Judges 4

You got any friends that are just perpetual screw-ups? The kind of person that just can’t get it right, no matter how many times they try? That was the Israelites. Somewhere between Wiley Coyote, Lindsay Lohan, and Michael Vick. The Israelites were perfecting the concept of being their own worst enemy far before that awesome Lit song inspired Charlie Sheen to try to dig a hole in his life to China with hookers and nose candy.

The Old Testament pretty much reads like this: God loves Israel. Israel loves God. Israel turns back on God, goes off the deep end, and becomes the inspiration for the show Skins. God gets mad and punishes Israel. Israel repents. God blesses Israel. Repeat until Jesus is born.

After Ehud the assassin shanked Jaba the Hutt like a champ, all was well in Israel for like, a year. Then Ehud died and it was like all of Israel figured that God had relaxed the rules on whoring and debauchery and what not, so they went back to worshipping foreigners and sleeping with idols. I mean, worshipping idols and sleeping with foreigners. Actually, nevermind. Probably both.

Because they had started approaching God’s laws like it was opposite day, God decided to give them over to Jabin, the king of Canaan. This dude was one bad mother trucker. He had a wicked army with 900 iron chariots that was commanded by an equally bad dude named Sisera.

“Sisera? That sounds like a girl’s name.”

You’re right bro, it does. That’s probably why he was such a douchebag to everyone, kind of like that Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue.” His parents gave him a name that was one step away from Sissy and he decided to make the world pay for it. The Israelites had been bearing the brunt of his “I’m mad at my dad” Marilyn Manson anger for 20 years when they decided it was time to ask God for help.

(Note: 20 years? Seriously Israelites, 20 years!? They must have been seriously dense, or seriously slam hammered to have to take that long to figure it out.)

God put Deborah (a girl!) in power over the Israelites. She was pretty much the Oprah of her day. She had a direct line to God, helped all the people figure out their problems, had a place where everyone would line up to see her, and I’m guessing she probably gave away a bunch of sweet stuff. Donkey blankets, dreidels, nice clay pots – I don’t know what kind of schwag Israelites would have wanted, but I guarantee that Deborah didn’t mess around with gift cards or anything lame like that.

Now I’m not some kind of charismaniac weirdo or anything, but this has got to be some kind of prophecy: Deborah had a great friend whose name was (get this!) Barak! Seriously, I’m not kidding.  It’s in the Bible. She told her friend Barak to take the Israelites and lead them into battle against Sissy boy and his army of Stone Cold Steve Austin clones on their Harley Davidson chariots, pretty much like Oprah told Obama to run for president. This Barak said “okay, but only if you come with me.” Pretty sure that’s just like how Oprah is now secretly running the country by texting orders to Obama every day.

So Deborah, in true emasculatory Oprah fashion, tells Barak that she’ll go with him, but the honor of killing Sisera will go to a chick. Ouch, Barak. Ouch.

Barak takes his army and rolls out to Mount Tabor for the fight.  Deborah comes with him, probably in some kind of veiled carriage thing that had ancient Jewish air conditioning and camel-leather seats. I mean, I can’t confirm that Deborah liked fancy things, but I think it’s safe to assume that she rolled like a boss.

Sisera hears on Facebook or something that Barak has his hairy Jewish army hanging out on Mount Tabor and gets pissed. He tells all the Steve Austin clones to fire up their Harleys and head out for what he probably thought was going to be like punching a child. Little did he know, the Israelites had gotten right with God again and the Big Guy was now doing all their heavy lifting.

Barak and his army literally killed everyone except Sisera, the leader. He got away and fled on foot, eventually stumbling into the tent of this femme fatale named Jael. The Bible doesn’t say whether or not Jael was a babe, but let’s be Hollywood for a sec and assume that she was. After all, what kind of story would this be if the heroine at the end was some frumpy mustachio? Know what I’m saying?

