Isaiah 10-13

The Facts (Chapter number: Verse)

10:2 - "[You who write oppressive statutes] to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widow may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey."
10:11 - "... shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols what I have done to Samaria and her images?"
10:12 - "This very day he shall halt at Nob, he will shake his fist at the mount of daughter Zion, the hill of Jerusalem."

Isaiah 11 - No mention of any women.

Isaiah 12 - No mention of any women.

13:8 - "Pangs and agony will seize them; they will be in anguish like a woman in labor."
13:16 - "Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished."
13:18 - "Their bows will slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children."

My Comments

The only mentions of women here are in relation to violence against them or the pain they suffer. They, along with the children and fetuses (God's pro-life, huh?), will be punished for the sins of the men of their community. Oh, wait, right, it's really all the women's fault because they are loose women who tempt men away from God by dressing up nice and shaking their bottoms to lure them into their marriage beds. So OF COURSE women, who are so often considered nothing more than property of men and the inferior sex who should have no real power in the community, should bear the worst of the punishment. Along with the fruit of their loins because nothing clean and pure comes out of a woman. Riiiiiight...

Violence, violence, violence. All in the name of God or perpetrated by God himself.

I can't help but giggle sometimes at all this horrific Biblical violence. Anyone remember after 9/11 how all anyone (at least anyone non-Muslim) could talk about was how violent the Koran was and this was why those terrorists blew the towers up? I know at least in my family my dad read the Koran (or at least claimed to, I never actually saw him reading it) and would tell us how horrible the Koran was, with people going out and slaughtering non believers in the name of Allah. Thank God our good Christian religion wasn't so barbaric! We would wipe our brows and rest easy knowing that our faith truly wasn't like violent Islam.

I really can appreciate the irony of those talks now that I have read first hand just how loving and peaceful the Bible really is.

Friday: Isaiah 14-16