[A Card Talk in Two Parts]
Let's start with the obvious. We wrote “shit” on this card. Shit.
Not only did we write shit, we have God smearing it on your face.
Technically Malachi said God is smearing shit on your face and we’re just quoting him.
And if you believe in divine inspiration of Scripture, then God told Malachi to write about God being a shit-smearer.
So what do we do with that?
I. Translating "Shit"
The Hebrew word in the passage we translate as "shit" is פֶּרֶשׁ - peresh.
The word is only used in six (6) verses in the Hebrew Bible. The first five all appear within the Torah— the five books of Moses:
Exodus 29:14— But the flesh of the bull, and its skin, and its dung (peresh), you shall burn with fire outside the camp; it is a sin offering.
Leviticus 4:11-12— But the skin of the bull and all its flesh, as well as its head, its legs, its entrails, and its dung (peresh)—all the rest of the bull—he shall carry out to a clean place outside the camp, to the ash heap, and shall burn it on a wood fire; at the ash heap it shall be burned.
Leviticus 8:17— But the bull itself, its skin and flesh and its dung (peresh), he burned with fire outside the camp, as the Lord commanded Moses.
Leviticus 16:27— The bull of the sin offering and the goat of the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy place, shall be taken outside the camp; their skin and their flesh and their dung (peresh) shall be consumed in fire.
Numbers 19:5— Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight; its skin, its flesh, and its blood, with its dung (peresh), shall be burned.
Two things should immediately stand out about this word: First, it is talking about bovine fecal matter, actual bullshit; Second, all of these verses are talking about the sin offering sacrifice, wherein the priests of Israel led the nation in communal atonement for their sins. Thus, this is special shit, holy shit if you will.
The final usage of peresh in the Hebrew Bible is found in our card’s passage, presented with its surrounding verses:
Malachi 2:1-9 — And now, O priests, this command is for you. If you will not listen, if you will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse on you and I will curse your blessings; indeed I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart. I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung (peresh) on your faces, the dung (peresh) of your offerings, and I will put you out of my presence.
Know, then, that I have sent this command to you, that my covenant with Levi may hold, says the Lord of hosts. My covenant with him was a covenant of life and well-being, which I gave him; this called for reverence, and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in integrity and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.
But you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by your instruction; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts, and so I make you despised and abased before all the people, inasmuch as you have not kept my ways but have shown partiality in your instruction.
In this passage YHWH is directing divine rage through the prophet Malachi toward the priests, the very ones who performed the sacrifices mentioned in the previous Torah passages. God is leveling a curse them:
God will dig out the peresh that was to be burned with the rest of the sacrifice and wipe it on their faces. Why? Because they have turned away from the life giving covenant, their actions don’t match the words they intone before the people, before a God they think is fooled (idiots).
The priests cull the words of YHWH, only speaking the things that don’t make them look bad. They leave out the passages that convict the hearts of the people-- that convict their own hearts-- yet they continue with the ritual sacrifices for sin. Continue to offer up animals to be burnt as sin sacrifices knowing full well that the words that they are saying are not the whole truth, are only part of the story. They are attempting to hide sins from God, while going through the motions of asking for forgiveness. As a result, YHWH will take the fecal matter highlighted in the previous passages and smear it across their faces, sticking it in their lying mouths.
This passage is talking about bull shit and sacrifices when the sacrifices have become bullshit.
II. Talking "Shit"
We took some flak for this card. We heard that it was one that some pulled from their decks when playing the game. In the past we asked for feedback on the game (we still do: contact us).
Below are real excerpts from our conversation with one player who removed this card from his deck. The following quotes are direct and presented in context.
This gamer said his family pulled certain cards out of the deck “regardless of biblical accuracy,” because “basically, everybody has a line and we found a few that crossed it for one reason or another.” This is something we understand and respect. He pulled this card from game play because it “reduce[d] God from a deity to a crass human.”
As the card is directly reflecting the actual context and content of the Bible, we asked the player who he felt was reducing God: us (the game creators), the prophet Malachi, or God Himself? Here was his response in full:
My wife objects to the wording, there is something about God "smearing shit" that is base and crass, and had it been worded "spreading dung" or "spreading refuse" as our translations have, she probably would not have objected so strongly. Without having the rest of the context, just saying "God smearing shit on people's faces" reduces him from a benevolent, omnipotent diety [SIC] to a coarse, crass human.
Context is everything, which is (IMO) one of the great points of your game -- God is warning the priests that if they do not give His name honor, anything otherwise good that they purport do in His name (e.g. sacrifices, feasts, etc.) will be turned around on them -- the excrement which happens to be the side-effect of a feast becomes that which is most prominently placed on their faces/is unavoidable... [SIC] "show me respect or I will make sure you understand what not showing respect is like". There's an odd parenting vibe in that. ;-)
So yeah, it's both the use of the profanity, and of the image. I understand the passage but wording it so dramatically on the card feels like playing up the R-rated nature of (parts of) the Bible to give it hipster cred, as if it were not the most powerful book in all ages on its own.
While we don’t see eye to eye on his analysis of the passage, or his take on our use of profanity, we do see his point, and said so in reply. Allow us to publicly go further.
Our “Theology of Swearing” (which we have discussed it at length with various interviewers) is pretty simple.
In short we use profanity or vulgarity (there is a difference) for at least one of two purposes, but sometimes both:
(1) our choice mirrors the content of the original (i.e. a profane or vulgar word was employed in the original language);
(2) our choice mirrors the context of the original (i.e. we are capturing the tone in the original).
We will freely admit that the second allows us more creative license, but we attempt to reign ourselves in. This card falls soundly within the second sphere. We said “shit” because the starkness of the image, the context of the passage, calls for exactly that word.
While the time of composition is debated, the writer of Malachi speaks to the people returning from Exile during the Persian period. People finding their footing again in a harsh and confusing world. This is the world of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Haggai. These are people bitterly fighting over a national identity which was forever bound with their religious identity. What it meant to be the children of YHWH was hotly contested during this time period, and religious ritual without honest heart-guided action was not enough. The individual families and the community at large was literally being ripped apart as they searched for unity.
In the midst of this we find Malachi's words, wherein God says that He is sick of the two-faced worship and hypocrisy from the spiritual leaders. That He will reach into the sacrificial animal, remove its lower intestine, sigmoid colon, rectum, and anus, to drain them of feculence. Upon which The Almighty Himself will take said excreta into His divine hands— not trusting this ordure duty to an angel— (heh heh, duty), and then smear the egesta, the guano, the discharge, the excrement, the flux onto the astonished priestly faces.
We have been asked why we couldn’t use any of the synonyms employed in that last sentence, or the ones in most translations, “dung” or “refuse”? First, because many (despite the heroic efforts of their third grade teachers to teach them how to understand context clues) wouldn't know what “egesta” means without a dictionary, but mainly it is because Malachi isn’t trying to be cute. He’s not attempting to be euphemistic. He’s not attempting to pull punches.
The image is crass, shocking, debasing, stark, and not seemingly wholly divine. And so we use the word “shit” to highlight that fact, because that’s what we’re about.
We aren’t the edgy young New England pastor who says ass when talking about Balaam’s donkey, the southern preacher who invoking hip-hop lyrics like “these hoes ain’t loyal” when discussing Pontius Pilate, or the northwestern speaker who makes it a mission to use profanity, vulgarity, and misogyny a staple in Biblical conversation because, hell we really aren’t sure why. We attempt to remain in the tradition of Moses, the Hebrew prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus, and the apostles when we speak truth. We seek to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable, expecting to ruffle some feathers along the way, but within dialogue.
Another thought: Would you have ever looked up the passage, spent even five minutes digging into the content and context if we had said “poop” instead of “shit”? Maybe. But at least now you have a better understanding of why we made the choice. That said:
Perhaps we will have some missteps along the way. We know "strong language" is a turn off for some, itself being a source of offense. If it is, call us out like you’re supposed to. You know how to reach us. That said
Perhaps your worship is shit. Literally as useful as the unburned excrement of bulls.
Perhaps you should be less concerned with our language than the state of your walk with God.
Perhaps the same holds true for us, the creators of this game, the writers of this blog.
Perhaps this was convicting as fuck to write.
But what do we know: we made this game and you probably think we're going to Hell for our language.
We aren’t telling anyone whether they can or cannot, should or should not, swear. But you should know how/why we use “bad words” in our game and Card Talks, before you let “unwholesome talk come out your mouth” about us.
(* An addendum to our Theology of Swearing)