The Four Lepers
July 11th, 2022 by John Mansfield
We rather enjoyed the appearance of the four lepers in 2 Kings chapter 7, those low-class stumblers-upon of big happenings. If I were staging this chapter, would I portray them as Dogberry, Touchstone, C3PO, and Peregrin Took? Or maybe Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Groucho?
John Mansfield
July 11, 2022
And here’s a Touchstone comic strip:
https://goodticklebrain.com/home/2016/5/19/guffaw-and-order-touchstone
John Mansfield
July 11, 2022
Oh, and here’s a Dogberry, same strip, two days earlier:
https://goodticklebrain.com/home?month=05-2016
Reading the plundering lepers did remind us of Merry and Pippin relaxing and smoking in the flooded waste of Isengard. I’m sure Tolkien would agree.
John Mansfield
July 11, 2022
That last link was for all of May 2016. The following is just for the Dogberry strip:
https://goodticklebrain.com/home/2016/5/17/guffaw-and-order-dogberry-part-1
G.
July 11, 2022
Yessir
I hope they at least got to keep some of the stuff
Bookslinger
July 11, 2022
This is also a literary trope, no?
The guys in charge mess up (the Israelites apparently didn’t have spies reporting on enemy movements), and the comedic relief schlubs discover the situation first, and have some fun before reporting it.
The underdog flip-the-script meme is sort of a recurring theme in scripture too. Shepherd boy slays the enemy’s giant with a sling. Backwoods/Gallilean fishermen become church leaders. Youngest son builds an ocean-going boat. Farm-boy becomes prophet. 18 and 19 year old volunteers compete for converts with theology-school-trained paid evangelists.
1 Cor 1:26-29.
26 For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:
27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
28 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:
29 That no flesh should glory in his presence.
John Mansfield
July 12, 2022
Thinking back to last week, the first literary characters the lepers brought to my mind, with their initial liines of “let’s go visit the Assyrians, we’ll likely as not die one way or another anyway,” was Beckett’s Waiting for Godot tramps. Which points out the nature of the play where “nothing happens, twice.” It’s C3PO rattling on to R2D2 for two hours without Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader anywhere in sight. Maybe someone has staged it that way, with Didi’s or Gogo’s lines performed as robot beeps.