Biblical Sex Toys?!?

His son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, which is, you know, just what they called it.

Don’t, don’t mix your grains and your grapes. We, we don’t need to do that in the same place. There’s plenty of room. Why are we doing that?

You’re not beating out your wheat there in the wine press again, are you, Gideon?

These boys been beating the wheat in my wine press.

Damn it, Gideon.

Been whacking in my camper. Okay, we need to go on.

Hey everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you’re listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the Bible. How go things today, Dan?

Things are good. It’s a beautiful day. You went golfing. I did. I went for a lovely walk. Excellent. Now it’s time to combat some misinformation. Actually, we’re not going to do a lot of misinformation combating this week. We’re just going to have some fun with the Bible.

We’re going to lean into the first part of our mission statement. We’re going to increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion by addressing a couple of passages from the Hebrew Bible.

Yes, indeed. The first thing we’re going to talk about, we’re going to hit a judge, one of the judges of Judges.

And that’ll be fun. We’re going to talk about Gideon. And I’ll tell you what, when you first type Gideon into— if you type Gideon into Google, you don’t— I thought I was going to be clever and type Gideon Bible into Google, and that is a whole other thing. The Gideon Bible is its own thing. So you have to type Gideon in the Bible, and then you get Judges 6 . So we’ll get to that. That’s our chapter and verse. And then in the latter half of the show, you’re gonna want to stick around for this. It’s our Twisted Scripture segment. And I’ll just say that we teased it a few weeks ago. We talked about it, we said we were going to look into it. It is in Ezekiel, Ezekiel and it’s, uh, naughty. So you’re gonna wanna— you’re gonna wanna stay tuned for that action. But first, let’s do a chapter and verse. Uh, in this chapter and verse, we’re— like I said, we’re in Judges chapter 6 through 8.

6 through 8. Yeah, we’re talking about, about this Gideon fellow, although he gets another name partway through.

Well, and this is interesting because the narrative is like he gets another name, but a lot of scholars are like, it sounds like that was his name originally, and they just wrote a narrative to explain why he has a name that seems dedicated to a problematic deity. But we’ll get to that. Yeah.

Yeah. Because it ends— I don’t want to give too much away, but his name is something something Baal. Yeah, as in the god Baal.

Baal, yes. Yes.

B-A-A-L.

Anyway, get those nasty Baals out of your mouth.

That’s the second segment of the show, Dan. Come on. So, okay, so let’s start out with who was this guy?

Well, Gideon was the son of Joash, but I want to start at the beginning of chapter 6 because we have— chapter 5 ends with, “And the land had rest 40 years.” Ah, everybody’s able to— the land is able to relax and take a breath.

Everybody chills. Yes, 40 years is about the right amount of time for everybody to sort of forget all of the good lessons that they’ve learned.

And, uh, and, and think that everything’s cool forever and then start doing dumb stuff.

Way to edit yourself there.

Um, and nothing happened. What are you talking about?

And then chapter 6 starts the way all of the new stories start in Judges. The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

And so, oh, you, you wacky, fickle Israelites.

Yeah. And so then God gives them into the hands of Midian for 7 years. And Midian would be this territory that’s kind of south-southeast of Israel, so other side of the Jordan, but further down south, kind of on the east side of the Gulf of Aqaba. So this is where Moses is supposed to have met up with Jethro, his father-in-law, got training in priesthood and all this kind of stuff. So the relationship of Israel to Midian is an interesting one. But when you get to verse 7, it says, “When the Israelites cried to the Lord on account of the Midianites, the Lord sent a prophet to the Israelites.”

And I said to you, “I am the Lord your God. You shall not pay reverence to the gods of the Amorites in whose land you live, but you have not given heed to my voice.” And immediately after that, we get Gideon. And as I was reading that, it sounds a little different from the rest of the narrative, but in the SBL Study Bible, there are actually double brackets.

Yeah, I’m seeing that around there in the NRSVUE as well.

Yeah, yeah. So I was like, huh, that’s usually where something has been added in. Like, this is the long ending of Mark, the story of the woman taken in adultery—those passages have the double brackets around it as well. And I looked down at the note, and it looks like there’s a Qumran manuscript, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, just straight up doesn’t have verses 7 through 10. So we’ve got a little text-critical how’s-your-father going on there. So, and I haven’t pulled up the manuscript to see if there’s a case to make for like some kind of haplography, which would be where maybe in the copying of the text, the scribe accidentally left four verses out. Like, that’s a lot to leave out. You usually don’t see that, but maybe that’s why, but I think what that indicates is that somebody actually threw this in afterwards.

This is a secondary addition to this.

Yeah, it does feel very like just sort of a preachy moment that doesn’t advance the story at all or anything like that. It’s just sort of a—like a reminder. Yeah.

And it sounds kind of Deuteronomistic.

