(no subject)

[rivka]

It's possible that, elsewhere on the net, I am going to be forced to kill someone.

"I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread." (Psalms 37:25) is quite possibly the most repellent and disgusting verse in the entire Bible, Y/Y?

Comments

[naomikritzer]

...and directly contradicted by, like, the entire Book of Job.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, Naomi. The Bible NEVER contradicts itself EVER. Every word of it is inerrant.

[naomikritzer]

Fascinating. So, how does this person explain the Book of Job?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Repellent and disgusting? Yes.

MOST repellent and disgusting? I can think of lots that are worse.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Job's children never had to beg. They were all dead.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

So according to this person, if a person is righteous, they will not be forsaken, and therefore any forsaken person is not righteous.

So, um. That Jesus bloke. (http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=157475339) Are they going to say he wasn't actually righteous (which has severe repercussions in soteriology), or that he wasn't actually forsaken (which... has severe repercussions in soteriology)?

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Please accept this gift-wrapped Internet.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

This is from Psalms, so; I don't think "David" or David was expected to have precognition of Jesus. I assume that in Christian soteriology this is handwaved away as "errors of the old dispensation" (like the whole mixed cloths thing) though I honestly do not remember ever seeing a discussion of it anywhere in the Patriologia Latina on down.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

No sweat! He just *thought* he'd been forsaken. God was right there with him the whole time, what with that whole being of one substance thing.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Is it possible to make a case for unreliable narrator?

[(Anonymous)]

No; Joshua 10:40 is the most repellent verse in the Bible.

SamChevre

(Reading Joshua 10 the day before visiting Auschwitz definitely left an impression.)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Bible Contradiction Graph (http://www.goddiscussion.com/22792/amazing-bible-contradiction-graph-created/).

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

My parents belonged to a strict fundamentalist evangelical sect and when Mother got breast cancer, many people in their church said she didn't believe in god. I know she believed in her god.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

*I* know that, and *you* know that, but I am trying to guess what this person who believes that the righteous will never be forsaken thinks.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

If I ever met someone who advanced this case, I would ask them politely to explain the Atonement to me.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

Smiting is definitely due.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I think it's time to release the Unitarian Jihad on 'em.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

I need to drink less red wine at night. I keep reading "forsaken" as "foreskin".

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure there are no righteous foreskins.

[going-not-gone.livejournal.com]

I have long said that the Bible is very much like statistics--you can pull something out of it to back up any damn thing you choose.

Psalms 37:25 is repellent, yes. Also pure, unadulterated bullshit.

[matthewwdaly.livejournal.com]

According to my Biblical commentary, Psalm 37 was written by King David and the Book of Job at its earliest was written during King Solomon's reign. So David would not have read the Book of Job.

[matthewwdaly.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I would initially have thought this post contained a typo, as my yardstick for Scriptural *headdesk* is Psalm 137.

[pameladean]

It's bad enough that it's THERE, but that somebody in this day and age should quote it is repulsive.

P.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I've long had a special loathing for Genesis 22:12, but not everyone agrees with me. I think it underlies almost all the other wretchednesses.

On the other hand, Exodus 7:3 has always seemed truly the distillation of Twain's "malign thug".

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yes, that.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

really? Some hard core anti-circ people would disagree... ; P

[naomikritzer]

By "this person" I meant the idiot on the internet, not King David.

[zeldajean.livejournal.com]

IMO, foreskin is definitely righteous.

Oh wait, *that* righteous. Um, yes, well... carry on.

:)

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

::applause::

In general, the Prosperity Gospel makes me want to ... well, makes me wish that the people who preach it had to live on food stamps for a month.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I'm impressed by how many of your friends can, quite literally, cite chapter and verse. I always have to think "er, um, that bit with the infants and the smiting" and then translate into Googlese.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I assume that underlies most of those posts.

(And, of course, yes, totally repulsive.)

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

I rely on biblegateway.com for bible quotes. I know the Bible like the back of my head, and as for my faith...well, I wouldn't insult a mustard seed by comparing my faith and its.

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

Only one month? You're a better person than I am, then.

Food stamps, no actual income because obviously they'd be able to work so not deserving of welfare (that's the first level of welfare screening, right there, I think. And an often inaccurate one.)

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

Oh ghods. My mother occasionally got that (not from our church, but others): If she truly believed, she wouldn't be blind.

People that act that way are *evil*. It's the first sort of victim-blaming I ever encountered.

*grrrrrr*

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I'd call it holier-than-thou greed: greed for "people like us", rather than something essentially personal.

But, alleluia, the children of the Righteous shall not be beggars.

Haven't they heard of Luke 10:25-37

I bet these people would be ready with baulks of timber and nails when the reports of the Second Coming hit Fox News.

[ailbhe]

Maybe we need to write up a top ten, but yeah.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Oh no. The narrator is perfectly reliable. There are LOTS of people who choose not to see poverty, oppression, and unhappiness among their neighbors.

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

I don't know the else-internet context of this. But I do know that I learned Psalm 37:25 in the original Hebrew as being what the good person says: "I have been young and I have grown old, and I have not just watched a good person left alone, or his children beg for bread".

This is followed by 37:26, what the good person does instead of standing by and looking at misery, "All day long he is gracious and lends [i.e., lends a hand, helps out, does not high-handedly dispense charity], and his children are a blessing."

It took a bit of digging, but I have found a post that explains why the psalm may be read this way (http://parshathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/04/psalms-3725-explanation-for-difficult.html) by religious Jews.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

The Jesus bloke was referencing Psalm 22, which begins with the same words. It ends though, with the psalmist happy and secure and praising God in the congregation, and the implication is that Jesus likewise will move from being forsaken to being rescued.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I'm aware of this, but the point remains that he *was* forsaken, at least for a time. If I make no mistake, the person mentioned in this post appears to believe that righteous people do not get forsaken at all.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Thank you, that's very helpful.

The verse was being quoted else-net to defend the idea that a righteous Christian could know that certain miseries and degradations suffered by others would never happen to her, because God would protect her.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

It's classical magical thinking. If you do Everything Right, then you'll be okay. If you're not okay, you must have done something wrong, so it's YOUR FAULT.

I much prefer a world where shit just happens, y'know?

[lizzibabe.livejournal.com]

I entirely agree.