The Wrath of the Lambkin—Part 1- Steve Orr
The Most Wrathful Book of the Bible:
The wrath of a baby lamb? Oooh, A lambkin—scary. Sure, the Bible speaks about serious things, but the humor of God is plain to see for those who look. Let’s not be so heavenly-minded that we’re no earthly fun.
Wrath? I don’t know about you, but when I picture a lamb, the last thing that comes to mind is wrath. Here in Montana, some animals fit the notion of wrath much better: grizzly bears, wolverines, mountain lions, black bears, and packs of wolves. Our ranchers and shepherds make considerable efforts to protect their herds and flocks from these wrathful predators.
So, in an attempt to find humor in the Bible, let’s examine the most wrathful book of all—Revelation, which begins with the words, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Revelation relates a series of catastrophic events that produce a sense of absolute terror when read literally. Scrolls are opened pronouncing the ride of four horsemen with curses of religious and political powers that deliver war, famine, plagues, and earthquakes. The earth is struck by hail and fire; a third of the earth, a third of the sun, a third of the moon, a third of the seas, and a third of the rivers are destroyed. The days are darkened. In the middle of all of this terror, the kings of the earth, the rich and powerful, and all people, poor and weak, hide in caves.
“And they say to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall upon us and hide us from the face of the one who sits upon the throne and from the anger of the suckling lamb.” (Revelation 6:16, The New Testament: A Translation by David Bentley Hart.)
The original text refers to a suckling baby lamb, a nursing lambkin. What? Of such is the “wrath” of God?
Revelation is written in the apocalyptic genre of the Bible, which entails lots of figurative language with plenty of exaggeration and hyperbole for emphasis. The book of Revelation references and mimics a few hundred such apocalyptic expressions from the Old Testament. This apocalyptic language may seem strange to us, but it is how they wrote. Did they provide emphasis like this because of their lack of italics, boldface, and ALL-CAPS type? There is a long history of this style of writing, and I for one am glad they didn’t have modern-day emojis and gifs.
The point here is that we need to learn how the Bible was understood by its original audience without reading it as literal from our modern worldview. Unfortunately, far too many have done just that, and the result is something that is weird and strange to the original text as it was understood by its original audience. There are far too many bad sermons, pamphlets, magazines, books, made-for-TV shows, and movie series. From this, religious media empires have been created and have confused many. Paul wrote, “God has not given us a spirit of fear,” so why do these prophets of doom stoke up the fear? Because it sells.
Now that I’ve denigrated the sensationalist language from the prophets of impending doom, allow me to add some of my own to highlight the humor of “the wrath of the lambkin.”
This wrath of the lambkin business sounds like a Wrestle Mania cage match, or rather, an extreme mismatch. The stage is set in downtown Jerusalem. On the one side, we have a cabal of all the most wicked characters on the planet: The armies of the East, The Beast and beasts plural, a Red Dragon looking to eat a newborn baby, a Godzilla-like-dragon that emerges from the sea, and another beast that comes out of the earth that looks like a lamb but speaks like a dragon. In addition, there’s the false prophet, the devil and father of lies, the Whore, and Babylon the great mother of harlots. But there’s more, a grim reaper swings his sickle, people are trampled in the wine-press, the blood flows as high as a horse’s bridle, and all those at war against God are drunk with the blood of the saints.
This cast of evil characters is pitted in the cage against the opponent on the other side of the ring, a cute little baby lambkin.
How ridiculously hilarious is that?!
What’s all this “wrath” of the Lamb in the most wrathful book of the Bible about? Stay tuned for part two of this series to see how the Wrestle Mania cage match turns out.
Steve Orr writes to us from Montana. After working in the mecca of technology, Steve traded the rat race of Silicon Valley for the adventures of High Tech in Big Sky Country. Steve has an MBA with experience in accounting, finance, technology, and management. He occasionally writes a little software code, but mostly he likes writing about Matters of the Heart.
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