It’s using the language that Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history uses. This “I brought you up from Egypt, gol darn it,” because it uses “gol darn it,” and that is a distinctly Deuteronomistic rural word.

What is the ancient Hebrew for “gol darn it” again? I’m trying to remember.

You got to be able to pronounce the “ch.” Yeah, it’s just “ch.” Just like Gomorrah is actually Amorah. It is an ayin and it’s not a G. Oh my goodness. But anyway, and she was also in the Guardians of the Galaxy. Now you get to verse 11 and you have, “The angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress,” which is just what they called it.

Um, yeah, that confused me because it’s like this whole threshing thing, but like, why are you threshing? Don’t, don’t mix your grains and your grapes. We, we don’t need to do that in the same place. There’s plenty of room. Why are we doing that?

You’re not beating out your wheat there in the winepress again, are you, Gideon?

These boys been beating the wheat in my winepress.

Damn it, Gideon.

Been whacking in my camper. Okay. We need to go on.

And it says the angel of the Lord appeared to him suddenly. He’s just beating his wheat and the angel pops up.

Oh, that is the worst. When an angel shows up right when you’re beating your wheat, that is, you don’t want that. But okay.

It says “The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.”

He’s apparently impressed by what he saw.

And Gideon went, “Ah!”

Oh my, we are getting silly, sir. Yes, we are being silly. It’s been a very serious episode, so we need to be far more serious about this.

So we get this back and forth between the angel of the Lord and Gideon, and you have some odd things because it says the angel of the Lord said this, the angel of the Lord said that, Gideon said this, and then verse 14, we’re in the middle of this. Gideon’s like, “Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has cast us off and given us into the hand of Midian.” And then verse 14 says, “Then the Lord turned to him and said, ‘Go in this might of yours, you wheat beater, and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. I hereby commission you.’” And Gideon responds, “But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” The Lord said to him.

Right, right.

And it’s just going back and forth. And then we’re going to get to Gideon’s sign. But there’s something interesting going on here. I and other scholars have published arguments, because when you look in the Greek translation of this, the Septuagint, the verses that have angel of the Lord versus just Lord are not identical. They switch them up a little bit. Okay. And this is an indication that maybe the word angel there is a later addition, an interpolation, if you will. In other words, the story is originally Adonai is the one who shows up and goes, “Zah! " And sorry, “Zah! " comes from an old Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie. It came out before I realized that nobody was going to get that reference except my wife, who doesn’t listen to our show anyway.

Rude. She’s rude.

Manos: The Hands of Fate, by the way, is the particular episode. And so an editor has probably come in here and written in Malak, angel, in order to muddy the waters a bit regarding who it is that’s talking to Gideon.

Because it’s theologically problematic that the Lord would appear to him.

Yeah. And because Gideon is— wants to give the Lord a gift, a present, he goes into his house. He’s like, wait right here, and runs into his house, comes back prepared a kid, which would be an animal, and unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour. The meat he put in a basket and the broth he put in a pot and brought them to him under the oak and presented them. And the angel tells him, “Put them on this rock, pour out the broth. " Then the angel of the Lord reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes, and fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes, and the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight. So God has a staff in their hand, and God is like, boop, and consumes everything. Right, flames. Yeah. A pillar of fire. And so it’s a little problematic to have God showing up with his staff, uh, uh, going, hey, what’s up?

I was just under the shade of that tree. I heard you beating your wheat in here and, uh, came to say you’ve got, you’ve got quite the arm there. I mean, I think we could use you.

It makes sense to me because right immediately after what you just said, in verse 22, uh, it says, then Gideon perceived that it was the angel of the Lord, and Gideon said, help me, Lord God, for I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face. And that struck me as weird, because they see angels all the time, and nobody’s worried about it. But they’re scared. They’re terrified of seeing the Lord.

So it’s so— yeah, it makes total sense to me. Like, this whole chapter makes way more sense if we take away the word angel.

Yeah. And it’s just God who shows up as God, because there’s, there’s like, it kind of defeats the point. You’re not supposed to be able to see God’s face and live according to Exodus 33:20 . That’s what God tells Moses, God’s like, I’m going to cover your face when you walk by and I’ll take my hand away and you’ll see my back, but you’re not going to see my face. And, and so you have all these instances where somebody is like, oh, we’ve seen God and they’re terrified, but they don’t die. And it kind of defeats the point of using a messenger as an intermediary. You know, I don’t want to kill them, so I’m going to send a messenger and then like they look at the messenger and die and like, “Crap, we didn’t think this through. " There’s no reason that seeing an angel would threaten your life. But then God’s like, “No, no, no, don’t worry about it.

Don’t worry.

