Day 120 1 Chronicles 6

            The sons of Levi.  All Levites had special title within the theocracy of Israel, but only the sons of Aaron could actually approach the altar to offer sacrifices.  Other Levites were assigned to various other tasks related to keeping up the tabernacle, and later the temple.

            It’s tempting to try to think of the Levites, and especially the priests, in kind of the same way people think of the Vatican or the president of the LDS church or something where these guys are in charge of the temple because they have a direct line to God.  They’re listening to Him so we need to listen to them.

            This doesn’t seem to be the case though through the last couple books.  When priests are mentioned, they are usually referred to as so-and-so’s priest, like the king’s priests for example.  Chronicles mentions that King David assigned a bunch of Levites to be in charge of music in the temple, so obviously the king is able to boss the priests around.  Even Aaron back in Moses’s time was aware of (and not very happy about) the fact that he and his sons were kind of like glorified janitors, with no authority beyond doing exactly what the law and Moses told them to.

            The guys with the direct line to God are the prophets, who have the authority to anoint kings themselves.  So it looks like it goes God, prophets, kings, priests, other levites, and then the general public in terms of who gets to tell whom what to do.  The trick is though, the kings are in charge of the day to day affairs of the country and, more importantly, the army, so there’s an enforcement issue when prophets roll in and try to tell kings what to do.

            1 Chronicles 6:55 says that Hebron was made a city of refuge and given to the Levites, but back in the book of Joshua, Hebron was given to Caleb, the scout who had originally gone out with Joshua to reconnoiter Canaan for Moses and came back with a positive attitude about it, so there’s a bit of a conflict there.  It turns out the city itself, and the pasture land around it, were given to the Levites, but the fields and villages in the area were given to Caleb.  That must have been pretty awkward.  Herders and planters didn’t get along under the best of circumstances in the ancient world.  Also, I think I mentioned before how Caleb really seems to get the short end of the stick.  Joshua is basically the unofficial king of Israel, while Caleb, who we’re told did most of the same stuff Joshua did, got Hebron thirty years later.  Now we find out that e didn’t even get all of Hebron, just some of the leftover bits of Hebron.

            I’ll bet that being right next to a city of refuge really brought down local property values too.

Day 60 Deuteronomy 8-10

            Moses likens the last forty years of wandering through the desert to a father punishing his son.  God didn’t do it because He hated the Israelites, just the opposite.  In fact, it really could have been worse in hindsight.  They were punished when they were disobedient, but God didn’t wipe them out, they were fed and cared for.  And now, in the same way that God punished them because He cares, He is going to hand over this great land to them.  It’s important to remember that neither of those things happen by the power of men.  Moses tells the younger generation that when they’re sitting in their nice homes overlooking their good lands after a big meal with pomegranates and honey and stuff, they’re going to be tempted to think of all this as their own success, brought about by the strength and goodness of their own families and tribes.  That kind of thinking is poison though, everyone has to always remember that it’s not because of their righteousness that they’re getting all these blessings, but because of the evilness of the nations that are there now.

            The rest of this section is basically just Moses reading Exodus for us.  He talks about the stone tablets and the golden calf and building the ark of the covenant, but this time the perspective is different.  In exodus, it feels like the narrator is down with the people, talking about Moses disappearing up into the mountain and then things happen in camp and them Moses comes back and is super-pissed.  This time the perspective is personal to Moses.  He talks about going up the mountain, talking to God, then coming down and seeing the idol and what he does to it.  He never mentions anything that happened that he didn’t actually see though.  I think I remember reading that Exodus and Deuteronomy were both written by Moses, but it sounds a lot like they’re coming from different perspectives.  I suppose Deuteronomy wasn’t written entirely by Moses because (spoiler alert) Moses dies at the end, but since the entire book seems to be one long speech by Moses, I guess it doesn’t really matter whether he wrote it himself or merely dictated it does it.

Day 30 Exodus 39-40

            After the tabernacle itself built, the craftsmen now work on the special priest suits for Aaron and his sons.  They’re covered in gold and precious stones.  They have obsidian tablets, cloth of gold-spun thread, gemstones set in gold representing the twelve tribes and then everything is held together with ropes made of pure gold.  These must have weighed a hundred pounds each when they had their full suits on.

            Moses inspects each piece and when he says it’s all in accordance with God’s instructions, it’s all assembled and placed in the tabernacle so Aaron and his sons could get to work sprinkling oil on everything.

