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Did Eliot Spitzer Do The Wrong Thing?

Dear God,

A lot of people are saying that Eliot Spitzer did the wrong thing by paying a prostitute over four thousand dollars for a sexual encounter. A lot of people say that what Mr. Spitzer did was against God’s laws.

Well, God, is it true? Is what Eliot Spitzer did against your moral laws?

- Marvin

Marvin,

Consider the advice I gave to Hosea, which was written down in the following story:

“Said the LORD unto me, go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the LORD toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine, so I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for a homer of barley, and a half homer of barley, and I said unto her, Thou shalt abide for me many days.”

You see, prostitution itself is clearly not against my moral laws. I told Hosea to go and buy a woman, and he did so, and that was fine with me.

My problem with Eliot Spitzer is that he had no sense of proportion. He did the wrong thing because he wasted money on that prostitute of his. I clearly set the holy price for a prostitute: Pay 15 pieces of silver, and a homer and a half of barley, and not a homer of barley more - and that’s for “many days,” not just a one-time encounter.

Eliot Spitzer couldn’t keep his homers to himself, and now look what’s happened to him. If he had just gone and hired a cheap hooker, he never would have gotten in trouble. The IRS never investigates an ATM withdrawal of 100 dollars.

- God

One Response to “Did Eliot Spitzer Do The Wrong Thing?”

  • 40661. Iroquois 12 March 2008 at 9:40 pm

    Truly astonishing.

    Of course you could also interpret the verse as being about Israel’s unfaithfulness on account of burning incense to Baal.

    The prices are spot on, though. According to my calculations, the amount paid for the ex-temple prostitute was 6 ounces of silver, at say twenty dollars an ounce, that would be $120. This is half the price of a male or female slave (Exodus 21:32) The barley is harder to track down. I’m seeing barley futures at $200 for 20 tonnes, how this translates to Hosea’s 273 liters is hard to pin down. This seems to be a whole lot of grain though, that could feed someone for a long time, but at a fraction of the cost of wheat. Perhaps it means he has to take the prostitute to dinner first, although McDonald’s or even White Castle would be acceptable.
    http://www.thebiblesearch.net/search_all.asp?BookNum=28&Chapter=3&Verse=2

    An alternative explanation is that Spitzer’s wife is supposed to take him back, since this particular passage, if you read it starting with the first verse, is about Hosea taking his wife back after she has committed adultery.

    v1 Then the *Lord said to me again, ‘Go and show your love to your wife again. You must love her although another man loves her. You must love her although she is a woman of *adultery. And you must continue to love her. You must love her in the same way that the *Lord loves the people of Israel. But they continue to *worship other gods. And they like to offer special fruit cakes to these gods’. v2 So I bought the woman with 15 pieces of silver and nine amounts of *barley.

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