We’ll make an exception for you. " Yeah. And so these stories, we’ve got Hagar, we’ve got Moses, we’ve got Gideon. In Judges 13 , we’re going to have Manoach and his wife who are the parents of Samson. Same exact thing. ‘Angel of the Lord! ’ And then they go, ‘Ah, we have seen God and we’re going to die,’ but they don’t die. And this place to this day— and this is some of the language of the Deuteronomistic literature and other literature that gives away that these stories were not written when they happened, because it says, ‘Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and called it The Lord is Peace. ’ to this day it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites. So this is something from hoary antiquity, and you know, you can still go see it down to this day. So this is something that they’re writing about much later.

Right. So yeah, there’s even, even though Gideon is the lowest on the totem pole at his house, and his house is not a big deal, and he’s just like, what the heck? Okay, I’ll go do it.

Sounds kind of like David, like, I’m the youngest.

Right, right, right. Yeah, everybody loves an underdog story.

Yes. And then the first thing though, that Gideon has got to do that night, the Lord said to him, “Take your father’s bull, the second bull, seven years old.” Don’t take the first bull.

That’s just—go steal your dad’s car, but take the bad one.

The second one. Yeah.

Not the good one.

Leave the gun. “And pull down the altar of Baal that belongs to your father and cut down the sacred pole,” and that is the Asherah, “that is beside it and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold there in proper order. Then take the second bull, offer it as a burnt offering.” And he does it at night just so he doesn’t catch the attention and catch any hands.

He sneaks it. Yeah, he’s a sneak.

Yeah, but this is interesting because we’re getting altars to Adonai all over the place. This is prior to the—well, this is after Deuteronomy, ostensibly, if you’re following the canon, this is supposed to be after God is like, “Don’t build anything anywhere except for the place that I will choose,” hint, hint, Jerusalem. But they’re having, you know, the Lord appears to Gideon and Gideon’s like, “Altar!” And then the Lord’s like, “Go build an altar.” “Altar!” And so we’ve got altars popping up all over the place to worship Adonai.

So first we got to take down Baal and Asherah.

Right. So we take them down the next day. Everybody wakes up and they’re like, “Huh? Pourquoi? And who hath done this?” And after searching and inquiring, they were told Gideon, son of Joash, did it. So they go to Joash. They say, “Bring out your son so that he may die, for he has pulled down the altar of Baal and cut down the sacred pole beside it.” And Joash, according to the text, it’s Joash’s stuff—the altar of Baal that belongs to your father.

So it’s Joash’s stuff, but Joash is just kind of like, well, you got to do what you got to do, and just lets it go. Joash said, “Will you contend for Baal, or will you defend his cause? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because his altar has been pulled down.” And this is the story, because the name Jerubbaal means “Baal contends.” Right. But, and this seems to probably have been Gideon’s original name.

Right.

Well, let’s tell a story that changes the significance of the name. And so now the name kind of becomes “Let Baal contend.” Right, or “Contend against Baal” or something like that.

Or something like that, yeah. Because we’ve heard names that mean “X god contends” before.

Well, that’s what Israel probably means.

Right, exactly. It’s “El contends.” So it’s interesting to hear it in this context now. But with a different god as the sort of the subject.

And so verse 32 says, “Therefore on that day Gideon was called Jerubbaal, that is to say, ‘Let Baal contend against him because he pulled down his altar.’” So, you know, that’s what you do when somebody destroys an altar to a deity. You name them after that deity, but in a way that sticks it to the deity. That makes tons of sense.

Yeah. So the more likely theory that you’re espousing is that his name was Jerubbaal, because he probably worshipped Baal. And well, yeah, and so he had a name, or he was part of a group that worshipped Baal. So it made sense to give him a theophoric—is that right?

That’s right. Yeah, it works.

See, I learned, I learned some things. But it makes sense to give him a theophoric name with Baal in the name. Because that would’ve just been natural.

Yeah. And Baal just means Lord or Master.

Right.

Or husband. We’re going to just slide right on by that. And when we get to Hosea, we can talk more about that. But so it could be a title for Adonai. For all we know, he was given this name and named after Adonai. And here’s what I think gives away the store. In chapter 7, it says, “Then Jerubbaal,” parenthetically, “that is Gideon.” So the narrator is kind of like, “Now remember, remember, this is the other guy,” when he’s telling this story that is talking about Jerubbaal. And so what I think happened is the editors have this story about Jerubbaal, and they’re like, well, we got this Gideon guy. Let’s fold him in. You just fold him in. And then, you know, every time it calls him Jerubbaal, you just say, that’s a reference to Gideon. And then we’ll tell a story about why Gideon had this secondary name added to him, you know, which happens to everybody.

Every time somebody does something cool, they then give you that other name that occasionally is the only name they know for you. So I think that’s probably part of the editorial layering going on here. And so now we have Gideon who’s been commissioned by God. You’ll recall he did the jazz fingers. And he’s got to go against the Midianites. And we’ve got a couple of ways that Gideon is going to figure out how to do this.

