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Medusa is one of the most fascinating figures in classical mythology and one who bears a deep contemporary resonance. Indeed, just yesterday, it was announced that a controversial statue of her would be installed in Collect Pond Park in New York City. In order to understand this statue and the controversy surrounding it, we need to talk about the bizarre and fascinating history of how the Medusa myth has evolved over the past 2,800 years or so.The story about Medusa that most people today are familiar with holds that she was once an extraordinarily beautiful mortal woman, but then she was raped by the god Poseidon in the temple of the goddess Athena. Athena was disgusted by the desecration of her temple, so she cursed Medusa, giving her snakes for hair and making it so that anyone who saw her face would be instantly turned to stone. Then, eventually, the hero Perseus came along and beheaded her.This story, however, is actually radically different from the story the ancient Greeks were familiar with. In the oldest surviving sources for the Medusa myth, she is seemingly born a Gorgon with the ability to turn people to stone at a glance, she is never raped by Poseidon, and she is never cursed by Athena. Oh, and she apparently also had the four-legged lower body of a horse.Hesiodos’s version of the story from the eighth century BCEThe story of Perseus and Medusa seems to have originated during the Early Iron Age (lasted c. 1200 – c. 800 BCE), before the invention of the Greek alphabet. It is unclear exactly how the story arose. The renowned British classical scholar Jane Ellen Harrison (lived 1850 – 1928) argues in her book Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, which was originally published in 1903, that the head of Medusa was originally an apotropaic symbol meant to ward off evil and that the story of Perseus and Medusa was only invented to explain the symbol later on.Harrison may be correct. As I will discuss in a moment, it is certainly true that the ancient Greeks did use Medusa’s head as an apotropaic symbol, but it is hard to say which came first: the symbol or the story behind it. All we can really do is speculate. One thing we do know for certain, though, is that the oldest surviving version of the story of Perseus and Medusa comes from the poem Theogonia, which was composed in around the eighth century BCE by the Greek poet Hesiodos of Askre.In Hesiodos’s version of the story, Medusa and her two sisters are the offspring of the primordial sea deities Keto and Phorkys. No explanation is given for why they are the way they are and it is implied that they were all simply born that way. Hesiodos remarks that Medusa’s sisters Sthenno and Euryale were both immortal, but she was born mortal for some reason. Here is what he says in his Theogonia, lines 270–286, as translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White:“And again, Keto bare to Phorkys the fair-cheeked Graiai, sisters grey from their birth: and both deathless gods and men who walk on earth call them Graiai, Pemphredo well-clad, and saffron-robed Enyo, and the Gorgons who dwell beyond glorious Ocean in the frontier land towards Night where are the clear-voiced Hesperides, Sthenno, and Euryale, and Medusa who suffered a woeful fate: she was mortal, but the two were undying and grew not old.”“With her lay the Dark-haired One [i.e., Poseidon] in a soft meadow amid spring flowers. And when Perseus cut off her head, there sprang forth great Chrysaor and the horse Pegasos who is so called because he was born near the springs [pegai] of Okeanos; and that other, because he held a golden blade [aor] in his hands. Now Pegasus flew away and left the earth, the mother of flocks, and came to the deathless gods: and he dwells in the house of Zeus and brings to wise Zeus the thunder and lightning.”Notice that Hesiodos says that Medusa had sexual intercourse with the god Poseidon, but he says that it happened in “a soft meadow amid spring flowers”—not in the temple of Athena—and he never says anything about it being a rape. As far as Hesiodos is concerned, everything that happened between Medusa and Poseidon was perfectly consensual.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the so-called “Pseudo-Seneca,” a bronze portrait head dating to the late first century AD discovered in the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, believed to be an imaginative representation of Hesiod. (No one knows what Hesiod really looked like.)An very early surviving depiction of MedusaHesiodos says nothing whatsoever about what Medusa actually looked like. We can, however, gather some vague impression of what he may have been imagining by looking at near-contemporary depictions of her in Greek art.The earliest surviving identifiable depiction of Medusa in art is a bas-relief from a pithos—a kind of large storage jar—from one of the Kykladic Islands dated to the early seventh century BCE. The relief shows Perseus grasping Medusa by the hair as he holds his sword to her neck in preparation to chop her head off.Perseus is wearing winged sandals, he has a purse around his neck, and he is turning his face away from Medusa to avoid her deadly gaze. Medusa has bulging eyes and fangs. Her hair is not discernably made of snakes, but, oddly enough, she has the lower body of a horse, with four legs like a centaur.ABOVE: Early seventh-century BCE pithos from the Kykladic Islands showing Perseus about to chop Medusa’s head off. Oddly enough, she has the body of a horse.The birth of the canonical MedusaIn later Greek art, Medusa starts to be portrayed in a manner that is more recognizable to us. The Greeks began to depict her all over the place in their art because her face in particular was seen as an apotropaic symbol and her hideous appearance was thought to frighten away evil.In most Greek representations from around the sixth century BCE until at least the fourth century BCE, Medusa’s appearance diverges drastically from conventional Greek ideas about what women were supposed to look like. She is normally shown with a hideous face with a beard, bulging eyes, puffy cheeks, an enormous tongue hanging out of her mouth, huge boar-like tusks, and serpents entwined in her hair. On her back, she usually has a set of wings. Around her waist, she often wears either a single serpent or a pair of intertwined serpents as a belt.Apotropaic symbols such as this one were extremely common in the ancient world. For instance, the ancient Egyptians used depictions of the hideous dwarf-god Bes to ward off evil spirits and the ancient Mesopotamians used depictions of the terrifying demon Pazuzu to ward against other demons. To some extent, Medusa can be thought of as the Greek equivalent of Bes and Pazuzu; she is dangerous, but also protective.