Thursday, May 19, 2011

Isaiah, Chapters 14 & 15: The single most influential chapter in the entire bible

Chapter 14

The Babylonians will enslave the Israelites then be enslaved in their turn and their king will be sent to hell. Apparently we get the one and only reference to Lucifer in the entire bible: How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! (v. 12), which must make this one verse the most influential in the entire book, given how much press it has generated. Oh, and he's going to punish his children as well, natch, because heaven forbid we should let that go unsaid.

There are also some threats for Assyria, the most interesting of which is that a serpent is going to give birth to a cockatrice, which is going to give birth to a fiery flying serpent (v. 29), which I guess is then going to destroy all of Palestine so its people can be free.

Chapter 15

Moab's fate is that all the men are going to get alopecia. The weaving industry is going to go to pot and they'll be forced to wear sackcloth. This vain group of early metrosexuals will then run around wailing at their lack of co-ordinating separates.

Then there are some boilerplate threats: withered fields, people scattered, blah, blah, blah, but at last god will make the rivers run with blood and lions will eat the survivors.

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