First, Gideon is like, “I need some signs, man.” Yeah, this was, this was a little baffling to me because he called, he says to God, I mean, he met the guy, he saw the magic rock flames trick.

But he still says to God, hey, if I’m going to do this, you’re going to have to give me some signs, uh, proving that you’re you and blah, blah, blah. And he does this whole thing with the fleece. But before we get to the fleece, aren’t there places in the Bible that specifically say, don’t ask for signs?

Yes, yes. And. And this is probably because they. The. The notion developed that you should have enough faith to not ask God to prove it to you.

Right.

But then we’ve got a bunch of places where God is like, you want to sign? I’ll give you a sign where people are like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And God’s like, you. And here we have—.

No, no, no, there’s no no, no, no, no, no here. This is just a, here, I’m going to tell you exactly what I want you to do.

And if you do it, then maybe I’ll believe, or maybe I’ll make you do the opposite of it, and then I’ll believe.

Because he— because, because— and so what he does, just quickly, is that he, he lays a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. Because I guess the wine press was not available at the time. And he said, “If there’s dew on the fleece alone and not on the ground, then I know that it’s you, that you’re going to deliver Israel as you have said, blah, blah, blah.” And that happens. There’s no dew on the ground. He squeezes a full bowl of water out of the fleece.

And then he’s like, okay, but like, let’s do it again, only reverse it. And this time, no dew in the fleece and dew all over the ground. And then, then I’ll definitely believe you. So calling for two signs, that just seems like it’s pure balls at this point.

That just seems like it’s— Yeah. And he’s being humble about it. He’s like, please don’t be mad at me. Just your humble and obedient servant would like you to do another sign.

And then, uh, there we have 30,000, I think, troops that they marshal, which is obviously not, uh, how many people they had available to them back then. Uh, but God is that—.

I look, I’ve never known, it’s not obvious to me because I’ve never known, like, I’ve always been confused about the numbers of people. I always imagine that these are smallish villages and whatever.

But then you see numbers like 30,000 troops and you’re like, oh, That’s way bigger than I thought it was. Yeah. But that’s probably not right then, is what you’re saying?

Correct.

Yeah. It’s going to be a lot smaller than that. These are little villages for the most part.

I’ve always been so confused about that. You get these huge numbers and it just sounds so wrong. Yeah.

And so the Lord says to Gideon, the troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into your hand. Would only take the credit away from me, saying my own hand has delivered me. So the idea here is you’re going to rout them just by pure numbers alone, and then they’re not going to attribute the victory to me.

Right.

You know, and, uh, and so God’s like, send some of them home. And so Gideon is like, if you’re afraid, you can go home. And 20,000 men, uh, are like, thanks, great, thanks. “Alright, I’m out of here.” And so there are 10,000 left and God is like, “Still too many.” Which is crazy, but yes, okay.

I mean, God really wants to pare this down.

Yeah, and so here we have this weird thing and we’re not sure, we’re still not sure exactly what’s going on here, but God is like, “Hey, take them down to the water. I want to show you something.” “Tell everybody to go get a drink.” Yeah, get a drink. And if they just, slurp the water straight out of the, uh, of the, the lake, the whatever, the river, uh, put them in one side. If they use their hand to cup water and slurp from their hand, they’re on the other side. And then you’re gonna send all the hand slurpers home so that it’s just the people who bent down and knelt down to drink.

Um, I think you got it backwards. I think the hand people are the ones who stay.

Uh, with the— all those who lap the water with their tongues as a dog laps, you will put to one side. All those who kneel down to drink, put in their hands to their mouths, you should put to the other side. Um, and then the Lord said to Gideon, with the 300 who lapped, I will deliver you and give the Midianites into your hand.

Right. Okay.

Yeah. I got confused. It’s a confused— like, though, it’s a very confusing test.

Yes. And we’re not sure exactly what it’s supposed to indicate.

Yeah, apparently lapping is a— lapping water like a dog is a good sign for a soldier.

Yeah, so there are 300 who lapped, and so we’ve whittled it down from 30,000 to 300. So we’ve got 10%, uh, or excuse me, uh, a lot less than that. Yeah, uh, I don’t know where my math went.

Don’t worry about it.

Okay, and, um, “And we’re gonna play a trick on the Midianites.” But first, Gideon’s gotta sneak down to the camp. The Midianites and the Amalekites, they were thick as locusts, and their camels were without number, countless as the sand on the seashore. And so he sneaks down and he hears a man telling a dream to his comrade. He said, “Comrade, I had a dream, and in it a cake of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian and came to the tent and struck it so that it fell.” fell, it turned upside down, and the tent collapsed. And his comrade answered, ‘This is no other than the sword of Gideon, son of Joash, a man of Israel. Into his hand God has given Midian and all the army.’ So Gideon’s like, ‘Yes.’ And that is a very weird thing for the Midianites to say.

