:13
  Remember Jesus hadn't come down to earth yet, so they didn't have the holy spirit. They had these physical manifestations of God. And they lost it. They were without it. Oops.
• 17:24
  I did it again. Imagine the panic. The guy that that accidentally dropped it a little bit and had to run away. Bad times. Yeah.
• 17:35
  So they... The Philistines bring it to a city called Ashdod, and they put it in the temple of their god, Dagon. Now the next morning, the statue of Dagon has fallen face down in front of the ark. That feels like a sign. So they stand him back up.
• 17:54
  Next morning, same thing happens. They're like, the cleaner is really messing things up. But the second time, his head and hands have been cut off. Now you've got to assume this is carved out of stone or something. It's not easy to lop the hands and head off of this thing.
• 18:10
  But they didn't quite catch the message. And so things went poorly. Every city that the Ark of the Covenant was in, the people started developing tumors. And we'll get into that in a second. And there were also mice that were running around and ravaging the towns.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking about the the many different plagues that the Bible contains. Yeah. Why not mice?
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Why not mice? And why not hemorrhoids? Because depending on your translation and depending on the way that... This is... We are a translation of a translation of a translation.
• 18:52
  So there are some scholars that believe that this wasn't just tumors, that this meant hemorrhoids, that all the
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: people were getting hemorrhoids. And we have said before on this podcast, don't be a hemorrhoid on the body of Christ. Yes. And God said, bet. And
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I just want you to think of a town full of rat infested hemorrhoidal people. They're mad. Things have gone very wrong. They are not well.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: No. They are not well. No. And soap wasn't a thing.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: No. There was not hemorrhoid cream.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: No. I don't even know if they
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: had witch hazel. So they keep moving the arc around because they are recognizing that, like, oh, hey. Where this goes, trouble ensues. Bad things are happening. So the one town is like, no.
• 19:41
  Screw that. Somebody else take it. The next town's like, no, thank you. You take it. And they just sort of keep passing it around.
• 19:48
  Feels like maybe not the most logical choice. Maybe we don't just keep afflicting every town we have.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't you just take it out into the desert and be like, okay, we don't want Yeah. We don't want you to have it. Let's just pretend we don't know where it's at anymore. Just leave
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: hole. Put it in there.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Throw it in the ocean.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No. They didn't do any of those things. I'm not sure that logic was, like, the top thing on
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: the Well, because they were so hemorrhoidal. Yes. That was
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the issue. They lost their capacity to make reasonable choices. Well, this was also... Logically, they're at war with Israel. This is weakening them, a lot of them, because they keep passing it around.
• 20:31
  They're weakened. So eventually, they're like, okay. It's been seven months. Right? Seven months of this.
• 20:40
  They've passed it around. They're like, we need to do something. And they're bound up. They're bound up. Unlike Eglon.
• 20:49
  Very true. Lots of poop in this store, I'm telling you. So before I get into how they got rid of it, the Hebrew term that's used here is ophelim. I could certainly be pronouncing that wrong.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: That's okay.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: But that is the word. And there is a long standing tradition of interpreting that as hemorrhoids, including in ancient texts and things like that. But most of your modern translations are gonna say tumors. That's just sort of how we've decided to translate it.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: We've wanted to smooth it out just a bit. Know, we don't wanna talk about buttholes in church.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Now, scholars debate it could certainly be tumors. It could be hemorrhoids. There is also a theory that it was the bubonic plague because there's this, you know, relation to rats and mice and things like that. And obviously, they had kind of like, with the plague comes tumors, stuff like that. Under your armpit.
• 21:43
  Yeah. So that's another option. There's also another theory or another way of translating it that could refer to male genitalia. So tumors and things like that on that. So imagine imagine that situation.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: I think that would bring people to their knees, but also could affect their population.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Very true. I think I think hemorrhoids might do it too. But I'm like, no, thank you. Yeah.
• 22:10
  No. You get out of my tent. So there's a lot of options. It's not definitively that's what it was. But either way, things are going bad.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Things are
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: awful. We've taken a turn. So the Philistines consult their priests, they're like, okay, we need to send this thing back to them. We want nothing more to do with it. What do we need to do to appease their god?
• 22:37
  And their priests are like, Let's think on this. Let's let's burn some incense or whatever. And they're like, okay. Don't return it empty. They need to see this as, okay, we've done something wrong.
