This morning, many people who partied a little too much in their observance of St. Patrick Day are beginning to experience a common set of symptoms: headache, dry mouth, aches and pains, and every noise in the world seems incredibly loud. In short, a hangover. To ease these symptoms some will partake in a little “hair of the dog.” Do you know that turn of phrase? It’s the folk wisdom (a term I use very loosely) that a little nip of drink in the morning lessens the effect of the hangover.

The hair of the day is actually an idea that goes way back.

For instance, back in 1898, in his book, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, old Ebenezer Cobham Brewer wrote: “In Scotland it is a popular belief that a few hairs of the dog that bit you applied to the wound will prevent evil consequences. Applied to drinks, it means, if overnight you have indulged too freely, take a glass of the same wine within 24 hours to soothe the nerves.”(1)

“Hair of the dog” comes from an even older idea that “like cures like”- that the same thing that has wounded you has the power to heal you – an idea that can be traced all the way back to Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, some 2400 years ago – and yet, even further, to our first reading from Numbers…which takes a slightly more… theological approach.

#OccupySinai
It had been nearly forty years since the Israelites left Egypt. Since their dramatic escape through the parted the waters of the Red Sea, their life had become rather… boring, wandering around the unforgiving Sinai desert. They were hot, tired, their feet hurt, their clothes were caked with sand. They had been eating the same tasteless manna and drinking the same warm, sandy, unfiltered water from rocks for decades. And they were fed up. Not that they were a very happy bunch to begin with. The Israelites of those years complained all the time. “Moses we’re hungry. Moses, we’re tired. Moses, are we there yet?” In our reading from the Book of Numbers, we find them complaining again. They say to Moses, “You brought us out of Egypt for this? We would rather still be enslaved under Pharaoh, making bricks without straw, than to be out here with you. What a mess!” But this time they take it a little too far. This time, they don’t just lay into Moses as they had many times before; this time they speak against God, making this the most egregious of any of their desert complaints.

And God responds by sending fiery, poisonous, deadly serpents, which killed many of the Israelites. (It seems a little much – and yet, having driven four kids in a car for 10 hours, fighting, asking for snacks, insisting we pull over at every rest stop and then asking over and over again, “are we there yet?,” you know, I can sort of understand where God’s coming from.) Continue reading