            One thing that is repeated several times is that everything was built the way God said to build it.  Honestly, today, with some of the amazing buildings we see around the world, the tabernacle doesn’t sound that impressive to me.  I sure it was a big deal then, with all that gold and silver and acacia wood, but it’s still just a tent filled with gaudy iconography.  The important part clearly isn’t the building itself though, but the fact that the Israelites were following directions.  The statement isn’t what an impressive tent they can build, but how obedient they can be.  And that’s something that the Ancient Israelites are good at when it comes to God at least.  They may be unfaithful and wicked and kind of complainers sometimes, but God has handed down these kind of complicated instructions a couple times now and the Israelites always do a good job of following them.

            I guess that must count for something because God descends down into the tabernacle in the form of a cloud and the area is so filled with His mojo that Moses couldn’t even go inside the tent.  The cloud stayed with them on Earth, glowing at night so it could always be seen, and whenever it lifted they would follow it to the next patch of desert along their route.

Day 29 Exodus 36-38

            The Israelites build the tabernacle and all the furniture and accessories that go with it.  It’s quite a process, described in great detail in this section.  They use over a ton of gold and over 7000 pounds of silver, which seems difficult considering it’s a tent.  I don’t know how you could even use that much gold decorating a tent.  I guess the cover for the ark probably used a lot, and Aaron’s posse’s outfits must have taken a fair amount.

            The slaughter from the last section got me wondering about just how many people were in this camp at this time.  It was mentioned that the Levites under Moses’s command killed 3000 people, but it doesn’t say what percentage that is of the whole population.  Well there just so happens to be a census now and that tax is collected that God mentioned in chapter 30.  They round up 7,545 pounds of silver which, at a fifth of an ounce per person, would have come from (5*16*7,545=) 603,300 people.  The verse says there were 603,550 men over twenty in the camp though so maybe a few weren’t puling their weight.

Day 28 Exodus 33-35

            3,000 Israelites have been killed by Moses’s Levite enforcers and God and Moses sit down again to rewrite their covenant.  God keeps saying that He will send an angel ahead to clear out the land and He will make sure that everything goes to plan, but that He’s not going to actually travel with them because they are so disobedient and flawed that He can’t stand to be around them.  If God tries to travel with the Israelites all the way back to Caanan He’s going to end up wiping all of them off the face of the Earth.

            By now Moses and God are good friends and Moses practically begs Him to come with, so that everyone will know that God is with them and that God is responsible for all the great things happening.  He also asks to see God’s glory.  God agrees to the first request, and says that He will travel with Moses because He thinks Moses is awesome (33:17), but Moses can’t see His glory because that would destroy him.

            Assuming that’s true, it’s kind of an interesting statement on this nitpicky, theoretical idea of omnipotence we like to debate, like if God can make a rock so big that He Himself cannot lift it.  God has made a creature so frail that He Himself cannot look it in the eye.

            He does tell Moses that He will pass by though and allow Moses to see the place where He just was, but not His face.  Moses is so spiritually charged up by that interaction that his face starts glowing and everybody at the camp gets freaked out.

            Moses and the Lord have a tent set up out away from camp a little ways where they hang out and write down their covenant.  It sounds like this takes place over a pretty long stretch of time.  Every day Moses walks ceremoniously out to the tent and God hovers overhead in the form of a dust cloud.  He mostly reiterates the same things He told Moses in the last covenant about dedicating all the first born males to Him and keeping the Sabbath.  Seriously, God is not joking around when it comes to keeping the Sabbath.  Also, keep those festivals and don’t eat goats if they’re boiled in their mothers’ milk.

            An interesting addition to this version of the covenant is that the Israelites aren’t allowed to make any treaties with any of the people they conquer in Caanan.  If they allow themselves to be allies with any other people, God figures the Israelites are so unfaithful, that they will soak up this foreign culture and their foreign Gods.  The way He says it is pretty interesting too.  My New Living Translation says “They are spiritual prostitutes, committing adultery against me by sacrificing to their gods.  If you make peace with them, they will invite you to go with them to worship their gods, and you are likely to do it.” 34:15 Adultery, that’s very personal.

            Moses has taken to wearing a veil around the camp now because his face glows so much.  Once the covenant gets worked out, they take up a collection of acacia wood and metals and gemstones and cloth and everything they need for the tabernacle and the priests.  I’m a little surprised that Aaron still gets to be high priest after that stunt with the golden calf, but that’s politics I guess.

Day 27 Exodus 31-32

            God pointed out to Moses that He had blessed the Israelites with a couple craftsmen of considerable talent.  He had given the Israelites all the skill they would need to create all the things God was telling Moses to have them make, all the furniture and incense and decorations and fancy robes needed for the ark and the tabernacle.  God then reiterates the importance of the Sabbath.

            The Sabbath, by the way, is super-important.  Anyone who works or who fails to worship properly on the Sabbath is to be cut off from the people.  It seems harsh, but I guess we’ve already seen plenty of examples of how quickly the people can be led astray when there’s a bad influence around.

