Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible

by David Plotz

  The Lord instructs Ezekiel to go preach to the “impudent and stubborn” Israelites. God gives him a scroll containing His words and tells the prophet to eat it. “I ate it, and it tasted sweet as honey to me.” Has there ever been a finer tribute to the glory of the holy book? The word of God tastes sweet as honey.

  chapters 4–5

  Ezekiel is God’s grooviest, trippiest prophet. For Isaiah and Jeremiah, prophecy was speech—haranguing, arguing, badgering, indicting. For Ezekiel, prophecy is per formance art. God has him build a model of Jerusalem out of brick and make a metal plate that represents the Babylonian siege works. Ezekiel then lies on his left side with the brick-and-metal plate resting on him. He stays in this position for 390 days, representing the 390 years of Israel’s punishment. Then he lies on his right side for forty days, representing the forty years of Judah’s punishment.

  During this period of self-mortification, Ezekiel consumes the first macrobiotic diet, eating only bread made from wheat, barley, millet, and spelt, and drinking only water. I tried the prophet’s meal plan, buying a box of “Ezekiel 4:9” cereal, a nourishing breakfast treat based on Ezekiel’s whole- grain regimen. The cereal looks like gravel and tastes only slightly better. Imagine Grape-Nuts, but even less fun. My daughter, Noa, ate a few bites and grudgingly pronounced it “OK.” When I asked her how she’d like to eat it every day for a year, she exclaimed, “Uck, no!” (The maker of Ezekiel 4:9, a scripture-minded company called Food for Life, produces a variety of Ezekiel-inspired products, such as pasta and English muffins, as well as a Genesis 1:29 bread. Personally, I prefer my Bible food with a little more sugar— whatever happened to the land of milk and honey?)

  When he finishes his 430-day tableau of Jerusalem, Ezekiel shaves off his hair and beard—God, again, loves the baldy—and divides the clippings in three parts. He incinerates one third inside Jerusalem, strikes the second third with a sword outside the city walls, and scatters the last third to the wind. What does this represent? Anyone? Anyone? Yes: one-third of Judeans will die in the city, one-third will be killed in battle, and one-third will be scattered throughout the world.

  I don’t know about you, but I’m very moved by Ezekiel’s per formance prophecy. In journalism, we are always reminded, “Show, don’t tell.” Ezekiel understands this, recognizing that his actions speak louder than other prophets’ words. What’s more, Ezekiel has profound humility. Jeremiah and Isaiah are smug with angry certainty. Ezekiel isn’t like that. He puts his body where his mouth is, truly making himself suffer for his people.

  chapters 8–9

  Ezekiel has a vision of abominations in the Temple (idols, loathsome animals, sun worship, etc.). In the vision, an angel walks through Jerusalem and marks the heads of all “who moan and groan” at the Temple abominations. Then the Lord orders his executioners to strike down every man, woman, and child who does not bear the mark. This slaughter, of course, reminds us of the final plague in Egypt, when the Israelites marked the doors of their houses with blood, so the angel of death would pass over them and kill only Egyptian children.

  More important, it’s another example of how the prophetic books are theologically more sophisticated than the earlier ones. In Egypt, survival was based on nothing more than genes. Being an Israelite protected you from the angel of death. But now God demands more. The fact that you were born a Jew is not enough. You must love God so much that you sorrow at the contamination of His Temple. In short, these two mass killings demonstrate a profound shift between the Judaism of Exodus and the Judaism of Ezekiel: the transition of Judaism from an immutable ethnic identity to a freely chosen religion, from blood to belief.

  chapter 14

  Ezekiel is truly the prophet of redemption, a more merciful and forgiving messenger than his pre decessors. At the beginning of the chapter, several Israelite elders request a meeting with him. The prophet is dubious, because these elders are notorious idolaters. But, in a Nixon-goes-to-China moment, God tells Ezekiel he of course must minister to these heretics. Ezekiel reminds them that they can still be saved if they reject idols and abominations. Ezekiel is always willing to offer a second chance, always holding out the possibility of grace. This puts him much more in line with modern religious practice than unbending Isaiah and Jeremiah were.

  chapter 15

  This just slows us down on the way to my new favorite biblical chapter, Ezekiel 16.

  chapter 16

  First of all, read this chapter yourself. Come on, just go read it. Right now. It’s so good that you won’t begrudge the fi ve minutes.

