Hey, you know in Leviticus when Moses's brother Aaron's sons, the priests of the Ark of the Covenant (you TOTALLY know what I'm talking about -- EVERYONE knows about Nadab and Abihu) defiled the sacred place around the Ark through some Jewish law I'm unclear on and then it says God killed them with fire and then Moses said:
"This is what the LORD spoke of when he said: 'Among those who approach me I will show myself holy; in the sight of all the people I will be honored.'"
So basically that they should have known better. Remember that? Do you know what immediately follows it?
"Aaron remained silent."
Some scribe like four thousand years ago chose to include that, which is amazing.
I mean, because this is the Bible and crazy-old and part of a long-distant culture, who knows if this meant something else. Maybe when your sons died in godly fire you were SUPPOSED to say nothing when your brother did a shitty job comforting you. But if we're terrible and look at it from a contemporary standpoint, it's one of the most poignant parts of the Old Testament. They could've just continued the text (Moses gets his cousins to carry the bodies away), but they SPECIFICALLY state that Aaron remained silent.
Speaking of literary tense, do you know how complicated it gets when you're speaking of the Bible? Because I think this stuff happened, in one form or another, so for ME this is at least partially a historical text, which means not fiction, which means not present tense. I think. BUT SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO DO PRESENT TENSE. Oh, confusion.
And for those about to for some reason say something tremendously insulting and/or shitty, you may have this to appease you:
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