My kids say the funniest things all the time. We’ve had lots of opportunities to laugh during our study of the Old Testament this summer.
Today we were reading about the Israelites wandering in the desert. They were whining, bitterly crying out to the Lord for meat. He provided them with quail stacked 3 feet deep for a distance of a day’s walk in all directions. I was trying to explain to the kids just how much quail that must have been.
I asked our 3 year old to stand up, and pointed out that the quail were stacked as deep as he is tall, and listed off several towns surrounding us to give an idea of just how far a day’s walk might be.
I said, “That was a LOT of quail! Can you imagine walking that far, and the ground being covered with quail all the way?” Our six year old chimed in, “Yeah, and it would be really hard to walk if you were buried that deeply in quail!” All the boys laughed as they imagined trying to walk many miles, buried up to the neck in quail the entire way.
Last week we were working on memorizing the Ten Commandments. I asked the boys, “What is adultery?” Our 8 year old said, “It’s when you do something that adults do, only you aren’t an adult…adult-ery.” Our six year old had a bit more of a clue. He said, “It’s when a child tries to get married. Like if a 4 year old tried to get married, that would be adult-ery.” When asked what “Thou shalt not covet” means, our 8 year old thought “covet” was a synonym for “commandeer”. Note to self: It’s always good to check what they understand when you are trying to teach them to memorize something!
When we celebrated our Shabbat feast, our three year old son got to blow a toy Shofar three times to signify the end of of work and the beginning of Sabbath rest. He couldn’t understand why the same technique didn’t work on Monday! I asked him to clean his room, and instead of doing the job, he found the shofar and blew it three times, believing it would magically release him from having to do his little chore.
Even our 12 year old son says funny things from time to time. He got to participate in a biblical meal recently. He was particularly looking forward to tasting Lentil Stew, as we had read that Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of it. When he got home he joked, “That Lentil Stew really wasn’t that great. It would take at least an all you can eat meat buffet to get me to sell my birthright!”