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an archaic Greek relief carving of Medusa from the west pediment of the Temple of Artemis on the Greek island of Korkyra (modern-day Corfu)ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Greek terra-cotta plaque of Medusa running, dated to between c. 620 and c. 600 BCE, currently on display in the Archaeological Museum of SyracuseABOVE: Tondo from an Attic black-figure kylix dated to the late sixth century BCE depicting the face of a GorgonABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Greek terra-cotta antefix bearing the face of Medusa dated to around the fourth century BCE, now on display in the Pushkin MuseumThe way Medusa and her sisters are depicted in Greek art lines up well with how they are described in Greek literature. One classic description of them is given by the Titan Prometheus in the tragedy Prometheus Bound, which is traditionally attributed to the ancient Athenian tragic playwright Aischylos (lived c. 525 – c. 455 BCE). In the play, Prometheus warns the princess Io, as translated by James Romm:“Near them are their three sisters, winged creatures,the Gorgons, snaky-haired, reviled by mortals;no one who looks upon them still draws breath.Guard against these as you would a hostile army.”Medusa and her sisters continued to be seen as hideous, inhuman monsters until the Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 30 BCE). During this period, Greek artists began to depict monsters of all types as more human-like in appearance. For instance, as I discuss in this article from May 2019, throughout the Archaic and Classical Periods, Sirens were consistently shown in Greek art as birds with the heads of women, but, during the Hellenistic Period, they started to be portrayed as full-bodied women with only the legs and wings of birds.Something similar seems to have happened with Medusa. In Hellenistic art, Medusa loses her massive boar tusks, her wings, and her massive tongue. She begins to look increasingly like a normal, human woman with snakes entwined in her hair. By the time we get to the Roman era, the transformation is complete and Medusa is far more of a woman than a monster.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a first-century CE Roman door decoration of the head of Medusa from the city of PompeiiABOVE: Roman mosaic of the head of Medusa from a tepidarium Tunisia dating to the late second century CEABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman relief carving of the head of Medusa dating to the second or third century CEOvid’s radical reimagining of Medusa’s backstoryMedusa was not done transforming, though. In around the year 8 CE, the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (lived 43 BCE – c. 17 CE)—who is better known in English as simply “Ovid”—wrote a long narrative poem in Latin titled Metamorphoses, in which he radically reimagined the whole story of Medusa, inventing for her a whole new origin story.In Ovid’s retelling of the story, Medusa is not born with snakes for hair; instead, Ovid says that she was once extraordinarily beautiful and renowned for her amazing hair, but then she was raped by the god Neptune (i.e., the god the Romans identified with the Greek god Poseidon) in the temple of the goddess Minerva (i.e., the goddess the Romans identified with the Greek goddess Athena) and Minerva was so horrified by the sight that she cursed Medusa by giving her serpents for hair. Here is what Ovid portrays the hero Perseus as saying, as translated by Horace Gregory:“That too is a good story,and here it is: Once she was beautiful,pursued by many lovers, and best of beauties,she had glorious hair, as I heard said by onewho claimed to know her. As the story goes,Neptune had raped her in Minerva’s temple,a scene that shocked the nerves of Jove’s pure daughter,who held her breastplate up to shield her eyes;as if to warn the girl of carelessnessshe turned her hair to snakes. Today Minervato keep bold strangers at a proper distancewears snakes on the gold shield across her breast.”This story is not attested in any source before Ovid. It therefore seems highly probable that Ovid invented the whole backstory of Medusa himself.Ovid was fascinated by stories involving physical transformations and the poem that he tells this story in was, after all, titled Metamorphoses, so it makes sense that he would invent a backstory for Medusa involving transformation. It is also possible that Ovid may have been trying to get his readers to feel some modicum of sympathy for Medusa—to see the humanity behind the monstrosity.Greek sources after OvidOvid’s reinterpretation of the Medusa story does not seem to have really caught on the Greek world. The Bibliotheke of Pseudo-Apollodoros, a Greek mythographic composition that was most likely written in around the second century CE or thereabouts, nearly two hundred years after Ovid, tells a version of the Medusa story that far more closely resembles the version told by Hesiodos than the version told by Ovid.The Bibliotheke states that there were three Gorgons, that their names were Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, that they were the daughters of Phorkys and Keto, and that Medusa was the only one who was mortal. It even gives a very traditional description of what they looked like. Here is what it says, as translated by Stephen M. Trzaskoma:“The Gorgons had heads with serpents’ coils spiraling around them, large tusks like boars’, bronze arms, and gold wings with which they could fly. They turned whoever saw them into stone, so Perseus came to them as they slept.”Like Hesiodos and Aischylos, Pseudo-Apollodoros says nothing about Medusa being raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple or about her being cursed by Athena.Ovid’s popularity in the Middle Ages and RenaissanceOvid’s story may not have taken off in the Greek-speaking east, but it did eventually take off in the Latin-speaking west. Knowledge of the Greek language became extremely rare in western Europe during the Early Middle Ages (lasted c. 475 – c. 800 CE). Consequently, people in western Europe became less aware of the original Greek sources for the Medusa myth. Knowledge of Latin, however, remained widespread among the educated elites.Thus, western Europeans found themselves getting most of their knowledge of classical mythology from Latin writers. Ovid was especially admired among Latin writers during the Middle Ages. As a result of this, Ovid’s revisionist retelling of Medusa’s origin became seen as canonical.Ovid’s Metamorphoses remained wildly popular during the Renaissance, especially among Latin humanist scholars. Consequently, Renaissance artists adapted many scenes from it into works of art. Between 1545 and 1554, the Italian Mannerist sculptor Benvenuto Cellini created a bronze sculpture of the hero Perseus standing totally nude atop Medusa’s headless corpse, holding up her severed head in his left hand, with blood and gore dripping from the stump of her neck.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Benvenuto Cellini’s statue of Perseus with the head of MedusaFeminist reclamation of Medusa in the twentieth centuryMedusa’s next transformation may come to some people as a bit of a surprise. One thing that is apparent to anyone who has read anything about Greek mythology is that it is generally very sexist. This is a result of the fact that the stories have been passed down to us through works written predominantly by men, many of whom were explicit misogynists. This is the reason why, for instance, monsters in Greek myths are usually female and heroes are usually male.In the twentieth century, though, feminists began to reexamine the myth of Medusa and reinterpret it. Where pre-modern authors had seen a monster, twentieth-century feminists saw a powerful woman who had been raped and abused by a man and was consequently filled with righteous anger at the patriarchal establishment.The feminist writer Emily Erwin Culpepper writes in an article titled “Gorgons: A Face for Contemporary Women’s Rage,” published in the fall 1986 issue of the magazine Women of Power:“The Amazon Gorgon face is female fury personified. The Gorgon/Medusa image has been rapidly adopted by large numbers of feminists who recognize her as one face of our own rage.”Medusa has taken on an especially strong resonance since the 2016 election. On 6 November 2016, The Atlantic published an article by Elizabeth Johnston, an associate professor of English at Monroe Community College, titled “The Original ‘Nasty Woman’” in which she offers a similar reinterpretation of Medusa as a powerful woman who has been unfairly demonized. She writes:“A Gorgon from classical mythology, Medusa is widely known as a monstrous creature with snakes in her hair whose gaze turns men to stone. Through the lens of theology, film, art, and feminist literature, my students and I map how her meaning has shifted over time and across cultures. In so doing, we unravel a familiar narrative thread: In Western culture, strong women have historically been imagined as threats requiring male conquest and control, and Medusa herself has long been the go-to figure for those seeking to demonize female authority.”Thus, Medusa has become something of a feminist icon.Luciano Garbati’s Medusa with the Head of PerseusIt is in this context of the feminist reinterpretation of the Medusa myth that, in 2008, the Argentine-Italian sculptor Luciano Garbati created his sculpture Medusa with the Head of Perseus as a direct riposte to Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa. The statue depicts the Gorgon Medusa standing nude with a defiant stare on her face, holding a sword in her left hand and the severed head of Perseus in her right hand.On 9 October 2020, it was officially announced that a seven-foot-tall bronze copy of Garbati’s statue would be installed in Collect Pond Park in New York City—directly across from the New York County Criminal Court where the notorious sexual abuser and rapist Harvey Weinstein was sentenced. It will remain outside the courthouse for six months.I personally rather like Garbati’s statue as an example of how artists can creatively reinterpret classical mythology to send a contemporary political message. Nonetheless, I do have a few problems with it. One problem is that he chose to depict Medusa in a way that aligns very well with conventional twenty-first-century American ideas about beauty; she portrayed as young, tall, and extremely thin, without any trace of fat or body hair, and, for some reason, her genitals seem to be entirely missing.Not only does this image not comport with how the classical Greeks imagined Medusa, it doesn’t even align with how the Greeks imagined goddesses. All you have to do is look at any Greek statue of Aphrodite to see that the ancient Greeks imagined her as a lot more voluptuous than the Medusa we see in Garbati’s statue.I don’t know if it’s necessarily a bad thing that the sculptor chose to depict her in this particular way, but it definitely makes the message behind the sculpture seem a lot less radical. It doesn’t seem entirely fitting to me that, even when she is committing the ultimate act of defiance against the patriarchy, Medusa is for some reason still conforming to patriarchal norms of physical appearance.ABOVE: Image showing the statue Medusa with the Head of Perseus from in front and from behindAnother problem I have is that, in Ovid’s telling of the story, Perseus is not the man who rapes Medusa; Neptune is the one who does that. Perseus is just a mortal pawn who is sent to decapitate her. If you want to use the statue as a commentary on the Me Too movement, it would be a lot more fitting if Medusa were holding the severed head of Neptune, rather than the head of Perseus. It’s not right for a male rapist in a position of power to get away with everything while a man in a much lower position takes all the blame.I understand that the statue was originally made back in 2008 and it was not originally intended as a commentary on the Me Too movement, but, if you put the statue in front of the courthouse where Harvey Weinstein was sentenced, that’s inevitably how people are going to interpret it.Finally, to me at least, it seems like it’s maybe not such a good idea to have a statue of a grisly beheading of any sort directly outside a courthouse. I understand the message that they’re trying to send about how the world is changing and men who rape and abuse women are going to start facing justice, but, in order to understand the piece, you really need to know the background about Ovid’s version of the Medusa myth, Benvenuto Cellini’s statue of Perseus, and the feminist rehabilitation of Medusa in the twentieth century.People who don’t know the complex history behind the sculpture are going to inevitably interpret it as nothing more than a glorification of violence. For this reason, I think that the statue really needs to be contextualized and it is better suited to a museum than the outside of a courthouse.(NOTE: I have also published a version of this article on my website titled “Where Does the Myth of Medusa Come From?” Here is a link to the version of the article on my website.)

Right then.First off, I have a massive complaint with the overly dark cinematography here. Not the mood or the tone, but it is too dark to allow proper visual appreciation of the events that are transpiring within the Battle of Winterfell.The episode starts off with everyone in battle position.Except Sam, whose hands are shaking because he’s never been in a straight-up fight since the Fist of the First Men, and even then, those who survived only did so by fleeing the battle. There is no fleeing this battle and no hope of survival without victory.This is a tracking shot that juxtaposes Sam between two people who have accepted their role, Lyanna as a warrior and Tyrion as the brains who has to stay behind and remain protected. This is done to establish that Sam doesn’t accept that he isn’t meant to be a warrior, despite the grant of Heartsbane to Jorah Mormont indicating otherwise. The tracking shot continues, now showing us that Alys Karstark was part of Theon’s group protecting Bran.The contrast in the sisters’ expressions is executed perfectly. For all her expertise and brilliance as a politician, Sansa is very new to the atrocities of war. She has suffered through some of them without ever having to see it for herself. Here, she is daunted by the prospect of possible death for everyone, after all the preparation and alliances. Arya, on the other hand, is a trained and experienced killer who is good at compartmenalizing her emotions. That is why she calmly stares into the dark.Brienne commanding the flank from her high ground and surprisingly, all of the people in this shot make it out alive.When I saw Ghost right up at the front of the cavalry lines, I was sure that he was going to die. Ghost is alive and the episode four trailer confirms it.This is Melisandre’s boss moment. She casually rides up to the cavalry line as if out on a late evening stroll. What is even more amazing is that she rides in from the same direction as the wight army, so how did she get past them? We will never know.This exchange is particularly relevant later when Grey Worm orders the trench to be lit, despite thousands of his soldiers, with whom he has trained since childhood, being on the other side. Melisandre quite bluntly tells him that all men must die and has him remind himself that all men must serve.Melisandre accomplishes so much in this episode. She helps the Dothraki take out as many wights as possible, she reminds Grey Worm to place his duty above all else, she is the one to light the trench and she reminds Arya of her destiny. This battle is very much her moment. I chose this image because, for me, it calls back to the statues of the Seven she burned at Dragonstone and conjured a fake Lightbringer for the fake Azor Ahai. Nothing about what she’s doing now is fake.This is where the episode reach its LOTR-esque heights. This is a scene of such cinematic brilliance and it is a shame that in order to properly watch it, I had to dial up the brightness on my laptop to 100% as opposed to 15% for