King Noah, the Jerk

Schalom and vee gehts!

Now that Moishe has already apologized for both of us, I can skip that and get to the blogging.

I think I'll leave the teaching thread as an open ended series (which is to say, I have more to say about it, but don't feel like doing it now), and get back to quick thoughts that came to me when I should have been listening in Sunday School.

Recently I was thinking about the story of King Noah. Noah seems like a pretty smart cookie, and somebody who knows how to take care of himself. Then, he gets Gideon chasing him, and he runs up into a tower.

This always bothered me. I never understood why a guy who knew how to take care of himself so well would run into a tower, because towers generally have only one way in. He backed himself into a corner with no good exit strategy.

A few weeks ago, I was reading the story and realized that it was trying to tell us something: it's not that the King is stupid, it's just that nobody likes him.

Towers are full of guards. Guards are paid to make sure that crazy guys with swords don't kill the King. The King ran to the place where he was sure to find help, and not even his hired goons came to save him. Ouch.

I guess the moral of the story is that we shouldn't assume that people will always come to help us just because of our position, but that we should be good people who other people are willing to help out of love. Or maybe the moral is just that we should change King Noah's epithet from "Wicked Noah the Moron" to "Wicked Noah the Jerk Who Nobody Liked."

So, till next time, Zay Gezunt!
Herschel