Sisera opens up the tent and is all like “Oh dude, I’m gonna die” or whatever, and Jael, not even skipping a beat, says “come right in, don’t be afraid.” A freaking black widow, this chick. So Sisera goes into the tent and he’s all like “Hey tutz, I’m thirsty from all of the running away and screaming that I just did. You got any Vitamin Water?” She didn’t, but she had some Muscle Milk and he settled for that. Then he was like “Thanks sugar, I’m gonna take a quick nap before I clean out my thoroughly pooped pants.  Would you mind watching the door and telling anyone who comes by that there isn’t anyone named Sisera here?”

“No problem, I’ll definitely do exactly that” she said.

Sisera crashed out in a big way under a blanket and immediately started dreaming about Ed Hardy shirts and other forms of douche baggery. While he slept, Jael got a tent stake and snuck up on him. She put the tent peg on his temple and hammered it through his head until it went into the ground. She literally nailed this dude’s head to the ground.

I mean, warrior fighter chicks are pretty hot and everything, but that’s a little too rich for my blood, know what I’m saying? She obviously knew that God wanted her to kill this guy, but you gotta wonder what God’s reaction was when she went with the “nail the brains to the floor” method.

“Whoa, whoa Jael. I mean, everybody knows I’m all about going big or going home, but wow, I just… I gotta be honest, that was a little much.”

After that, Jael went on to start the first roller derby league, a sport that hasn’t changed for thousands of years.

Joshua 7

Back when the Israelites were romping across Canaan like Ben Roethlisberger across a piano bar there was this bro-meister in camp named Achan.  Remember that rapper, Akon, who got yelled at by FoxNews a couple years back for grinding up on that 14 year-old girl?  Yeah, that’s not who I’m talking about.  But it might as well be ‘cause there are some weird parallels between rapper Akon and Old Testament Achan.  Just replace “freaked on a 14 year-old” with “stole from God” and “yelled at by FoxNews” with “stoned and set on fire” and you’ve pretty much got it.

By the time our story begins, the Israelites had already been out of Egypt for, like, fifty years.  They’d spent most of that time in the desert, fighting amongst themselves and walking in circles, until someone finally checked Google maps and said “oh, it’s this way.”  They arrived in the Promised Land and got busy throwin ‘bows and bustin noses like Chris Brown after the Grammys.  They worked the cities of Canaan over like a snitch in San Quentin and, within a matter of months, had arm wrestled the entire region into submission.

As you might expect, God was fully aware that his people were posterizing and pillaging their way across Palestine.  In fact, he had sanctioned the rampage.  To him, the Canaanites were no better than a bunch of marbles and his Israelites were some hungry, hungry hippos.  There was only one rule: God called dibs on all the shiny stuff.  Gold, silver, brass, sequined top hats – if it sparkled, it belonged to God.  Everything else was to be treated like a Harry Potter book or Golden Compass DVD and destroyed by ritual fire.

This arrangement worked well for awhile, but then this guy Achan went and ruined everything.  Achan was rooting through the rubble of Jericho one afternoon when he spied some shiny stuff under what used to be a Hometown Buffet.  This wasn’t your average, run-of-the-mill, salad-fork silver.  This was the good stuff.  A high school class ring.  A Cadillac hood ornament.  Even a bedazzled “Don’t Mess With Texas” belt buckle.  Achan had found the proverbial mother load, and he should have gone straight to church and put it in the offering plate.  But he didn’t.  He took it home and hid it under his bed next to the Skoal cans and skin mags.

The next day, Team Israel was scheduled to lay waste to the city of Ai.  Joshua knew Ai was weaker than a trombonist in a bar fight so he decided to send out the JV Squad.  He figured they’d handle their business, and give the starters a much-needed breather.  The Israeli bush leaguers ran up to Ai – all hopped up on manna and 5-hour Energy – and were soundly spanked by the Ai-ians (Ai-ites? Ai-anders?  I don’t know.).

Joshua couldn’t believe it.  “What happened, God?” he shouted at the Ark of the Covenant.  “One minute we’re walking over our enemies like Michael Phelps at a pool party, and the next we’re getting blown out by a scrub squad like Ai?!  This is gonna kill our street cred!”

God told him to get up.  “Here’s the deal,” He said.  “Israel stole some stuff that belongs to me.  Until I get it back, you guys are gonna be losing more games than an Ethiopian hockey team.”

