In the old-timey Bible days, I mean like really Old Testament times, it doesn't seem like you could hardly ever be just a regular guy just walking around doing whatever you want. I mean, you might think you were just a regular everyday guy breeding cattle or selling pretzels, and your name was Jebedeezum son of Makaroy, and live your whole life thinking this. And maybe once you had a one-night thing with your wife's sister, or you accidentally killed your neighbors goat, and those might have been distressing things for you. Maybe you immediately fell on your face and asked for forgiveness and tried to make everything right, but if you're like most other folks in the Bible, you probably lied about it and tried to cover it up, or you ran away and wound up getting eaten by a moose or struck by lightning.
But the thing is, no matter what happens, you're just a regular guy rocking around trying to make a living. It just never seems to work out that way, and I'll tell you why. Because in the very next chapter, there'll be a whole tribe of thousands of Jebedeezumites, and they all sell pretzels, and they are beset in the North by the Boadites (who are descended from Boad, the bastard son you had with your sister-in-law) and in the South by the Hillerites (who are descended from the neighbor whose goat you accidentally killed).
People always seem to think of the Old Testament as being all judgment and wrath, and there is for sure a lot of that there. But to me, the Old Testament is more about normal people doing bonehead stuff like this all the time, and screwing everything up for everyone else for the rest of forever, and it's hard for me to blame God for all this stuff when He's always saying don'tdoitdon'tdoitdon'tdoit, and then they always seem to do it anyway.
I suppose it's easy for me to read all about this stuff 5,000 years later and tell these doofwads where they went wrong. On the other hand, sleeping with your sister-in-law should never be just "no big deal," and we might laugh about dead goats now but we tend to assign varying levels of importance to such things based on factors such as how much we need goats and how many we already have.
It seems to me that we see this over and over in the Old Testament, and the original Jebedeezum guy never seems to think past his zipper, and all the 10,000 Jebedeezumites spend a lot of time crying out to God and blaming Him that the Boadites are laying siege to their city, and hardly any time at all considering what a doofwad their great-grandpa was for causing all this trouble in the first place.
You never really hear much of this stuff happening these days. I mean you don't have whole cities named after just one guy, and all the folks in it descended from just one guy, and all of them interested in doing just the same exact things that that one guy did.
Sometimes I think it would be cool if it was really like this, and in 1,000 years there would be a tribe of Doolittlites, and they were all exactly like me, and they all lived in one little village or planned community. Naturally they would all have different jobs and stuff, but in their free time they would have televised debates about who was the ugliest Civil War general (it was Sherman, by the way), or what the lyrics to Hotel California really mean, or why is it that cats never really seem glad to see you in the same way that dogs do. And they would all make war against the neighboring village of Doofusites, who are all descended from that guy at work who pisses me off. Only instead of guns and bombs, we just make prank phone calls and leave burning paper bags of poop at the gates of their city.
You couldn't just do what you wanted; you'd have to do the same thing that your father did and what his father did. Like how Jesus was a carpenter, and not a fireman or a cop. Although when you think about it, I don't know if the Bible ever explicitly states that He was a carpenter or if we're only just supposed to assume that He was because that's what Joseph was. He would have made a really good cop, especially handling domestic disputes and stuff. And if we assume that He was a carpenter because that's what Jewish law and tradition would have dictated that He be, why don't we also assume that He was married? I mean if He wasn't ever married (and I'm not saying that He was), how come when the Pharisees were making up stuff to accuse Him of, they never mentioned it? They could have said, Hey, this Guy's 30 and never been married, and back then that would have been a really big deal to a lot of folks.
Anyway, back on topic...
It just seems like you could have never been friends with somebody without considering where he was from and who was his grandfather and did he get along with your grandfather? And at the same time, whatever you screwed up, your kids would have to live with and their kids and their kids. I would just be totally afraid to even walk out the door. And then everything you chose to do would all be handed down and there would be whole cities and cultures based on your life.
In a way it's kind of like that Dark Knight comic book where it's all in the future and there's these gangs of kids all painted up to look like Joker and they all go around being homicidal maniacs, and so Batman picks out the toughest one and beats the crap out of him and so then a bunch of them all start painting themselves to look like Batman and become vigilantes. So instead of one Joker and one Batman, there's now 1000 Jokers and 1000 Batmen. That's kind of like how in the Old Testament you had 12 guys and then they all became 12 tribes and they all had their own roles in society like how Levi and then all his sons and grandsons became priests.
Anyway I'm glad things aren't like this today. I think my grandfather drove a bus. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just that I would hate it.