            In fact, we’re reminded of this again in the very next chapter when Moses comes down from the mountain with all that God said on two stone tablets.

            I wonder about those tablets, incidentally.  There’s a lot more than the ten commandments on there.  My Bible is written in tiny, tiny print and the stuff that God told Moses on Mount Mariah fills seven and a half pages, over ten chapters of text.  Single spaced.  Can you write that small on stone tablets?  Three and a half pages worth of text on each slab?  A lot of those building specifications would have been tempting to include some diagrams too.  Why stone anyway? They just came from Egypt, there must have been some papyrus in the camp.

            Anyway, when Moses comes back down with his two vary densely worded stone tablets, he finds that Aaron, in the relatively short time he’s been in charge of the camp, has forged a golden calf and is leading the people in a big pagan orgy.  Yes, this is the same Aaron who just acted as God’s mouthpiece in the court of Pharaoh himself.  Aaron who helped hold up Moses’ arms because he believed God would grant them victory over the Amalekites as long as Moses’ staff was raised to the sky. 

            The people immediately assumed Moses was dead or lost or somehow gone the second he left their field of vision, so they told Aaron to make them some new Gods to lead them.  Apparently they were tired of the one who parted the Red Sea and decimated two different armies for them.

            Moses is furious and smashes the two tablets, which seems like kind of a big deal to me no matter how angry you are, but God doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.  Aaron kind of mumbles some story about how the people are simple fools and he threw all their jewelry into the fire and out came this calf, and isn’t that a funny coincidence? *nervous chuckle*

            Moses informed Aaron and the people that no, in fact it’s not a funny coincidence and furthermore, everybody who’s still loyal to God, come stand over here with me.  All the Levites joined him at the entrance to the camp, which may have had more to do with Moses being a Levite himself than their actual loyalty to God, and then Moses told them to do a lap, from one end of the camp to the other, killing everyone.  Sons, brothers, friends, everyone.  About 3000 people in all.

            It seems like that should mean that everyone who’s left must be Levites, but I know that later they split up all the land they get according to their tribes so there must still be a few of each tribe left alive.  I guess everyone who escaped the slaughter was allowed to come back and still live in camp, or Moses must have just meant to kill everyone who was worshipping this calf.

             God threatens to wipe out everyone and just take Moses to the promised land, but Moses talks Him down and convinces Him to take everyone.  God relents, but adds that He will blot out everyone who sins against him.  Then he sets a plague on the Israelites.

Day 26 Exodus 28-30

            Priests have to wear special clothes.  They are very ornate and God is very specific about how they are to be designed.

            Very specific.

            Priests also have to be dedicated through a ceremony where they ritualistically kill a bull and a couple rams, and then a bunch more animals over the next week.  These are all sons of Aaron’s going through this, which is interesting since all of the Israelites are supposed to be a nation of priests.  Maybe Aaron’s line is supposed to supply the high priests or something, or maybe this goes back to the Israelites being afraid and electing a delegate to talk to God for them, like that was their one chance to have this relationship as an entire nation and they immediately just gave it up.  That’s kind of sad.

            Plans are also laid out for an altar for incense, a washing basin for Aaron and his priests and tithing/taxation systems for getting money, incense and oil for rituals.  The special oil and incense for anointing and purifying things they’re just supposed to sort of come up with, but actual rules are given for donating money to the tabernacle.  I suppose donating is the wrong word because it’s compulsory for every man over 20.  My NIV Bible calls it a ransom.  Every time there’s a census, every man has to pay one fifth of an ounce of silver; the rich do not have to pay more and the poor do not have to pay less.

            Regressive taxes obviously favor the rich heavily, but only if it’s for at least a moderate amount of money.  If everyone in America had to pay a dollar for example, that would be a regressive tax, but it wouldn’t really be that much of a problem for anybody.  If everyone had to pay a thousand dollars, then that would be trivial for some, but very difficult for many others.  I have no idea how much a fifth of an ounce of silver amounted to relative to the cost of living for the Israelites.  I’ve heard this tax in Exodus used as an argument in favor of regressive, or t least flat taxes, since it’s the first tax handed down by God, it must be the best kind of tax and we should not be taxing the rich more heavily than the poor as we often do.  Silver prices fluctuate a lot and I guess right now is actually a good time for silver in the commodities market.  It’s more than doubled in price in the last year.  Of course I don’t know what the silver market was like in the ancient middle eastern world, but even with that incredible growth we’re seeing now, it’s still not much more than $20 an ounce today.  One fifth of that would be $4. So yes, the first tax was a regressive tax, but it doesn’t sound like they had to tap into their life savings to come up with it.

Day 25 Exodus 25-27

            Boring.

