I did not have a good weekend reading strategy in place and need to rethink this for next weekend. And this particular weekend started Friday, apparently.
On to Exodus.
I had never read Exodus closely enough to see the "but the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh." So the Lord is just a big puppetmaster here? I mean, it really is the only possible explanation because, jeez, the bugs and the frogs and all...yecch.
And also: interesting how many old, old stereotypes of Jews are set. They took the gold and silver, they spoke to Moses saying, What, there weren't enough graves in Egypt so we had to die here? That's a comment that would get an "oh, SNAP!" today and clearly got the equivalent then or it wouldn't have been recorded. But that's exactly the kind of verbal pattern comedians like Billy Crystal and many of my own Jewish friends use, which is kind of amazing longevity for a pattern of speech.
No comments:
Post a Comment