“Any way we can make it up to you?” asked Joshua.

“Yeah.  Get everyone together tomorrow and tell them I’m pissed.  Call the tribes forward one at a time and I’ll tell you who’s got my gear.”

So that’s what Joshua did.  He called a mandatory team meeting the next morning and brought the tribes of Israel, one at a time, to the front of the room.  It was like a game of hotter/colder.  Benjamin…cold.  Rueben…cold.  Gad…warm. Asher…getting warmer!  Zebulan…burning hot!  Judah…YES! Once Judah got picked out of the lineup, they went through the same ordeal with the clans and then the families and then the individual men-folk until Achan, son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah got ID’d as the perp.

“You just got called out by God, son,” said Joshua.  “You wanna tell us what you did or do we need to get out the waterboarding kit?”

“Alright, alright.  You got me,” said Achan.  “I did it.  I was over by the Hometown Buffet and I saw some stuff that I thought would look sweet in my man cave so I kept it.”

Joshua dispatched some guys to Achan’s tent and they came back with the ring, the watch, and the buckle.  They also brought the Skoal and the skin mags which Achan thought was a little excessive.

“You done screwed up real bad on this one, bro,” said Joshua.  “You lost us that battle against Ai and you got us in trouble with the Big Man upstairs.  You got beef with God and now you got beef with us.”

The Israelites took Achan and everything he owned outside the camp and threw rocks at him until they were sure he’d never go klepto on God again.  How were they sure?  Because he was dead.  With Achan neutralized and God’s wrath satisfied, the Israelites set up a rematch with Ai.  This time they brought the noise.  They plowed through Ai like Tiger Woods through a fire hydrant, and everyone learned a valuable lesson about obedience, and the Israelites never disobeyed God ever again.

Hahaha.  Just kidding.

Click here for Part 1.

Judges 16

Several decades after the Donkey-bone Beatdown, Samson was creeping around the Gaza strip looking for some tail.  Now Samson was getting up there in years by this point and his body wasn’t quite what it used to be.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, the dude could still throw a pigskin a quarter mile if you asked him to.  He just didn’t have the same figure he did back in the day when he was walking around clubs, lifting up his shirts and saying, “looks like we’ve got a situation here, ladies.”  He was old, that’s all.  His six-pack had turned into more of a mini-keg and his barbed wire tats kind of looked like ingrown hairs.

So what I’m saying is: when a decently cute (call her a 6.5) chick from the Valley of Sorek took a liking to him, Samson wasn’t really in a position to hold out for a better option even though this Delilah chick was a total slu…even though she didn’t treat him right.  Samson fell hard for this broad.  Two weeks in and he was totally whipped.  Because of this, it didn’t seem weird to him when she asked, “Hey baby, if someone wanted to tie you up and kill you – just hypothetically, of course – what would be the best way for them to do it?”

To his credit, Samson didn’t cave right away.  He had some fun with De-lies-lots first.  He told her, “If you make me watch 15 minutes of The Bachelor, I’ll be as weak as an appletini popsicle.”  So, wouldn’t you know it, the very next night Delilah had a friggin Bachelor marathon queued up on the DVR.  They were in the middle of the first episode’s rose ceremony when Samson got bum rushed by some Philistine wankers that Delilah had hidden in the pantry.  Samson tossed ‘em like yesterday’s newspaper and sat back down on the couch.  He switched the channel to Pam Anderson’s E! True Hollywood Story and left it at that.

The next night, Delilah asked him the same question and Samson said, “If I hear anyone singing songs from Glee, I will become as powerless as Joe Biden.”  Samson cracked open a Coors and went into the living room to catch the end of Spiderman III which was showing on FX for the third time that week.  Delilah followed him into the room, and started belting out this awful, show-tunes rendition of John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”  When she got to the part that goes “don’t know when I’ll be back again” she yelled “NOW!” and four neckless thugs came crashing out of the hall closet.  Samson blew up their world like a Palestinian bus stop and finished his beer while the mountains were still blue.

