Strange Curses in the Bible

While waiting for our flight out of Omaha this past Wednesday, I was reading 1 Samuel because I was quite interested in getting the whole story after listening to the Understanding the Scriptures podcast.

I learned something really interesting. Did you know that when the Philistines took the Ark of the Covenant, after breaking their god's statue, God cursed each town that housed the stolen Ark with ...


















... HEMORRHOIDS!

I s*** thee not!

Every time the Philistines moved the Ark to a new city, the people got hemorrhoids. Well, there were plagues of mice, too. But the really funny part was the plague of hemorrhoids that befell them all. Finally, people were meeting the bearers of the Ark at the gates of the city and saying, "Hey! What the heck are you doing with THAT thing HERE??!!?? Get it away from us!!!" (Okay, so those are my words, but they are pretty close to the NAB translation.)

During the flight, Hubby borrowed my Bible to read it all for himself. He suddenly leaned forward in his seat (which was behind me) and said, "If you think the hemrrhoid thing is bad, you should read the next chapter and see what the Philistine's priests said they needed to do about the plages of mice and hemrrhoids!" (For the answer, in case you don't know it, go to that last link and look for 1 Samuel 6:4-5.)


And if you are more of a purist and would prefer the Douay-Rheims translation, you can see the story here.

Hubby and I are really curious how you would make one of those. What on earth did they look like??