Neverending Laundry Convinces Atheist Parent: Biblical Miracle Of Unlimited Oil Real

“And don’t get me started on dishes. My thinking has really, really come around of late on the whole Biblical miracle thing. It’s much more plausible now.”

Mevasseret Tzion, March 7 – A mother of three children in this middle-class Jerusalem suburb acknowledged that she has begun to revise her opinion on the historicity of the Hebrew Scriptures and the supernatural events it purports to chronicle, upon realizing that her experiences with the ceaseless quantities of clothes her family requires cleaned, folded, or otherwise cleared make at least one episode, involving a poor widow for whom a prophet arranges an unending flow of olive oil, not so supernatural anymore.

Yuval Tzurieli, 32, mused Monday that a story in the book of Kings seems much less fanciful now that she has spent countless hours doing laundry that appears to regenerate at a preternatural rate. The Biblical narrative, appearing in the Second Book of Kings, chapter four: a widow of a prophet-trainee laments to the seer Elisha that her family’s creditors will come soon to collect, but she cannot pay, and she expects them to take her children to sell as slaves; she has only a tiny quantity of oil. The prophet instructs her to borrow as many containers as possible from her neighbors, gather her family into the house, shut the door, and begin pouring the oil into the other containers. She does so, and the oil continues to pour from her jug until every last borrowed vessel brims with the liquid. Elisha then tells the widow to sell the copious oil and use the proceeds to pay off the debt.

“I used to dismiss that as just a fanciful tale that only credulous religious fools believe,” she confessed. “But a few years as a mother has convinced me it’s far from impossible. I do my best to stay on top of the housekeeping, and I take pride in how quickly I can get three or four loads done in the few available hours I have each day – but I swear, I’ve cleaned, dried, folded, and put away the same item, only to find it back in the hamper later the same day, I don’t know how many times. And don’t get me started on dishes. My thinking has really, really come around of late on the whole Biblical miracle thing. It’s much more plausible now.”

Tzurieli added that she has a newfound respect for the faithful who give Biblical accounts more credence than she did. “I know some go all literal, and that’s not where I’m at,” she explained. “But the stories resonate with me much more authentically now that I’m a mother. The whole angry God thing? I get it now. If the Israelites were half as aggravating as my kids get on any given Tuesday, I’m siding with those divine threats to wipe the people out and start over with Moses. If the fact that I haven’t slaughtered my darling angels a dozen times over in the last two weeks isn’t proof of divine intervention, I don’t know what is.”

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