He did this a couple more times, always saying something hilarious like “if you make me eat Pinkberry I’ll crack like Humpty Dumpty at the Daytona 500” or “if you put a loofah in my shower I’ll give way like a New Orleans levy.”  Delilah kept falling for it, and the Philistines kept getting rocked six ways to Sunday until, finally, Delilah flipped her lid.

“How can you say ‘I love you’ but not tell me how you could be tied up and killed?” she said.  “Don’t you trust me?  I’m just curious, that’s all!  IT’S NOT LIKE ANYONE ACTUALLY WANTS TO KILL YOU!!”

Not even kidding dude, this broad was crazy.  Like Texas Chainsaw – Glenn Beck – Blue’s Clues kinda crazy.  But Samson couldn’t see it.  He was looking at her through boob-colored glasses, and all he saw was that she was everything he wanted in a woman: tramp stamp, “Pink” boy shorts from Victoria Secret…actually, that’s as far as his list went.  So he stayed with her.

Finally, after weeks of begging and pouting and pleading and shouting, Samson gave in and told Delilah the truth.  “Cut off my pony tail,” he said.  “And I’ll become a bigger pansy than that one guy on Saving Private Ryan.”  So – surprise, surprise – Samson went to bed that night and woke up with a buzz cut and a bedroom full of Filth-istines.  Shocker.  I gotta tell ya, sometimes I wonder if Samson didn’t deserve to get punked after letting a chick run him the way Delilah did.  But still, the dude got punked pretty hard.

The first thing the Philistines did was poke his eyes out.  Then they chained him to a millstone and made him walk in a circle all day while listening to “Bailamos” by Enrique Iglesias on repeat.  After a couple weeks of this, they unchained Samson from the millstone and put him in the middle of this big temple in town.  Then they threw a big shindig and invited all the Philistine head honchos to come poke Samson with sticks and laugh at what a wuss he was.  And there stood Samson, no eyes, no girlfriend, Enrique Iglesias ringing in his ears, taking it like a champ as people he hated came by and dropped retarded one-liners like “you call that a bicep?” and “I’ve only got eyes for you, Samson.  Get it?  Eyes? Hahaha!”

Finally, it became too much.  Samson cried out to God one last time, “Hey God, it’s me, Samson.  I know I’ve screwed up real bad here, and I know I probably deserve all this, but please, gimme one last shot to make it right.  Gimme my muscles back and lemme get these morons back for taking my eyes.”

Suddenly, it was like he could rep out at 450 again.  He pushed against the pillars with all his might and the things toppled over like a pair of drunks at closing time.  The roof collapsed, the walls collapsed, the whole friggin temple collapsed and over 3,000 Philistines ate it – including our guy Samson.

And as the temple came crashing down, people swore they heard Samson belting out his second favorite Toby Keith song: “I’m not as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was…”

Judges 14 – 15

Back in the day there was this righteous dude named Samson.  No doubt about it: Samson was a baller, and by “baller” I don’t mean “good at basketball” but rather “able to kill several dozen people with a basketball.”  Samson was huge in a way that few people not named Jose Conseco can imagine.  In fact, he was so huge that he was elected ruler of Israel for, like, twenty years.  Some people think it’s dumb to put a guy in charge just because he’s jacked out of his mind.  Others, like the residents of California, are apparently cool with it since they once made the star of Jingle All The Way their Governator for the same exact reason.

But before Samson was the boss, before he started cracking skulls and ripping phonebooks in half, he was just plain old Sammy, son of Manoah, and he had it bad for this Philistine chick who worked out at his gym.  Everyday he’d watch her ride the elliptical while he whaled away on his Shake Weight, and he knew it was love.  He told his old man, “Hey Pops, I’m into this chick.  Go get her for me.”

So mom, dad, and Sammy headed down to Timnah to see the girl.  The trip down was pretty uneventful.  Lots of talk radio, lots of restroom stops, and, oh yeah, Samson tore a lion in half with his bare hands.  No biggie.   When they got to Timnah, Samson saw his fiancé’s face for the first time.  Fortunately, he liked her frontside as much as he liked her backside.  He said, “You’re alright.  Let’s get married.”  She said, “Can I touch your biceps?”  He said, “Soon enough, thunder thighs.  Soon enough.”