general use. This stage is also the only point at which this episode felt like it might match up to the Battle of Helm’s Deep.Here, I would argue that sending the Dothraki in first was a great decision. First and foremost, the enemy isn’t orcs, it is the undead who like to get in close and swarm living combatants. Even the best cavalry force in the world would struggle against the wights. The reason for that is simple, the horses aren’t wearing armor and wights would target the horse first as soon as it is slowed down enough. Once the horse is down, the rider would be on foot and surrounded on all sides.That is exactly what happens to Jorah here. His horse is taken down by the wights and he only just manages to land clear of the horse. The Dothraki would have died all the same, but in this way, they managed to take out as many wights as possible and at the same time, revealed the position of the enemy army.This is the wights’ charge against the Unsullied lines. No amount of training can prepare you for this fight and the first few rows of the phalanx are trampled almost immediately. This is another reason why it was good that the Dothraki cavalry was disposed of earlier. The Unsullied depend on the discipline of their phalanx and no way that would have been maintained with a bunch of Dothraki riding up and down among their formation.Shift-of-perspective shots like these have become something of a Miguel Sapochnik trademark on GoT. The shot interlaces the two levels of the battle in largely seamless manner, with Daenerys and Drogon largely insulated from the slaughter going on down below and Tormund very much immersed in it, while at the same time having to keep an eye on the dragons to avoid being roasted.Rest in peace, acting Lord Commander Edd Tollett… Poor, sarcastic Edd. Maybe for the first time in a long time, he seems sincerely hopeful that the flaming arakhs of the Dothraki might put a dent in the wight.This shot can be used to estimate the sheer number of the wight army. The space between the two lines of fire is chock-full of wights, and it is an impossibly large number. I think the show opted for such a ridiculously large undead army to make victory by conventional means impossible for the living. The show wants us, and the living at Winterfell, to understand that the only way out is to kill the NK.Chekhov’s snowstorm. The sole purpose of this is to take the living dragons out of the fight, so they can’t burn the wight army outside the walls, while the living regroup inside.This is Theon’s group, protecting Bran. Again, Alys Karstark is part of this group, which is wiped out to the last man.This shot gives an idea as to just how many of Daenerys’s Unsullied gave their lives protecting the army’s retreat. The Unsullied and the Dothraki have been decimated in this battle.Melisandre’s second major contribution already. She helps light the trench and buy the living some time to regroup.Miguel Sapochnik at his best, as the scene suddenly shifts from too dark to way too bright in mere seconds.Stunningly beautiful and brutal at the same time. Another big callback to the Battle of Helm’s Deep, telling us how hopelessly outnumbered the living are at this battle.Brilliant improvisation from the NK. The wights are nothing but expendable shock troops and they are used to that exact effect here. I alluded to this in my review for the last episode when all these fortifications were being built.The books go out of their way to suggest that Winterfell doesn’t have the highest or well-made walls, which is why Ramsay and his men were able to scale the wall with grapnels.The undead use the old World War Z tactic, whereby piles of dead wights are used as ladders by undead ones. They scale the wall and get inside the castle as well.As they come upon the Frey’s siege of Riverun, Jaime asks Bronn to be the right hand he lost. Here, he has found that right hand. Brienne is that right hand and fittingly so. They pretty much fight together for the rest of the episode and that is the primary reason both of them survive this battle.Arya uses her detachable spear to great effect here and it is the impulse of saving her that shocks Sandor out of his crippling fear of fire.This was abolsutely brutal and heartbreaking. It seems logical that the wight giant would go for the nearest target first, but militarily, she should be protected by the soldiers of her house. Instead, she is left almost completely alone.Rest in peace, Lady of Bear Island.Lyanna ‘Giantsbane’ Mormont.For me, this was the weirdest tonal shift in the episode. We go right from Lyanna’s death on the ground to this live-action How To Train Your Dragon remake. The dragons and their riders were the most peripheral part of this battle, which went contrary to everyone’s expectations, but perhaps that was part of Bran’s plan. I’m not going to talk about the dragon-on-dragon combat here, because it ends up being filler material.I loved this sequence. Here, I was genuinely scared that the show was killing off Arya. For one, she looks genuinely scared for the first time since the Faceless Men blinded her. This whole sequence was a combination of a chess match and Theseus navigating the Labyrinth with Ariadne’s string. Except, Arya is both Theseus and Ariadne combined, using her own instincts and training to seemingly carve out a path without alerting the wight horde, or so we are led to believe, until she is immediately swarmed.Turns out, Beric was the one given the ‘you shall not pass!’ moment as part of his sacrifice scene. He was always a stand-in for Jon as R’hllor’s champion and with Jon now in place, his days were numbered anyway. In the books, he is kept alive to reanimate Catelyn Stark and on the show, to save her daughter from a death she couldn’t have avoided otherwise.This. She is telling Arya that the blue-eyed target she’s supposed to kill is the freaking Night King himself! I had no idea that this was what she had meant back then.And this. Melisandre helps Arya accept her destiny by reminding her of Syrio Forel’s mantra. Arya was a servant of the god of death for a while but Melisandre reminds her of her first teacher and her identity before the Faceless Men. This just shows how much of an MVP Melisandre was in this episode. She gives the Dothraki a chance to fight and die with honor, reminds Grey Worm to place duty over camaraderie and helps Arya accept and fulfill her destiny.The dragon-on-dragon combat felt really exciting at the time, but as I now realize, was filler material.The show made us believe all the way since Hardhome that the final fight would be between Azor Ahai and the NK, and then subverted the hell out of it. The NK just raises everyone who has died at this point and walks away from Jon, confident that he’s doomed Jon and Daenerys.This scene is no doubt inspired from the massacre at the Dragonpit where a crazed mob of thousands killed the dragons living there, at the cost of nearly all of these wannabe dragonslayers dying themselves. Drogon’s survival here is pure plot armor.The horror of his choice is admirably reflected in Jon’s face here. He saw Sam about to get overwhelmed and chooses to leave him behind because taking out the NK is more important than saving your best friend. That is why the Jon-Daenerys arc is so reviled among book readers. The choice he’s making here, that is classic book-Jon, and the show is saying this same person gave up his crown and his people’s independence for the sake of ‘love’.Daenerys finally gets her hands bloody. You’d expect she would have a more balanced view of the horrors of war, but judging by the episode four trailer, Jorah’s death has only hardened her convictions, not caused