  You’re back! How did you like it? Wasn’t it as good as I said it was? You think it’s a little bawdy? A little rude? Maybe, but doesn’t it sound true?

  Ezekiel 16 is the story of the world’s most dreadful marriage, as narrated by the wronged husband. The husband is God. The wife is Jerusalem. They meet cute in the desert when she’s just a baby. He mentors her. She grows up into a raving beauty. What hair! What a fi gure!

  Soon the mentor becomes a lover. (Isn’t it always that way?) “I passed by you again and looked on you; you were at the age for love.” The Lord marries her: “You became Mine.” It’s all wine and roses for a few years. He buys her “fine linen . . . and rich fabric,” hand-tooled shoes, and incredible jewelry. She even gets a nose ring: “I put . . . a ring on your nose.”) Men all around the world hear about the Lord’s bride and what a hottie she is.

  But—there is always a “but” in these stories—everything soon sours. “You trusted in your beauty, and played the whore because of your fame, and lavished your whorings on any passerby.” She makes male idols and plays with them. She’s a nymphomaniac—“insatiable.”

  She prostitutes herself to the Egyptians and Assyrians, but that isn’t enough. “You multiplied your whoring” with the Babylonians.

  At this point the divorce lawyers should have been called, and restraining orders should have been issued, but instead the fight continues. Imagine the worst marital fight you’ve ever heard, and multiply by a thousand. It’s a conjugal Armageddon. (It’s as though every husband in the universe suddenly said, “You’re just like your mother,” and every wife said, “That’s no way to load a dishwasher.”)

  “How sick is your heart, says the Lord God, you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen whore.” Then He realizes she’s even worse than a whore, because at least a whore gets paid. She does it for free.

  God invites all her lovers to visit her. They strip her naked and set a mob on her to cut her to pieces. At last, God’s rage is exhausted. At the end of Ezekiel 16, He promises to remarry her—but only if she shuts up: “I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, in order that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I forgive you all that you have done.”

  This chapter is like the bad parts of Portrait of a Lady, Madame Bovary, and Married with Children rolled up into a ball of rage. It’s the first story to correctly understand that the psychological relationship between God and His people is not parent and child, but spouses. For most of the Bible, God is a furious father, disappointed in his faithless children. But in this chapter He is a jealous husband, a role that is much more terrifying and persuasive. “Jilted husband” makes more sense as a role for God than “angry dad.” Parents are disappointed and frustrated with their kids, but rarely so furious with them that they kill them, banish them, or humiliate them. Husbands and wives do this to each other all the time, and God has been doing it to His people throughout most of the Bible. Sexual jealousy is the greatest crazy maker we have. What is God’s fury at our idolatry if not sexual jealousy? We have found other deities to satisfy our deepest needs. He’s so enraged at our betrayal that He wants to kill us.

  Ezekiel 16 is unsettling in its violent misogyny and sexist in its depiction of marriage. But it’s psychologically penetrating like few other chapters in the Bible. I can’t get it out of my head.

  chap
ter 23

  Several male friends—with nudges and winks—recommended this chapter to me as the sexual high point of the Bible. They hinted that it was a chapter to which they had paid, um, special attention as teenage boys, if you catch my drift. I confess that I’m a little disappointed. Ezekiel 23 is just a sluttier version of 16. It’s Chapter 16, but with twins. The gist is this. There are two sisters, Oholah and Oholibah. Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem. Both of them get married to the Lord. They proceed to put the “ho” back in Oholah and Oholibah. It turns out that they were prostitutes in Egypt before they married God, and they haven’t mended their ways. After the wedding, they turn tricks with Assyrians. I suspect boys like this chapter because the language is cruder than that of Ezekiel 16: men “fondled [Oholah’s] virgin bosom and poured out their lust upon her”; men “whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose emission was like that of stallions.” But the message is the same: the Israelites betrayed God with other gods and bad allies. As in Ezekiel 16, they are cut to pieces for their “wanton whoring.”