On the way out of town Samson walked past the shredded lion carcass and saw that it was full of honey.  He scooped out a handful and munched on it the whole way home.  If it wasn’t for Lot and his daughters, this would probably be the grossest part of the Bible.

Now Samson was a lot like Paul Rudd in the movie I Love you Man in that he didn’t have many guy friends.  His fiancé wanted to help him out so she invited her brothers and her old high school boyfriends and a bunch of other Philistine jags to the wedding so Samson would have someone to hang out with.  Only problem was: her guy friends sucked at life like Charlie Sheen sucks at being sober.

Samson wasn’t interested in being friends with these jokers, so he decided to hustle them.  He told them he had a riddle and if they could solve it he would buy each of them Ed Hardy T-shirts and Armani Exchange sunglasses, but if they couldn’t solve it they had to buy him a five year supply of protein powder and a subscription to Men’s Fitness magazine.  They said, “Do your worst, Hulk.”

Samson told them the riddle. “A man rides into town on Friday.  He stays for two days and leaves on Friday.  How is this possible?”

The Philistines realized immediately that they were in over their heads, but there was no way they were gonna buy this Isreali juice-head a buncha protein powder.  They told the future Mrs. Samson to tell them the answer or they would burn her house down.  She didn’t know the answer so she went to Samson and begged him to tell her.  He said, “not a chance, my Philistine flower.” She started bitchin and moanin like he’d left the toilet seat up.  After seven days of her carrying on, Samson had a massive migraine and half a mind to call the whole thing off.  Hoping to put an end to her shrieking, he finally gave in.  She, of course, told the Philistines and they marched right up to Samson, all proud of themselves, and said, “The horse’s name is Friday.”

Samson knew what they had done, and he wasn’t about to concede defeat to a buncha cheaters.  So he went down to Ashkelon, which was near the shore, and killed thirty dudes on the boardwalk.  He took their clothes and gave them to the douchers at the wedding.  He gave away his two-timing wife and booked it out of dodge.

A few months later, Samson bought a goat, took off his shirt, and went down to make peace with his ex.  But when he got to her place, he found out she had already remarried some other Philistine chotchbag.  So he did what any us would have done: he caught 300 foxes, lit their tails on fire, and set them loose in the Philistines’ fields.  (Note: It was from this act that the popular web browser, Mozilla Firefox, got its name.  Mozilla was a favorite Philistine nickname for Samson – a combination of “Mofo” and “Godzilla.”)

Needless to say, the Philistines weren’t thrilled about this stunt.  They got together a Gangs of New York-style posse and rolled into Judah lookin to kick Samson’s teeth in.  The Judeans caved quicker than the Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl, and agreed to hand Samson over to the mob of meatheads.  Fortunately, neither ropes nor backstabbing countrymen could keep our man down.

He busted out of the ropes, grabbed the first thing he saw – which happened to be a donkey bone instead of the box of AK-47s he’d been hoping for – and proceeded to wreck house on the entire Philistine army.  When he’d choked out the last Philistine, Samson dropped the bone and started singing “How Do You Like Me Now” by Toby Keith at the top of his lungs.

Yeah, Samson was feeling pretty good about himself back then, but little did he know, his biggest battle was yet to come.  Killing 1,000 dudes with a donkey bone was one thing.  Resisting the charms of a slammin hot she-devil was something else entirely.

Click here for the epic conclusion.

1 Kings 18:16-40

This story is about a dude named Elijah.  For three years before this all went down, Elijah, had been kickin it solo in the wilderness east of the Jordan River.  Picture it like Arizona or like the episode of Man vs. Wild where Bear Grylls goes to the Mojave Desert except if instead of drinking his own urine, Bear had super-smart ravens that would bring him bread and meat and whatnot.  That’s pretty much what it was like for ole E-Jay. Apart from the occasional miraculous resurrection, it was pretty lame.

Finally, after three years of this, E-Jay gets a message from the Lord saying, “Go back and face your old nemesis King Ahab and tell him that I’m about to rock his world and, if he’s lucky, I might even send some rain his way because – let’s be honest – all the trees are dead.”

