A LITTLE UNDER THREE MILLENIA AGO, A PROPHET named Elijah struggled, at God's behest, with the government of his day, one ruled openly by kings. These Israelite kings promoted the worship of a new god, the nature god Baal, to enhance their power. It wouldn't do for their people to attend the holy days at Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. They might want to reunite with their brothers, the Jews. So the new state god, Baal, was established, and woe unto anyone who followed the old ways. Worship of the LORD became synonymous with treason. What I am going to write about is Elijah's run-in with the King and the police forces of his day, as mentioned in II Kings, Chapter one.
IT MIGHT BE A PRETTY GOOD TALE, the reader might say. But what has that to do with today? Glad you asked.
In the best literary traditions of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Joseph Smith, Robert Graves, and Gary Jennings, I must, simply must, relate what happened to me the other day. I was turning up my garden to bury a duck when an angel appeared unto me and made me dig up a pot with a scroll inside. There, in the ancient Hebrew, which I was all of a sudden able to understand, was the expanded first chapter of II Kings. The angel commanded me to publish it. So I did, then the angel took off with the scroll and my understanding of ancient Hebrew. I'm going to put it in today's vernacular: Angry White Male Redneck-Peckerwoodese. Here goes:
Last Kings, Chapter 1
Verse 1 -- Then a whole bunch of pissed-off people called Moabites rebelled because they wouldn't put up with any more of the King's shit and they sure weren't scared of Ahab's boy.
Verse 2 -- And the King fell off the bed and through a lattice in the White Palace while screwing his latest whore, and his right and third leg just wouldn't heal. So he sent messengers and told them, "Go, ask Baalzebub, the Philistine State God of Healing at Ekron, if this is just another sore and when I'll get better. I sure feel my pain."
Verse 3 -- But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, "Get up and go down to meet the messengers of the king and tell them, "What! There's no God in Israel that you gotta go down and lick the bronze butt of Baalzebub, Philistine State God of Healing in Ekron?"
Verse 4 -- "Now the LORD says this, "Your pecker will turn black and fall off. Then you will die of frustration because of no more bimbos and because you lie so much that nobody will bother to listen to you anymore. Plus the Queen will nag you to death." Elijah nodded, then left.
Verse 5 -- And when the King's messengers returned, the king asked, "Back so soon?"
Verse 6 -- They told him, "Some holy geezer pestered the shit out of us and he told us to come back and tell you this: "The LORD says, "Is there no God in Israel that you gotta kiss Baalzebub's bronze ass in Ekron? Your pecker will turn black and fall off. No more whores, everyone will ignore you because you lie so much. The queen will nag you to death. You will die of frustration."
Verse 7 -- "Who was that mean old holy geezer?" the king asked.
Verse 8 -- And they answered him, "He was a hairy guy, with a girdle of leather about his nuts." And the king said, "Elijah, the Tishbite!"
Verse 9 -- Then the king sent a captain of fifty with his fifty agents: the King's Bureau of Wine, Hashish, and Swords, the King's Bureau of Investigation, the King's Sneakret Service, the King's Marshalls, a whole alphabet soup of King's goons. The captain, a slick young thug, saw Elijah sitting atop a hill. Scattering his men in a circle around the hill, the captain held a pair of shackles as he climbed the hill saying, "Don't mess with me. I killed a whole bunch of weavers in their hut, speared them all in the back. My best man shot an arrow into the wife's head. We are the King's men and we will never be held to account." As he neared Elijah, the captain said, "Now you had better cooperate with me and the King, you smelly old man of God, or I'll slap a harelip on you faster than you can say "Police Brutality."
Verse 10 -- And Elijah rolled his eyes, shook his head, and said to the young police thug commanding fifty, "If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume you and your fifty murderers." With a Whoosh!, fire came down from heaven, burning to death fifty-one murderous King's rascals.
Verse 11 -- Then the King sent out another chief goon of fifty with his fifty. The captain, a grizzled old killer, looked at the remains of the previous fifty-one and said, "Funny, I thought we were the only ones allowed to besiege people on private property, then burn them to death. No matter," he said as he drew his sword. 'The King wanted you two hours ago, so get your nasty old man-of-God ass right down here -- now!"
Verse 12 -- And Elijah answered and said unto them, "You murderous pigs won't learn, will you? Very well then, if I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven, and consume you and your fifty." And the fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.
Verse 13 -- And the king sent again a captain of the third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty saw the damage about the hill. He soiled his armor. So did the rest of the King's men. It's a whole lot more fun to kill unarmed civilians than to be killed yourself. The captain crawled up the hill like a scared snake, and came and fell on his knees before Elijah, and besought him, and said unto him, "Oh man of God, I pray you, please, please, please let my life, and the life of these fifty of your servants, be precious in thy sight." Then the king's bureaucrat peed in his armor again.
Verse 14 -- "I see that there came fire down from heaven, and burnt up the two captains of the former fifties with their fifties: therefore let my life now be precious in thy sight. To hell with the rest. Even though I set fire to the King's tower the other day and roasted some of the King's men and serving women and their babies, and blamed it on a Moabite in a speeding oxcart carrying a load of manure, an unregistered dagger, and no road tax license from the King. It's not all my fault. I had the help of the scribes and town criers, S.O.B.s (Sons of Belial) all, who helped me put the blame onto the rebellious Moabites. The common people didn't want to find out any different, because they lack the physical and moral courage to do anything about it. It ain't fair that I should burn without all my crooked buddies getting the same as well. Everyone knows that the King can do whatever he wants."
Verse 15 -- Elijah wanted to call down fire on this rapscallion and his lot. But the angel of the LORD said unto Elijah, "Go down with him: be not afraid of him. He and his fifty will get the same fate on earth as the King and his family -- serving as dog and bird food." So Elijah arose, and went down with him unto the king, keeping a twenty pace margin upwind.
Verse 16 -- And Elijah said unto the King, "Thus saith the LORD, forasmuch as you have sent messengers to brown-nose to Baalzebub, Philistine State God of Healing in Ekron, is it not because there is no God in Israel to inquire of his word? Therefore you shall not come down off that bed you lie on and every place else for that matter. Your pecker will turn black and fall off. You will die of frustration because there will be no more whores for you. Nobody will listen to anything you say, especially after today, and the Queen will help nag you to death. I've had enough of you." Then Elijah left the White Palace.
Verse 17 -- So the king died according to the word of the LORD which Elijah had spoken. Nobody missed him except the whores and other Sons of Belial, (S.O.B.s) and even them not too much.
AND THAT'S PRETTY MUCH THE WAY IT WAS. Ahab's line came to an end when a rebellious general named Jehu killed Jehoram. Jehu ordered Queen Jezebel thrown out of a window, and before he got around to burying her, the dogs ate all of her except her head, hands and feet. Jehu killed all of Ahab's children, Ahab's State-God Priests, and Ahab's Kingsmen, at least all that he could find. Since Jehu did such an efficient job of it, God promised him that his dynasty would last four generations. God kept his word. Regrettably, Jehu soon turned out to be as wicked as Ahab's bunch. God got tired of the Israelites and he allowed the Assyrians to take them away in captivity, where they were scattered and never heard of again.
THREE THOUSAND YEARS HAVE PASSED, and people still remain the same.
This article first published in
The Southwestern Missouri Libertarian,
Issue #11, April-May 1995.