  I can see why Ezekiel 23 catches the eye of fifteen-year-old boys— especially since many translations render “bosom” as “nipples”—but it doesn’t move me as much as Chapter 16. Ezekiel 16 is a more sophisticated, passionate, and dramatic version of the same story: it is God’s failed marriage, as told in the New Yorker. Ezekiel 23 is God’s failed marriage, as told in Hustler.

  chapter 24

  Unlike Jeremiah, who was celibate by God’s order (or, more likely, because no woman could stand him), Ezekiel is a family man. That is why this chapter is so sad. Ezekiel’s wife dies during the siege of

  Jerusalem. God forbids him to mourn or weep. All Ezekiel may do, God says, is “sigh, but not aloud.” God immediately dispatches the widower to preach to the Jerusalemites, and Ezekiel obediently does it. If you’re searching for a pleasant interpretation of the story, tell yourself that Ezekiel is a workaholic and he found solace in returning immediately to prophecy. In any case, this episode is a reminder of what a mensch Ezekiel is. Unlike the icy, vengeful Jeremiah and Isaiah, Ezekiel is fully human, and thus a much more tragic figure. This is why I’ve cut Isaiah and Jeremiah from my list of acceptable Bible names for kids, and added Ezekiel.

  chapter 25

  Once again, the Lord vows revenge against the Edomites, Moabites, Philistines, and Ammonites. This wouldn’t be especially interesting, except that Ezekiel 25 plays a minor but spectacular role in the history of American pop culture. It’s a key source for Pulp Fiction. In an unforgettable scene, Jules Winnfield, the hit man played by Samuel L. Jackson, says:

  There’s this passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.” I been sayin’ that shit for years. And if you heard it, that meant your ass. I never gave much thought to what it meant. I just thought it was some cold-blooded shit to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin’ made me think twice. See, now I’m thinkin’, maybe it means you’re the evil man, and I’m the righteous

  man. And Mr. 9 mm here, he’s the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or, it could mean you’re the righteous man and I’m the shepherd and it’s the world that’s evil and selfish. I’d like that. But that shit ain’t the truth. The truth is you’re the weak. And I’m the tyranny of evil men. But I’m tryin’, Ringo. I’m tryin’ real hard to be the shepherd.

  Not to be pedantic here, but I feel obliged to point out that most of the quotation is spurious. Only parts of two sentences (“lay my vengeance”) actually come from Ezekiel.

  chapters 26–27

  This episode, the Babylonian sack of Tyre, is unusual for public policy reasons: It is one of the few Bible stories to celebrate capitalism. According to these chapters, Tyre was the Shanghai or New York of its day, a port city that was the economic engine of the world around it. In mourning Tyre’s destruction, Ezekiel offers an economist’s-eye view of the city, listing all its trading partners, detailing the various kinds of products it exports and imports, applauding its magnifi cent harbor and clever merchants. It’s a very enthusiastic and emphatic litany, written by someone who truly seems to admire the free market.

  chapter 28

  Whoops! I spoke too soon. This chapter reverses all the Adam Smithery of Chapter 27. Mercantile success, Ezekiel declares, made the king of Tyre “haughty” and idolatrous. Tyre’s grand commercial achievements produced only “lawlessness.” That’s why it deserved to fall.

  chapter 34

  A long, wonderful analogy compares the kings of Israel to shepherds and the Israelites to sheep. The shepherds have neglected their flock, exposed them to wild animals, failed to feed them, and never culled

  the bad animals from the herd. So God is firing the shepherds and doing the job Himself. “I will look for the lost, and I will bring back the strayed; I will bandage the injured, and I will sustain the weak.” This is among the most loving depictions of God in the Bible. Isn’t that what you want God to be, a kind, nurturing shepherd, protecting poor dumb us from harm?

  chapter 37

  Ezekiel 37 features one of the Bible’s most famous images, especially beloved by Christians. God leads Ezekiel to a valley fi lled with desiccated bones. (It’s the source for “Dem Dry Bones.”) God tells him to summon the bones back to life. At the prophet’s words, the bones sew themselves back together, and flesh and skin cover them. Then Ezekiel orders breath into them, and the corpses come alive, a mass reincarnation that symbolizes the restoration of Israel. The valley of dry bones is also an emphatic tribute to the power of scripture: God’s words are so powerful that they bring dead men back to life.