So E-Jay walks his emaciated self back to Jerusa-Vegas and heads straight for Ahab’s house (picture Master P’s house from Season 3 of Cribs, but with bigger dungeons).  He rolls up to the door and says, “What up Ahab, you big dumbass?” (Yes, E-Jay has some stones.)

And Ahab’s all like, “Oh look, it’s the guy who ruined my life.”  And E-Jay’s like, “Psssh, whateva, you ruined your own life when you stopped praying and started letting your whore wife manage your career.”  And Ahab’s like, “Good point.”

So Elijah tells Ahab to text all the prophets of Asherah and all the prophets of Baal and everyone else who doesn’t think God is awesome and to tell them to meet him on top of this one mountain because he’s ready to make like Ron Artest and crack some skulls.

So everyone gets together up on Mount Carmel.  And my boy E-Jay get’s up there in front of God and everyone and says, “Hey everybody.  Thanks for coming out today.  I think your gods suck.”  (Like I said, the dude’s got some cojones.)

Now the thing to remember about the prophets of Baal and Asherah is that they’re pretty much the Twilight fans of 1500 BC.  And by that I mean: they’re a bunch of little bitches.  So no one says anything.  They just twitter amongst themselves about how Elijah is a hater and how he kinda looks like Osama Bin Laden.

Hearing no objections, E-Jay keeps tearing them a collective new one.  “Would you make up your minds already?!  It’s always Edward this, Jacob that; I swear, whenever I’m with you people I can actually feel myself getting dumber.  Wait for it…there it is! I don’t know math anymore.”

E-Jay tells them it’s time to figure out once and for all which supernatural being is a baller and which one(s) is a Betty White.  He suggests they build two grills and throw a slab of Angus on each.  One rule: they can’t use charcoal or matches or Girl Scout Juice to light them.  They’ve got to ask their favorite supernatural superstar to start the grills for them.

Team Baal and Team Asherah may have been little bitches, but they also knew enough about E-Jay to know that if they backed down now, he’d put them on blast on his next LP, with a song called “God, Grills, and Girly-Men” or something like that.  So they accept the challenge.

The Baalites and Asheraans go first.  They put on a bunch of costumes like they’re going to a midnight premier and dance around their grill shouting out to their gods.  It’s amateur hour at Mt. Carmel: half post-Prom field party, half MGMT video, all ammo for an embarrassing Facebook album.  This goes on for the better part of the morning.  As you’ve probably guessed, Baal and Asherah are about as real as Pam Anderson’s knockers so, of course, nothing happens.

Around lunchtime, Elijah has had enough.  He starts dogging on the other prophets saying stuff like “maybe your gods are taking a leak, maybe they’re passed out on the pool table, or maybe they’re just real hungover and don’t feel like raining down fire at the moment.”  He also holds up a big sign that says “EPIC SACRIFICE FAIL.”

The other prophets are tired and irritable after their morning of flailing so they don’t take too kindly to E-Jay’s lip.  “Screw you Elijah,” they say.  “Let’s see you do better, you flip-phone-loving geezer.”

So Elijah goes over to his homemade Weber and says a quiet prayer to his God who happens to also be the Sovereign Lord of the whole entire universe.  Before he can even finish his prayer, fire falls from the sky and consumes the steaks, the wood, the grill, and a bottle of A1 next to the grill. (This probably looked alot like that part in Independence Day when the laser blasts destroyed New York, Los Angeles, and Washington DC.)

Everyone is stunned and afraid and can do nothing but sit and watch as E-Jay dances around the mountaintop flexing his muscles and shouting “One shot!” like he’s freaking Ronnie from Jersey Shore. When he finishes rubbing it in everyone’s face, he rounds up all the prophets of Baal and Asherah, takes them down near the brook Kishon, and slaughters them.  Hahaha.  Classic E-Jay.

Sadly, murdering the losing team has since been made illegal – or is at least frowned upon.

(Photo courtesy of mocpages.com.)

