God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible (34 page)

Habakkuk sends up a second letter of complaint to God:

God was now engaged and answering Habakkuk’s concerns with prompt retort and to the above complaint he replied that there are five woes that have besieged his people and those that have succumbed to these pursuits will perish, but those that remain righteous will thrive. The five woes include:

Those that stockpile stolen goods.

Those that prosper by unjust means.

Those that build a city by bloodshed.

Those that get their friends drunk so that they can see their naked bodies.

Those that worship other gods.

Habakkuk then falls to his knees in prayer and appeals to the better half of God’s bipolar personality:

Carl Sagan

Zephaniah is yet another prophet that we know little or nothing about outside of the Bible, thus his real identity is unknown. What is assumed is that the author wrote this at the end of the Babylonian captivity, but backdated it to make it read like a prophecy.

The author opens with a vision in which he conceives a date in the future that God will bring destruction forthwith to all of mankind and only those judged righteous will survive. No doubt using the Book of Genesis for his inspiration, Zephaniah opens with God telling him:

The author states that this coming judgement will affect all nations including Zephaniah’s home nation of Judah, where he believes God resides. He foretells the destruction and judgment of Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Cush, Assyria but claims that God’s wrath will be even more vengeful against evil doing Israelites because they were chosen by him to be the ‘light upon the nations’.

God, in vitriolic violent fury warns:

God shows his softer side once in the final verses of this book and promises a better future for his people that survive judgment:

This is the promise God has made to the Israelites at the end of their exile, but hello – Holocaust. God must have had his fingers crossed when he committed himself to this pact. Impressively sneaky. Not!

George Santayana

The text of this book claims that Haggai was the son of the governor of Judah and was written in 520 BC, approximately eighteen years after Babylon had been conquered by Cyrus, thus allowing the captive Jews to return home to Judea. With their exodus and freedom, God called on his prophet Haggai to ensure that the Israelites had their priorities in order. The first priority not being to rebuild their homes, or replant their crop fields, number one for God was for his people to rebuild his Temple:

Haggai passed this word of God onto the governor and the Israelites postponed their own basic survival requirements in order to obey God’s command to build his temple for their worship of him. In return for rebuilding his temple, God promises to end the drought that had brought famine in the region.

Quentin Crisp

Zechariah prophesized during the same period as Haggai, which was the period after the exodus from captivity to the Babylonians. This book is often suitably nicknamed the ‘Book of Revelations of the Old Testament’, and is certainly from where the New Testament’s version plagiarized much of its loony inspiration.

During this period of restoration of the Promised Land, the Israelites were still a shattered nation having spent the better part of seventy years in captivity. It would obviously take them years to rebuild their society and they lived in constant fear that due to their weakness as a developing nation once again their neighboring nations would attack.

Zechariah’s contemporary, Haggai, was constantly nipping at the Israelites heels, reminding them that they had spent the past seventy years in exile because they did not worship God enough and that the current drought was a result of not completing the rebuilding of the Temple. God realized that his people would grow tired of one man’s voice so he appointed Zechariah to be another vocal whip. Thus, Zechariah’s first writings are a reminder to all that God had punished them with Babylonian captivity because they worshipped other gods and ignored the most important god of all – God.

Zechariah then tells of a vision he received from God, a dream that included four horses standing among some myrtle trees, a red horse with a jockey riding it and behind him were another red, a brown and a white horse. Zechariah asked God what the significance of these four horses were. God was busy running a few errands that day and had an angel take care of all incoming calls, to which the appointed angel replied, “I will show you what they are”. The man riding the red horse stepped forward and said:

Then the angel passed on the message from God that read:

Doesn’t this verse remind you of backyard fights you had with your brother? When in a rage you would say, “You pissed me off a little bit by wrecking my train set, but now I am really mad that you violated my porn stash without asking!”

Zechariah then writes that during this vision he looked upwards and saw four horns. He asked the angel what this meant, to which the winged messenger replied that they represented the four nations that had undone Judah. Next, the prophet saw a man with a measuring line in his hand and the angel informed him that this was God measuring the boundary pegs of Jerusalem, because God wanted the rebuilt city to be a city without walls. God said to the angel:

Zechariah was then shown a gold lamp stand, a flying scroll and woman in a basket, all with their own cryptic meanings. Suddenly, four chariots burst out from between two mountains. The mountains were not made of rock, however, but carved out of bronze. Zechariah asked the angel the meaning of the chariots, to which the angel responded:

The chariot with the black horse was sent to the north; the one with the white horse to the west and the others to the south.

In what Christians believe to be the prophecy of Christ, but the Jews believe to be the prophecy of a messiah that has not yet arrived, still to this day, God says to Zechariah:

Hmm, I think I smell a rat, but let’s move on.

Yes, I definitely smell a rat!

God further adds to Zechariah’s vision that the nation of Israel will mourn for the ‘one they pierced’:

God then promises he will kill two-thirds of mankind for their sins, with the remaining third to be thrown into the fire and converted into silver to carry forth God’s name. Wow my head is spinning!

During these end days, before the coming of God to earth, God says:

Zechariah then writes that on this day that God’s feet land on earth, it will be on the Mount of Olives, Jerusalem. The righteous will live in prosperity with God and the evil-doers and non-believers will reap the following fate:

Eric Hoffer

The book of Malachi is the final book of the Old Testament, and like Zephaniah the identity of the author is unknown, as is the exact time of writing.

The author’s objective is to steer the Israelites back to following God’s laws and commandments after the return from exile in Assyria and Babylon. Regardless of the fact that the prophets had urged the people of the Southern and Northern Kingdoms to follow God’s way or suffer another exile-like punishment, the Israelites continued to wane in their worship. Henceforth, the prophecy of Malachi, to straighten them back on the path to righteousness.

In the very opening verses of Malachi it reveals Israel questioning whether or not God actually does love them:

God then in a fit of jilted-lover-like rage, hammers the Israelites for failing to love him adequately:

In an effort to blurt out the actual punishment for those that fail to worship him in a manner that pleases, God dishes out warning of punishment by defecation: