Yea, and there shall be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; and it shall be well with us. And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God -- he will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this; and do all these things, for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God (2 Ne. 28:7-8).
This morning, I checked The Babylon Bee and found an article, published April 21, called "Christianity Today: 'Jesus May Not Have Existed And The Bible Is A Lie And God Is Dead'." It ended with this sentence:
At publishing time, Christianity Today had published an article titled "Eat, Drink, and be Merry, for Tomorrow We Die."
What makes this an improbable sync is that, while the Bee is a Protestant outfit, that exact expression occurs only in the Book of Mormon, not the Bible. The Bible has "eat, drink and be merry" (Luke 12:19, cf. Eccl. 8:15) and "eat and drink; for to morrow we die" (Isa. 22:13, 1 Cor. 15:32), but the "be merry" and "tomorrow we die" are never combined. In fact, the only occurrence of the exact phrase "eat, drink, and be merry" is paired with the expectation that one’s life will continue “for many years.”
Note added: Although not biblical, the expression is apparently proverbial enough to have made it into Wiktionary, where one of the quotations provides is from
the 1993 Dave Matthews Band song “Tripping Billies”:
Eat, drink, and be merryFor tomorrow we dieEat, drink, and be merryFor tomorrow we dieCause we’re Tripping Billies
This morning, after posting the pre-note-added version of this post and before discovering the DMB song, I once again read The Billy Goats Gruff to some preschoolers. The three Billies in the story, as I suppose everyone knows, cross the bridge to the distinctive onomatopoeia “trip trap trip trap trip trap.”
The version of the story I read ends this way: “The billy goats Gruff have fun in the grass. They eat and eat and eat. We like it here, they say.”
Eat grass and be merry, for tomorrow you may be eaten by a troll.
3 comments:
In addition to the BoM, there's a similar sentiment, if not the same words, found in the book of Wisdom, Chapter 2.
This is interesting! It appears the first incident is Ecclesiastes 8:15 for "eat drink and be merry"
The first incident to include that phrase and the theme of death is Our Lord:
19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.”
20 But God said unto him, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?”
Though of course Isaiah 22:13 seems to state "joy, eat, drink" but then leaves it out on the restatement. So was Our Lord restating and clarifying Isaiah 22:13 or - was he restating Ecclesiastes 8:15 with a more contrasting or unexpected moral twist?
In the BoM/DMB version, they want to eat, drink, and be merry because they expect to die tomorrow.
In Jesus's version, it is implied that he wouldn't eat, drink, and be merry if he knew he was going to die tomorrow.
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