Judges 3:12-30

Dudes. Dudes. Dudes. Jason Bourne is in the Bible. Stop calling me gay, I’m freakin serious. There’s a badass assassin in The Bible. If you’ll shut up about how gay you wish I was, I’d tell you about it. Yeah you see what I did there?  Turned that one right around on you.

So there was this dude named Ehud. He was kind of a weird looking dude, based on his weird looking name. He was probably one of those karate nerds.  You know, one of those kids who plays Magic: The Gathering and reads books about dragons but can somehow still kick your ass. Anyway, he didn’t have amnesia like Bourne, but he was left-handed which might be worse. Some scholars think that “left-handed” in the Bible meant that he had a messed up right hand – probably from some kind of high fiving accident.

Ehud was not the kind of dude you’d want to make fun of, unlike you over there Chester. Yeah dude, you’re a junior varsity doucher and you know it.  See, that’s a good example of something you wouldn’t say to Ehud. I swear if one of you idiots makes another Chuck Norris joke I’m going to punch you in the throat. You know I’m good for it!

If you’ve heard any Old Testament stories, you know that the Israelites served as the model for Linsday Lohan’s life. They had everything going for them, and yet they just kept getting DUI’s and slumming it with skanky sea-donkeys. So, once again, they had really pissed God off and were in the dog house big time. Seriously, not until Michael Vick did his thing would someone be as deep in the doghouse as the Israelites were.

Because they kept jacking around instead of following the rules, God put some bad dude named Eglon in power over them as punishment. I think he was from Moab, which I guess is ancient Israeli-speak for Tijuana.  Eglon was the Bible’s Jabba the Hutt. He was a mean, nasty guy and he was fat as a bacon donut. Not like “I love McDonald’s” fat.  We’re talking “I love eating children” fat. When God wanted to punish the Israelites, he really went for it.

Finally, after this fat dude abused the Israelites for a couple decades (probably with lots of pranks involving farts and sweat) they decided to wise up, repent, and ask God for help. Enter the BAMF Ehud. He got an encrypted text from God saying that Eglon had done enough sloppying all over the Isrealites and needed to be taken care of, but not like “a sixpack and a pizza” taken care of, more like “Tony Soprano” taken care of.

Tony Soprano had a weird way of showing affection.

Ehud made himself a foot and a half long sword – no, Chester, that’s not what anyone said.  Anyway, he made that sword and headed over to Eglon’s fat-house.  He told Eglon’s secretary he was bringing a tribute from the Israelites to mask his ass-kicking intentions. We’re not sure what the tribute was, but knowing Eglon, it was probably 3000 nugs from whatever kind of Wendy’s they had back then. After giving the porker his gift, Ehud sent all the servants away because he had to tell Eglon a “secret” that they couldn’t hear. They probably thought he was going to give up the Colonel’s fried chicken recipe, but really it was a lot stabbier than that.

All the servants left, and Ehud told fat bastard that he had a message from God… then BAM, he whipped out his sword and stabbed Eglon in his huge fat gut. Because Ehud was a “give 110%” kind of dude, he not only stabbed Eglon, but he pushed the sword all the way into him until the fat closed in over the handle.  After that Eglon apparently crapped his pants, but, honestly, that was probably par for the course with him.

After offing the blob, Ehud escaped and went to tell the Israelites it was time to put the hurt on the Moabites. They all rolled down to the parking lot or playground or wherever they had 80s movie-style fights back then and kicked the crap out of the Moabites.

Following the fight, the Israelites communally made the “suck it” symbol to the Moabites and did some other Green Street Hooligans type taunting before returning to their favorite pubs for celebratory Jager-bombs. The story doesn’t say anything about what Ehud did after that, but it probably involved leaving the “life of violence” for gardening only to be called upon again by the Israelites when the next Tijuanian took over Jerusalem.

2 Samuel 11

Remember David?  Sure you do.  He’s the dude who played the harp and tamed lions and killed Goliath and got a shout out in that one Jeff Buckley song.  You remember, right?  Good.  That’ll save us some time.  So anyway, this was after the whole Goliath thing when David had already been named king of Israel.  Now being king of Israel in 1200 BC was a lot like being president of America in 1992-2010.  You spent most of your time doing two things: getting tail and marauding across the Middle East.  And by all accounts David was a freaking champ at both.