            God tells Moses to build the Tabernacle so He can hand down the Law.  I’ve heard that every part of the Bible is there for a good reason, and I’ll buy that, but I’m not sure every part is meant to be meaningful to every person, at least not at all times.  But who knows?  Maybe there will be a time in the future when these building specs will help me spiritually.

            I suppose it is kind of reassuring to see God give such specific instructions.  We tend to have kind of a vague picture in our culture of a mystical, impersonal  God who kind of subtly influences things from afar.  In Genesis, he rarely tells anyone to do things directly, and when He does, it is usually a small, symbolic act like cutting some birds in half or something.  Even when He told Noah to build the ark, the only instructions are about how many cubits long to make it.  I suppose that story was already a thousand years old by the time it was written down for the first time though.

            You hear a story like Evan Almighty, that Steve Carell movie that kind of parallels the story of Noah, and God is constantly giving clever, vague instructions and no one ever knows why anything is the way it is or what the next step is going to be.  Sometimes it is like that, but in Exodus God basically hands Moses a blueprint for the tabernacle.  I guess it’s still true that nobody knows why any of the plans are exactly the way they are, why God wants gold trim around the edges of the table or cherubim embroidered on the curtains, but as long as the what is clear, I think it’s reasonable to accept “because God says so” as the why.

            A huge curtain hundreds of feet long surrounds the tabernacle, then the tabernacle itself is inside, with a sanctuary inside that.  Then the ark of the covenant is inside the sanctuary.  It’s like a giant acacia wood and gold leaf covered fractal.  Some researchers are finding that that kind of design is actually popular in a lot of very old African cultures.  The villages themselves are each arranged in some shape, then each family compound is arranged in the same shape and the buildings themselves are also built in that shape.  Then there might be a little shrine inside the buildings of the same shape as well.  Each layer of the tabernacle is just box-shaped though so that’s kind of boring as fractals go.

            There is also some furniture that God wants in the tabernacle: a table, a lamp and an altar for burnt offerings.  God provides specifications for how each should be constructed.  The materials for all of this stuff is to be donated by the Israelites “from each man whose heart prompts him to give.” Ex 25:2 NIV  It’s fascinating to me that even under the old covenant, so much of the worship of God was so self-directed.  It would have been really easy fo God or Moses to just roll through camp and collect what was needed.  This is the tabernacle after all, important stuff.  God told Moses though, just tell the people we need an offering and it will work itself out.  I think that’s neat.  In addition to all that gold and wood and animal hide needed for the offering, the people are also told to donate lots of clear oil for burning.  Aaron and his sons are supposed to keep lamps burning from evening to morning every night.  Not just every night like during construction or every night while they’re worshiping either. It sounds like they’re supposed to keep these lamps burning every night pretty much forever.

Day 24 Exodus 22-24

            I didn’t realize that there was so many rules handed down in this first meeting beyond the Ten Commandments.  After the rules about how to treat your Hebrew slaves and how to deal with injuries, now God tells Moses about their new property laws, like how to make things right if someone borrows an ox and it gets stolen or killed by wild animals or something.  It sounds kind of petty to us today for something handed down directly from God, but these rules were a big deal for them I’m sure.  You could wind up dead if something like that happened and someone thought you were treating them unfairly.  God wouldn’t have fixed it if it wasn’t a problem.

            The next section on social responsibilities is where we get rules about not having sex with animals and what my obligations are if I sleep with your daughter.  A lot of these passages can’t seem to figure out though whether someone has to stand trial in front of the Judges of Israel or in front of God Himself.  That seems important to me, but I guess it doesn’t matter much now.  Also, don’t charge interest when you lend money to other Israelites.

            The laws of justice and mercy are more what I expected to see here.  These sound like the laws of the God of the New Testament.  They go above and beyond what is expected of us culturally and require that everyone avoid bribery and corruption and seek justice.  We should neither take advantage of a poor man by denying him justice, or favor him because he’s poor.  Don’t follow the crowd, but do what’s right, and be good even to your enemies and people who hate you. The most interesting part for me is the law against taking advantage of widows and orphans.  All these other laws talk about how, when someone sins, they need to pay a fee or they’re stoned or punished or destroyed.  If you mess with widows and orphans though, then God will kill you Himself.  I guess that one’s important.

            Finally, God sets up three feasts spread about evenly through the year, lays down some more rules about what not to do on the Sabbath, and promises the services of an angel who will ride ahead of the Israelites preparing for them to conquer the land.  They’re promised the land from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and from the desert to the Euphrates river.  This is most of what we think of as the Middle East, from Saudi Arabia through Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and all the way up to Iraq.  I don’t think the Israelites ever actually got all that land, but they didn’t do a very god job of holding up their end of the bargain either so I guess there’s a lesson in there.

