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Bildad, the saviour of goats...and humanity
Let's talk about...goats. And sheep. And Bildad, the Shuhite. And The Second Coming.
As all we GO fans remember, Crowley aka Bildad the Shuhite did NOT kill Job's blameless goats, even though he had "a permit".
That was pretty cute, but it's also really interesting, especially in combination with what Heaven calls "The Second Coming". You ever did some research about it? Me, a nonbeliever, did, and it gave me something to think about. But maybe you can see what I mean by reading a text from the Bible:
Matthew 25:31-46“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ www.biblegateway.com
Which implies that the "sheep" are the ones who have lived a "righteous" life in obedience and altruism. Sounds about right and fair. But when adding the Ten Commandments to that idea, it can get a lot scarier:
The Ten Commandments(Exodus 20:2-17 NKJV)
1“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me."
2“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments."
3“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain."
4“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it."
5“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you."
6“You shall not murder."
7“You shall not commit adultery."
8“You shall not steal."
9“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."
10“You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.”
Now let's be honest: in the modern days, how many people would have followed ALL of these commandments, and never (even if accidentally) broken at least one?
So, I'd say, on Judgement Day, there'll be an unholy row on the left side of the goats and
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
And here is where our favourite demon Crowley aka Bildad the Shuhite comes into play: he saved the goats. Those who are a symbol of godless behaviour (blind obedience) and defiance, like even Crowley himself used to be.
Of course, he saved the children as well, but the way the goat scene was put into the flashback made me see it like something more than just a cineastic gag. Good Omens is full of these double meanings, so the goats might be a purposive sample as well. He could have saved the geese or camels or oxes instead (he surely did, but we get to see the goats).
GO fans are true masters in finding Clues for any possible theories about the upcoming third season, hidden meanings and symbolism. I mostly try to stay away from these theories, as I don't like to mess with Neil Gaiman's ideas or anticipate the whole excitement ("wait and see"). However, I like the thought of the cute goats being a parable for humanity and that both Crowley and Aziraphale will find a way to save those who might be "unworthy" of God's mercy and a place in Heaven- but are still worthy of our Ineffable Husbands' love and protection. They will be the humans' "shepherds".
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NEIL NEIL! There’s an article from Deadline Hollywood that says good omens is going to be renewed for a third season IS IT TRUE??? CAN I START SCREAMING ALREADY???
Every day it's getting closer. We aren't quite there yet. But Amazon has definitely been doing things that make a third season more likely.
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I find it extremely funny that the entire Good Omens fandom is absolutely in love with Bildad the Shuhite for seemingly no reason. Can one of you please tell me why we love him so?
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Awhile ago @ouidamforeman made this post:
This shot through my brain like a chain of firecrackers, so, without derailing the original post, I have some THOUGHTS to add about why this concept is not only hilarious (because it is), but also...
It. It kind of fucks. Severely.
And in a delightfully Pratchett-y way, I'd dare to suggest.
I'll explain:
As inferred above, both Crowley AND Aziraphale have canonical Biblical counterparts. Not by name, no, but by function.
Crowley, of course, is the serpent of Eden.
(note on the serpent of Eden: In Genesis 3:1-15, at least, the serpent is not identified as anything other than a serpent, albeit one that can talk. Later, it will be variously interpreted as a traitorous agent of Hell, as a demon, as a guise of Satan himself, etc. In Good Omens --as a slinky ginger who walks funny)
Lesser known, at least so far as I can tell, is the flaming sword. It, too, appears in Genesis 3, in the very last line:
"So he drove out the man; and placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."
--Genesis 3:24, KJV
Thanks to translation ambiguity, there is some debate concerning the nature of the flaming sword --is it a divine weapon given unto one of the Cherubim (if so, why only one)? Or is it an independent entity, which takes the form of a sword (as other angelic beings take the form of wheels and such)? For our purposes, I don't think the distinction matters. The guard at the gate of Eden, whether an angel wielding the sword or an angel who IS the sword, is Aziraphale.
(note on the flaming sword: in some traditions --Eastern Orthodox, for example-- it is held that upon Christ's death and resurrection, the flaming sword gave up it's post and vanished from Eden for good. By these sensibilities, the removal of the sword signifies the redemption and salvation of man.
...Put a pin in that. We're coming back to it.)
So, we have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword, introduced at the beginning and the end (ha) of the very same chapter of Genesis.
