Where My Head Goes

So in my further travels in reading the whole Bible, I can say I was a little disheartened to get somewhere around Psalm 90, and realize there’s still a good 60 chapters left.

Keener Bible readers than me will groan loudly when I venture to say that the Psalms started to get kinda boring after awhile. They all seemed to follow the same pattern of Praise God! God’s Great! I Was Miserable And Bad Things Were Happened To Me But God Rescued Me! Or Maybe I’m Still Waiting On Him To Rescue Me, But I Know He Will! Yay God! God’s Great! Made me think paradoxically of the Smiths song, “What Difference Does It Make,” especially when it gets to very end of that song:

Oh, I'm too tired
I'm so sick and tired
And I'm feeling very sick and ill today
But I'm still fond of you, oh-ho-oh

Yes, I admit it’s not the best example. But that’s where my head goes.

Then I hit Psalm 105 and 106, which are a handy dandy history lesson for those for us who aren’t reading the Bible in chronological order, and haven’t already read Exodus and Numbers.

But I perked up a bit when the psalmist in 106 namechecked Phinehas in verse 30 and 31. But Phinehas stood up and intervened, and the plague was checked. This was credited to him as righteousness for endless generations to come.

I had forgotten about Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron and a priest of the temple. In Numbers 25, Israelite men start sleeping with Moabite and Midianite women, God tells Moses to kill ‘em all, kill ‘em all, and in the midst of Moses telling his troops to kill ‘em all, kill ‘em all, an Isralite dude named Zimri and a Midiaite woman name Cozbi decide to give a metaphorical finger to God, Moses, and anyone else telling them where they can or can’t have sex, and decide to get busy IN the temple, apparently in front of everyone. Phinehas responds by taking his spear and running it through the couple whilst they were in the middle of whoopiemaking.

To which I thought, Hey! I’ve seen that before!

(okay, first I thought, GROSS.)

But yes, I’m right, I have seen that before. See?












That’s Jeff and Sandra from Friday the 13th part 2. See, you thought the Friday the 13th movies were just a gratuitous slasher series with no redeeming social value, didn’t you? NOOOOOOOOO PEOPLE! YOU’VE GOT IT ALL WRONG!

Director Steve Miner and writer Ron Kurtz are very obviously crafting a biblical metaphor, where killer Jason is a stand in for Phinehas, Sandra is Cozbi, Jeff is Zimri, Camp Crystal Lake is the Jewish Temple of Meeting, Scott, Terry, Vickie, Mark, Ginny, Random Policeman and Crazy Ralph are all sinning Israelites that need to be purged.

This also means that Mrs. Vorhees is God.

I think we all owe Mr. Miner and Mr. Kurtz a big apology for thinking their movies are black holes of plotless gore filled with vapid characters absent of any logic. Because they are clearly much more religious than any of us ever gave them credit for.

And this is where my head goes.