Yeah, because that is, that is an— it like, how do they know that Gideon is the one that’s going to be coming against them. This seems like it’s a new thing, but I guess word has gotten back about the lapping soldiers or whatever, the famous lapping soldiers of Gideon. It just, it all seems very weird, but okay, sure. They had— apparently Gideon has some tough bread that knocks tents down.

Well, I— yeah, I think the idea is that the barley bread is supposed to represent Israel because they were big on barley.

They were big barley dudes.

They loved them some barley.

Yeah. And so what Gideon’s idea is, okay, everybody get a trumpet and a jar.

Here’s your trumpet, here’s your jar. So all 300 of the guys, nobody grab a sword. Everybody just grab a trumpet and a jar and then a lantern.

Or so.

And he splits them into 3 companies of 100 each, and they basically are scattered around the Midianite camp. And at Gideon’s signal—.

This is at night, by the way. So presumably everybody’s asleep and they just sneak in and infiltrate the camp.

Yeah. And so when Gideon blows his trumpet, they’re all going to blow their trumpets and then they’re all going to smash the empty jars that they have. And I think the idea here is probably to give the Midianites the perception of significantly inflated numbers.

Right.

The idea being, you know, you only have one trumpeter per 10, 50, 100 soldiers or whatever. And so if you suddenly hear 300 trumpets, that’s a buttload of soldiers. And then the smashing of the jar, I guess, is supposed to make a really creepy sound that is supposed to freak them out.

Well, the sense that I got, because it says there’s torches inside the jars, So the sense that I got was that like they were— they had the jars over the torches to like keep it dark while they came in.

Yeah, broke the jars, holding in their left hands the torches and in their right hands the trumpets to blow.

So that suddenly it’s bright in the camp or something?

Well, well, they see all the— they— if, if that’s what’s going on, they would see all of the, the lights.

And that would give them the impression of they’re surrounded by by thousands and thousands of men. In other words, that they had the numbers they originally had. Right. That’s the impression that they want to give the Midianites.

Although what’s great is that instead of having actually those numbers with swords, they have 300 guys with no swords blowing trumpets. It just seems— it’s an interesting plan that the Lord has come up with for for Gideon and his 300.

And then they cried, or he cries out, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!” And everybody cries out and the Midianites run away.

And they cry out, “God for Harry and St. George!” or something. Yeah, so they all They basically just startle them into losing the battle.

Yeah. And it doesn’t— the text doesn’t say that God— I don’t think it says that God gave Gideon the idea. Gideon hears the telling of the dream and its interpretation. He returned to the camp of Israel and said, “Get up, for the Lord has given the army of Midian into your hand.” And then he divides the company and does all this. So it’s not clear from the text that God was like, “Okay, Gideon, get this. We’re going to freak them out.” It sounds like it was just Gideon’s idea, which makes me wonder if God was so upset about the soldiers not giving the credit to God because of their numbers, it sounds like Gideon could boast that it was really his idea all along.

Well, yeah, although—.

Except for the dream, the dream that was given to the the Midianite man.

In verse 22, it does say that, uh, the, the Midianites— is it the Midianites? Is that who we’re talking about? Yeah, I, I got confused there.

Oh, the— yeah, the Lord set every man’s sword against his fellow and against all.

Right, so, so they all just started fighting each other instead of fighting Gideon’s troops, which I think is pretty funny.

Uh, so he is playing a role.

Gideon basically just said, you guys go in there, scream a bunch, play your trumpets, and then stand there like torchbearers, and they’ll all just kill each other, and you just be like, “I’m just the guy with the torch.

Don’t kill me." And so anyway, we have Gideon and the 300. They’re pursuing them. They came to the Jordan. They cross over the Jordan, and then they’re looking for some help. They ask the people of Sukkot, “Give us some loaves of bread.” They’re exhausted. “I’m pursuing the kings of Midian, Zebah and Zalmunna.” and the people in Sukkot were like, you don’t look that hungry.

I don’t know about this. Yeah, they’ll get mad if you guys lose. They’re gonna get mad at us if we give you bread.

Yeah. And Gideon is like, ooh, you’re gonna get it when we get back. Um, and then they mess you up. Yep. Uh, once we get some bread in us, man, it’s over. We just need some carbs. Uh, so they’re— they, they continue along these, these routes, and there’s, uh, They catch up with Zebah and Zalmunna, and they give them what for. And then they come back and obviously kill all the people who were not nice to them.

Who didn’t give them bread.

Didn’t help them out. Didn’t do them a solid.

There’s no— it’s fascinating because now we’re in chapter 7 now, and in verse 10— We’re in chapter 8 now. Oh, chapter 8. That’s right. And in verse 10, it’s They catch up with Zebah and Zalmunna and their army, about 15,000 men.

And here there’s no, there’s no like real telling of how the element of surprise has vaporized.

