GOLDEN HEMORRHOIDS (AND GOLDEN RATS)

Once more I cast a glance at the Holy Bible and at the passages that are absent from kids' Bibles for a good reason. You have maybe already read on this blog about Ezekiel 23:20 (Egyptian lovers with members like those of donkeys and flow like that of stallions), but now let us look at another passage in the Good Book that has brought me many a good laugh.

When the Philistines, the pagan enemies of Israel, finally captured the Covenant Ark at the Battle of Eben-Ezer (and killed 10.000 Israelites in that battle), the LORD punished them by striking them down with painful hemorrhoids. Such was the pain that they could not even sit down. Those hemorrhoids even caused death to some people! In order to get rid of the excruciating and even lethal ailment, the Philistines shuttled the Ark from town to town (it was for a while in Goliath's hometown of Gath), but to no avail, as it brought death and hemorrhoids to the locals wherever it went. Along with the hemorrhoids came plagues of rats that ate all the Philistines' grain and spread lethal infectious diseases, like the plague. In the end they were happy to return the Ark to its rightful Israelite owners, along with a guilt offering of five newly-crafted solid gold sculptures of rats and five newly-crafted solid gold sculptures of buttocks with prominent hemorrhoids, one for each of the five different Philistine towns that had hosted the Covenant Ark and the subsequent rat plagues and hemorrhoid outbreaks, as the Philistine soothsayers had told them to do. These ten sculptures and the Covenant Ark were put in a wagon drawn by two dairy cows, which had never been yoked before (any significance on why dairy cows? The soothsayers had also said so, but why?), the wagon headed straight for Israel without any wavering, and the Israelites recovered their beloved Ark along with five golden rats and five golden butts with hemorrhoids. Only then were the Philistines' lands free of both hemorrhoids and rat swarms.

This appears in the First Book of Samuel (1 Samuel), Chapter 6. Or 1 Sam 1:6 for short

PS. The King James Version calls the hemorrhoids "emerods," a word that is a phonetic transcription and archaic term no one uses anymore... Therefore one might find the Google search "what are emerods in the Bible?"