Day 23 Exodus 19-21

            God explains to Moses and, by proxy, the Israelites, that He is the God of everything and everyone, but that the Israelites are going to be a nation of priests.  They’ll be super-blessed as long as they follow the rules that God hands down to them and God will completely destroy anyone who stands against them.  The whole arrangement kind of comes off like something from Dune or some other sci-fi story.  Like in Star Trek how they had to keep coming up with whole new worlds every week so some of them turned kind of simple.  This is an entire planet of desert, or of snow, or jungle, and this is a race of people who all believe in the supremacy of logic, or capitalism or gymnastics.  In the real world, the Israelites fail to live up to God’s requirements over and over again for centuries.  So much for the race of people who all follow God.

            Anyway, God prepares to appear before the whole camp, but there are a lot of really strict formalities that have to play out first.  The Israelites spend three days getting all purified and not having sex, and Moses has to block off Mount Sinai so no one wanders up early.  When God does arrive, it’s all smoke and fire and loud noises so everyone’s really impressed.  Moses talks to God on the mountain top and God tells him to make sure that only the priests come up the mountain and that they have to be purified first.  Moses replies that He had already told them that no one was supposed to come up the mountain so God commands him to just go get Aaron.

            The ten commandments are split into two sections, mankind’s duties to God and their duties to each other.  The first couple are about idolatry and… you know what?  There’s only ten, I don’t feel the need to summarize this, here they are:

            No other Gods

            No idols

            Don’t misuse the name of the Lord

            Keep the Sabbath

            Honor your parents

            Don’t murder

            No adultery

            No stealing

            No false testimony

            Don’t covet your neighbor’s stuff or people

            Pretty straight-forward, although not really as straight forward as we like to pretend sometimes.  The exact definition of murder is open to cultural bias, as is adultery and, well pretty much everything on the list is open to a little bit of misinterpretation if you want to get really specific.

            The people get freaked out by all the storming and trumpeting(?) (20:18) on the mountain so they tell Moses that they want him to act as their delegate because they’re scared to talk to God.  I guess this nation of priests thing is off to a rocky start already.

            What follows then are more commandments, but these are a lot more specific and mostly have to do with the punishments for injuring people and how to treat your slaves.  I suppose, to be fair, if there were no rules for how to treat your slaves, then laying down some guidelines for fair treatment is pretty progressive in itself.  When we read through this today though, it’s weird to hear that if we beat our slaves with a rod and they fall unconscious, but get up a couple days later, then everything’s okay, and that really we can beat slaves as much as we want because they’re our property.  I guess, in context, at least it says that if you straight kill them, then you have to be punished.  That’s at least better than nothing.  At least slaves no longer had to fear being beaten to death on a whim.

            I’m glad we’ve moved past the old covenant though.  Some of these rules do not age well.  But then they weren’t intended to were they?  After Jesus, everyone is supposed to love everyone else as brothers.  That’s why there was no more slavery after Jesus came.

Day 22 Exodus 17-18

            The Israelites continue to complain to Moses.

            “Why did you take us from Egypt just so we could die of thirst?!”  They asked Moses, who kept explaining to them that they were not just complaining about him, but about God.  It’s was God’s plan they were following.  So shut up and do it already.  It sounds very frustrating.  He performed yet another miracle from the Lord, striking a rock which then poured out water for them.

            The Amalekites came out while Moses and his people were at Rephidim and they had to fight.  As long as Moses held up his arms, they had the upper hand, but whenever he dropped them, the Amalekites would start to win.  Moses got tired after a while and needed some guys to help him hold his arms up until the end, but they did and the Israelites fighting under Joshua won the day.  God told Moses that He would be at war with the Amalekites from now on and wipe them from the face of the Earth.

            I saw the latest Narnia movie in the theatre a little while ago and I know that it’s all supposed to be Christian Allegory, but I really don’t like the Character of Aslan and I think this passage has made me finally realize why.  In these stories from the Bible, I’m just starting to get into the parts where there’s a proper Israelite army and they can fight real battles.  As long as they do what God says though, they always win, completely.  Often they win without losing a single man or win even when they’re outnumbered five hundred to one or something ridiculous like that.  God has them completely covered.  On the other hand, when there are idols and deceitfulness and sin in the ranks, they’re on their own.  It’s either one or the other, God’s either on your side or he’s not, and He’ll let you know if you ask.  Aslan meanwhile, likes to play these games where you don’t know if he’s around or not.  If you ask him what you’re supposed to be doing he gives vague, fortune cookie answers.