• 22:49
  We're apologizing. Whatever. So what offering would God like? Let's let's think on this. Right?
• 22:56
  Here's what they came up with. Send it with five golden tumors and five golden mice, because these are the afflictions that they've been given. Think that through. Okay? Why five?
• 23:10
  So five was chosen actually to represent each of the five Philistine rulers. So that was significant as well. And the verse actually says, basically, make images of the tumors that are afflicting you. So some artisan in their community gets an order. Some artisan who probably also has hemorrhoids gets an order, they're like, alright.
• 23:36
  I have to fashion five golden hemorrhoids and five golden mice. Imagine that.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Did they find maybe a dead person, take out their tumor and
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: And just just coat it in gold? Yeah. Dip it? I don't know. Couldn't tell you.
• 23:54
  But they did send it back with these five representations of each thing. And and that's how they
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: sent it back. Okay. Thinking... This is an offshoot, the Ark of the Covenant. Okay.
• 24:10
  It's a big box. Mhmm. And I know within it is Moses' staff and those kinds of supernatural things. So what else did it collect along the way? We have now collected five gold mice and five gold tumors.
• 24:27
  Yeah. And also this other supernatural stuff. What what else are we putting in
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: there? Who knows? Who knows? And where did it go? Nobody knows where it went.
• 24:37
  That's the thing. That's why it was in Indiana Jones. Nobody knows
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: I where it didn't actually watch or pay attention to Indiana Jones. So I thought maybe we found it. We didn't. It's like a
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: lore thing. It's it's this supernatural thing that has so much significance that God basically said was where he existed, and it's just been lost to time.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: God said that he had existed in a box?
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Pretty much on top of a box, I think. I think it was supposed to be his seat. But the story does keep going, and it says that the Philistines sent the ark back, pulled by... Now remember, there's very specific instructions to the Israelites of, okay, this is what has to carry the ark.
• 25:21
  This is what has to pull the ark, etcetera. The Philistines wouldn't have known that. So they put the ark on a cart that was pulled by two cows that has... Had recently had calves and had never been yoked before, so had never pulled anything before. Their theory was that if the cows ignored their natural instincts and left their calves behind, that that was a sign that this was God cursing them the whole time.
• 25:49
  And if they didn't, then I guess it was just really unfortunate hemorrhoids. What was the other option? And the cows walked straight towards Israel, and the Philistine rulers followed them, and that's how it went.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Just... That's just interesting.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: The things that, again, are lost to time. Just the random beliefs in cows. Yeah. You know? This is a divine sign.
• 26:20
  If the cow faces to the south, okay?
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: But I think... We did a episode a few weeks ago on mysticism, and how the early Christians and the early Bible, there was so much mysticism there. And it worked. I mean, the cows did, in fact, ignore their natural instincts and head straight towards Israel. And I think it was the expectation.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: If this cow moves towards Israel, that's God. I know that's God. Mhmm. Whereas now, I think it's like, was that God? Right.
• 26:55
  We question everything. Or am I just wanting to get my way? I don't know. It's just the expectation, yes, this is God. Right.
• 27:03
  I know this is God. Right.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Now the theological point underneath all of this just absolutely ridiculous story is that nobody could control the Ark of the Covenant. That included Israel. It included the Philistines. Israel is trying to use God as a magical weapon, and God was like, absolutely not. The Philistines are also kind of trying to use God as a magical weapon.
• 27:27
  And they're like, no way. I'm going to cause chaos because I'm not your mascot. I'm not a talisman. You can't capture me and make me do what you want. We talked about this before.
• 27:39
  We serve a very wild god Mhmm.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Who doesn't bow down to us. Right.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: And we love that. We love that control of God, that idea that we can put God in a box. We can put him in the four walls of the church and tell him this is where you live, and you stay here. I'm gonna go do my thing out there. You just stay right here.
• 28:01
  Like, he's controllable. Like, he is only ever reasonable and logical. You know, sometimes God does weird crap that we just have to go with. We're talking about poop today. Mhmm.
• 28:12
  Our mom was not thrilled. She said, do you guys need to talk about poop that much? And we said, yes. Yes. Because the Bible told us to.
