I’d certainly say that the Old Testament God was more
macho, which seems to associate well with being
cool.
Gangsta-rappers are cool.
The Salvation Army may be good, but it ain’t cool.
The OT God was very much aware of the coolness level of his
homeboys, and didn’t let them take any shit from no one. In
Kings 2 Chapter 2, when
Elisha, an Old Testament prophet, was walking in the direction of
Bethel, the following happened:
23 :
And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
Now, as we said, The Lord don’t let his homies take no such crap (for being called a bald-head was probably very offensive), so:
24 :
And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
This seems to imply that calling one of The Big Guy’s gang a baldhead entails terrible punishment. Just to make sure, however, I went to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary and checked what to “tare” means. It reads:
to ascertain or mark the tare of; especially : to weigh so as to determine the tare
Where Something’s tare seems to mean:
a deduction from the gross weight of a substance and its container made in allowance for the weight of the container; also : the weight of the container
So I figure that is really cool – some kids offend your friend, so you get two she bears to walk out of the woods and weigh them to see what they’re lacking to make room for their containers. Sounds like an exciting metaphor to checking the children’s supplication to the temptations of their flesh, or something. Alas, checking the original text (Hebrew) seems to show that the person translating Kings 2 (in this case, King James Version) did not surf to www.m-w.com before using the term “tare”, and that the kids did get ripped to shreds.
Yes blaaf, I know The Bible both in English and in Hebrew, I knew where to find these blessed quotes, and I needed to go to Merriam-Webster to find out what "tare" meant here. Exactly :-)