This is my 587th post

...so it isn’t an important milestone or anything like that, but it reminded me that Zedekiah, king of Judah, was carried away into Babylonian captivity by Nebuchadnezzar’s army in 587 B.C.

As some of my posts were written by Billy Ray Barnwell, and a couple of recent ones were written by Editor Bob, the true number written by me and me alone remains iffy. (My new motto: Egos Altered While-U-Wait.) There is also the irritating fact that 587 B.C. actually began the second phase of Judah’s exile because the first captives were carried away around 597 B.C. and there’s also the other irritating fact that the entire northern kingdom, called Israel, consisting of ten of the twelve tribes, was carried away more than a century earlier by the Assyrians and its inhabitants were never heard from again. The southern kingdom was called Judah even though it consisted of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, which is also confusing. Originally there was a single kingdom consisting of all twelve tribes under the rule of King Saul and then King David and then King David’s son, King Solomon, but after Solomon died things were never the same again and it was split into two kingdoms with, surprise, two kings. Then there’s also the fact that Judah was supposed to remain in exile for seventy years according to Jeremiah or Ezekiel or somebody, but they began returning in 538 B.C. or thereabouts, so who knows what to believe, really?

I don’t know about you but I find this fascinating, and knowing such stuff is how I was able to qualify to be on Jeopardy in 2003, only I was never actually “on” Jeopardy because after they took my picture with a Polaroid camera and told me I would remain in their files for fourteen months I was never contacted again by Alex Trebek’s gang.

It occurs to me that Billy Ray Barnwell may be writing this post as well.

The twelve tribes of Israel were named after the twelve sons of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel after a wrestling match at Bethel. In a book called Genesis, the twelve sons of Jacob are listed as Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. For some reason, Joseph’s descendants became known as the half-tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, undoubtedly because his two sons were named, surprise again, Manasseh and Ephraim, but why this phenomenon didn’t occur with the other ten sons’ descendants, I can’t really say, except that trying to keep track of them all would prolly have become very unwieldy very quickly.

You can tell right away, just by reading your Bible and paying attention, that things were very different back in those days, because Jacob had children by four women, Leah, Leah’s handmaiden, Rachael’s handmaiden, and Rachael. Leah and Rachael were sisters. It’s a long story. Jacob worked for their father for seven years to get Rachael and wound up with Leah instead, so he worked for their father for another seven years to get Rachael. He must have been what we would call today an illegal immigrant because according to what I hear illegal immigrants are the only ones who will do certain kinds of hard work and I can’t think of many red-blooded, flag-waving American men who would work for fourteen years to get anybody. Most of them would prolly just try to carry their woman off like a caveman or possibly like one of Nebuchadnezzar’s soldiers.

If this post seems rambling and disjointed to you, it seems that way to me also, and the only way I know to get out of Billy Ray Barnwell mode is to sign off, but before I do I would like to dedicate this post to Mr. David Barlow of Ephraim, Utah, which may or may not be related to a certain half-tribe mentioned earlier.


For the benefit of jinksy and Snowbrush, this has been another tongue-in-cheek post from rhymeswithplague.