            My wife says that the Chronicles of Narnia are supposed to be about Jesus, not the God of the Old Testament, but even when Jesus was around, he was sometimes not super-clear, but you could tell if you were on his good side or not at least.  That kind of mystic ineffable quality makes good supporting characters, but it  seems like more the territory of the holy ghost than the father or son.  Also, Jesus, while alive, was decidedly not interested in leading great epic battles.  So Aslan is backing armies and running the world like in the Old Testament, but refusing to give straight answers like the holy ghost.  If Aslan were running the battle with the Amalekites, Moses would have found his staff no longer worked until he walked out into the desert by himself to find God and listened to a monologue about faith first.

            Moses’s father in law, Jethro, comes out and visits him.  He was a Midianite priest, but now he says that the power of the Lord is undeniable and worships the God of the Israelites in stead.  Destroying the Egyptian Army and wiping the Amalikites from the face of the Earth makes for pretty powerful evangelism I guess.  After that conversation, he gives Moses some advice on how to properly lead people.  Moses had been making judgments and mediating for all of the Israelites and it was spreading him pretty thin.  Jethro told him to split the people up into administrative groups to handle their own disputes.  Moses is now the Israelite Supreme Court.  Only the most difficult of problems reach him.

Day 21 Exodus 14-16

God told Moses to go camp in this place by the Red Sea in stead of going aroind the north end of it into Canaan. When Pharaoh’s army shows up to kill them all, they believe the Israelites are lost and wandering the desert. The Israelites believe that too and promptly freak out and start blaming Moses for their eminent deaths at the hands of the Egyptians, because even being oppressed by slavery is better than getting stabbed by charioteers.

God commands Moses to hold his staff over the water and a dry path will appear. It takes all night for an east wind to dry a path through the sea bed, but the pillar of smoke they’d been following moves around to the back of the camp in between the Israelites and the Egyptian army. It lights the Isrealite camp as a pillar of fire, but casts darkness over the Egyptians so they can’t find anything. The rest plays out just like the cartoons and Sunday school stories. The Israelites walk through, then the waters close in and kill the Egyptians to a man.

I feel like there’s this pattern in how God gets people to worship Him. With Adam and Eve He just talked to them and hung out like another corporeal creature. It didn’t seem like they had to do much of anything, but God let them know that He had made everything and was in charge of everything and expected them to pass that along to all their descendants. With Noah, God again spoke directly with Noah but now He wasn’t around all the time, so He worked miracles all around Noah and his family so they would know He was in charge of things. When He started humanity over again with Noah and his family, it’s again assumed that the knowledge of God will continue on through all their descendants. Both times though, the message seems to run out of steam pretty quickly and people have all but forgotten about God within a few generations.

For Abraham then, God connects up with the family in the long term, working directly with Abraham’s line for generations, subtly helping them out and making things work out for them. This works better and, when Moses comes, the descendants of Abraham still hold onto some idea of what the Lord is about, but it sounds like it’s kind of a theoretical knowledge. No one really does anything about it. So now there’s a new chapter, no more subtly telling kings to be nice to the Jews or multiplying flocks to help out Abraham’s line, and no more working with one man and expecting him to pass the knowledge of God along to his family. God actually goes out of His way to prevent Pharaoh from giving in to Moses’s demands to make a big show for everyone to see. In Exodus 14:17-18 God says He hardened the hearts of the Egyptians so they’ll chase after Moses and then He will have the glory for killing Pharaoh’s army. It was a huge, flashy miracle and everyone saw it.

This change of tactics seems to sound again like God changing his mind about things. It reminds me though of the Tralfamadorians in Kurt Vonugut’s book Slaughterhouse 5, and a few other books of his too. The Tralfamadorians see time differently from us. They see all time at once, but they still exist in only one instant at a time. There’s a major revelation for the protagonist of the novel when they tell him about some mistakes they are going to make in the future. Billy Pilgrim can’t understand how they could know something’s a mistake and still go through with it, and they try to explain how it works, but Billy just can’t process it.

I’m not saying that I think God is using different methods because He’s making mistakes, but only that we don’t really know what omniscience entails. We assume that perfect foresight implies unchangingness, but that’s really naive since we can’t even get our heads around what perfect foresight even looks like. I can’t remember if I’ve seen anything so far about God claiming to be unchanging Himself, but it seems to come up a lot in church doctrine. I’ll have to keep an eye out for that claim specifically in the future.

In the end, God’s plan whips the Israelites into shape though. The grand display in front of the entire nation brings everyone into line and no one ever questions God for generations to come.

Just kidding. They actually start complaining and cursing Moses again in the very next chapter when they travel through the Sin Desert and there’s no good source of food or water there.

“We told you you should have left us alone” They gripe at Moses. “We may have been slaves, but at least we were fed in Egypt.”

