The Righteous Will Laugh at the Rich (I Am an Olive Tree)
Psalm 52
Listen to the Needy Groan
Psalm 12
I Stand Alone (Surrounded By Bulls)
Psalm 22
Dwell in My Sacred Tent, Live on My Holy Mountain
Psalm 15
To his heavy metal phase…
You’re Gonna Be Eaten By Dogs
Psalm 68
Teach the Children (About Death and Pain)
Psalm 78
Dwelling in Darkness (Please Destroy My Enemies)
Psalm 143
This collection even includes David’s never before released hip-hop demos…
God Be Creepin’ on a Fool
Psalm 109
Save Me, Lord (From Deez Ruthless Bitchez)
Psalm 86
Plus many, many more!
All the songs you see here— plus all the classics from the King David Family Singers—are gathered together for the first time in box-set form. These are the songs that we grew up to, the songs we worked to, and made love to.
Now, at last, they’re yours in one timeless collection.
The Book of Proverbs
The Book of Proverbs is a collection of wise sayings written primarily by King Solomon. Much like a Kenny Rogers album, it’s mostly advice about life, money and how to treat a woman.
Some of the life lessons offered by Proverbs:
Don’t sleep with another man’s wife. A prostitute will only cost you a loaf of bread, but sleep with another guy’s woman and you have to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life. You can’t carry a fire in your heart without burning your shirt.
Don’t be a liar. A lie might taste sweet at first, but it’s just a matter of time before it turns to gravel in your mouth.
Also, don’t be one of those smug, entitled jerks who looks down on people who aren’t as lucky as you are. When you belittle the poor, you make fun of God. But when you give money to the poor, you are lending it to God. And you know he’s good for it. If you laugh at the misfortunes of others, God will give them a chance to laugh at yours. So be cool.
Never miss a good opportunity to shut up. Smart guys don’t feel the need to jabber all the time and dumb guys are only mistaken as smart when they aren’t talking. An idiot is a bomb and his mouth is the fuse.
It’s okay to be wrong once in a while. How stupid you look when you’re wrong is directly proportional to how certain you were that you were right. A wise man will always consider the possibility that he’s wrong and he will welcome a second opinion. Only an asshole thinks his first guess is right every time.
Work hard and save up for hard times. An ant doesn’t need to be told to work hard by his boss or the government, and neither should you. At the same time, don’t knock yourself out trying to get rich. Money doesn’t do you any good if you’ve wasted your whole life getting it. Money is a bird: just when you think you’ve got it cornered, it flutters away, making you look like a real prat as you jump after it.
If you are rich or powerful, don’t drink too much. It will make you lazy, oppressive and forgetful. If, on the other hand, you are destitute, miserable or dying…drink away. You probably need to do some forgetting.
A nation with corrupt rulers is a country always in rebellion. But deal honestly with the powerless and your throne will never be in danger. Putting a corrupt man in power is like releasing a bear in the town square. A dishonest man is always on the run, even when nobody’s chasing him. But a man with integrity can stand his ground, even when all are against him.
Finding a good wife is better than discovering buried treasure. Marrying a trophy wife without any common sense is like finding a gold ring in a pig’s snout.
You might get the gold ring, but it’s not worth whatever you had to do to that pig to get it. A good wife is hard-working, smart with money, and keeps the house running smoothly. A good wife will make you look better than you really are. And guys, if you have a wife who makes you proud, the least you can do is let her know what she means to you.
A woman will forgive a lot of bullshit if you aren’t cold and uncaring.
Ecclesiastes
Speaking as your king, and as a descendant of King David, I hope you will indulge me if I philosophize a little. I’ve been around the block and have seen just about everything, and let me tell you: it’s all horseshit. Everything you do, everything you’ll ever accomplish, your life’s work, your kids’ life’s work: horseshit. I mean, none of it matters.
The world will keep humming long after you and everything you’ve ever done is gone and forgotten. And nothing you can possibly do will change any of that. What can a man possibly hope to accomplish in the brief moment of sunshine that is a life?
Hey, that goes for me too, and I have a palace filled with naked concubines. I’ve got massive armies of soldiers and the wisest men in the world, just hanging around, eating my pineapple. Doesn’t matter. The day will come when all that will be gone, I will be forgotten, and everything I ever did with my wealth and power will not have made one donkey turd’s worth of difference to the world.
Everything’s temporary. There’s an occasion for everything you can think of. A time to be born, a time to die. A time to cry and a time to dance. A time for war and a time for peace. It’s all happened before and it will all happen again. There’s nothing new under the sun and nothing you do can change the heaving tide of history for more than a second or two. The world is nothing but a huge fad.
So if you can’t change the world, you might as well make yourself happy, right? Nope. That’s pointless, too. Gorging yourself with food just makes you gluttonous, filling your head with knowledge just makes you aware of your own ignorance, and hoarding money just makes you greedier. Service to God isn’t a bad idea, just don’t expect any reward for your efforts.
It doesn’t matter how great you are, or how much of a legacy you think you have created for yourself, when all is said and done, you will die like everything else and that will be the end of you. It is better to be a living dog than a dead lion.