her to question them.The sequence of events leading up to this scene are the most inane choice that the showrunners made in this episode. The Starks don’t embalm their dead before burying them, so the bodies should just be a disjointed pile of bones, but that is not we see when the dead in the crypts get reanimated, despite the iron longswords placed across their tombs to prevent precisely this. Tyrion and Sansa, and Peter and Sophie, are beyond excellent here. Their chemistry has gotten better since King’s Landing and the two bring out the best in each other. Could it be that Sansa and Tyrion end up together, once his loyalties aren’t divided any more?The Hungry Wolf rises, Theon was named for an exceptionally bloodthirsty member of the Stark family and his berserkergang would have made his namesake proud.Rest in peace, Ser Jorah Mormont. This is the perfect way for him to go out, defending his lady love from an undead horde. Daenerys doesn’t love him back and frequently manipulates him, but even she is genuinely affected that her de facto sworn shield has taken one too many blows to protect her and now must rest for all time.It is here that Theon realizes that his death is not only part of the plan, but it is required for the plan to succeed.It is here that he realizes that he has to throw his life away for the NK to be defeated and he doesn’t even budge from the line of duty. His dedication to his duty would have made Lord Eddard proud. Based off of his sacrifice here, I hope he gets a place in the crypts, although it might be that he gets a statue, as the bodies are likely to be burned.Rest in peace, Theon of House Stark and of House Greyjoy.The NK is startled by Bran’s lack of obvious alarm, but doesn’t give it a second thought. Big mistake, pal.Arya doesn’t completely stealth through the Others. This one notices her passing around them, and does nothing. Perhaps he was restrained by an overconfident NK.This scene is amazing, but here’s my issue with it. Why does Arya, who has been uber-stealthy this whole time, suddenly decide to go with a war-cry here? If she is silent during the jump, she guts the NK without him even turning around.The NK thought that no one could kill him now. Turns out, ‘no one’ did.For me, this was the final shot of the trailer. Winterfell is once again devastated, though the Stark family has survived unscathed.And now, the MVP takes her leave. Her centuries-long mission is fulfilled and it is time for her to rest as well, just as it was time for Beric. Therefore, in true boss lady manner, she chooses to go out on her own terms, not being executed by anyone, but by simply giving up the magic that keeps her alive.

The Bible is a collection of various ancient texts that are considered by Christians to be the inspired Word of God. The number of books in the Bible varies depending on which branch of Christianity you happen to belong to. The standard Protestant Bible only has sixty-six books, the standard Roman Catholic Bible has seventy-three books, and the standard Eastern Orthodox Bible has seventy-eight books.Many of the texts that are included in the Bible seem rather strange—at least when you read them for the first time. There are some books in the Bible that are a bit peculiar in the sense that they don’t fit in well with the other books in the Bible. Then there are other books in the Bible that just seem downright bizarre—at least until you decipher what they’re talking about.In this article, I want to talk about five of the most unusual books in the Bible. These are books that are striking either because they are so different from the others or because they employ such bizarre imagery.The Book of JonahThe Book of Jonah was originally written in Hebrew. The author of the book is completely anonymous. Although it has been given the title “Book of Jonah,” the book never claims to have been written by Jonah and it consistently speaks of Jonah in the third-person. Internal evidence indicates that the book was written during the time when Judah was ruled by the Achaemenid Empire (lasted c. 539 – c. 332 BC).The Book of Jonah is, in my opinion, almost certainly a work of satire making fun of people who believed that YHWH would destroy people who refused to obey him and that his mercy did not extend to non-Jews. In the story, Jonah is portrayed as an apathetic jerk who hates the people of Nineveh. YHWH calls on him and tells him to go to the city of Nineveh and tell the people there that they have been wicked and that YHWH is mad at them.Jonah’s name is יוֹנָה (Yōnāh) in Hebrew, which means “dove.” This name clearly must be intended ironically; the ancient Hebrew associated doves with faithfulness, but, throughout the book, Jonah shows complete lack of faithfulness. Instead of doing what YHWH tells him to do, Jonah rejects his role as a prophet altogether and tries to run away. He boards a ship that is heading to Tarshish, evidently thinking (ludicrously) that YHWH won’t be able to find him there.YHWH sends a terrible storm that threatens to sink the ship. The sailors are all panicking and throwing all their cargo overboard. Meanwhile, Jonah is fast asleep in the hold of the ship and the other sailors have to wake him up. He tells them that YHWH must be angry with him and orders them to throw him overboard so he will drown and the ship will be spared.Just as Jonah is about to drown, YHWH sends a giant fish to rescue him by swallowing him. Jonah somehow manages to survive inside the giant fish for three days and three nights. Finally, he agrees to go to Nineveh as YHWH asked him to. Then the giant fish goes up to the land and vomits Jonah out on the beach.This whole part about Jonah being swallowed by a giant fish, surviving in its belly for three days, and then being vomited out the beach is so over-the-top ridiculous that I can only think it is deliberately intended to be silly. This trope of the hero getting swallowed by a giant fish shows up in other works of ancient satire, most notably in the satirical novel A True Story, which was written in Greek by the Syrian writer Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. 125 – after c. 180 AD). (For more information about this novel, you can read this article I wrote in January 2020 in which I talk about it extensively.)ABOVE: Jonah and the Whale, painted in 1621 by the Dutch painter Pieter Lastman (lived 1583 – 1633)The Book of Jonah wildly inflates the size of the city of Nineveh; in Jonah 3:3, it is unrealistically claimed that it took three whole days to walk from one end of Nineveh to the other. If this were true, though, this would make ancient Nineveh far larger than any city on Earth today. For comparison, three days is roughly the amount of time it would realistically take for someone to walk all the way from Indianapolis to Chicago!Meanwhile, the people of the city of Nineveh are portrayed as unrealistically eager to repent and worship YHWH; as soon as Jonah shows up and starts half-heartedly preaching, everyone in the entire city instantly repents. Not only do all the people fast and put on sackcloth, but their livestock are explicitly stated to do this as well. The Book of Jonah 3:4–9 reads as follows, as translated in the NRSV:“Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.”