Monday, February 26, 2007

My New Favorite Bible Verse

Psalm 58:8a: "Let [the wicked] be like the snail that dissolves into slime."

Great, isn't it? I stumbled across this beauty as part of my reading for my Psalms class. (This week's topic is Imagin/ing YHWH and Issues of Covenant.) But this one verse captured my attention. It's startlingly (and wonderfully) graphic. Don't you wish your enemies would dissolve into slime? Come on now...be honest!

Just for fun, I turned to the United Methodist Hymnal to see (1) if it was in there and (2) if the liturgist or the congregation said it. Sadly, it's one of the psalms that got axed (though I don't know why, after all, we do say the end of Psalm 137, and that's not a pretty sight to think about!) I can just imagine someone proclaiming from a lectern, "Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime; like the untimely birth that never sees the sun." (The last half of that verse is just a little too harsh for my taste, though there are times when I wish my enemies had never been born).

We forget that these nasty little phrases sneak into our clean and pretty text. We also forget the Bible's little idiosyncrasies. Another favorite passage is Proverbs 26:11, which says "Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who reverts to his folly." Fun, eh? Too bad we don't get these memory verses in Sunday School!

Anyone else have some favorite quirky passages?

4 comments:

Sally said...

I rather like:
" Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off a foul odor;
so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor." Eccles 10:1

Only takes a little poison to ruin something good!!!

Sally said...

love your verse btw

Melissa said...

That's a fantastic verse! :-)

Randy said...

It's not quite in the same vein as slime and dog vomit, but I just ran across this one a couple weeks ago and it makes me chuckle:

"See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!"
Galatians 6:11