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Every Day Bible

Worthless Sons

When God gets angry, it’s good to take notice.

Isaiah 5:20, an Old Testament version of the "Seven Woes" of Matthew 25 is explicit: Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil!

Jeremiah railed against the people for taking things too lightly: Jeremiah 6:14, 8:11, etc.

Malachi 2:3 describes God’s promise to, yes, really, smear dung on the offenders’ faces.

Of course, Jesus said a few things along these lines too. There’s that "unpardonable sin" of Matthew 12:31-32 and Luke 12:10, and the whole "it would have been better if you had never been born" line in Matthew 26:21-25.

In this week’s reading, Eli’s "worthless" sons were given this sort of treatment. The text said that the guilt of Eli’s house would never be atoned for. It appears there was a laundry list of sins these guys committed (including sleeping with those who had gathered to worship), but the one that got the most attention was the way they "treated the Lord’s offering with contempt" (page 387 of the Daily Bible).

I’ll leave as an exercise to the reader to determine the common thread between these offenses.