Human Sacrifice – I used to think Jehovah only liked smoke and blood from animals

Of course the best human sacrifices are virgin girls

Back when the Israelites were still wiping out their neighbors, Jephthah was made the captain of the combined armies of Israel. When the Ammonites attacked Israel, Jephthah sent messengers to ask why they were invading. The Ammonites responded, “It’s because the children of Israel stole our land when they came up out of Egypt.” Jephthah wasn’t versed well enough in Israeli history to know this was true, so he made up some story about how the Israelis didn’t actually take the Ammonites’ land and the Ammonites needed to back the F**K off.  Of course this message did nothing for the Ammonites so Jephthah moved to make battle.

Being the God-fearing man he was, Jephthah swore an oath to Jehovah that if the children of Israel were victorious against the Ammonites, he would offer whichever person first came out of his house to meet him when he got home as a sacrifice to the Lord. This must have worked because Jehovah helped Jephthah’s armies kill all sorts of Ammonites until the Ammonites didn’t have enough people left to mount an offensive.

When Jephthah got home he was really upset when his daughter was the first person to come out of his house to greet him. Because the daughter isn’t named in the bible, we will call her Autumn. You see, Jephthah really liked Autumn and she was his only offspring. Unfortunately Jephthah couldn’t go back on his promise and once he explained the situation to Autumn she understood that it was the only course of action. You see, she also believed that Jehovah would not have helped the Israelis kill all those Ammonites without the promise of a human sacrifice. This always makes my think of the scene in Dragonslayer where the kings daughter Princess Elspeth went willinging to be sacrificed to the dragon, as a virgin, to protect the townspeople from the dragon's wrath.

A Virgin Sacrifice for a Dragon

Autumn had a single request before she was sacrificed in accordance with Hebrew law. She just wanted to go into the wilderness with her friends so they could cry for two months because she was going to die a virgin. This made a lot of sense to Jephthah because he, like most men, believed that all females are eager for sex and can’t live properly without it.

Autumn bewailing her virginity

Two months later, Autumn came back home like she promised. Then she was sacrificed. For those that don’t know, this means a priest grabbed Autumn by the head and killed her in front of a crowd. Then the priest sprinkled her blood on an altar. Finally, Autumn’s fat and kidneys were removed and burned on the altar. This constitutes an “offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.”

Moral: the Lord doesn’t always stop a parent from sacrificing their child.

Ref: Judges 11:29-39 & Leviticus 3:1-6

Note: when I tell biblical stories this horrific, I always have a hard time typing by the end because I get upset. Also, when I started writing this I planned to focus on the whole “bewailing virginity” thing because it's funny, but by the time I got there; I just didn’t have it in me.

David and Bathsheba – When it rains, it pours

"It's a sucky life and just when you think it can't suck any more it does." – Phoebe Buffay

My last post explained all about the early relationship between David and Bathsheba. If you haven’t read it, please do so now.

continuing on . . .

All King David’s ass-hattery didn’t go unnoticed by Jehovah who was displeased. Apparently He doesn’t like it when mortals try to edge in on his “nearly random acts of terrorism” bit, so He sent His prophet Nathan to have a little chat with David. Nathan told David this really sappy story about how some rich guy with tons of sheep killed and served for dinner the sheep of some poor guy who didn’t really have anything else in the world. This story made David mad. David immediately declared a sentence of death for the rich guy in the story.

I suppose David was supposed to understand that the story was a parable for his rape of Bathsheba and murder of her husband, but David wasn’t very bright so Nathan had to explain it to him very patiently. Rich man kills and eats beloved, single sheep; signifying how David rapes Bathsheba and has her husband killed. Then Nathan had a message from Jehovah for David. The message went something like this: “You are a jerk and because you secretly had sex with someone else’s wife, I’m going to make sure somebody has public sex with all your wives. Oh, and the kid you made with Uriah’s wife? Yeah. He’s going to die too now.”

So Jehovah struck the child and it became very ill. David was bummed that the kid was dying so he stopped eating and prayed a lot because he thought this would change God’s mind about the kid. It didn’t work though and after seven days the kid died. Once David figured out that acting all sad and whiny didn’t do any good after all, he washed up, got dressed, and sat down to a nice meal. His servants thought this was weird and asked, “What’s going on? You seemed really concerned when the child was dying, but now that he’s dead you’re acting fine.” David had a simple response, “Meh, can’t bring him back, so why bother with it?”

David didn’t like that the whole rape and murder thing didn’t get him a son, so he had more sex with Bathsheba (poor girl) until she had another son. David named this kid Solomon, which sounds an awful lot like Saruman.

Note: I’m bothered that nobody seems to care how badly David destroyed Bathsheba’s life. She was violently raped multiple times, her husband was murdered by the King (using the swords of the Ammonites), she was forced to marry her rapist and the murderer of her husband, and her son was murdered by Jehovah. There are no words.

I also don’t like how God’s solution to the problem is to have someone rape all of David’s wives. This is so unbelievably misogynistic, I can’t believe how any modern woman can read this and think God is OK.

Ref: 2 Samuel 12