I’ve come now, to Chronicles. We’re having a review, and they’re filling in a few blanks. The Lord was not quite as happy with David as I’d been led to believe.
It seems that after he was proclaimed King, and everyone danced in the street, David called up his general and asked him to “number”
And so he did. It couldn’t get any grander. Practically made of gold. All Trumped up. The Lord loved it. But not so much that he didn’t give Solomon hell when he employed his building skills on behalf of the gods of his many wives.
Sol was a scion of diversity. God detested diversity. Don’t mix cotton and linen and don’t mix the Jews and the Heathens. (He had no truck with lepers or other“special” folks our culture embraces, either.) Stay pure, and healthy, was his message.
It wasn’t the bodies he minded them mingling with, so much as it was their gods. He didn’t put up an argument when Sol began bringing home the babes. But when he started building little out-house oracles for them, God put his foot down. Right through Solomon’s reign.
These two famous kings had a note of disrepute about them. David sang and caroused too much. His wife despised him for it and tried to get him to stop. Sol was pussy-whipped.
But I have discovered a true prince in the guise of a prophet. The prophet Elijah. The one the Jews set a place for at the Seder table, should he be passing by and get a yen for matzoh ball soup.
Wipe that dumb look off your face if you’re thinking: Huh? Seder? What the hell’s a Seder? I’m no Jew.
If you’re no Jew, the Seder is more important to you than it is to them. To you, it’s the Last Supper. Chew on that. Have some unleavened bread with it. Jesus did.
Why does Elijah need to have a place set for him? Why isn’t he home, feasting with his family? Elijah has no home. Elijah is a wanderer. The Powers that Be are always after Elijah’s head. He keeps it in hiding.
Why’s that?
That’s because Elijah is such a goddam good prophet, nobody wants to hear what he has to say.
Yet if they want the truth, they have to call him. And he gives it up – just before fleeing into the countryside. Where on the first night of Passover, he might be strolling by your house, or skulking in your backyard, preparing to crash your party.
Welcome him in. And treat him like a king. He’s one of God’s real reps on Earth. He told it like it is and made his way without profiteering.