“When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’”Obviously, this is unrealistic and the idea of animals fasting and dressing in sackcloth is just plain silly.After this happens, Jonah gets extremely mad at YHWH because the people of Nineveh actually listened to him and repented and Jonah clearly didn’t want that to happen. Thus, Jonah begs YHWH to kill him, saying that he would rather die than see Nineveh be spared. He sits down outside the city to watch, evidently hoping that YHWH will still destroy it, even though the people repented.Instead, YHWH sends a plant to provide Jonah with shade. Then he causes the plant to wither. Jonah gets mad and begs YHWH to kill him, but instead YHWH reproaches him for caring more about a non-sentient plant that he didn’t even plant himself than about all the people and animals in the city of Nineveh.The Book of Jonah, in other words, is comedy gold and it has a truly moral message—but there is no way on Earth that any of the events described in it could have really happened. It is clearly a work of satirical fiction.ABOVE: Illustration from c. 1866 by the French illustrator Gustave Doré, depicting Jonah preaching to the NinevitesThe Song of Songs of SolomonThe Song of Songs is an erotic love poem. It was originally composed in Hebrew, most likely sometime around the third century BC or thereabouts. The version of the poem that has been passed down to us through the manuscript tradition begins with the words “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s,” but it is unclear whether this is supposed to mean that the song was written by Solomon, that the song is about Solomon, or that the song was composed in honor of Solomon. It is also unclear whether this verse was originally present.Oddly enough, the poem does not contain even a single mention of God. It does, however, contain tons of heavily innuendo-laden passages that seem to describe a whole range of sexual acts that both Jews and Christians have traditionally regarded as forbidden. There are two speakers in the poem: a woman and a man. In Song of Songs 2:3, the woman says something that sounds a lot like a description of fellatio:“As an apple tree among the trees of the wood,so is my beloved among young men.With great delight I sat in his shadow,and his fruit was sweet to my taste.”In Song of Songs 4:11–5:1, we have this exchange that sounds a lot like a description of cunnilingus:Man: “Your lips distill nectar, my bride;honey and milk are under your tongue;the scent of your garments is like the scent of Lebanon.A garden locked is my sister, my bride,a garden locked, a fountain sealed.Your channel is an orchard of pomegranateswith all choicest fruits,henna with nard,nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon,with all trees of frankincense,myrrh and aloes,with all chief spices—a garden fountain, a well of living water,and flowing streams from Lebanon.”Woman: “Awake, O north wind,and come, O south wind!Blow upon my gardenthat its fragrance may be wafted abroad.Let my beloved come to his garden,and eat its choicest fruits.”Man: “I come to my garden, my sister, my bride;I gather my myrrh with my spice,I eat my honeycomb with my honey,I drink my wine with my milk.”“Eat, friends, drink,and be drunk with love.”In Song of Songs 5:2–6 the woman says something that sounds a bit like a description of some sort of fingering:“I slept, but my heart was awake.Listen! my beloved is knocking.‘Open to me, my sister, my love,my dove, my perfect one;for my head is wet with dew,my locks with the drops of the night.’I had put off my garment;how could I put it on again?I had bathed my feet;how could I soil them?My beloved thrust his hand into the opening,and my inmost being yearned for him.I arose to open to my beloved,and my hands dripped with myrrh,my fingers with liquid myrrh,upon the handles of the bolt.I opened to my beloved,but my beloved had turned and was gone.My soul failed me when he spoke.I sought him, but did not find him;I called him, but he gave no answer.”There are a lot of different ways you can take these passages. Obviously, I may just have a dirty mind and I may be reading too much into them, but, to me at least, these passages really sound like they are describing sex acts that, historically, most Christians would consider abhorrent.Of course, there’s also another peculiarity; towards the end of the poem, the woman speaker seems to say that she and her lover are unmarried and that their relationship itself is forbidden. In the Song of Songs 8:1–3, she says, as translated in the NRSV:“O that you were like a brother to me,who nursed at my mother’s breast!If I met you outside, I would kiss you,and no one would despise me.I would lead you and bring youinto the house of my mother,and into the chamber of the one who bore me.I would give you spiced wine to drink,the juice of my pomegranates.O that his left hand were under my head,and that his right hand embraced me!”This passage only makes sense if we assume that the woman and her lover are not married. Notably, she implies that she still lives with her parents, which implies that she is unmarried, because a married woman would ordinarily live with her husband. Furthermore, she implies that it would not be socially acceptable for her to be seen kissing her lover or leading her lover to the bedchamber.It is true that, earlier in the poem, the man does repeatedly describe the woman as “my bride,” but he also repeatedly calls her “my sister” and the passage I have just quoted above strongly suggests that she is not really his literal sister. It therefore seems likely that, when he calls her “my sister” and “my bride,” what he really means is that she is like a sister and a bride to him, when, in fact, she is really neither.I think someone could reasonably argue that the various passages quoted above aren’t really about fellatio, cunnilingus, fingering, and so forth, but I think someone would have a really hard time arguing that Song of Songs 8:1–3 does not indicate that the lovers in the poem are unmarried.Both Jewish and Christian scholars have been trying to come up with excuses for why the Song of Songs is included in the Bible for millennia. The Church Father Origenes of Alexandria (lived c. 184 – c. 253 AD) famously interpreted the poem as an allegory for the relationship between God and the believer in his Commentary on the Song of Songs, but this interpretation is not entirely convincing.ABOVE: The Song of Songs, painted by the French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau (lived 1826 – 1898) in 1893The Book of JobThe Book of Job is a philosophical poem with a prose framing narrative that was originally written in Hebrew. Rabbinical tradition attributes the book to Moses, but the book itself never actually claims to have been written by Moses and there is frankly no good evidence to support the claim that the book was written by Moses. The true author of the Book of Job is anonymous.The Book of Job was most likely written during the time of the Babylonian captivity (lasted c. 597 – c. 539 BC), but there are some aspects of the book that some scholars have interpreted as evidence that it might have been written during the time when Judah was ruled by the Achaemenid Empire (lasted c. 539 – c. 332 BC).The Book of Job is unusual because it seems to challenge the basic theological assumption of the Deuteronomistic History, which is that those who fall on hard times are being punished by God for their sins. It does this by presenting us with the example of Job, who is described as perfectly righteous in every way. This is how the character of Job is introduced in Job 1:1:“There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.”Job 1:6–12 describes how the “sons of God” (בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים; bənê hāʼĕlōhîm) came to present themselves before YHWH. YHWH asks one of these sons, a figure described as “שָּׂטָן‎” (sâtan), which means “the accuser,” where he has been. The accuser replies that he has been exploring the Earth. YHWH points out Job to the accuser and tells him about what a