Wit and Humor of the Bible: A Literary Study

by Marion D. Shutter

I.

The sense of humor often tempered his rebukes. There was often sunshine on the cloud.

There were times, indeed, as we shall see, when he spoke with unmeasured severity, when his words fell like fiery hail, beating and burning the heads of offenders; but anon he spoke half smiling, half pitying, as if disposed to laugh at the very inconsistencies he censured. In this respect his spirit has been caught by Addison and Goldsmith, by Irving and Dickens. Richter says that “no one has a right to laugh at men but he who most heartily loves them.” Taine says of Dickens, “Before reading him we did not know there was so much pity in the heart.” Jesus loved men, he pitied them, even while his eye detected and his words exposed their faults and foibles.

He had looked with pleasure (remembering his own childhood), upon the games of the boys and girls in the streets of Jerusalem; he thought of their whimsical complaints, as they played at weddings and funerals in the market-place. On one occasion, his severity mitigated by his sense of the ludicrous, he exclaimed, “Whereunto shall I liken this generation? and to what are they like? They are like unto children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another and saying, We have piped unto you and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you and ye have not lamented.” Everything had gone wrong. The others would not play fair. They would not dance when we wanted to play wedding; they would not be mourners when we wanted to play funeral. We have done all we could to please them, but they are “too mean for anything.” To the mind of Jesus, the people of that generation appeared to be making the same complaint. They were childishly dissatisfied with every divine messenger,—none could please them. “For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine,”—solemn, gloomy, austere; but they would have none of him. He mourned unto them, but they would not lament. They would not “play at funeral” with him. They turned away and said, “He hath a devil.” Then came the Son of Man, bright and cheerful, “eating and drinking,” but they would not dance to his piping. They pointed at him and said, “Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!” It was impossible to please that generation.

If we place this passage side by side with the following from Goldsmith, we shall see at once that if there be humor in the latter, there must also be humor in the former. The subject is the reception accorded the Chinese philosopher who tried to please his friends by his demeanor upon the death of an English sovereign: “I thought it at least my duty to appear sorrowful; to put on a melancholy aspect, or to set my face by that of the people. The first company I came amongst after the news became general was a set of jolly companions who were drinking prosperity to the ensuing reign. I entered the room with looks of despair, and even expected applause for the superlative misery of my countenance. Instead of that, I was universally condemned by the company and desired to take away my penitential phiz to some other quarter. I now corrected my former mistake, and with the most sprightly air imaginable entered a company where they were talking over the ceremonies of the approaching funeral. Here I sat for some time with an air of pert vivacity, when one of the chief mourners immediately observing my good humor desired me, if I pleased, to go and grin somewhere else; they wanted no disaffected scoundrels there. Fum, thou son of Fo, what sort of people am I amongst?” Whereunto shall I liken this generation?

There was a certain time when multitudes followed Jesus, not knowing what they were about, but simply swept along by the enthusiasm of the moment. He saw that they understood not, so he turned and gave them this gentle caution: “Which of you intending to build a tower sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest, haply, after he hath laid the foundation and is not able to finish, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish.” Whoever comes after me and does not count upon bearing his cross, is in the predicament of this foolish tower-builder,—a ludicrous spectacle as he sits beside the unfinished structure, his materials exhausted, while all his neighbors, as they pass by, wag the head and point the finger. Such a spectacle as that will each one of you be who does not count the cost of discipleship. With such gentle strokes of humor did Jesus stay the thoughtless multitudes who imagined that their empty zeal was genuine loyalty. He set forth their conduct in terms that would most effectually impress upon them its folly,—in terms that appealed to their sense of the ridiculous.

In a sarcastic paragraph of his French Revolution, Carlyle speaks of the work of the National Convention thus: “In fact, what can be more unprofitable than the sight of six hundred and forty-nine ingenious men struggling with their whole force and industry, for a long course of weeks, to do at bottom this; to stretch out the old Formula and Law phraseology, so that it may cover the new, contradictory, entirely uncoverable thing? Whereby the poor formula does but crack and one’s honesty along with it. The thing that is palpably hot, burning, wilt thou prove it by a syllogism to be a freezing mixture? This of stretching out formulas till they crack is, especially in times of swift change, one of the sorrowfullest tasks poor humanity has.” Was it not this very formula-stretching that Jesus satirized in more playful vein,—this formula-stretching that existed in old times and that still exists,—when he said: “No man putteth a piece of new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then, both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old”? You can not patch up old terms with new meanings. The new meaning agreeth not with the old term. “And no man putteth new wine into old wine-skins; else the new wine will burst the wine-skins and be spilled, and the wine-skins shall perish. But new wine must be put into new wine-skins, and both are preserved.” The man who tries to put new senses into old words, new ideas into old formulas, is like a man who cuts up a new garment to mend an old; like one who puts wine not yet done fermenting into a skin whose capacity admits no further strain. He spoils his new coat and he loses his new wine.

With such illustrations as these, illustrations embodying a figure or comparison or situation essentially amusing, was Jesus wont to temper his rebukes.

II.

The sense of humor in Jesus enabled him to detect pretension, imposture, hypocrisy, and expose them to the derision of mankind.