The Last Testament: A Memoir (22 page)

⁸
Yea, everybody liked Debbie.

⁹
Easy on the eyes, too!)

¹⁰
Then came Gideon, the one with the trumpet; then Abimelech; then Tola, Jair, Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon.

¹¹
They kept a low profile.

¹²
But then came the final judge, Samson; the mighty Samson; the legendary Samson; the earthshaking Samson;

¹³
Who tore apart a lion with his bare hands; who killed 30 party guests for cheating on a riddle; who single-handedly pulled the gates of Gaza out of the ground; who tied 150 pairs of foxes together by the tail, fastened torches to them, and set them loose in his enemies’ wheat fields; who slew 1,000 Philistines with a donkey’s jawbone...

¹⁴
Truly, one reads Judges 1–12, and it is alliances this, and trade missions that, and altar-buildings and sacrifices, yahweh yahweh yahweh;

¹⁵
And then one arrives at Judges 13, and thinks, “Whoa, when did my Bible turn into a comic book?”

¹⁶
Samson was the most accomplished Judge, more so even than Deborah; for though he lacked her wisdom and compassion, he rendered his decisions with a chest-beating, club-wielding, Schwarzeneggerian finality that tended to dissuade the losers from filing an appeal.

¹⁷
I did not converse often with Samson, for my intervention was seldom needed during his forceful reign; nor was he one for small talk, his outside interests being limited to stonelifting and squinting in incomprehension.

¹⁸
Samson was more than just a hero, he was a superhero; and like all super-heroes, his birth was divinely prophesied, and his strength was beyond that of mortal men, and he fought for justice, and had a hidden weakness whose exposure would lead to his downfall: Nazirite.

¹⁹
Yea, he was a Nazirite: an ascetic consecrated unto my service from before birth, and thus sworn by oath to abstain from alcohol, avoid dead bodies, and leave his hair and beard unshorn; which he did . . . until
she
walked in.

²⁰
Of course I mean Delilah; an unscrupulous, conniving harlot; a mistress of seduction who verily was not even all that comely, though she had a reputation for being most adept at “anointing the tent pole.”

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The treacherous harridan plotted against Samson from their first night together, when she asked him, “If thou lovest me, tell me by what means canst thou be subdued.”

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And he said, “Tie me with seven new bowstrings and I will become as weak as any man.”

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Then he fell asleep; and she bound him with seven new bowstrings; whereupon he woke, and snapped them like straw, and mocked her.

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And the next night she asked, “Tease me not: this time tell me truly by what means canst thou be subdued.”

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And he said, “Tie me with new ropes and I will become as weak as any man.”

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Then he fell asleep; and she bound him with new ropes; whereupon he woke, and snapped them like flax, and mocked her.

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This went on for 827 consecutive nights.

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If that is not the definition of a dysfunctional relationship, I know not what is.

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But finally Delilah wore him down, nagging him into revealing his Naziritic oath, and thereby the source of his strength; and quickly ensued the famous denouement:

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She cut his hair while he slept, and the Philistines captured him, and blinded him, and brought him into their temple; whose pillars he leaned upon until the entire edifice collapsed, killing him and all within;

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Leaving the final lesson of the saga of Samson—rabbi, champion, patriot, last of the judges of Israel—all too clear:

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Never feel too embarrassed to ask for another stylist.

CHAPTER 3

1
N
ot long thereafter emerged David, and after him his son Solomon, the two most accomplished men of ancient times; kings, warriors, musicians, poets, psalmodists, lovers; their peers called them Renaissance men, which back then made them
extremely
ahead of their time.

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David first rose to prominence as a harpist: he was a child prodigy whose father Jesse made him practice eight hours a day until his fingers bled; Jesse himself having once been a promising young harpist, until his career ended in a freak scything mishap.

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In this way David came to the attention of the moody King Saul, who took solace in the lad’s honeyed glissandi after a hard day’s smite.

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David also gained the friendship of Saul’s son Jonathan, who, if not in love with David, certainly kissed him a lot.

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One day David went to visit his brothers, who were soldiers in Saul’s army, in the Valley of Elah, and this is where his famous battle with the Philistine Goliath took place.

