Psalm 150 & All That Jazz
Hallelujah!
Praise the everything to which I am nothing!
Praise the nothing to which I am everything!
Praise the universe beyond us!
Praise the universe within us!
Praise with Freddie Hubbard trumpet tour of Cantaloupe Island!
Praise with Purple Haze from Jimi Hendrix’s electrifying guitar!
Praise with Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man!
Praise with a Shakira - Hips Don't Lie dance!
Praise with Newport Jazz Festival secular humanists
dancing to gospel beat of Mahalia Jackson!
Praise with Don Cornelius Soul Train line dancers introducing
on syndicated television show latest dance moves!
Praise with Eric Dolphy playing Jitterbug Waltz on flute!
Praise with loud crashing cymbals of a Elvin Jones drum proclamations!
Praise with Willie “life-of-the-party” Bobo on conga!
Let everything that has breath
sock-it-to-me, sock-it-to-me, sock-it-to-me!
Ode to the Period
Where the comma is hesitant,
you are resolute.
An apostrophe’s known for its omissions
and you for being thorough.
Abrupt the dash--
You get to the point.
Ellipses enigmatic…
You translucent are.
The semicolon initiates;
you consummate.
The following don’t stop: waves, greed and colons.
You do.
The exclamation point is excessive
but you are stable. Yes!
Does not the question bring uncertainty
and you closure?
As the old quotation marks, “When all is said
and done, you are there.”
I Remember Amalek*
O God of my Bible Belt fathers who through
the prophet Samuel ordered him to say unto Saul,
“The Lord sent me to anoint thee to be king over Israel.
Now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words
of the Lord.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts: ‘I remember what Amalek
did to Israel, how he lay in wait for him on the way
when he came up from Egypt.
Now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all
that they have, and spare them not; but slay
both man and woman, infant and suckling,
ox and sheep, camel and ass.’” **
ELOI, ELOI…?—***
What did these children and babies have to do
with what Amalek did to Israel a few centuries
before they were even born that you ordered
them to be wiped off the face of the earth?
I read both the Bible through twice before I was 15
and was deeply disturbed by what was surely a war crime
but the godly Bible professors at Bob Jones University,
the college I attended during the 50’s, shrugged off
the genocide described in 1st Samuel 15:1-3 while
insisting the scriptural point was that King Saul
had to be punished for failing to kill King Agag
and the best livestock of the Amalekites.
Jesus Christ, man! What the hell was your problem?
There still wasn’t enough screams and bloody mommy
and baby bodies to propitiate your wrath?
I didn’t hear any cries for mercy and sword whacks either
in the liberal commentary on the same Bible passage.
The New Interpreter’s Study Bible only remarked,
“Samuel orders Saul to avenge the events of
Exodus 17:8-16 through holy war which
forbids taking prisoners or booty.”
Lord, Lord, love me.
I’m a Liberal.
When I went to BJU and later Fuller Theological Seminary,
eminent archeologist William F. Albright was still living.
He believed the physical evidence for the historical events
behind many Old Testament narratives had been found.
This was wishful thinking.
Excavations at Tell es-Sultan, did not find any traces
of Jericho’s destruction during the time when Joshua
led army of chosen people to conquer and occupy—
excuse me, enter the promised land.
But don’t get me wrong, God almighty.
Every time I hear Mahalia Jackson sing,
“Joshua fit the Battle of JerichoJericho- Jericho…
And the walls come tumbling down,”
O my Sweet Lord,
I’m a believer!
Anyway, there’s also no archeological evidence
or historical records of Hebrew slaves in Egypt.
According to Wikipedia, the “consensus of modern
scholars is that the Pentateuch does not give
an accurate account of the origins of the Israelites,
who appear instead to have come together as
a separate and distinct people from the indigenous
Canaanite culture in the central highlands of Canaan
in the late 2nd millennium BCE.
So with all due respect, All Knowing God, what I’d
like to understand is how can you remember
what never happened?
Of course you didn’t answer.
The genocide in 1st Samuel 15 never happened either.
According to 1st Samuel 30:1–2, the Amalekites invaded
the Negev and Ziklag in the Judean/Philistine border
area towards the end of the reign of King Saul, burning
Ziklag and taking its citizens away into captivity.
The future king David led a successful mission against
the Amalekites to recover "all that the Amalekites
had carried away.”
Thank God, you changed your mind on collective punishment,
when you said in Deuteronomy 24:16, “Parents shouldn’t be
executed because of what their children have done; neither should
children be executed because of what their parents have done.
Each person should be executed for their own guilty acts.”
Ended conversation with evolving and elusive deity…
All shook up by fictitious account of ancient holocaust…
Turn on television…
See rubble from Israel Defense Force bombing…
Hear TV voice—
“Over 10,000 dead in Gaza…
More than 4,000 of them—
Children…”
* A quote from 1st Samuel 15:2 by Benjamin Netanyahu
** I Samuel 15:1-3 21st Century King James Version
*** Mark 15:34
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