I always enjoy reading Blondie's Watchtower comments each week. I understand and respect her presentation from a general Christian perspective. I have prepared a comment from a different perspective, not to detract in any way from Blondie's post, but to perhaps show the variety of scriptural interpretation possible outside the standard Jehovah's Witness viewpoint.
Here is a comment that you won't hear at the
Watchtower study this week. (Quotes in bold type. My comments in regular type.)
From the
Watchtower:
Q16, 17) How can parents teach children the fear of Jehovah?
16) David stands as an example for parents today. What kind of example is the Biblical David?
The following information is from the book
Is It God's Word? by Joseph Wheless. (Read it for free at
www.infidels.org or purchase from
www.amazon.com. Chapter headings are those set up by the Infidels website. Page numbers apparently come straight from the printed book.)
Chapter 6, page 134:
David was a "man after Yahweh's [Jehovah's] own heart," the most murderous, adulterous, lustful, perfidious, mendacious character in the Hebrew Scriptures. He practiced the phallic rites of divination with ephods and teraphim, and danced naked in public the phallic Baal-dance before the Ark of Yahweh; and when Michal, his wife, who was herself a heathen and kept a phallic teraphim for her private use and worship, rebuked him for it, he shamelessly retorted: "I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine own sight" (2 Sam. vi, 22 [2 Sam. 6:22]); and he notified her then and there that she should never have a child by him, but that he would bestow his amorous favors upon "the hand-maids of his servants." (Note: Bible chapters in this book are in lower case Roman numerals. "Baal" simply means "Lord." See Chapter 9, page 165. It should probably be noted that David wasn't entirely naked, for he wore an ephod. It is not clear exactly what this ephod was. My
JPS Tanakh renders it "linen ephod," so it was likely a piece of linen cloth used to secure ornamentation of some unspecified nature to the wearer. More on this below. If David was dancing almost naked in front of other women, "as one of the riffraff might expose himself," (2 Sam. 6:20,
JPS Tanakh) that could explain the jealous reaction of his wife. The post-Babylonian exile priest who wrote the Chronicles states that David was clothed (1 Chr. 15:27). His account differs markedly in many respects with the older account in Samuel. In Samuel, King David is the center of the story. In Chronicles it is a complex priestly affair that David just happens to be attending. This is a fine example of 'historical' revisionism on the part of Bible writers. More on that below.)
"He practiced the phallic rites of divination with ephods and teraphim"? The honorable King David? How could this be? What about pure worship of Jehovah? Well, for you lurkers and other uninitiated ones, the Bible is revisionist history, poorly edited at that. Furthermore, that wonderful leather-bound book that you look scriptures up in has been "professionally" translated to reflect the more conservative ideologies of modern Judaism and Christianity. What about those ephods and teraphim?
Chapter 8, page 151:
YAHVEH'S PHALLIC EPHODS AND TERAPHIM - Besides the mazzebahs ["pillars", male organs] and asherahs ["groves", female organs] which abounded in [pre-exile] orthodox Hebrew worship, the ephods and teraphim, before described as being smaller household idols of Yahveh with great standing phalli, were popular objects of the worship of Yahveh, very potent for conjuring and oracular prophecy. The first mention of "teraphim" is in the interesting passage in Genesis xxxi, concerning Jacob and his pagan father-in-law Laban, and involving the modest Rachel, Jacob's wife and Laban's daughter. Inspiration tells us that "Rachel had stolen the teraphim that were her father's" (Gen. xxxi, 19); and Laban was very wroth and asked Jacob (xxxi, 30): "Wherefore hast thou stolen my gods [elohim]." But Jacob protested and said: "With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live. ... For Jacob knew not that Rachel had stolen them" (xxxi, 32). Laban searched through all the household tents, and finally came into Rachel's tent. "Now, Rachel had taken the teraphim," says verse 34, "and sat upon them." The manner in which these idols were ornamented, with the erect male phallus, is suggestive of the form and manner of devotion that Rachel was engaged in, "sitting on" the gods, and explains the naive excuse which she gave to her father for not rising politely when he came into her tent (xxxi, 35). Laban "searched, but found not the teraphim" (xxxi, 35). Some fine examples these Old Testament characters are turning out to be! But wait, there's more!
Chapter 8, page 152:
Gideon, the man of the gods, "made an ephod [of gold] and put it in his city, even in Ophrah: and all Israel went thither a whoring after it" (Judges viii, 27). This phallic idol was, at the time, expressly recognized as entirely proper and orthodox in the worship of Yahveh, who was personified by the image. The people had requested Gideon to set himself up as king and rule over them; but Gideon replied, "I will not rule over you; Yahveh shall rule over you." He called on the people for all their golden ornaments, and of these he made the golden ephod. The ephod was thus Yahveh or his idol. It was evidently the writer or editor of the Book of Judges, centuries later, who used the opprobrious term "went a whoring after" this sacred statue of Yahveh, which he says "became a snare unto Gideon and to his house" (Judges viii, 27).