• 28:22
  So, mom, this is your message. No.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: I think that's the underlying message of our our chat about number two today is we serve a wild, crazy god. Yeah. And that's it.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: That's all I got. That's what we got. Alright. Now we do have a third story, and this one comes from Ezekiel four, which I think this one is a little bit more of a well known story than the other two. But I'm gonna be fully honest, I had not heard it until we started researching.
• 28:54
  Because I'm not someone that's sitting and like, okay, I'm gonna read through the Bible in a year. I talk to God, you know? And I read my Bible. And sometimes stories like this pass me by unless I choose to find them. So this one is Ezekiel four, like I said.
• 29:12
  And there is a viral story that Ezekiel eats poop. And that's the story in the Bible. That's not quite what happens. Delicious. But God does tell him to use human feces as fuel to bake bread.
• 29:28
  So that's fun. That's unique. That is unique. That is And
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: you know what? We're living in a year where you can buy coffee beans pooped out by cats.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Okay? Why not? Why not?
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: So Ezekiel, essentially in this story, is doing street theater. Like, he's... Things are going off the rails for him. He is living among the Judean exiles in Babylon, which is quite a sentence to say. And God tells him to basically have a play of what's about to happen to Jerusalem.
• 30:03
  And so he has to make a little model of Jerusalem. It's craft time. Ezekiel is, like, carving figures out of He went crazy. Clay. Yeah.
• 30:11
  Do you remember that scene in Gilmore Girls where they're trying to... It's like a town meeting, and they want to build an ice cream shop, but then they just put a standard sized horse in there, the horse is massive. That's what I'm thinking. He has no artistic skills. The people are huge.
• 30:26
  The buildings are small.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: He's working with what he's got. Nobody knows what's going on. There are... I made a joke. Michaels didn't exist.
• 30:34
  Michaels didn't exist. Joanne's didn't exist. It doesn't exist now. I know. So So Ezekiel was doing the best
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: with what he had. And let's be real. He was not an artist. That we know of. That we know of.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: You know what? Art doesn't always have to come in that form. He's putting on a play. Yeah. He is an artist.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: So he creates his little diorama, and he has to... It's not just creating it. He has to make a miniature siege against it. Because Jerusalem is gonna have a siege, so he has to now... Hold on.
• 31:07
  Let me take my little fingers. Them put put them put them and attack the town and siege the town to show people... And imagine these people don't have anything to do. Okay? Love is Blind is not on TV.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: But also, like, is he showing this little play to everybody that passes by? Was there a set time? Like, hey, everybody come by at 07:00. We're putting on a show.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Showtime's at twelve, three, and six. Like, how do we know
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: that multiple people saw his little demonstration? We don't. But there's not a lot going on. Okay. Why did we get so much detail about this one guy's, like, fat and the poop coming out of him, but we can't even get details about this.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: We don't know. We don't know. I have questions, God. So he does this because God asked him to. He see just the little fake town, and then he has to, wait for it, lie on his left side for three hundred and ninety days.
• 32:00
  And that is performance art. Outside, mind you. Like, in the street.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: You are going to end up with sore shoulders. Yeah. Maybe a bed sore or two. I don't know.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it was, like, constant, like, he couldn't get up or anything.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: No. He couldn't get up. He was glued.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know. But three hundred ninety days, that's over a year. That's a long time. People are walking by and just... Oh, Ezekiel's still on the ground.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: What if he was a stomach sleeper? That is gonna screw him up. Do you
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: think people walk by and they're like, are you okay? Can we help you? Do you need something? Hey, what does this mean? Mind you, like, Ezekiel has heard from God, but the other people have not.
• 32:40
  Now they know he's a prophet, but somebody's out there being like, okay, this guy has lost his actual mind. Mhmm. Do we really need to trust this? Because he is crazy crazy. And after three hundred and ninety days on his left side, he has to be forty days on his right side to represent Judah.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: So this is something that is going on for over a year. Long term. Honestly, just take out the talent.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Is... He's having a bad time. Ezekiel's having a bad time. Now scholars will classify this type of behavior as a sign act where a prophet would physically a message as opposed to, like, delivering a speech or something like that.
• 33:23
  Because I guess it would be more impactful, but this feels, like, so far over the edge. Right? Performance art is powerful. Yeah. But how long can you keep someone's attention?
