Achewood

0098b — Cruciflection Point

Added 2024-11-29 20:00:08 +0000 UTC

(Okay, okay, here's the verse I was mulling over when asking why Bible passages are always freighted with metaphors. I ultimately decided to keep this discussion out of the author's notes for strip 0098, but now I am quite curious to discover how many Biblical scholars are out there in Cho Acres.)

Just for fun, let's have a gander at 1:7 of the Book of Judges, which is affectionately regarded as the seventh tome of the Old Testament. Why this verse? It mentions tables and eating, and we're about to host a big Thanksgiving.

The actual passage, from the New International Version of the Bible, whose wording I think offers less room for error:

Then Adoni-Bezek said, "Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off have picked up scraps under my table. Now God has paid me back for what I did to them." They brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there.

In and around this holiday chestnut, the Israelites disobey God by torturing the Canaanite king Adoni-Bezek, rather than just smiting him outright. They cut off his thumbs and big toes, and make him eat scraps from under their table, just as he had done to his own luckless captives. In so doing — by reducing man to animal — they have allowed themselves to be infected by the values of their enemies.

How do you interpret this passage, and the wider chapter around it? If you just want to make something up, of course, that could be fun.