truly righteous man Job is.The accuser tells YHWH that Job only follows YHWH’s commandments because YHWH has been good to him and he assures him that, if Job lost everything, then he would undoubtedly curse YHWH to his face. YHWH therefore gives the accuser permission to do whatever he wants to Job—as long as he doesn’t hurt physically harm Job’s body.The accuser causes foreigners to steal all Job’s livestock and kill nearly all his slaves. He also causes a roof to collapse, killing all Job’s children. Nevertheless, Job refuses to curse YHWH. The accuser goes to YHWH again and tells him that, if only he would let him harm Job’s body, then he could make Job curse him. YHWH gives the accuser permission to harm Job’s body, so the accuser afflicts Job with painful boils from head to toe.ABOVE: The Examination of Job, painted c. 1821 by the English poet and artist William Blake (lived 1757 – 1827)Job’s wife comes to him as he is sitting in the ashes, covered in painful sores, scraping himself with a potsherd. She tells him, “Curse God and die,” but Job refuses. Job’s three friends—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite—come to “comfort” him, but, instead, they mostly just tell him that his suffering clearly must be his own fault and that he must have done something wrong for YHWH to punish him like this.Job defends himself, telling his friends that he has done absolutely nothing wrong and that his misfortune is not any kind of punishment for anything he has done. Job even flat-out declares in chapter 24 that, most of the time, YHWH does not punish the wicked for their sins at all and that YHWH doesn’t even necessarily reward the righteous either, because human lives are short and of little importance to YHWH. He says in Job 24:24:“They [i.e. mighty humans] are exalted a little while, and then are gone;they wither and fade like the mallow;they are cut off like the heads of grain.”After the dialogue between Job and his friends, there is a poem in chapter 28 about how wisdom is hidden from humans and how it is only accessible to God. After the narrative resumes, Job gives a speech demanding that YHWH answer him. Then this guy named Elihu who has never been mentioned before randomly shows up and gives a few speeches before he seemingly disappears, never to be mentioned again.ABOVE: Job and His Friends, painted in 1869 by the Russian painter Ilya Repin (lived 1844 – 1930)At last, after Elihu’s speeches, YHWH himself appears in the form of a whirlwind and speaks to Job. He does not directly respond to anything Job has said, nor does he in nay way try to justify Job’s punishment; instead, YHWH merely boasts about his own supremacy, pointing out how weak and pitiful humans are compared to him.YHWH also vividly describes to Job the behemoth and the leviathan, two terrifying mythical creatures that are presumably supposed to prove how weak and pitiful humans are relatively speaking. In Job 42:1–6, Job admits that he is nothing compared to YHWH and that YHWH is supreme—a fact that Job doesn’t seem to have ever really questioned to begin with, but that YHWH seems awfully keen to impress on him.Finally, YHWH tells Job’s friends that Job is right and that they must all make offerings to him with Job acting as their intermediary. YHWH restores Job’s health and gives him more children, livestock, and money than he had had before. Job lives to the ripe old age of one hundred and forty, having lived to see his own great-great-grandchildren.Christians have often read the Book of Job as offering up as theodicy—an explanation for why God allows bad things to happen to good people—but, in all honesty, the book doesn’t really offer up a satisfying explanation. Instead, it seems more concerned with trying to prove that bad things do sometimes happen to good people than with trying to explain the reason why.If there is a moral to the Book of Job, it seems to be that YHWH is a capricious, all-powerful, otherworldly being who generally doesn’t care about humans because he thinks they are too puny to concern himself with. (Also, apparently he is so out of touch that he thinks that just giving someone more children is enough to make up for the children they’ve lost.)ABOVE: My own illustration from c. 2015 of God showing the Leviathan to JobThe Book of RevelationThe Book of Revelation was originally written in Koine Greek near the end of the first century AD on the Greek island of Patmos. At the time when the book was written, the entire Mediterranean world was ruled by the Roman Empire. The book itself is generally thought to have most likely been written during the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian (ruled 81 – 96 AD).The author of the book introduces himself as Ἰωάννης (Iōánnēs). This name is usually rendered in English as John. Internal evidence strongly indicates that the author of the Book of Revelation was not John the Apostle, but rather a different man with the same name. Most noticeably, the author of the book never claims to be an apostle and, at several points, he even seems to imply that he isn’t an apostle. The author of the Book of Revelation, then, is generally known as “John of Patmos” or “John the Revelator” to distinguish him from John the Apostle.The Book of Revelation is full of all sorts of bizarre visions and symbols that have left readers perplexed for centuries. It starts out strange from the very beginning. In the very first chapter, John of Patmos describes how he saw Jesus in a vision with a double-edged sword sticking out of his mouth, his head glowing like the Sun, and seven stars floating in his hand. Here is the full text of the Book of Revelation 1:9–20, as translated in NRSV:“I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, ‘Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.’”“Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force.”“When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades. Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.’”There’s equally weird stuff later in the book, including the famous Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (whom I wrote about in this article from January 2020), bizarre “living creatures” covered in eyes, a many-headed dragon, a whore drunk on the blood of the saints, the prophet being commanded by an angel to literally eat a scroll, and a lake of fire.Ultimately, as weird as all this stuff is, it isn’t nonsense; everything that is described in the book is meant to be symbolic. The Book of Revelation is, in part, a manifesto against the Roman Empire written in a code that the author knew only Christians would understand. It draws heavily on imagery from the prophetic writings of the Hebrew Bible.In fact, I actually don’t think the Book of Revelation is the weirdest book in the Bible. There is one book that I think surpasses it. I’m talking about a book that is more sexually explicit than the Song of Songs and that is the ultimate source of most of the most bizarre imagery in the Book of Revelation: the Book of Ezekiel.ABOVE: Modern imaginative depiction of Jesus’s divine form, as described in the Book of Revelation 1:9–20. For some reason the artist forgot to include the massive sword that’s supposed to be sticking out of his mouth.The Book of EzekielWhen it comes to the weirdest book in the entire Bible in terms of sheer alien bizarreness, I’m probably going to have to go with the Book of Ezekiel—which, as I said, is actually where the Book of Revelation gets some of its strangest images from. Some version of the Book of Ezekiel was originally written by the prophet Ezekiel (lived c. 622 – c. 570 BC), but the book seems to have undergone substantial editing after Ezekiel’s