In fact, on this particular day in 2^nd Samuel, the armies of Israel were out in the fields doing terrible, awful, unspeakable things to the Ammonites.  Normally, David would have had his Braveheart gear on and been out there leading the charge, but he wasn’t feeling up to it this time.  Things had been kind of stressful at home lately.  The media was all over his ass about an “exit strategy” from Ammon and Wives 1-6 kept begging him to put babies in them.  Meanwhile, Wife #7 had completely let herself go.  Safe to say: the making love part of his job wasn’t quite keeping up with the making war part.  But all that was about to change.

Late one evening, David was walking around his rooftop lounge smoking a Black N’ Mild and surveying his kingdom when he saw this chick taking a bath on her roof across the way.  Seeing that this chick was super hot, and also super naked, David sent one of his servants to find out what her name was.  The servant came back and reported that the chick’s name was Bathsheba.  Considering that Bathsheba is a combination of the word “Bath” which is Hebrew for “bath” and “sheba” which is Hebrew for “she was taking one”, it is possible that the servant made this name up. But David didn’t care.  He went ahead and had sex with Bathsheba, or whatever her name was, anyway.  After he’d sexed her up he made her take the walk of shame all the way back to her place.  Real class act, that David.

The next day David woke up and went about his kingly business as if nothing had happened.  He didn’t give a second thought to his dirty deed until a couple months later when he got a letter that said:

Dear King,

I’m pregnant. Call me.

Sincerely,

The Girl from the Roof

This was bad.  Even in 1200 BC, it was considered wrong, or at least rude, for the king to go around knocking up married women.  This was just the kind of thing that could ruin his standing with the “soccer mom” crowd.  But this wasn’t David’s first rodeo.  He knew how to handle his lady troubles.

He called up his main man Joab, who was supervising the army’s ravaging of Ammon, and told him to send Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, back for two weeks of furlough.  David was thinking Uriah would go home, shack up with his old lady, and – bingo bango – problem neutralized.  What he hadn’t counted on was Uriah being a standup dude with more class in his mustache than David had in his entire beard.  Uriah didn’t even go home to fill his bird feeders.

He told David, “The Ark of the Covenant is getting blasted.  My homeboys are sleeping in tents.  I’ll be damned if I’m gonna go get freaky with the Mrs. while the rest of my platoon can’t do the same.  With their wives, I mean.  You know what I’m saying.  No one’s getting freaky with my wife but me.”

David was kind of annoyed by how much of a better person Uriah was than him, but he wasn’t giving up that easy.  He told Uriah to come over for dinner the next night and then he could go back to his precious little tents.  Uriah came over and David proceeded to pour cheap liquor into him like he was a cheerleader at a homecoming dance.  Before long, Uriah was piss drunk.  But even then he wouldn’t go home.  He passed out on David’s futon and, in an ironic turn of events, puked all over David’s coffee table.

It was time for extreme measures.  David gave Uriah a letter for Joab and sent him back to the front line.  In the letter were instructions for Joab to put Uriah with Israel’s Delta Force warriors even though Uriah had only been out of basic training for like 8 months.  Basically, it was a letter giving our boy Uriah the shaft.  David knew Uriah couldn’t read so he wasn’t worried about him figuring out what was going down.

Joab was kind of bummed when he got the letter because everyone loved Uriah.  He made some damn good coffee and could do a spot-on Dane Cook impression.  He was good company.  But Joab was the King’s boy so he went ahead and did as he was told.  Uriah went out with the ballsiest of the badasses and it wasn’t long before he caught an arrow in the chest.  Game, set, match.  Uriah died for his country and David lived to fornicate another day.

After he heard about Uriah’s passing, David called up Bathsheba and she moved into the castle to become Wife #8.  Most scholars agree that this was a dick move on David’s part.  God was none too pleased about it either.  He’d seen the whole thing and you can bet he was going to have a word with David about it.  He sent the prophet Nathan to smack David around for being such a perv.  Diseases and other disasters followed and eventually David learned to quit creeping on the neighbors.

But that’s a story for another day.