  The remainder of Ezekiel is pretty dull. Even so, I’m going to miss this warmhearted, whole-grain, hippie prophet.

  SIXTEEN

  The Minor Prophets

  All Those Books You’ve Never Heard Of, Plus Jonah and the Whale

  In which a dozen prophets predict catastrophe for the Jews; Jonah is swallowed by a whale and preaches in Nineveh; Amos quotes Martin Luther King Jr. (or maybe vice versa); Satan makes his first appearance.

  the book of hosea

  gain with the prostitutes. God’s first instruction to Hosea is: Go find yourself a whore and marry her. Hosea picks up a streetwalker named Gomer—ancient Hebrew for “Candee,” I guess—and they quickly have a son, whom Hosea names Jezreel. (Remember that Jezreel is where Ahab and Jezebel committed one of the Bible’s most loathsome crimes, in 1 Kings.) Hosea names their other kids “Not Accepted” and “Not My People,” to symbolize God’s rejection of the Israelites. (Why couldn’t he just name them “Brianna” and “Madison” like everyone else?)

  The hooker wife, Gomer, represents the faithlessness of the Israelites, which is the main theme of Hosea. It may be theologically illuminating to have a metaphor for a spouse, but it must make life around the house unbearable. In Chapter 2, for example, Hosea unloads on Gomer for her harlotry, then threatens to leave her in the wilderness to die of thirst. The squabble between Hosea and his wife resembles Ezekiel 16, when God has a similar fight with His wife, Jerusalem. I find the version in Hosea much more unpleasant. The fight in Ezekiel was between God and a city. But in Hosea, the wife is the putatively real prostitute Gomer, and the husband is the real prophet Hosea. That lends it a note of genuine domestic horror that the story in Ezekiel lacks. Still, Hosea eventually persuades Gomer to stop sleeping around with other gods. So it’s a happy ending, of a sort.

  There’s a curious proto-Christian moment midway through the book, the fi rs
t of many in the minor prophets. Hosea instructs the Israelites to return to the Lord, telling them, “On the third day He will raise us up, and we shall be whole by His favor.” Am I crazy to think this has overtones of the resurrection of Christ?

  The closing lines of Hosea are the best in the whole book.

  He who is wise will consider these words, He who is prudent will

  take note of them, For the paths of the Lord are smooth; The righ

  teous can walk on them, while sinners stumble on them.

  I like those verses for their mea sured tone. There is none of the maniacal rage of Jeremiah here, none of the trying-too-hard threats of Deuteronomy. Hosea sounds like a prosecutor calmly summing up his case. He is speaking from a position of quiet confidence: If you’re smart, you’ll listen to me. This straightforward appeal to rational self-interest—as opposed to love, fear, hate, anxiety—is rare in the Bible, and surprisingly refreshing.

  the book of joel

  Joel is the prophet of green. His brief (four-chapter) book glows with images of nature—as destroyer and redeemer. It’s astonishingly beau

  tiful. In the fi rst two chapters, Joel depicts an invasion of locusts that is followed by widespread natural calamity: the fig trees droop, “the seeds shrivel,” and—in a spookily brilliant image—“even the fl ocks of sheep are dazed.” The natural destruction signals human disaster: “joy withers away.”

  This eco-catastrophe is a prelude to the Day of Judgment, which Joel also depicts as an environmental disaster. The Lord arrives as a thick, dark cloud and sends fiery warhorses to incinerate the land. (You’re worried about your carbon footprint? Blazing horse armies sent by God to set the world on fire—that’s global warming!) Earthquakes and solar and lunar eclipses follow.