Sometimes the humor of the Bible lies in the thing described,--the odd or
awkward or absurd thing said or done.
"The Iliad," says Sidney Smith, "would never have come down to these
times, if Agamemnon had given Achilles a box on the ear. We should have
trembled for the AEneid, if some Trojan nobleman had kicked the pious AEneas
in the fourth book. AEneas, may have deserved it, but he never could have
founded the Roman Empire after so distressing an accident." And yet
accidents quite as distressing, if not of precisely the same nature, have
happened in the best families that ever lived upon this planet. The
writers of the Bible have not hesitated to give us a very frank account of
some of them.
Imagine the vacant look of the terrified Aaron, as he gave his imbecile
explanation of the golden calf! Moses and Joshua are coming down from the
mountain. "And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted,
he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp. And Moses
answered, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is
it the voice of them that cry for being overcome; but the noise of them
that sing do I hear." Soon they draw near the camp and see "the calf and
the dancing." Then does the anger of Moses wax hot. In his rage he flings
down and shatters the "tables of stone." Like a whirlwind he descends upon
the camp, hurls the miserable calf into the fire, and demands an
explanation of his recreant brother. "What did this people unto thee that
thou hast brought so great a sin upon them?" Aaron quails beneath the
wrath of Moses and stammers: "Thou knowest the people that they are set on
mischief. For they said unto me, Make us gods which shall go before us:
for as for this Moses"--think of that, _this Moses_--"that brought us up
out of the land of Egypt, we know not what has become of him." You see
they are set on mischief; they were disrespectful even unto you--_this
Moses_. Something had to be done. "And I said unto them, Whosoever hath
any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it to me, and I cast it into
the fire, and"--what do you suppose happened?--"_there came out this
calf_!" I was as much surprised as you are, but no one is responsible--_it
did itself_!
In quaint fashion did Saul make honest confession when smitten with
remorse on account of his persecution of David: "Behold I have played the
fool!" The regret of Prince Hal also--"Thus do we play the fools with
time, while the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us."
What an odd--almost laughable--spectacle is the bombastic Nebuchadnezzar,
one moment proudly striding along the battlements of his palace, "Is not
this great Babylon which I have builded?"--the next eating grass like the
beasts of the field! As Carlyle says: "A purple Nebuchadnezzar rejoices to
feel himself now veritably emperor of this great Babylon which he has
builded; and _is_ a nondescript, biped-quadruped, on the eve of a seven
years' course of grazing."
There is a scene in the life of David in which that worthy is represented
as cutting fantastic capers before high heaven. At one time, in order to
keep out of Saul's way, David went down to Gath. The servants of King
Achish recognize him, and tell their royal master that this is the famous
David over whose exploits the daughters of Israel sang. "Is not this
David, the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in
dances, saying, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten
thousands?" But David does not wish his identity known and with
characteristic shrewdness he feigns insanity. "He feigned himself mad, and
scrabbled on the doors of the gate and let his spittle fall down upon his
beard,"--a sorry looking hero! So thinks the king Achish. What, this the
man that slew the giant? this drivelling lunatic the victor that Israel's
daughters praised? His disgust knows no bounds. He is almost as grotesque
in his anger as is David in his appearance and conduct. He turns upon his
courtiers in offended dignity and cries, "Lo, ye see the man is mad;
wherefore have ye brought him to me? _Have I need of madmen_, (are not ye
my own servants sufficient?) that ye have brought this fellow to play the
madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?" "Fool me no
fools," says King Achish. When King Achish asked, "Have I need of madmen?"
he evidently thought of his own servants and courtiers as did Christian
I., of Denmark, in modern times, of those who graced _his_ Court. He
sharply remarked, on a presentation to him of several court fools, that
"he was not in want of such things, and if he were, he had only to give
license to his courtiers, who, to his certain knowledge, were capable of
exhibiting themselves as the greatest fools in Europe!"
In Nehemiah's account of building the walls of Jerusalem, he shows how
sorely the Jews took the clumsy jibes of their foes and gives us a
specimen of Samaritan joking in that early day. Sanballat mocked the Jews
and said, "What do these feeble Jews? Will they fortify themselves? Will
they sacrifice? Will they make an end in a day? Will they revive the
stones out of the heaps of rubbish which are burned?" Tobiah, the Amorite,
was yet more caustic: "Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he will
even break down their stone wall." This ridicule, although the jests do
not seem very formidable to us, was harder to bear than attacks with sword
and spear. It is so to-day. We can stand anything but laughter. One would
rather be made to appear infamous than ridiculous. The only answer the
builders could make was to pray for the destruction of their sarcastic
persecutors. They wished that heaven's bolts of lightning might answer
these bolts of wit.