We ran an ad using this card.

Some people were not happy about it and posted their dissatisfaction online. But those people hate everything about our game, so screw them. No, we're kidding! Maybe.

But as with all the "offensive" cards in our game, we hope those people pulled their Bibles off their dusty shelf, or from under their 14 cats, and actually looked up the verse we provided at the bottom of the card. We wonder what those people did if they actually read their bibles? 

We also wonder what translation they read this passage in?

The Trouble with Translation and Transliteration: A Side Trip to the Book of Job

Translations are a funny thing. Translators have, at times, social and theological biases, agendas, and golden calves to protect (pun intended). One of the most time honored biases, acknowledged by serious scholars and lay people alike, is the "we must keep important characters, God, and the Scripture itself looking as holy as possible!" imperative.

A famous example is found in Job 2:9, where Job's wife says something very strange: 

בָּרֵךְ אֱלֹהִים וָמֻֽת

Most translations have her asking/telling her husband to "curse God and die!” However, some translations, go in the complete opposite direction: "bless God and die." Don't believe us? Click here and read through the translations. Be sure to look at the Douay-Rheims Bible and the Young's Literal Translation, as those two versions were concerned with strict transliteration: getting it word for word correct. And you know what? They did. The Hebrew really says "BLESS God and die."

Sometimes translations seek to play it safe, so as to not cause a scandal. The writers/redactors of Job were scandalized by the idea of someone cursing God. So they removed the Hebrew word for "curse" and replaced it with the one for "bless." The evidence? This substitution also takes place in Job 1:5, 1:11, and 2:5. In each case, the subject of the sentence is Job, and the object of the cursing is God: i.e. this substitution only happens when it is God who is being cursed. The writers/redactors had no trouble using the actual word for cursing [אָרַר  'arar] when the object of cursing was not God (Job 3:8 for example). 

All this to say, avoiding uncomfortable statements are often on the mind of those who translate Scripture. This said, we turn back to the passage at hand. 

Ezekiel 16:17

 וַתִּקְחִי כְּלֵי תִפְאַרְתֵּךְ, מִזְּהָבִי וּמִכַּסְפִּי אֲשֶׁר נָתַתִּי לָךְ, וַתַּעֲשִׂי-לָךְ, צַלְמֵי זָכָר; וַתִּזְנִי-בָם

Above is the Hebrew of Ezekiel 16:17. Below are some translations which, we think, most "good christians" will place on a spectrum from "safe" to "wtf?!" As you will see, it's the end of the passage, the part we translated as "gilded dildos," that makes the real difference. 

SAFE

New Living Translation

You took the very jewels and gold and silver ornaments I had given you and made statues of men and worshiped them. This is adultery against me!

The Message

And then you took all that fine jewelry I gave you, my gold and my silver, and made pornographic images of them for your brothels.

Not Safe

King James Bible

Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them,

New Revised Standard Version  (for once following the KJV's lead)

You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and my silver that I had given you, and made for yourself male images, and with them played the whore;

New International Version (for once being more direct, and closer to the Hebrew)

You also took the fine jewelry I gave you, the jewelry made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them.

International Standard Version (hitting the nail closer to the head)

You also took your fine jewelry—including my gold and my silver that I had given you. Then you made for yourself male images and had sex with them!

 WTF?!

Young's Literal Translation

And thou dost take thy beauteous vessels Of My gold and My silver that I gave to thee, And dost make to thee images of a male, And dost go a-whoring with them.

The Passage in (Misogynistic) Context

All of Ezekiel chapter 16 is an extended metaphor of the relationship between God (the "husband") and His "bride," Jerusalem. It charts the (weird) relationship between the two, which is filled with historical/biblical events retold as a love story:

The husband rescued his bride from certain death, showered her with love, attention, and gifts. But before the happily-ever-after arrived, the bride became unfaithful. She took all of the present the loving husband gave, and perverted their use.  Specifically, vs 16 says she took the gold and silver jewelry He gave her as tokens of His love, and made צַלְמֵי זָכָר-- "images of men/male idols" (i.e. crafted, 3-D objects of a male shape)-- and used them to  וַתִּזְנִי־בָֽם --"commit fornication," "be like a prostitute," or (transliterated) "to go a-whoring." 

Again, there are those who think our translation goes to far. But seriously, the Hebrew makes it clear you should be picturing

1. phallic symbols,
2. that were re-molded from gold and silver jewelry,
3. being used for sexual gratification,

Thus, "gilded dildos."

Now we could bring this back to safer ground, and over-spiritualize this passage, and/or remove it from its context. But that misses and loses the point. 

As we've discussed before, The Book of Ezekiel contains the words and sign-acts of a man desperately trying to save his people. A prophet who used flaming words to melt the metal hearts of the people around him.

He used shock and awe tactics throughout his book to get through to a people who believed they were safe from God's punishment because they were His favorite nation, containing His home, His Ark, and His Law, in His favorite city, Jerusalem.  Or as Hebrew Bible/Old Testament scholar Dr. Leslie C. Allen said, "it took language this outrageous to break the spell of the Temple."

Ezekiel took the metaphor of Jerusalem as an unfaithful wife to the extreme. For Ezekiel, Jerusalem's dalliances with other nations was equivalent to a wife measuring a lover's dick, taking the earrings and bracelets her husband gave her, making a dildo out of them, and then cumming to that instead of the man in bed with her. 

Yes. The modern reader can level charges against the inherent misogyny of this passage. And those charges will stick. The power of this metaphor is rooted in Ezekiel's knowledge and use of horrific patriarchal norms; he is banking on the fact that the male hearers of his words would be scandalized by, not only the graphic sexual content, but also as being referred to as women, unfaithful women, and unfaithful women who use sex toys. This was intended to be a body-blow to them. 

In their estimation the female body should be devoid of pleasure, unless the pleasure being referenced is in the context of providing pleasure to the man rightfully in charge of her body; that women are, in essence, sexual chattel. Yes: Ezekiel's metaphor is pretty fucked up, and he employs much worse in his tome.  

But the metaphor stands. 

Switch the roles. Make the husband unfaithful. 

A woman meets a talented man, who is down on his luck. He is handsome, winsome, but perpetually finding himself in trouble. She takes him in. Cleans him up. Sobers him up. "Fixes" him. She works two jobs to put him through medical school. She works tirelessly to support him, to help him capitalize on his dreams, even sacrificing her own-- she had dreams of going into ministry, pastoring her own church, but she pushed seminary back year after year so they would be financially stable. And then the kids came. It was never the right time for it to be "her time." But no matter: his success would benefit the whole family.  

But then he "goes a-whoring." 

The Montblanc pen she gave him when he was accepted into medical school, gold watch she bought when he began his residency, the monogrammed stethoscope she purchased when he began his own private practice in their small town: all these he melted down and reformed into butt-plugs he loves to have anally inserted by his secretary, the girl from the gym, and a deaconess from their church. 

(Hopefully you're still outraged at this scene and not only because we used the word "butt-plug.")

We've said it before. We'll say it again: 

The Bible is not safe. The images are not safe. 

Perhaps we do well to remember that we do a disservice to God, Scripture, and ourselves by attempting to tame the Bible, by attempting to melt and mold its rough edges into something that can be more comfortably inserted into our fragile hearts and minds. 

Perhaps we should remember that, even in the Bible, sometimes a dildo is just a dildo.

But what do we know: we made this game and you probably think we're going to Hell.