Poe’s troubled narrator asks the black bird, “On this home by Horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore – / Is there – Is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!’” GENESIS 37 : 25 records the Israelites carried on trade in “spices, balm, and myrrh” with the “Ishmaelites, coming from Gilead…”
Eden
Whittier’s tribute to Barbara Frietchie describes “the clustered spires of Frederick” as surrounded by fruit orchards: “Round about them orchards sweep, / Apple and peach tree fruited deep” and then describes the orchards as “Fair as the garden of the Lord.” This, of course, alludes to Eden. What life was like in God’s garden is […]
Mark of Cain
GENESIS 4 : 1-26 provides the account of Cain’s murder of his brother Abel and that, as punishment, the Lord sentences Cain to be a “fugitive and a vagabond…And Cain said to the Lord, ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear!’”
Dust to Dust
Longfellow’s psalm declares, “Life is real! Life is earnest! / And the grave is not its goal; / Dust thou art, to dust returnest, / Was not spoken of the soul.” Longfellow is correct in that Moses (the human author of Genesis) and the author of the book of Job were not speaking of a […]
Bone of My Bone
When the Lord presented Adam with Eve in GENESIS 2 : 22 his response in GENESIS 2 : 23 was to say, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”