How the 300 dudes managed— like, the first trick worked pretty good, but there’s no, there’s no knowledge of like how the 300 guys then handled the remaining, even though it’s a smaller number than it was before.

Yeah. And it says 120,000 men bearing arms had fallen. So 120,000.

Yeah. These guys were worse swordsmen than stormtroopers are shots.

Yeah. Significantly inflated.

Yeah, these guys are forever killing each other and themselves rather than—.

Yeah, and so Sukkot and then Peniel, or Penuel, they both say, “No, we’re not gonna help you,” and Gideon says to both of them, “Ooh, if I had a sword, I’m gonna get you so bad.” And so they go and they successfully defeat everybody, and come back and then obviously destroy the people of Sukkot and Penuel.

Obviously, because what else would you do?

Show mercy to them?

And then the Israelites said to Gideon, “Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also, for you have delivered us out of the hand of Midian.” And Gideon, as humble as he is, says, “I will not rule over you and my son will not rule over you. The Lord will rule over you, but— and we will just be the representation.”

We will just— that’s a cute little turn of phrase, but, um, but also, I don’t own all of these houses.

God owns the house. I’m just the steward.

Little Dave Ramsey throwback. Good. Uh, okay, so then, uh, but, but, but Gideon’s not done.

He’s—.

Like, his little, his little bout of hum— of humility does not last long because the very next thing he does is like, but by the way, give me like all the gold.

Yeah, uh, let me make a request of you. Each of you give me an earring he has taken as spoil, which is not, uh, not asking a ton. They’re, they’re plundering the, uh, everybody that they’re defeating, and he’s like, just, just an earring. Doesn’t even—.

Yeah, I mean, presumably these are the earrings of the warriors that they just defeated.

And, uh, and that means that there were hundreds of thousands of them. So yeah, if every man just gives one earring, it’s not going to be that big of a deal.

Yeah, they’ve got quite a lot of booty. And so it adds up to 1,700 shekels of gold. And then there’s a little parenthetical remark at the end of verse 26, apart from the crescents and the pendants and the purple garments worn by the kings of Midian and the collars that were on the necks of their camels. So yeah, they picked it clean.

They got some good booty there. They got some stuff. Those camel collars alone are worth a fortune.

And then Gideon takes that and makes an ephod out of it and puts it in his town in Ophrah. So an ephod, in Exodus, the ephod is like a priestly vestment, like a vest, the thing that goes over the tunic that is supposed to carry like the precious stones and things like this, but it also seems to be used to refer to some kind of divine image, some kind of tool of divination. So it’s a way to inquire of God, but it’s functioning like a divine image. And it’s kind of like that in Exodus because it seems like there’s a pouch and the Urim and Thummim go into the pouch. And according to ancient Jewish tradition, that was kind of how the priests divined God’s will, right? They used these seer stones, for lack of a better word, to somehow divine God’s will.

So the ephod, the priestly ephod, is functioning like a tool of divination as well.

But this can’t be that. I mean, you can’t have 1,700 shekels worth of gold in an ephod and wear that.

Yeah. And so there are scholars who think this is some kind of cult object that is not necessarily a vestment, whether it’s a standing stone or some kind of anthropomorphic statuary or whatever it might be. This has been put up in Ophrah, and all Israel prostituted themselves to it there. I’m going to look up what the word translated prostituted there is.

Yeah, because I saw that and was like, I don’t know what we’re talking about now. Because it does seem like to this point, Gideon hasn’t really done anything bad. He’s been great. And now suddenly, they’re using what seems to be a very negative word for what Israel is doing with this ephod.

It seems like the season finale of a TV show where the hero in the very last scene, you’re like going behind the— into his private time and then, you know, out of the shadows comes some kind of evil that is associated with your hero.

I love the KJV so much.

We’re gonna go a-whoring thither and yon. Yeah.

Hey, let’s go thither and a-whore.

All right, so have you been beating your wheat? No, I swear I’ve been a-whoring.

I’ve been a-whoring by the ephod. Yeah. So, okay, so Israel prostituted themselves to the ephod. Yeah.

And it became a snare.

Yeah. To Gideon and to his family.

So Midian was subdued before the Israelites and they lifted it. So it doesn’t say much after that. Like, it’s— yeah, he doesn’t seem to be condemned for it. It’s just noting, by the way, he made this thing and everybody was kind of a whore about it. And the end.

Yeah, this is what we got. And then we get the very next story. So the land had rest 40 years in the days of Gideon, and then we get the death of Gideon.

Yeah. So like, God doesn’t punish anybody for this prostituting before the ephod. He’s going to let them have it. They had a hard time with this battle, so might as well just let them have the— A little bit of—.

