Then Noah decided to check and see if there was dry land. He must have had a
laptop computer that seemed to take forever to boot up and finally, “After
forty days, Noah opened the window he had made”(Genesis 8:6). He was very
frustrated that it took him forty days to open the window, but he was only
using a 286 cubit with 3 RAM (and 4 ewes), so what could he realistically
expect?
Like Noah, others were also disappointed by early versions of Windows. I
Samuel 19:12 records that David was let down by a window and he fled and
escaped. (Who among us has not been let down by windows on occasions.)
You can almost hear excitement turn to disappointment in the young woman’s
voice when she exclaims “My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look!
There he stands behind our wall,…” then she realizes that he is distracted
by his new Intel core i7 system and she continues, dejected: “scrolling
through the windows” (Song of Solomon 2:9).
Early computer viruses were often referenced. Jeremiah warns that “Death has
climbed in through our windows…” (Jeremiah 9:21). In later verses he
attributes this to a woeful lack of prerelease testing. (Note: Some
manuscripts omit these verses to avoid legal reprisals)
Others had more success at using their systems, Elisha “Opened the east
window”(2 Kings 13:17) and Jeremiah was renown throughout the land because
“He makes large windows” (Jeremiah 22:14) and was able to use the tile
facility so that “the windows were placed high, in sets of three”(1 Kings
7:4). Using the color feature he was able to make them “with cedar and
decorated in red” (1 Kings 7:4)
However, most of the Old Testament windows users were not very productive
because there was nothing in their windows until several thousand years
later when Paul “shook the dust from his feet in protest and went to
Iconium” (Acts 13:51) where first century icons were created. But even Paul
himself had difficulty with the new systems. He was later put in prison
because one of the icons evidently named Eucalyptus fell out of the window
and was “picked up dead” (Acts 20:9) which is not a good thing.
And finally, I would be remiss if I did not point out that the Bible also
speaks to the future of Windows. How telling are the verses in Ecclesiastes
12:3-5 where the writer predicts: “the keepers of the house tremble, and the
strong men stoop and those Working With Windows grow dim… Then man goes to
his eternal home and mourners go about the streets.” (Emphasis mine) Some
scholars see this as predicting that Windows will be the death of us all,
but the original text is unclear on this. Some think that the reference to
“grow dim” is referring to mental capability, not physical demise, I think
both translations have an element of truth!
~~
Dr Bob Griffin
[email protected] www.grif.net
“Jesus Knows Me, This I Love!”