But here's the important bit, the bit that's not immediately obvious, the bit that nonetheless encapsulates one of the central themes, if not THE central theme, of Good Omens:
The Sword was never intended to guard Eden while Adam and Eve were still in it.
Do you understand?
The Sword's function was never to protect them. It doesn't even appear until after they've already fallen. No... it was to usher Adam and Eve from the garden, and then keep them out. It was a threat. It was a punishment.
The flaming sword was given to be used against them.
So. Again. We have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword: the inception and the consequence of original sin, personified. They are the one-two punch that launches mankind from paradise, after Hell lures it to destruction and Heaven condemns it for being destroyed. Which is to say that despite being, supposedly, hereditary enemies on two different sides of a celestial cold war, they are actually unified by one purpose, one pivotal role to play in the Divine Plan: completely fucking humanity over.
That's how it's supposed to go. It is written.
...But, in Good Omens, they're not just the Serpent and the Sword.
They're Crowley and Aziraphale.
(author begins to go insane from emotion under the cut)
In Good Omens, humanity is handed it's salvation (pin!) scarcely half an hour after losing it. Instead of looming over God's empty garden, the sword protects a very sad, very scared and very pregnant girl. And no, not because a blameless martyr suffered and died for the privilege, either.
It was just that she'd had such a bad day. And there were vicious animals out there. And Aziraphale worried she would be cold.
...I need to impress upon you how much this is NOT just a matter of being careless with company property. With this one act of kindness, Aziraphale is undermining the whole entire POINT of the expulsion from Eden. God Herself confronts him about it, and he lies. To God.
And the Serpent--
(Crowley, that is, who wonders what's so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway; who thinks that maybe he did a GOOD thing when he tempted Eve with the apple; who objects that God is over-reacting to a first offense; who knows what it is to fall but not what it is to be comforted after the fact...)
--just goes ahead and falls in love with him about it.
As for Crowley --I barely need to explain him, right? People have been making the 'didn't the serpent actually do us a solid?' argument for centuries. But if I'm going to quote one of them, it may as well be the one Neil Gaiman wrote ficlet about:
"If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization."
--Robert G. Ingersoll
The first to ask questions.
Even beyond flattering literary interpretation, we know that Crowley is, so often, discreetly running damage control on the machinations of Heaven and Hell. When he can get away with it. Occasionally, when he can't (1827).
And Aziraphale loves him for it, too. Loves him back.
And so this romance plays out over millennia, where they fall in love with each other but also the world, because of each other and because of the world. But it begins in Eden. Where, instead of acting as the first Earthly example of Divine/Diabolical collusion and callousness--
(other examples --the flood; the bet with Satan; the back channels; the exchange of Holy Water and Hellfire; and on and on...)
--they refuse. Without even necessarily knowing they're doing it, they just refuse. Refuse to trivialize human life, and refuse to hate each other.
To write a story about the Serpent and the Sword falling in love is to write a story about transgression.
Not just in the sense that they are a demon and an angel, and it's ~forbidden. That's part of it, yeah, but the greater part of it is that they are THIS demon and angel, in particular. From The Real Bible's Book of Genesis, in the chapter where man falls.
It's the sort of thing you write and laugh. And then you look at it. And you think. And then you frown, and you sit up a little straighter. And you think.
And then you keep writing.
And what emerges hits you like a goddamn truck.
(...A lot of Pratchett reads that way. I believe Gaiman when he says Pratchett would have been happy with the romance, by the way. I really really do).
It's a story about transgression, about love as transgression. They break the rules by loving each other, by loving creation, and by rejecting the hatred and hypocrisy that would have triangulated them as a unified blow against humanity, before humanity had even really got started. And yeah, hell, it's a queer romance too, just to really drive the point home (oh, that!!! THAT!!!)
...I could spend a long time wildly gesturing at this and never be satisfied. Instead of watching me do that (I'll spare you), please look at this gif:
I love this shot so much.
Look at Eve and Crowley moving, at the same time in the same direction, towards their respective wielders of the flaming sword. Adam reaches out and takes her hand; Aziraphale reaches out and covers him with a wing.
You know what a shot like that establishes? Likeness. Commonality. Kinship.
"Our side" was never just Crowley and Aziraphale. Crowley says as much at the end of season 1 ("--all of us against all of them."). From the beginning, "our side" was Crowley, Aziraphale, and every single human being. Lately that's around 8 billion, but once upon a time it was just two other people. Another couple. The primeval mother and father.