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: They didn't have the attention spans like we do today. There wasn't a lot else going on. Do you
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: think they checked... Like, they checked... Like, you get up and check the weather in the morning, and you're like, oh, yep. Ezekiel's still out there. Alright.
• 33:55
  Must not be three hundred and ninety days yet. And that's how,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: like, they kept time. Also, question, harking back to the lane on the left side. How would they know that that wasn't his natural sleeping position? He's in the street. Yeah.
• 34:09
  Okay. But, like, I would just assume he's sleeping on the street again. Not while he's sleeping on his left side.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Maybe he told them. I don't know. It's a weird story. But it keeps getting weirder. So God then tells him to mix, wait for it, wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt into bread.
• 34:32
  And frankly, I didn't know what at least two
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: of those things were prior to researching this. Spelt, we saw at an Amish store.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: We did. But I'm still a little unclear on what it is. And it might sound like, my gosh, Whole Foods threw up. But that is not it. There is a reason behind these ingredients.
• 34:52
  So basically, the idea from God is scarcity. So the thought is like, you're under siege and you're making bread out of whatever you can manage because there's not enough of any one thing left. So we've just combined whatever we have to make bread. Okay. That's I...
• 35:09
  I'm with you. That seems like a rather short, impactful statement. But it gets weirder yet. So he makes his bread, and then god says, okay, you can only eat a tiny bit, 20 shekels by weight each day and one sixth of a hin of water. And I have no idea what those things mean.
• 35:29
  But it's not a lot. And so that's to be, like, ration everything. Like, okay. We don't have a lot. Not only are we scraping everything together, but everyone's starving.
• 35:40
  Poor Ezekiel has been on his left side for three hundred and ninety days. Now all he can eat is a tiny bit of bread. But then, not only that, god says, okay, I want you to bake this bread over top of human poop. Human poop. And Ezekiel wasn't concerned that, oh, it's poop, but he did draw a boundary with god.
• 36:07
  And I think that's an important part of the story. He talked to God and he said, I can't do that. All of this other stuff. He's lying in the street. He's performing a siege on a fake town.
• 36:18
  He's willing to cook over some sort of poop. But he says, no, god. I have never made myself ritually unclean. And we've talked before about what that meant to the Israelites. Being ritually unclean, it meant they couldn't go into the temple.
• 36:32
  There's lots of things that happen with that. But Ezekiel was like, I've never done that. And apparently, I'm not sure the exact law surrounding why human poop in particular would be a problem. Well, I mean, ew. Yeah.
• 36:44
  I mean, ew. But it still ends up ew. And so he he tells God, here's all the things that I could have done in my life and I didn't do because they would have made me unclean. Other people may have done them. I chose not to.
• 36:58
  He lists it out to God. And God says, alright. I respect that. I respect that you put a boundary here. I love that.
• 37:07
  I love that part of the story. Now, there's not a lot about this story that I could say that about, but I like that Ezekiel says to God, God, you're pushing me too far. And God says, okay, I hear you. I won't
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: push you further. And I think that speaks to having a relationship Mhmm. With God, where there's back and forth. Rather than just either God trying to talk to you constantly or just you constantly talking at God. Mhmm.
• 37:39
  Here's what I want from you. Here's what I'm doing. I'm so obsessed with me, me, me, me, me. Mhmm. But like a back and forth.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and we we get this message all the time of, like, never question God. Never question God. Never say no to God. Always be on the right path, you know, whatever.
• 37:55
  But then you see stories like this, and Ezekiel was very close to God. And yet he argued with God. He said no to God. God respected that. Because it's a friendship.
• 38:06
  It's a relationship. And so it... If the Bible is thinking that it's important enough to tell us the story, then that's okay for you too. It's okay for you to push back on god a little bit. And god might still say, no.
• 38:19
  I still want you to do that thing. But he might say, okay. Let's alter that thing so that it works better. Or, okay. We won't cross that boundary because you've set that boundary.
• 38:29
  And it was important to Ezekiel, so God respected that. So unfortunately, though, God did say, alright, fine. You don't have to do people poop, but you do have to do cow poop. Cook it over cow poop. And apparently, that was fine.
• 38:42
  I'm unclear on why that was fine and people poop was not fine. But he was chill with that. So he did the thing. He cooked his bread over the cow poop. And I believe that was supposed to represent, like, the degradation of being in exile.