death and the book as we have it today is probably not exactly the same as it was when Ezekiel wrote it.The opening scene of the book is a bizarre, detailed description of a vision in which Ezekiel sees YHWH in the sky on a divine chariot pulled by four terrifying, chimeric creatures that sound like something straight out of an acid trip. Ezekiel 1:4–14 reads as follows, as translated in the NRSV:“As I looked, a stormy wind came out of the north: a great cloud with brightness around it and fire flashing forth continually, and in the middle of the fire, something like gleaming amber. In the middle of it was something like four living creatures. This was their appearance: they were of human form. Each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot; and they sparkled like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. And the four had their faces and their wings thus: their wings touched one another; each of them moved straight ahead, without turning as they moved. As for the appearance of their faces: the four had the face of a human being, the face of a lion on the right side, the face of an ox on the left side, and the face of an eagle; such were their faces. Their wings were spread out above; each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another, while two covered their bodies. Each moved straight ahead; wherever the spirit would go, they went, without turning as they went. In the middle of the living creatures there was something that looked like burning coals of fire, like torches moving to and fro among the living creatures; the fire was bright, and lightning issued from the fire. The living creatures darted to and fro, like a flash of lightning.”Incidentally, these same four “living creatures” make a reappearance in the Book of Revelation 4, although in that book they are described as having six wings rather than only four and as being completely covered in eyes.Things get even weirder right away, though, because, almost as soon as Ezekiel sees YHWH in his crazy nightmare chariot, a mystical hand comes down from the sky holding a scroll and YHWH orders Ezekiel to eat it. Ezekiel 2:8–3:3 reads as follows:“’But you, mortal, hear what I say to you; do not be rebellious like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you.’ I looked, and a hand was stretched out to me, and a written scroll was in it. He spread it before me; it had writing on the front and on the back, and written on it were words of lamentation and mourning and woe.”“He said to me, ‘O mortal, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.’ So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. He said to me, ‘Mortal, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.’ Then I ate it; and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey.”The eating of the scroll is evidently supposed to symbolize the fact that YHWH is giving Ezekiel the gift of prophecy, but it is still really, really weird.Evidently God really likes making people eat scrolls, since John of Patmos is also instructed by an angel to eat a scroll in Revelation 10:1–11.ABOVE: Illustration of Ezekiel’s inaugural vision by the Swiss engraver Matthäus Merian (lived 1593 – 1650)The Book of Ezekiel isn’t just filled with crazy chariots pulled by monstrous alien creatures and random scroll-eating; it’s also extremely sexually explicit. In Ezekiel 16, YHWH compares Jerusalem to an adulterous wife, but, for some reason, YHWH goes into extremely graphic, explicit detail describing her sexual depravities. The Song of Songs seems to describe a lot of sexual acts, but it does it through obfuscating metaphors, usually involving fruit. Ezekiel’s YHWH does no such thing; he just says exactly what he means outright.In Ezekiel 16:17–21, YHWH describes the adulterous Jerusalem as literally having sex with male idols made from the silver and gold jewelry that he gave her. He also describes her as sacrificing her sons and daughters to the same idols:“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. And you took your embroidered clothes to put on them, and you offered my oil and incense before them. Also the food I provided for you—the flour, olive oil and honey I gave you to eat—you offered as fragrant incense before them. That is what happened, declares the Sovereign Lord.”“And you took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me and sacrificed them as food to the idols. Was your prostitution not enough? You slaughtered my children and sacrificed them to the idols.”Ezekiel evidently loved this idea of using sexual promiscuity as a metaphor for general unlawfulness so much that he actually uses it again. Later, in Ezekiel 23, YHWH tells Ezekiel a story about two prostitute sisters named Oholah and Oholibah who are said to represent the nations of Israel and Judah respectively. Once again, for some reason, YHWH describes all their depraved activities in vivid detail.The most bizarre passage is Ezekiel 23:14–21, in which YHWH first describes Oholibah, the younger sister, who represents the kingdom of Judah, lusting after paintings of Chaldean men on a wall. Then YHWH goes into extremely explicit detail describing Oholibah’s Egyptian lovers’ penises:“But she carried her whorings further; she saw male figures carved on the wall, images of the Chaldeans portrayed in vermilion, with belts around their waists, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them looking like officers—a picture of Babylonians whose native land was Chaldea. When she saw them she lusted after them, and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their lust; and after she defiled herself with them, she turned from them in disgust. When she carried on her whorings so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned from her sister. Yet she increased her whorings, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt and lusted after her paramours there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose emission was like that of stallions. Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians fondled your bosom and caressed your young breasts.”Way too much information there, YHWH.ABOVE: Illustration by the French artist James Tissot (lived 1836 – 1902) of the whoredom of OholibahThen, of course, there are more weird visions. In Ezekiel 37:1–14,YHWH shows Ezekiel an entire valley that is completely filled with dry bones and asks him if the bones can come to life. Ezekiel basically tells him, “I don’t know; you tell me.” Then YHWH tells Ezekiel to talk to the bones. As a result of Ezekiel’s words, the bones come to life and they turn into zombie people. Then YHWH tells Ezekiel that the weird zombie bone people are the nation of Israel. Here’s the full passage:“The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.’”“So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”“Then he said to me, ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.”Ultimately, all of these weird visions and stories do serve a theological message, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still really weird.Finally, the last nine chapters of the book (Ezekiel 40–48) are devoted to an extremely lengthy, detailed description of what the new temple in Jerusalem is going to look like. Ezekiel goes on and on, giving exact measurements of everything.And that’s why I think the Book of Ezekiel is, hands down, the weirdest book in the Bible.ABOVE: Illustration from c. 1866 by the French illustrator Gustave Doré, depicting Ezekiel’s vision of the zombie bone people(NOTE: I have also published a version of this article on my website titled “The Strangest Books in the Bible.” Here is a link to the version of the article on my website.)