Old Testament Lore. Norman M. Chansky

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      I swoon thinking about how beautiful it had been to make babies with you.

      I felt young again. You nodded blankly. Did you understand the words of my heart?

      How tender you had been to the infant Cain and later to the baby Abel.

      Both drank of my milky breasts. I tingled with joy as they nursed at my teats.

      You held each babe in your arms; in a voice like the nightingale you sang hymns to God.

      How, frightened yourself, you confronted the wild cat poised to menace our babies.

      When they grew up you taught them so much:

      How to sow, how to reap, how to tend sheep, how to build, and, above all, how to pray.

      How pained you were when Cain took Abel’s life away. You said nothing. You were wooden.

      Can any difference between Children of God be so chafing as to justify murder?

      We lost a child. What did Cain gain?

      Marked by God, he wandered in fear, in guilt, and in grief.

      You hurt, too, but you wanted to be with him to soften his pain.

      They were such dear children. Heartaches they gave us, though.

      They were a crucible mixing jealousy, strife, rage, and, above all, love.

      Seth made up for the two of them. We could count on him to make us smile.

      The jokes he would tell about the tiger and the leopard.

      And he made us feel proud, too. So gentle, so methodical, so wise.

      Abel never left your mind, though.

      You must have been sensing your oncoming death,

      Hugging a dead donkey lying along the path and calling it Abel.

      Your eyes clouded up and droplets of tears fell to the ground.

      I, too, had a foreboding,

      But I did not know when would be your last breath.

      God Keeps us guessing, or, perhaps, Has us cling to a thin thread of hope

      That we still can be of use tomorrow. We are to make every moment count.

      And how useful you had once been! Your hands were not always so calloused.

      In Eden they had been as smooth as rose petals.

      After we were evicted, they became rough making axes

      And calloused felling trees, stripping bark, building a home.

      How arduous it was to break clods of earth, muddy from the seasonal rains.

      But you did all those things.

      By the sweat of your brow did you plant and reap grain.

      By the sweat of your brow did we eat bread.

      Then there were sheep to shear and clothes to sew.

      How cleverly you planned for the cold and the drought.

      You did all things without complaint and with no thought of receiving praise.

      Praise God, you would say. Thank God, you would proclaim.

      It was for the family’s welfare that you labored.

      Then you were chilled. When you trembled I warmed you with an elephant leaf;

      Then you trembled and I rubbed your arms with lamb’s wool.

      Then you lifted submerged feelings sleeping since the loss of our boys

      And grew agitated with agony and morose with melancholy.

      Then your brain exploded. Your thoughts scattered hither and thither.

      Your mind was chaos. Your heart stopped beating and your face turned cold.

      Ours was True Love and I will cherish your memory until stars lose their glitter.

      Eve kissed Adam’s stone, lifeless lips and sobbed, “good bye my best friend.”

      Out of Evil Cometh Good In Time

      And it came to pass that Cain left the Sight of God and drifted to the land of the wanderers, east of Eden. And Cain made love to his wife and she became pregnant and bore Enoch. Gen IV, 16–17.

      The penitent Cain took a wife who begat Enoch

      Whose son, Irad, cleansed his father’s sin and begat Mehujael

      Who cleansed his grandfather’s sin and begat Methushael

      Who cleansed the world of his great-grandfather’s sin and begat Lamech, the pure,

      Who begat three sons who expanded God’s Creation:

      Jabal bred horses and cattle;

      Jubal taught the world to play the harp and flute;

      And Tubal worked bronze and iron.

      From these three grew economics, art, and science.

      Noah, the Hero

      In ancient Greek lore the hero, either a human elevated to the status of the divine or a demoted divine, was revered as a demigod. Often he was perceived as a ghost to be appeased. In contrast the hero in Biblical literature was no demigod nor someone to be feared. Noah is the exemplar of the Biblical hero. He was a man righteous in his generation but fallible. To the ancient Hebrews, heroes were persons of valor. As humans they erred but as heroes they transcended the ordinary.

      From the very beginning the humans that God Created had cavorted with truancy. Adam and Eve were disobedient and Cain took his brother’s life. Generations to come developed the arts and technology but they also lived by stealth. Jealous of one another the farmers tried to vanquish shepherds. It is apparent that the species God Created could destroy itself. God, according to the Bible, Became so repulsed by humans that Creation was inundated by a flood.

      The Flood legend is found in many cultures ranging from the American Indian to the Icelandic and to the Chinese and Japanese. Closest to the Noah tale is the Sumerian. King Ziusudra is forewarned about the impending flood and builds a boat. There is a deluge after which Utu, the son god, appears. Ziusudra is saved and offers sacrifices to Utu. This tale made its way into the famed Epic of Gilgamesh. Although the Noah tale may have borrowed some of the essentials from the Sumerian, the Noah version has a different argument: Noah was spared so that a new and more moral civilization would take root. Noah made a sacrifice, too. God, however, Regretted having Flooded Creation and Decided never to repeat that error. However, even after the flood waters subsided the descendants of Noah did not cleanse their weaknesses СКАЧАТЬ