So Moses explains (again) that God is running this show and that complaining to Moses and Aaron was complaining against God. God heard them though and sent a bunch of Quail to eat every night and every morning He frosted the ground with manna, which were like little bread crumbs that tasted like honey cakes. I think God was still working on making a point about how dependant the Israelites were on Him though because they weren’t allowed to store any extra food ever, but had to wait for God to send each serving.

Day 20 Exodus 11-13

There was only one plague left, the plague of the firstborn, where God declared He would kill every firstborn son, from the sons of the slaves to the prince of Egypt himself. God told Moses that this was the one that was going to change Pharaoh’s mind and they would finally be allowed to leave Egypt.

The bulk of this section of the book is about how the Israelites are supposed to prepare themselves. The last plagues all avoided the Israelites in Goshen automatically. The darkness didn’t touch them and the frogs and gnats and flies all just stayed away, but now Moses was given a very complex set of rules for avoiding the plague. They had to slaughter a lamb and smear a little of the blood on their doorway so God would know Israelites were there and not go in and kill anyone in that house. That’s the Sunday school version, but they also had to cook it a certain way and eat it with bread with no yeast in it, and then they had to be sure to eat it all, if there were any leftovers at all they had to burn them. Also, everyone was supposed to go ask their neighbors for pieces of silver and gold and God made all their Egyptian neighbors feel generous that day, or else made them feel terrified of the Israelites who kept cursing them all the time. Either way, they gave away lots of gold.

The Israelites also had to make a commitment to commemorate this plague every year with the Passover feast and nearly a month of spiritual services and prayer and special meals. A major theme is eating bread with no yeast in it.

The final obligation is that Israel’s first-born sons are now God’s, both man and animal. Not just now, but forever it sounds like. Everyone has to take their first born son and explain how the Passover works and why they do it and all about God. We’ve finally got our first dogma. Until now everyone’s relationship with God was completely personal. God told them to do stuff and did stuff for them and usually only seemed to really be with one person at a time. Now there’s a codified system of worship though, that everyone is supposed to do.

The fact that all the firstborn sons of the Israelites are now set aside for God is interesting given the plague that’s going on around them at the time. It’s like God is saying that the miracle happening here isn’t that He’s killing all these Egyptians, but that he’s saving all the Israelites from it. All those sons would be dead if it wasn’t for God interceding on their behalf so now they’re His, even though He’s the one who is running the plague anyway. That’s the kind of distinction you get to make though when you make the rules I guess.

Actually, now that I think about it it’s a lot like the old Pharaoh’s arrangement once everyone in the nation was his slave to have them return to their lands and farm them for him. It seems benevolent but it wouldn’t be possible unless Pharaoh had annexed all their grain to sell back to them to begin with, but then they’d all have starved to death if he hadn’t. Similarly, God not killing al those first-born Israelites seems benevolent except He’s the one killing all the other first-borns anyway, but if He didn’t do this, then the Israelites would be doomed to stay imprisoned in Egypt.

Maybe that’s kind of a thin comparison.

Day 19 Exodus 7-10

Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh and turn Aaron’s staff into a snake again, but the Egyptians can do that trick too so they’re not very impressed. God tells Moses what to say and do and we finally start to see some real Charlton Heston plagues. First, Moses turns the water of the Nile into blood and then fills the land with frogs, which I guess isn’t really harmful to anything, but just gross.

Pharaoh is suitably impressed and agrees to let the Israelites go out into the desert to worship God. It is mentioned repeatedly that God is going to harden Pharaoh’s heart and make him refuse Moses’s demands, so now we’re now starting to see God being in charge of every part of the universe. In stead of merely influencing livestock and occasionally coming to Earth to talk to someone or destroy a city, God is reaching right into Pharaoh’s head and pulling his strings on camera. It seems clear that God could have just made Pharaoh wake up one day and think “I should let the Israelites go.” But, not only does God make Moses do the leg work, He doesn’t even have Moses tell Pharaoh the truth about what’s happening. Moses is still peddling this story about going out to worship in the desert for a couple days and then coming back.

It seems to me like God really wanted to make a point of disrespecting Pharaoh and Egypt. I wonder if this ire is related to the policy in Ancient Egypt of treating the Pharaoh like a God on Earth. “Fine, you say you’re a God like Me? Let’s see you come roll with the big dogs when you can’t get any water and you’ve got frogs in your pockets, bitch.”

Anyway, Pharaoh agrees to let the Jews go so Moses un-plagues the land, but then Pharaoh has his heart hardened again and tells them he changed his mind. They have to stay.

Two more plagues come, gnats and then flies. Pharaoh agrees to let them go again and again revokes their permission to leave once the plagues are gone.

