Thursday, April 14, 2005

Recycled Jawbones

There's nothing new under the sun.

With regularity, God just cracks me up. Often He does so with personal pranks-- situations of the genre of a dropped dollar bill being blown just out of reach as I attempt to pick it up or, when grumbling to myself about some unrelated circumstance, as I open a door, it hits my foot and I whack my forehead into its corner while trying to enter the portal. Incidents like that would anger me at an earlier point in my life, but now cause me to laugh as I pull a mock shake-of-the-fist toward God while rubbing my forehead. (He just did it again! It took me 13 tries to spell 'while' correctly.) I had feared that as I became more faithful in life's little irritants that He would give me bigger ones to help train me. He just smiles and reminds me that after 46 years of bachelorhood, he allowed me to marry. Oh, yeah, I have some distance to go on that one. (He who finds a wife finds what is good, He who finds a wife finds what is good, He who finds a wife finds the backside of the desert, huh?)

It is more rare, however, that I laugh unto incontinence while reading Scripture. Ezekiel? I guess that I have never read the whole NIV. For years I read King James, now the New American Standard. Presently, I'm reading through the English Standard. A verse in Ezekiel 23 caught my attention as it appeared to be describing something unusual. Comparisons to the NAS and KJV weren't quite so direct so it never dawned on me before. But the NIV... As a portion of the listed transgressions of Oholibah (Jerusalem) for which they were overrun by Nebachadnezzar... "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses." Ezekiel 23:20 (NIV) I thought I was going to die! Preview blurbs for many modern TV shows and movies. (Desperate Housewives comes to mind, although I've only seen commercials for it and the Monday Night Football intro. So please forgive me if I have mischaracterized it.) I will never look at an Enzyte commercial in quite the same way again, either. (And, no, I will not rename my blog, 'Genitals of an Ass'!)

There is NOTHING NEW under the sun. Therefore, as both Oholibah and the modern housewives may be desperate, they could never be termed 'disparate'.

3 comments:

Al said...

I'll be chiggered!

Steve Burri said...

Better than being ticked.

Lance Burri said...

Ezekiel 23:20

New James Version: and doted upon her paramours there, whose members were like those of asses, and whose issue was like that of horses.

New International Version: There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

New American Bible: She lusted for the lechers of Egypt, whose members are like that of an ass, and whose heat is like that of stallions.

New American Standard Bible: She lusted after their paramours, whose flesh is like the flesh of donkeys and whose issue is like the issue of horses.

Bible in Basic English: And she was full of desire for her lovers, whose flesh is like the flesh of asses and whose seed is like the seed of horses.

American Standard Version: And she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.