But Adam and Eve die, eventually. Humanity grows without them. It's Crowley and Aziraphale who remain, and who protect it. Who...oversee it's upbringing.
Godfathers. Sort of.
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this is such incredible advice for creating any kind of art i have to put it over here to remind myself
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File under "unnecessarily intimate"
GOOD OMENS | 1.02 “The Book”
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I didn't want to leave, Crowley. I didn't have a choice. I'm doing this for you. For us. We're still on our side.
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Crowley walking like his hips have something to prove
Let's look how in season 1 his walk has a lot more "cool rockstar" vibes, while in season 2 he has the same swagger but it tends towards being bouncier and carefree.
It's fascinating that there is a big change in Crowley between seasons, probably because he doesn't have to do bad things anymore. He's not proving himself to Hell. He's free to do whatever he wants and he's definitely happier. (INSP)
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Gabriel: Worst thing about dating a demon, on three.
Aziraphale: Okay, easy.
Gabriel: One, two, three:
Aziraphale: The emotional distance-
Gabriel: Flies.
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Here’s the thing about the big fall-out: Crowley and Aziraphale are operating under very very different interpretations of what has just happened in the bookshop.
From Aziraphale’s point of view: Gabriel turned up on his doorstep and told him that something terrible was going to happen to him. He vaguely alluded to things being better if you were just with that one other person. He hummed a love song. Then the dukes of hell and archangels all arrive and the big reveal is that Gabriel and Beelzebub are in love. He doesn’t see Gabriel’s memories or anything that would explain it otherwise.
The archangels/demons tell them “If you leave you can never come back”, which is - based on Aziraphale’s past behaviour and experience and fear of being cast out - would suggest that this the bad thing Gabriel was referring to.
Aziraphale assumes Gabriel is being cast out because he fell in love with a demon.
From Crowley’s point of view: He knows that heaven and hell are hunting for Gabriel and doesn’t know why. He knows that Aziraphale’s life will be in danger from both sides and that’s why he agrees to hide Gabriel, as much as he knows “it’s too late now. It’s always too late”.
And then he goes to Heaven to find out wtf is really happening and discovers that Gabriel not only defied the commands of Heaven and his designated role of Supreme Archangel, but that he was about to be stripped of his memory and authority, pared back to the lowest of Scriveners. Gabriel was about to lose everything because he decided to stand against Heaven’s plans.
Crowley knows that the terrible thing that was about to happen to Gabriel was his demotion and erasure of his memory for defying Heaven’s plans, but he doesn’t have the time to tell Aziraphale because everything is happening all at once in the bookshop.
And this is where the tragedy comes in about their misunderstanding.
Aziraphale’s assumption that a demon and angel being in love and being together means being cast out, alone, exiled to who knows where. So when he’s given the opportunity to guarantee they will be somewhere safe together with the means and position to keep themselves safe, he is absolutely going to take it.
But Crowley never saw the Gabriel/Beelzebub relationship like that. He knew Gabriel was being cut down because he decided to take a stand against heaven. Heaven didn’t know about the Beelzebub relationship. That was a non-entity in Gabriel’s demotion. Crowley knows that if Aziraphale goes back to Heaven, it’s the same Heaven that cast out both him and Lucifer (as well as the legions of the damned) and would have cast down Gabriel if it wouldn’t have been awkward for them. As they said, it’s an institutional problem.
If Crowley had had five minutes alone with Aziraphale to explain what he saw in Heaven and why it really all happened, before the Metatron turned up. But the Metatron showed up just in time to begin the mind games.
And by the time they have a few minutes alone to talk things through, both of them are too wound up and on edge. Aziraphale is giddy in the belief he and Crowley can be safely together and make things better in a Heaven that Crowley knows for a fact is still murderously corrupt and will turn on them both as it has before. They both want the same thing: to keep each other and themselves safe, but neither of them realise the other doesn’t have all the details of what’s happening.
“You don’t understand what I’m offering you,” Aziraphale says and he means safety, security, protection.
“I think I understand it better than you do,” Crowley replies, because he knows what a toxic cesspit Heaven is.
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In 0.5 seconds and without saying a single word, Michael Sheen changed lives.
This was the bitchiest bitch moment Aziraphale had in all 2 seasons. Thank you for your service, respectfully, I am deceased.
GIF credit: @wildsflag
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