And we get in verse 29, it goes back to calling him Jerubbaal. “So Jerubbaal son of Joash went to live in his own house. Now Gideon had 70 sons, his own offspring, for he had many wives. His concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son, and he named him Abimelech. And he died at a good old age and was buried in the tomb of his father Joash at Ophrah. And as soon as Gideon died, the Israelites relapsed.” That’s it. Great rendering there, uh, NRSVUE. I wonder what relapses— that’s gotta, that’s gotta be shuv. It’s just gotta be returned. Yeah, um, yep, shuv. They returned and prostituted themselves with the Baals, making Baal-Berit their god, or Baal of the Covenant, Lord of the Covenant. The Israelites did not remember the Lord their God who had rescued them from the hand of all their enemies on every side, and they did not exhibit loyalty to the house of Jerubbaal. By the way, that’s Gideon.

In return for all the good that he had done to Israel. So, oh man, you ungrateful punks. Yeah, get off my lawn.

Yeah, you know, there’s a line in a very— in a poem that I love by E. E. Cummings called—.

Is that something about “Here I Sit All Brokenhearted”? No, no, no, that’s everyone.

I believe that one’s Robert Frost. But Cummings wrote something— the poem’s Humanity, i love you. And the very last stanza says something— this is a paraphrase, but it’s something along the lines of, humanity, i love you because you are continually finding the secret of life, putting it in your back pocket and sitting down on it.

Which is kind of— he didn’t capitalize any of the letters in that.

That’s right. That’s right. It does feel a little like the Israelites are continually figuring out the secret of life. Yeah. Uh, and then just 40 years later, they put it in their back pocket.

Yeah, we’re gonna— we’re gonna nail it into a crate and we’re gonna stuff it into a big, uh, a big warehouse and forget about it.

All right.

And thus endeth the story.

Here endeth the lesson. Yes. Yeah. All right, well, uh, I don’t know that we learned anything, uh, useful except there was a guy named either Gideon or not who did some stuff. All right, let’s move on to Twisted Scripture. Oh, and there are a few of our listeners who have been waiting for this one since we teased it a few weeks ago, but we are getting to— we— so we are in Ezekiel 16 , which you have mentioned a few times on our show because sort of towards the bottom of it is where we learn that Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed. Sodom and— sorry, and how is it pronounced?

Gomorrah?

It’s pronounced however you want to pronounce it.

However? Okay. I want to pronounce it Boston. Anyway, Sodom and its sister city were destroyed not because of of homosexuality, but rather because, uh, what was it? What am I— it’s, uh, I’m looking at— oh yeah, 49.

Your sister Sodom, uh, pride was in her, and she had an overabundance of bread and prosperous ease, uh, but she did not strengthen the hand of the poor and the needy and did abominations.

Yeah, so, uh, so yeah, the, the sin of Sodom is not helping the poor and needy.

And being haughty.

Haughty.

They don’t like haughtiness.

No, uh, which by the way refers to, uh, being high, uh, in the sense of exalting yourself. Cocky, arrogant.

Yeah, so, anyway, yeah. So that’s one thing about this. But there’s a very— there’s a much more fun thing about this particular chapter. The chapter starts with the Lord coming to our— who’s— who is the Lord coming to? Who’s writing this? Theoretically, it says the Lord came to me.

Yeah, well, this is Ezekiel.

Oh, it’s Ezekiel, right. Okay. So Ezekiel’s writing, and he says, “The word of the Lord came to me,” and then he goes into this very long— the Lord is doing a metaphor.

Yes. God is fond of metaphors.

Yes. And it’s a metaphor about Jerusalem. And Jerusalem in this metaphor is a lady. Starts out as a baby. And interestingly, this is God talking to Jerusalem and says, “Your origin and your birth were in the land of the Canaanites. Your father was an Amorite and your mother was a Hittite.” I think that’s really interesting. Because you and I have— you’ve talked about how the Israelite people were probably of Canaanite origin.

And this seems to just overtly confirm that. Is that what this is doing? Or is that— am I being too literal in metaphor land?

Well, it says your birth was in the land of the Canaanites. It says your father was an Amorite. And that might have reference to the notion that Abraham was an Amorite.

Oh, okay.

And then your mother a Hittite. I’m curious about that, because they don’t say a lot about the Hittites. But let me— you are the daughter of your mother who loathed her husband and her children, and you are the sister of your sisters who loathed their husbands and their children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. Okay, why are you saying this?

Your mother was a—

Yeah, and your father smelt of elderberries. Yes. Um, let me see, uh, one other passage. Yeah, I, I think that it might just be saying that, uh, um, bad-mouthing— okay, uh, Israel’s— there’s probably something there, I have just not looked into it.

Okay, so anyway, uh, we know the parentage. As for your birth, on the day you were born, it basically just says you popped out. Nobody, nobody took care of you as a baby. Nobody, nobody did all of the birth things. And then they just plopped you in a field.

Yeah. You were abhorred on the day you were born. Right.