Trust me, it doesn’t matter what you come up with to do with your life, in the end, it all turns to dust. You can’t even take solace in knowing the truth.
The truth is that it’s better to cry real tears than to fake laughter. Better to be a sinner who surprises himself with goodness than a righteous man who disappoints himself with sin. Better to be condemned by a wise man than praised by idiots. How is anyone supposed to make sense of the truth?
It’s enough to make one cynical, I know, but don’t give in to cynicism just yet. For I will let you in on one more secret I’ve discovered during my long and meaningless lifetime:
Just because life is pointless, that doesn’t mean you get to sit around all day moaning about it. There’s still work to be done. You should still help the oppressed, take care of the abandoned, and make each other happy if and when you can. Just because there’s no point to any of it doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.
Song of Songs
(aka Song of Solomon)
The king is so hot. I love it when he gives me one of his “palace tours” that ends in the bedroom. Although, it’s a little embarrassing, walking around the palace. Everyone stares at me because I’m so tanned and poor and it’s obvious to all of them I’m just some chick who works in the fields. But I don’t care. Let them stare. Maybe they need to see what a happy woman looks like.
The king is so sweet. And did I mention that he’s hot? He lets me eat in the banquet hall and he feeds me raisins and apples. And on top of it all, he’s an amazing kisser. I’m going to faint just thinking about him! Last night, I kept waking up, wishing he were in my bed. When morning came, I went into town, just so I could catch a glimpse of him. He was riding around in his golden carriage with like sixty bodyguards.
He’s such a showoff!
Did I tell you what he said to me the other night? H
e said my eyes were like doves and my hair was like a flock of goats. Oh. My. God. I thought I was going to melt! He said my teeth were like sheep (don’t ask, he has a thing about animal metaphors) and that my boobs were like a pair of gazelles. I’m pretty sure that was meant as a compliment. And then (I think I’m going to explode!), he asked me to go away with him! He said my love was his wine and my body was his fruit. Let’s just say there was a lot of wine and fruit tasting going on that night.
When the morning came, I felt like I never wanted to leave or get dressed. I just wanted to stay in bed with him forever. But when I rolled over to say good morning, he was already gone. The palace staff totally turned on me once the king had left. They beat me, tore my clothes and gave me the bum’s rush out of the palace. I don’t care, though, that ivory body and those sweet lips have me wanting more.
I ran into him later, and again he went on about how my love was wine, my hair was goats and my body was fruit (in fact, he went straight for my clusters of grapes, if you know what I mean). Again, he asked me to leave town with him. He said that he wished he could be more in the open about our relationship, that he could introduce me to his mother. I don’t know if he’s serious or if he’s just feeding me a line, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m in love and not even a river can wash that feeling away. Oh, I know this has almost no chance of ending well, but I can endure anything if I can just be in love while doing it.
Part Four
The Major Prophets
In which Isaiah gets work as a motivational speaker, Jeremiah’s poetry submissions are rejected, and Ezekiel is the victim of an alien abduction.
The salad days were over. God was feeling hurt and betrayed by his chosen people. The tiny Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judah were surrounded on three sides by the superpowers of the ancient world: Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria. The only question seemed to be which of these three empires they would be conquered by. This is where the prophets came in. Other than Isaiah, whose advice was actually sought by the government, most of the prophets were guys who just wandered in from the desert to tell the kings how awful and incompetent they were. This represented a shift in the literary culture.
Before, during the boom times, the kings snapped up the literate men and put them to work as scribes: keeping records, writing histories, telling the world how great the kings were. Once the kingdoms became two petty puppet states, and there was no more cheese in the cupboard for struggling writers, the literary culture totally changed. Now, the writing was coming from disgruntled prophets, eating crickets and self-publishing their pamphlets in the desert.
Needless to say, the prophets weren’t very popular. They usually ended up being rode out of town on a camel, or dumped down a well.
One book which doesn’t really fit that mold is Daniel. Daniel was written hundreds of years after the events it describes. It was written during the Greek occupation of Israel, not the earlier Babylonian occupation in which it takes place. The Greeks were always pressuring the Jews to assimilate. They banned circumcised dudes from the gymnasiums and outlawed kosher diets. As such, Daniel was probably written to be an after-school special to teach fellow Jews the value of resisting the pressure to worship Greek gods, or to have reconstructive surgery on their penises in hopes of getting a gym membership.
Isaiah
The King of Judah walked up to the podium and addressed his advisers.
“Okay, can everybody hear me? As you all know, Israel has been conquered by the Assyrians, meaning that we are now the sole remaining Jewish kingdom. As you can see from the situation map, we have the Assyrians coming down at us from the north, the Babylonians heading straight for us from the east, and then we got the Egyptians coming up from the south. Basically, we’re caught in the middle of a Sumerian standoff between the three most powerful empires in the world. Needless to say, things are… uh, things are a little iffy. So to give us some much needed confidence, I have asked a motivational prophet to come speak to us today. Let’s all give a warm welcome to the Prophet Isaiah.”
(Applause.)
