Archives: Commentary

Malachi 2:3 has God threaten to spread dung on the priests’ faces. It is listed for its coarse imagery. Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung…

In 2 Kings 18:27, repeated in Isaiah 36:12, the Assyrian field commander warns that the men on the wall will eat their own dung and drink their own…

Revelation 13:1-2 describes a beast with seven heads and ten horns that is like a leopard, with feet like a bear’s and a mouth like a lion’s. The…

In Judges 15:15-16 Samson strikes down a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey. It is set beside the previous item as another tale of one man…

Judges 3:31 says Shamgar killed 600 Philistines with an oxgoad, a farmer’s prod. The argument finds the feat too fantastic to take at face value. After him was…

Leviticus 12:1-5 makes a mother unclean for seven days after a son, but for two weeks after a daughter. The complaint is that the birth of a girl…

Leviticus 11:20 calls winged creatures that go on all fours detestable. The objection is that it describes flying creatures as walking on four legs, which is not how…

The first of a list of passages the argument calls absurd: a donkey speaks to Balaam, Numbers 22:27-28. The point is that a story of an animal holding…