Now things get real. The next plague kills all the livestock, then everyone is stricken with boils so bad they can’t even stand up straight to talk to Moses in the palace (some God, all covered in gross sores) then a nasty hail storm sweeps through and kills all the flax and barley. People are starving and in pain and Pharaoh has no choice but to let the Israelites go.

But, then God hardens his heart and, well, you see where this is goin

Day 18 Exodus 4-6

Moses keeps arguing that no one will believe him so God makes his walking stick magic, so he can show it to people. Moses argues further that he’s not good at speaking and arguing so God tells him that He will tell him what to say and also gives him leprosy for just a couple seconds to prove he’s serious. Moses complains enough that God gets irritated with him and tells him to get his brother Aaron to help.

Moses tells his father in law he has to go back to Egypt and, by the way , almost gets himself killed by God on the way. At some place he’s staying for the night, God comes to kill him, or possibly his son, my footnote says it could be either one. Moses’s wife jumps into action by immediately circumcising her son and touching Moses with the knife, which staves off God. The Bible Handbook I’m looking at says this story has something to do with Moses not conforming to the law of circumcision, which is a huge deal to God. Moses couldn’t be an important Hebrew hero without circumcising his son.

Anyway, everyone gets to Egypt safely without being killed by God and Aaron meets them out in the desert. He was super-excited about God thinking of them. Once they both went to talk to Pharaoh though, not only did he not agree to let the Israelites go out into the desert for the imaginary three day festival, but he increased their workload significantly, making them gather their own straw for the bricks they were making in stead of supplying it like he always had before. Once that happens, the Israelites immediately turn on Moses, blaming him for pissing of Pharaoh and making their lives harder. Moses passes this along to God and asks Him why He would make so much trouble for them and God talks up how He’s going to punish Pharaoh and get all the Israelites out of Egypt with his mighty hand. Moses relays this stirring speech to the rest of the Israelites, but no one listens to him.

Day 17 Genesis, no wait Exodus 1-3

One book down, 65 more to go.

Many years after the generation of Jacob’s twelve sons, the Israelite people are multiplying like rabbits in Egypt. Oh, they’re Israelites now because they are all descended from Israel, God’s new name for Jacob. Everyone still knows which of Jacob’s sons they’re descended from though so the tribes are distinctly formed.

A new pharaoh has come to power, somehow without knowing anything about Joseph or what he did. All he knows is that there’s a big group of people out towards the border who refuse to integrate into Egyptian society and that poses a major threat to national security. Being a reasonable, rational ruler, his first instinct was to conquer all of the Israelites and hold them in brutal slavery to thin them out some. This pharaoh didn’t take into account though, when he took away all the Israelites’’ possessions and freedoms that there still was and always would be one free, universal form of entertainment through all the world through all of history. The Israelites seemed to be multiplying even faster now.

In a little bit of a panic, Pharaoh ordered some Hebrew midwives to start killing baby boys, and only allowing Israelite girls to live, which, by the way, is a terrible way to thin out a population anyway. They summarily ignored that order and fed Pharaoh a line about how Israelite women have babies too fast and they can’t get to them in time. Pharaoh then ordered all the people of Egypt to just start throwing baby Israelite boys into the Nile. Remember now, these are the measures Pharaoh is taking to prevent the Israelites from rising up against him. Brilliant.

A Levite woman tricks an Egyptian princess into adopting her son Moses, so he avoids being thrown in the river and gets to live in the palace once he’s old enough to leave his mother. His time there is cut short though when he ventures out one day and sees a slave-driver beating an Israelite. Moses looks around and doesn’t see anyone so he murders the slave-driver and buries him in the sand. He thinks he was pretty sneaky, but he talks to some Israelite men later and realizes that he’s an idiot and everyone knows about what he did. He freaks out and runs away, which turns out to be pretty prescient because Pharaoh wants to arrest him and then kill him soon after.

Moses escapes to Midian, which most people seem to agree is right around the western-most point of Saudi Arabia. There, he helped out some sisters trying to water their sheep at a well and was taken in by their father, a priest of Midian. He married one of the girls and integrated himself into the nomadic little Midianite camp, but one day he came across a bush that was on fire, but not consumed by the flames. When he got close to it God spoke to him and identified himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It sounds like God had kind of faded away for the last few decades because Moses says that no one will believe he spoke to Him and mentions that everyone worships many gods now. God tells him not to worry so much and to go back to Egypt and tell the Pharaoh that He had commanded that all the Israelites needed to go out into the desert for three days to offer sacrifices and praise to God. This was going to be a lie that Moses was to deliver. Then he was supposed to round up all the Israelites and run away. Even though it seemed like kind of a flimsy plan at a glance, to promise Pharoah that they’d be right back and then make a break for it once he wasn’t looking, God assured Moses that He would back him up and everything would work out.