“I want you all to be honest with me,” Isaiah asked, looking for a show of hands, “how many of you feel like winners? Not many, huh? Well, I can understand why. You all saw the shit-stomping Israel got and you’re wondering ‘Are we next?’ You’re surrounded on all sides by enemies bigger and stronger than yourself. Why wouldn’t you be scared?
“But I’m here to tell each and every one of you that YOU ARE A WINNER! Not because of anything you’ve done. Not because you’re rich, or powerful, or have a full head of hair. No, you’re winners for one reason and one reason only…you are God’s chosen people.
“And how does a winner behave? A winner acts like he belongs. He doesn’t cower.
He doesn’t find a daddy to protect him. He stands on his own two feet. I’ve seen scared nations before and I know what they do. They curry favor. They adopt foreign gods. They make alliances with foreign nations that don’t have their best interest at heart, and then they’re surprised when their protectors turn on them.
“I’m going to say this just once: you CANNOT trust foreigners to protect you. If you join forces with one of these empires and it loses a war to one of the others, the winner is going to see us as a hostile nation and invade.
And even if you join forces with the winning empire, once it realizes it no longer needs you, it will invade.
“Let me see if I can put this in terms anyone can understand: There is a chicken named Judah. This unlucky chicken happens to live in a cul de sac where its neighbors are an alligator, a lion and a coyote. Judah the chicken would like to go on living. Who should he trust to save him? A) The alligator. B) The lion. C) The coyote or D) the Almighty God. As naive as this may sound to you, the answer is actually D. The chicken should trust in God. And do you know why? Because God is the only choice WHO DOESN’T EAT CHICKEN!
“Nobody respects a loser, and a winner does not beg for protection. So the only way to convince people you’re a winner is to stand tall. It’s not camel-science, people!
“But, Isaiah, you might ask, suppose they do invade us. How do I convince God to save us from annihilation? I can’t even convince my wife to give me a foot rub!”
(Laughter.)
“The answer, as always, is simple: you get God to save you by being a people worth saving. All God wants from you, all he’s ever wanted, is your love and respect.
Now, some of you believe that God is just one among many gods. So you feel like you can choose to worship him or some idol the same way you would pick out a hat to wear to a party. And many of you who stay true to God only do so because you think he’s better than the other gods. Well, at the risk of shocking you, I’m here to tell you that Jehovah is not just the best god, he’s the ONLY god!
“I have news for you. When you have to carve an idol out of balsa wood so it can tell you what to do, you’re not worshiping a god. You’re worshiping a puppet. You have to question the intelligence of someone who worships a god he made in shop class. A man who whittles a god out of a tree branch and then uses the rest of the tree for firewood has two things: a pile of firewood and crap. If anything, he should worship the firewood, at least that will keep him warm at night.
“But at least the heathens don’t know any better. How you people, after witnessing God save your broccoli in the desert, after seeing him lead you out of Egypt and perform miracles before your very eyes, how you keep betting on golden calves and wooden idols is the real mystery.
“So, in summary, it doesn’t make sense to make deals with any foreign rulers. You’re merely choosing who gets to eat you. If you don’t want to be eaten, then make your alliance with God. Put away your idols, show God some respect, and everything will be bananas foster. And remember: YOU. ARE. A. WINNER. Thank you all and goodnight!”
Isaiah pumped his fist in the air and walked off the stage to raucous applause. Everyone poured to the front of the room to shake his hand. The king th
anked him for coming by. Once Isaiah had left the room, the door was closed and the king turned to his advisers.
“Pretty great, huh?” the king asked.
“Yeah, that guy was amazing!” they concurred.
“So, what do you think? Should we take Isaiah’s advice?” The king asked.
“Are you nuts? We have to make an alliance. He’s a great motivational prophet and all, but come on, we have to live in the real world. Divine Intervention isn’t a foreign policy.”
So the king called up the Assyrians and made a deal. Judah became a puppet state, and the king basically became the regional manager for a hot and dusty corner of the Assyrian Empire. As Isaiah predicted, this arrangement didn’t work out very well. Before long, both Assyria and Judah were conquered by Babylon. The Babylonians carted away Judah’s treasure and led the Jews away in chains.
“Well, you win some and you lose some,” Isaiah mused. “Despite it all, I’m still pretty optimistic. God didn’t choose us as his people, give us laws, and bring us out of Egypt just so we could serve drinks and carry fruit trays in Babylon.
He chose us so the rest of the world could know God.
“Someday we’ll return to our homeland. Someday, a woman will give birth to a child named ‘Immanuel,’ who will free us from foreign rule. He’ll be a wise king, the sort of king who listens to somebody whose job title is ‘Prophet.’ Someday, we won’t have any kings at all. God will rule the Earth and put an end to all this war, corruption and greed.
“Someday,” Isaiah sighed
Jeremiah
The last years of Judah’s existence were a very precarious time. The great empires of the world were closing in on their tiny little borders, and their future as an independent nation was in grave doubt. Yet everyone wanted to believe that God would save them and that, somehow, everything would turn out all right.
God Is Disappointed In You Page 8