In Judges xvii and xviii is the account of the idols of Micah the Ephraimite, which became famous: "The man Micah had an house of gods, and made an ephod, and teraphim, and consecrated one of his sons, who became his priest" (xvii, 5). Afterwards he secured a Levite for this office, and said: "Now know I that Yahveh will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest" (xvii, 13). And the Danites came and consulted the ephod, or phallic image of Yahveh, in regard to their expedition against Laish; and they said to the Levite priest: "Ask counsel, we pray thee, of the gods [Elohim]" whether they should be successful, and the priest consulted the idol and reported: "Go in peace: before Yahveh is your way wherein ye go" (xviii, 1-6), again proving that Yahveh was worshipped and consulted through ephod idols. And when they had captured the city, and changed its name to Dan, and dwelt there, "they set them up Micah's graven image. ... at the time that the house of the gods [beth-ha-elohim] was in Shiloh" (xviii, 31) -- and there it remained and was worshipped "until the day of the captivity of the land" (xviii, 30), several hundred years later. This also proves that the Book of Judges was not written until after "the captivity of the land." (Note: While "teraphim" are recognized to be "household gods," in his book Wheless simply assumes that ephods consisted of phallic images used in worship. Christian apologists argue against such an interpretation, so naturally I find it appealing. The truth is that no one can know for certain what kind of ornamentation the ephods in the above accounts contained.) That final statement, "until the day of the captivity of the land [the northern kingdom of Israel circa 722 B.C.E.]," shows an example of the kind of revisionist history to be found in the Bible. Events of the past were written about from the later writer's moral perspective. What had once been acceptable worship of Yahweh/Jehovah, became unacceptable once the Law Code was invented, most likely around the time of King Hezekiah's reign. (See
Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Friedmann. Modern scholarship has identified at least five different writers/redactors, who lived in different time periods between the ninth and fifth centuries B.C.E., for the Pentateuch, the so-called books of Moses. Different writers would often put their own spin on a story resulting in twice told tales. Stories, laws, and lists were arranged into the five books we know today by an editor, possibly Ezra.) Are there any other clues that the so-called Law of Moses didn't exist around the time we assume that King David reigned? Consider for a moment the issue of animal sacrifices.
Chapter 11, page 196:
During the patriarchal times, down to the traditional "giving of the law" on Sinai, and for a thousand years afterwards, every man who pleased was his own priest and made his own bloody sacrifices: Cain, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Aaron, before and after the "law"; and Joshua, Gideon, and all the judges, Samuel, David, Solomon, and other kings, after the "law"; not one of them was specially ordained a priest.
No sooner had the fleeing Chosen arrived at Sinai than Yahveh himself is recorded as proclaiming: "Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation" (Ex. xix, 6); that is, every man should be at liberty to act for himself as priest and make his own altars and sacrifices "for the atonement of his soul" unto Yahveh. And under the very shadow of Sinai, the day after the first giving of the law to Moses, Moses himself "builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars [phallic mazzebahs] according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto Yahveh" (Ex. xxiv, 4, 5).
REVELATION OF PRIESTLY MONOPOLY - But Moses had been brought up in the royal-priestly court of Egypt and was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts vii, 22). Consequently Moses received a "revelation" from Yahveh that Brother Aaron should be high priest, and the four sons of Aaron should be priests: "It shall be a statute for ever unto their generations" (Ex. xxvii, 21; xxviii, 1) -- just as Mohammed afterwards reserved the priesthood for his own family. Yahveh complaisantly again decreed: "And thou shalt anoint them, as thou didst anoint their father, that they may minister unto me in the priest's office: for their anointing shall surely be an everlasting priesthood throughout their generations" (Ex. xl, 15). Having got this divine commission in perpetuity for Brother Aaron's family, it was necessary to sanction it with awful Jahvistic pains and penalties, to prevent sacrilegious meddling with the monopoly. The penalty of death was therefore decreed for any interference with the priestly monopolists: "Thou shalt appoint Aaron and his sons, and they shall keep their priesthood: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death" (Num. iii, 10)! And it was repeated: "The man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest, ... even that man shall die" (Deut. xvii, 12). The priests of Yahveh were as jealously exclusive as was their God whose name was Jealous; and they were protected in their monopoly by the fatal enactment on Sinai: "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto Yahveh only, he shall be utterly destroyed" (Ex. xxii, 20); and these deadly penalties were enforced by their beneficiaries. So, the Law said that all sacrifices were to be made only by descendants of Aaron at the Tabernacle/Temple. Yet, how many "faithful men of old" disobeyed this law that was to be enforced under penalty of death? Is it any wonder that David got away with breaking so many of the laws that were supposed to have been given to Moses for the simple fact that they, at least in the form that we know them, hadn't been invented yet? So-called "pure" worship was an invention of ancient priests to secure an income for themselves. Would the Watchtower Society use "pure worship" as an excuse to secure an income for itself?
King David is not a good example for Christian parents. Jehovah is not a god to be feared, loved, or worshipped. But, don't take my word for it. Be skeptical and do your own research.
Primate Dave
