Dishonorable Monster Mention

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  There are a couple of other monsters I failed to mention who should be included.  

Cain murdered his brother.  Yahweh was not too happy about it so he marked him.    

What else could he do?  There were so few people on the earth at the time that he could not cast him out of the garden of life.

Doing the math of being fruitful and multiplying cannot happen if you are dead.  

Confused?  So am I, but I love the story.  It provides possibilities for all kinds of writers.  See East of Eden by John Steinbeck for a terrific Cain and Abel story.  

The unnamed Pharaoh of Egypt who ordered the murder of Hebrew boys was a monster.  Here we have another man with lots of power willing to do anything to keep his power.  

He seems like the type of person who would be willing to shut down his own government if he does not get his way and laws restrain him from murder.

We have no idea how many Pharaoh killed.  The person who wrote of battles in Joshua gave us death stats, but the person who wrote of the slaughter of the innocents did not.  Nor do we know which Pharaoh this is.

Of course, his is a story about oppression and liberation.  Although none of it happened, it is all true.  Even today innocents are being slaughtered.  The names of the monsters only have changed.

Now, that we have books and footage of Hitler, how untrue could this monster possibly be?

This Pharaoh does not need to be named for he is all the Pharaohs who ever lived and ever bled people.  

This Pharaoh's fiendish ways were etched into Hebrew lore so unforgettably that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew used it in his birth narrative with King Herod as the perpetrator.

Josephus tells us a lot about those days before and after Jesus was born.  He never mentions that Herod ordered such a slaughter.  It seems unlikely since the symbolism of that deed would not escape Herod.

However, we know Herod was a monster.  He had his wife and son murdered--and others.  So let's include Herod the Grisly on the monster list for this slaughter of the innocents did not happen, but it is true, indeed.

Next time, the two worst monsters of the Bible.

Blessings...