And I, meaning I, the Lord, passed by and saw you flailing about in your blood. “As you lay in your blood, I said to you, live and grow up like a plant of the field.” So anyway, Jerusalem grows tall and arrives at full womanhood. And it gets very explicit here. “Your breasts were formed and your hair had grown, and yet you were naked and bare.” It’s all very sexy, and it’s about to get sexier. But anyway, the Lord clothes Jerusalem. I pledged myself to you and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off the blood from you and anointed you with— oh, she left the blood on her the whole time. That’s weird. And I clothed you with embroidered cloth and with sandals of fine leather I bound you in fine linen and covered you with rich fabric.

Rich in this case, I assume, means actually very expensive fabric.

Because, yeah, it looks like it might— it looks like the word is silk.

Oh, okay. I adorned you with ornaments. I put bracelets on your arms, a chain on your neck, a ring in your nose, earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown upon your head. That is some fancy stuff. “You are adorned.” So she is richly adorned. She’s got embroidered cloth. It just goes on and on and on. “You had choice flour and honey and oil for food. You grew exceedingly beautiful, fit to be a queen. Everybody loved you. You’re hot.” And blah, blah, blah. “But you trusted in your beauty.” This is where it takes a turn in verse 15. You trusted in your beauty and you prostituted yourself because of your fame and lavished your prostitutions on any passerby. You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful high places, and on them you prostituted yourself.

Yes, this is an interesting little reference here, because it says, “vattasi lak tsalme zakhar.” So, “you made for yourself,” and then “images of a male,” or “male images.”

Uh-huh.

Um, and so the image probably refers to a divine image. So this would be some kind of cultic object, but it’s male. So maybe it’s anthropomorphic, or maybe it is an image of the male member. Yeah, um, because it then says, and you prostituted yourself with them, or as zanah. So you, KJV, “didst commit whoredom with them.” Yes. And so there is— we could think of this two ways. The metaphor could be saying you prostituted yourself in the sense that you— I am your husband, yet you worshiped other gods. And so that is the metaphor of prostitution in Hosea and Ezekiel and the other texts.

Except the metaphor seems to be pretty on the nose because it’s not just that they worshiped other gods, but specifically made male images.

Um, so there are scholars who think this could be a reference to phallic images. And the idea is you are having actual sex with the male images that you created with my gold and my silver. In other words, we’ve got a holy dildo. Potentially, potentially in Ezekiel 16:17 , this could be a divine image functioning as a dildo.

Right, in the metaphor.

In the metaphor.

Okay, so that is— yeah, I mean, there’s no part of this that isn’t sort of a sexualized naughtiness. Like, no matter whether it’s a dildo or not, it’s— you’re prostituting yourself.

There’s a sexual overtone.

Yeah, right. Yeah. So I mean, you know, we don’t need to split hairs too much on this. But it does seem very interesting. This— you made your— the fact that it specifically says male images, it doesn’t say images of gods, or of male gods or whatever. It says male images. Yeah, I don’t know. I think that that’s a very interesting possibility.

I think it— and it could be toying with that ambiguity. It could be toying with the metaphor as qua metaphor. But the imagery is what Ezekiel is perhaps getting off on. I don’t know.

Yeah, I mean, he painted a pretty elaborate picture before this. So it does seem like maybe he’s really enjoying splashing around in this metaphor.

He’s having a good time.

So yes, it’s possible he was very much enjoying the idea of these male images. This beautiful, buxom woman that is Jerusalem.

Yes, and it is a weird idea that God is like, “Hold up, there’s a baby. That’s my future ex-wife.” Yeah.

Oh, man. All right, well, there you go.

It’s problematic.

It’s a little weird, but there is— and frankly, I think that we need to make the phrase “the dildo of Ezekiel” catch on. That just sounds fun.

The sword of the Lord and of Gideon and the dildo of Ezekiel. Clang those together and scare off the Midianites.

Yeah. Put it under a pot and then break it right at the right moment and blow your trumpet. And all will be well. All right, well, there it is. The promised dildo. We actually followed through on something, so I think that that’s great. Um, anything else we need to say about this dildo? Or, I mean, you could— we could go on with the metaphor, but it just—

I think we might be beating this dead wheat. Yeah, the wheat has been beat.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, Ezekiel sounds like he’s got to go off and beat some wheat later. Uh, anyway, so that’s it for the show today. Thanks everyone for joining us. If you would like to become a part of helping to make this show go, you can be like so many other of your fellow listeners and become one of our patrons over on patreon.com/dataoverdogma. It’s what keeps us going. We are so grateful for all of our patrons, and it is how we keep the lights on around here. Thank you so much. And please consider it if you’re able. If you’re not able, you can go and leave us a 5-star review over on wherever you get your podcasts.

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Biblical Sex Toys?!?

Segments

The Transcript

Scripture Index

Terminology