• 39:03
  So now we don't even have a home. We have nothing. We are at the absolute bottom of the heat. And so I guess that's what that one was supposed to represent. There is actually currently a product called Ezekiel four nine bread.
• 39:22
  I have seen it before. I've never bought it. But it... It's all of these ingredients. I hope it's cooked over poop.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: I just find out I hope all all the people who are eating that bread who have no idea what that's about, I hope it is cooked over poop.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Just think about the logic behind that. Somebody sat down and they were like, oh, a recipe in the Bible, but I'm gonna stop reading now.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm not gonna move on to the next first because I found my recipe. And honestly, we do that with blogs. Right? That's so true.
• 39:53
  From a recipe online, you're like, I'm not reading all of your family history on this recipe. Just get me to the recipe.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: So somebody did that with the Bible.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: Someone did that with the Bible, made a product out of it.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They did. So you can buy that, I guess.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: Report back. We wanna know.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Personally, I would say no. I... Could be great, but there's always the risk that it was cooked over poop.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: There's always that risk. And you know what? We should look that up sometime. Not today,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: but sometime. Sometime. And so the message... I think the overall message here... In a way, it is, okay.
• 40:32
  Look. The Bible's super weird. And we like to read the weird stuff in the Bible. We like to bring it up to you because it's funny. And sometimes after really heavy episodes, we need something lighter.
• 40:41
  Last week was heavy.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: And so it's fun to just do something silly. But all of these stories pull together bigger messages. We have ickiness. We have absurdity. We have the human body.
• 40:56
  We have humiliation and spectacle. But there's more than that there. In Judges, we see Israel's oppressor being reduced to something so unassuming and non threatening. And I think that's a message of... That's what God does to our enemies.
• 41:15
  He makes them not scary. Just like I... I'm thinking of the VeggieTales song because we've gotta always reference VeggieTales. Right?
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Where they say God is bigger than the boogeyman. He's bigger than Godzilla or the monsters on TV. It's not just that God is bigger than them and God can defeat them, but God makes them so inconsequential that it... They're just... They're not even scary anymore.
• 41:41
  They're a
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: speck of dust Or in the poop
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: in the wind. Poop in the wind. The case. And I like that you can read the story as funny and satire y and stuff. In first Samuel, we see the Philistines seeming like they're victorious.
• 41:59
  The enemies of Israel seeming like they've defeated the Israelites, and not just defeated them, but humiliated them.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: And that's a purpose. Right? God could have just taken them out initially. Mhmm. Not have had them take the Ark of the Covenant.
• 42:19
  But he wanted to make a message. Right? We're gonna lose this battle. But you are gonna regret it. And I'm gonna show you the power of God.
• 42:29
  Mhmm. And I
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: think it, I mean, God did that before. Like, I... We talked about a story a while back where a man reached up to save the ark because it was about to fall. And all he did was literally reach up to stop it from falling. Mhmm.
• 42:45
  And he died because he touched it. It would have been not unexpected for God to kill all the people that touched it or that took it. Yeah. Like, there was precedence. But he didn't.
• 42:58
  And it sent a message so much more powerful to both the Philistines and the Israelites. Because now the Israelites are like, oh, we can't use God as our mascot.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: And also that God is really powerful. Mhmm.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: God will always come back to us. He will always chase us. He will leave the 99 to go find the one. However, you don't get to play around with God. You don't get to pretend that he's like, alright, I'm gonna make you win just because I feel like it, because you brought my talisman here.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: That's not how he works. Don't manage God. Right. God manages us.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: And that's a much more powerful message than just hemorrhoids. But... But hemorrhoids are funny.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: But hemorrhoids are funny, and what a message What a message. They can deliver.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: And then in Ezekiel four, obviously, like, the disgust is intentional. God is making Ezekiel do something gross. And not even just in the poop bread story. Like, he's laying in the road with animals walking by, with people walking by. You know, like, there's horror, there's scarcity, there's uncleanness, there's humiliation.
• 44:21
  But that story all pulls together like God giving us a broader message. I will help you. I will find you. I will be there for you. Ezekiel just kinda took the brunt
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: of it. Yeah. Poor Ezekiel.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Poor Ezekiel. I feel like and I realize this is, like, not the way that you're supposed to feel, but I would not wanna be a prophet, man. No. They get the short end of the stick every time.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, are they remembered throughout history? Sure. Would I want to be remembered for eating poop bread? No. No.