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And here I must rush to the defense of this unfairly maligned man; for though not a Chosen Person, and destined to lose, Goliath’s giant stature concealed an even bigger heart.

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Goliath was a faithful husband; Goliath was a devoted father; Goliath was a trusted friend; Goliath was a community activist; Goliath worked with troubled youth in inner-city Gaza; Goliath was cofounder of the Philistine Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

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Goliath was as universally beloved a figure as the Middle East has ever produced; and when the young, brash, arrogant David agreed to accept his challenge to fight him,
everybody
was rooting for Goliath—even the Jews, though they would never have admitted it.

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The outcome was preordained, of course; David had to win, and the Philistines had to be defeated; but never have I felt more sadness about ending a life, as I did when I guided that rocket-grenade from David’s specially-designed slingshot to Goliath’s forehead.

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Rest in peace, Goliath; thou art missed.

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Saul soon grew jealous of the newly famous David, and tried to have him killed; but he failed, largely due to the intervention of Jonathan, who, if not in love with David, certainly sodomized him a lot.

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Eventually both Saul and Jonathan were killed by the Philistines, and David was anointed king, a post he filled for 40 years—there is that number again, 40; I must ask a master Kabbalist why it keeps cropping up throughout my career; Madonna, I await thy call.

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David led his army on a series of military triumphs; he conquered the Philistines, and made the Moabites pay tribute, and even took bronze vessels from the servants of Hadadezer of Zobah; and back then,
nobody
took bronze vessels from the servants of Hadadezer of Zobah.

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He also had eight wives, the most famous of them being Bathsheba; he coveted her but she was married, so he sent her husband Uriah to war and told his commander to abandon him on the battlefield, “that he may be smitten, and die”; well played, Dave.

¹⁵
But it was a grievous sin nonetheless; and as is written I punished David by killing their infant son; tragic, to be sure, but then again
I
am not the one who chose to be born to David in this illegitimate fashion.

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David and I had our disagreements over the years, but I loved him, and he loved me; for he wrote many of the psalms in my honor in the book of that name; they are all wondrous, one great psalm after another; I listen to them whenever I am down and in need of a picketh-me-up.

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I have no favorite, but humanity seems especially fond of Psalm 40 (that number again!); for from it derives the lyrics to U2’s popular concert-closer “40.”

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(I am of two minds about Bono; he has written great music, and does noble charitable work; but he is a bit smug; and then there is
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

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Even ignoring the public brouhaha and the safety issues, the score itself is mediocre at best: musically forgettable, lyrically craftless, and betraying a failure to even recognize, much less solve, the practical problems of writing stageable songs within a musical-theater context.

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I have six words for thee, Bono:
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
)

CHAPTER 4

1
D
avid was succeeded by his and Bathsheba’s better-fated second son, Solomon; who has justly gone down through the ages as a model of wisdom.

2 For I came to him one night in a dream, offering to bestow a gift; and he asked not for wealth or honor, but for wisdom, and a discerning heart whereby to govern his people; and I was so pleased by his request, that I not only granted it him, but also the wealth and honor he had not asked for.

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(I have wondered over the years, if perhaps he asked for wisdom
knowing
it would predispose me to also grant him wealth and honor; which would have meant he was
already
very wise; which would have made his request for more wisdom unnecessary; and therefore unwise; but therefore necessary once more...

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Lo, this is why having an infinite mind is a pain in the ass.)

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Solomon’s wisdom is exemplified in the story of the two women who each claimed to be the mother of a baby; he wielded his sword and lifted it as if to cut the infant in two; whereupon the real mother gave up her claim to spare the child’s life.

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This was wise of Solomon; but it was even wiser of him to parlay that verdict into a celebratory “chamber party” that night with the world’s most grateful MILF.

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That was another thing about Solomon; to call him a lover of women would be woefully inadequate, for as it states in 1 Kings 11:1–3, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

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That is why he seldom left his palace; preferring to spend the day strolling in his bedclothes around his palace’s custom-built garden, complete with a grotto wherein his women would frolic.

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He lived this way until his death at age 94, long after it had become very, very disturbing.

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Like his father before him, Solomon was also a great writer; indeed, David only wrote half of one of the Old Testament’s poetic books, Psalms, whereas Solomon wrote three: