There are a number of odd passages in the Bible that are hard to make sense of, unless one takes them as comedic relief; “authoritative commentary” on these passages tends to be rather ideological in nature as the jokes seemed to whoosh over the heads of experts.

1. For example, in Exodus, when the Hebrews “play” at the feast of the golden calf, God wishes to destroy them and start over making a great nation of Moses’ offspring instead. Moses calms God arguing that leading them out of Egypt to destroy them in the desert would be pretty bad PR. Then when Moses goes down to check on them and sees it with his own eyes, Aaron has to calm Moses down as Moses calmed the Lord God of Israel.

The scene resembles a three stooges style skit where Moe wants to beat someone up Larry holds him back then Larry gets hit and wants to fight but Curly holds both of them back. It lightens the darkness of what is meant by “play” and that they played as a people, and that then the calf ground to dust and mixed with water was given to the children of Israel; ie children is literal here not the whole of people descended of Israel.

2. When God calls moses back up to the top, he says to bring two more tablets with and God will write the words again same as the first. But after Moses has his everlasting gobstopper moment offering up the inheritance and admitting himself stiffnecked as the people he ordered the Levites to execute after calming God himself, receiving in return the best covenant ever: Moses carves the commandments into the second tablets. So why did God say that God would write the second then make Moses do it?

Imagine Moses up there chiseling that stone all day all night, God with his feet up leaned back watching with a grin, “Hard work, huh, bet you won’t smash these on the ground for any reason will ya? Bet you never forget these either, huh?”

3. When Pontius Pilate interrogates Jesus before the Crucifixion, the comedic relief doesn’t play well in Greek or English, but the Judeans and others from the region would have gotten the pun, which only enhances the message of the injustice of the Roman legal system.

Gonna include the text here cuz this has been misinterpreted so bad so long you need to read it closely:

John: 33Pilate therefore went into the hall again and called Jesus and said to him: Art thou the king of the Jews? 34Jesus answered: Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or have others told it thee of me? 35Pilate answered: Am I a Jew? Thy own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee up to me. What hast thou done? 36Jesus answered: My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would certainly strive that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now my kingdom is not from hence. 37Pilate therefore said to him: Art thou a king then? Jesus answered: Thou sayest that I am a king. For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

Jesus: “Wait, who the heck is calling who a King of the Jews? You Romans should really learn our languages before trying to govern us. Ain’t no one said a thing about a king of the Jews til you showed up. If I was king of the Jews I wouldn’t have been delivered to the Jews. I am delivered to the Jews because I am the Messenger to the Jews, the very Angel who wrote Malachi, which foretold my own coming...Since you are Roman I will spell it out for you: I am Malak not Melek, Messenger, not King can you see the difference you cannot hear or pronounce?”

Matthew 11And Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, saying: Art thou the king of the Jews? Jesus saith to him: Thou sayest it. 12And when he was accused by the chief priests and ancients, he answered nothing. 13Then Pilate saith to him: Dost not thou hear how great testimonies they allege against thee? 14And he answered him to never a word, so that the governor wondered exceedingly.

Jesus: “Listen dude, you don’t even know the difference between Melek and Malak. You have no idea what they are actually alleging of me; to defend myself so you could understand I’d have to teach you the language a few years, and that wouldnt make you look very good as a judge. So whatever you think they are alleging, whatever you think I am, I’m not going to change your mind magically or rationally.”

3. Luke 1And the whole multitude of them, rising up, led him to Pilate. 2And they began to accuse him, saying: We have found this man perverting our nation and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar and saying that he is Christ the king. 3And Pilate asked him, saying: Art thou the king of the Jews? But he answering, said: Thou sayest it. 4And Pilate saidphjhh to the chief priests and to the multitudes: I find no cause in this man. 5But they were more earnest, saying: He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee to this place. 6But Pilate hearing Galilee, asked if the man were of Galilee? 7And when he understood that he was of Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him away to Herod, who was also himself at Jerusalem in those days.

Pilate: “Wait what? I could only understand pervert and king. He doesn’t look like a perverted king... Wait I heard someone say Galilee I know where that is, he is Galilee? Awesome I’ll send him to Herod he knows this language a little better than me... Ok well Herod didnt kill him so he must be cool I’ll let him go...damn these people really want this dude dead huh... sorry bro.”

This reading also gives some psychological insight into Pilate, given that pervert and king are the few words he understands.

There’s a part in Malachi that can be read with irony, and is doubly illuminating with other verses seen in the same vein:

The Lord God of Israel sayeth: when you hateth thy wife put her away lest you abuse her; but the Lord of Hosts sayeth: that’s gonna end uo in iniquity and it will get easier to hate her as it gets easier to put her away, so you should probably try to just not hate her, ok? Then no worries over putting her away.

That the “Lord of hosts” offers a higher solution than the “Lord God of Israel” shows that the form the True God takes to develop a people is subordinate to the True God as such, ie the Lord God of all peoples. What was good during your youth is replaced by what is better once grown.

Joshua 5 13 And when Josue was in the field of the city of Jericho, he lifted up his eyes, and saw a man standing over against him, holding a drawn sword, and he went to him, and said: Art thou one of ours, or of our adversaries? 14 And he answered: Neither; but I am prince of the host of the Lord, and now I am come. 16 Josue fell on his face to the ground. And worshipping, said: What saith my lord to his servant? Loose, saith he, thy shoes from off thy feet: for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Josue did as was commanded him.

So why did the “prince of the host of the Lord” tell Joshua how to destroy Jericho if he was on neither side?

The horns and shouting did not flatten the walls of Jericho, the hosts of the Lord did. And the hosts were not commanded by the horns and shouting, which were in truth a test of faith.

Israel had just entered Canaan, its first major trial stood before it. Moses was gone, the old generation had gone, the Lord God of Israel had guided the stiffnecked people out of Egypt and through the wilderness, they were armed, trained, knowledgeable, and bound as a people in a way the Hebrews of Egypt had not been, as illustrated by the chaos of the calf, especially the Hebrews who had meant to snitch on Moses for killing an Egyptian to save a fellow Hebrew: “Whoa dude, you gonna kill us too? Because we gotta tell the boss about this cuz if he finds out and we didnt tell him then we’ll get in trouble.”

Can Joshua lead his people? Can the people work as one in faith?

“Ok Israel, you’ve grown up. I can’t go around smiting all of your enemies while you shelter in place. Everyone else who worships the Lord of Hosts will be like “Why we even bother? God does everything for those guys no matter what they do.”

What occurred before or after or while Joshua removed his shoes on the holy ground, is the the Lord of Hosts gave a plan to the people of Jericho to follow of an appearance of equivalent irrationality. Maybe Jericho was called to give a stranger a hug every day, and their walls would stand forever.

Instead, the people of jericho probably slept in or went up to watch Israel and mock their silly tactics. Meanwhile, Israel carried out their orders perfectly, with perfect faith in God. These were people who were born in the wilderness and survive by God’s hand alone (hence the practice for thousands of years after of high caste families’ sons going to the wilderness as a sort of walkabout passage into manhood), they had seen mighty signs there, and they were delivered to the very land of the stories they were raised on. This generation had no reason to doubt; they had been forged.

And they passed the test of faith.

The Lord and his Hosts are always all around you. When you are faced with a trial that seems impossible to overcome, but conscience still calls your concern, know ye that feeling of “I ought” only ever occurs within yourself where there is also an “I can”.

In other words, one enlightenment view holds that “Oh well he couldnt be held responsible for X since he couldn’t do Y, but if he had not lost his sight all of a sudden from COVID-19 then yes he should face justice for not socially distancing; can’t punish someone for not socially distancing if they don’t know where they are standing.”

This is the sort of inverted thinking characteristic of the enlightenment, which is why the world has fallen to such a depraved state that people who can barely make it out of bed to flip a burger find people like Joshua mythical. I don’t quite understand what sort of evolution of fiction these Jerichoans subscribe to where our oldest texts, written in a language of words that were only things that could be directly pointed at, are some hypermetafiction, just fake stories of bad asses who grew up reading fake stories of bad asses who read stories of badasses, unmatched until 20th century ad. The deep truth of reality is that if you can imagine it, then it is possible too.

The age of enlightenment and reason would say that man uses science and evidence (and often self/class-interest if we be honest) to determine social good and to author laws that serve said good, and we then decide an individuals’ culpability based on his capacity and certain mental states and attitudes and intentions and relations and duties etc etc, whole lotta metaphysical shit that humans didn’t need for some 6,000 years of civilization in brutal conditions, before 500 years of stupendous efforts to explain everything one can point at in terms of an endlessly multiplying multitude of madeup nonsense that no one can point at (and thus have no meaning save political value) culminates with a people who have seemingly mastered nature yet still nearly destroy themselves regularly, and have now basically stopped reproducing completely - autogenocide.

The truth is if you look for pain, seek it out, watch for people in disorder help them overcome it whatever, that’s care, that’s leadership.

Remember, Adam and Eve could have eaten sny fruit but good and evil. But they were expelled in the end “lest they eat of the fruit of tree of life”, which they were not prohibited from. I suppose Eden wouldn’t have enjoyed another two immortal peoples spending all day arguing about good and evil.