Souzek Republic: Old Testament Spam

Old Testament Spam

Like most people, I receive a number of unspeakably filthy emails per day from spammers (I long for you, Spam Assassin) but I just received one that caught my eye for an entirely different reason. I use a text email client so I don't see the images that normally occupy the whole message, I just see text. At the bottom of this spam was the following:

"them.b as for the appearance come from?' d answered the 'from going to and fro on the earth and from wal up and down on it.' the 'have you considered my servant job? there is no one like him on the earth a blameless and does it become holy? the priests answered 'no.' then haggai said 'if one who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any"

Curious, I decided to see if I could find the source(s) of this strange, cryptic message. As it turns out, the first part is from the second chapter of Job, verses 2 - 3, in which the Lord challenges Satan to tempt Job, whose story we all know:

"The Lord said to Satan, 'Where have you come from?'

Satan answered the Lord, 'From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.'

The Lord said to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.'"

The second part is from the Old Testament as well, but from Haggai 2:11 - 14. Haggai is teaching a lesson about works through the metaphor of cleanliness:

"Thus says the Lord of hosts, 'Ask now the priests for a ruling: if a man carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and touches bread with this fold, or cooked food, wine, oil, or any other food, will it become holy?'

And the priests answered and said, 'No.'

Then Haggai said, 'If one who is unclean from a corpse touches any of these, will the latter become unclean?'

And the priests answered and said, 'It will become unclean.'

Then Haggai answered and said, '"So is this people. And so is this nation before Me,"' declares the Lord, "and so is every work of their hands; and what they offer there is unclean."'"

If this is a common spam practice, it's new to me. I wonder where they are pulling this text from, assuming it's done by some automated process. Is this crusading spammer trying to teach us all something by sending out indecent emails with cryptic Biblical messages? Only Nydia Jacobs (num1sxy@active.co.nz) truly knows.