• 45:01
  Not so much.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: So I'm good here. I also... Okay. I find it very funny because most of the women in the Bible, they have big important stories. But can you imagine any of them being part of this story?
• 45:15
  Because I think I think the reason they're not is they'd be like, no, thank you. Sorry, God. God.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: No. Yeah. Respectfully, no. No. Like, no.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Like, you look at the story of Deborah, and she's doing alright. Mhmm. Junior? Doing okay. Phoebe?
• 45:34
  Doing okay. Like, I'm not saying they all are.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: One of the millions of Marys? Yeah. Sure. They're good.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: But there's... Like, the grossness and stuff tends to be men.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: I I just find that
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: an interesting little fact.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: Well, men are gross.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Alright. Our next episode is gonna kind of jump off of this episode in a way. We're we're headed into spooky season. We're doing some of the weirder, spookier things in the Bible. We always do because we like spooky season.
• 46:03
  We do.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: And it's our podcast, not yours.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: So next week, we are gonna be talking about biblically accurate angels. What do those
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: look like? Why are they here? How do we deal with that? Oh, Halloween costume idea.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Everybody out there.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: All of our listeners. We're all dressing up as angels this year.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: But nothing can you think.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: I'm getting a big bunch of googly eyes for
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: all of Just a lot of eyeballs. So whenever I think of biblically accurate angels, I think about the series A Wrinkle in Time, because that was my first introduction to that concept. I can't remember if it's the first book in the series or... There's several books. But they talk about an angel, and they talk about it with all these eyes and whatever.
• 46:54
  And as a kid reading that, who was never introduced to this concept, who saw the very Baptist images of a blonde haired man with wings and a robe flying in the air. I just... I didn't know what to do with that. So I think I just put it aside and ignored it. But it's been very popular in the media to talk about like, okay, the Bible's actually pretty specific about what angels look like.
• 47:20
  Now, could that be just someone's fever dream? Sure. But if we talk about, yeah, biblically accurate angels, they don't look so normal.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: I know. I... When I was a kid, I used to think about being afraid of the dark. Mhmm. Right?
• 47:40
  Because sometimes you get in your own head. Oh, yeah. And you're laying there at night, and you're like, well, I'm gonna die tonight because I'm surrounded by demons. Think that might
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: have been a just youth. No. Honestly, I think that's a religious trauma thing. Oh, maybe.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: So I would sit there, and I would close my eyes, and I would think about, like, whatever song, like, worship song I could think of, And just kind of repeat that in my head and imagine my room being, like, surrounded by angels. But can you imagine if young me was, like, picturing biblically accurate angels? No.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I think that would have been
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: a Those would scare off anybody. So
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: that's a good thing. Yes. Except that they'd scare off you too. True. Think about, like, you know, people will talk about, oh, I've got my guardian angel over my shoulder or whatever.
• 48:26
  Think about, like, a blob full of eyes
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: as your guardian Think about a Furby covered in eyes and just... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 48:34
  Yeah. On Yeah. Your shoulder.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: I don't think... I'm... Like, I'm good. I'm not sure that I want that. Kinda freaks me out.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: I think I want that. Alright.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: For Christmas, you're getting a Furby, and I'm gonna glue a bunch of eyeballs to it. Fantastic. All of you out there, what a lovely Christmas idea for your loved ones.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Merry Christmas. Oh,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: that could be my girl gift. Yeah. Guys, every year, our family, all the girls, and there's, like, 11 that participate, we get one gift. We get one thing, and we get one for everybody. So, like, 11 of the same thing or whatever.
• 49:09
  And this year, I feel that mine should be a biblically accurate angel. Yeah. That would be great, I think.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: I think it's good.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: Alright. I'm gonna... If you all have Furbies you're not using, if you could mail them to me, that'd be great.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: And I'm giving everybody a lock of my hair. Yeah. We might not be popular in the family after this.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: So if you wanna be a little spooked out, tune in for that next week. Follow us on social media if you don't. We are on Instagram and TikTok at the hashtag we are more, and I've been really pissing some people off over there lately.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So go check that out. Okay. We'll talk
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: to you next week. Love you.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: Bye. Love you. Bye.