130 2 Chronicles 18-20

  Jehosephat allied with Ahab, the king of Israel, through marriage, and started repairing the fracture between the two nations.  Ahab asked to Jehosephat to go to war with him against Ramoth Gilead, some random middle-eastern parcel of desert.  Befoire Jehosephat would agree to such a war though, he asked about what the Lord thought.  Ahab brought all his prophets out and they all said that whatever Ahab wanted to do would be awesome, but Jehosephat pressed him and asked if he had any prophets of the Lord.  Ahab admitted that there was a prophet of the lord in Israel named Micah, but he complained that it was a drag to listen to Micah because all he did was say negative things all the time.  Jehosephat insisted that they hear what Micah had to say though so Ahab dutifully summoned him.

  Micah heard that all the cool prophets were telling Ahab that he would crush Ramoth Gilead and be awesome forever, so he tried to tell the two kings the same thing they had been hearing so far.  Micah was a bad liar though and Ahab ordered him to tell them what the Lord had actually revealed to him.

  Micah told the kings that things would not go well at all in battle, so Ahab had him put in prison and ordered that he have nothing  but bread and water until his own safe return from the front.  So really there's no way for Micah to win here.  The warning must have had some effect though because Ahab wore a disguise to the battle so no one would know who he was.

  When they actually went out to fight Ramoth Gilead, the enemy had orders to ignore all of the Judean and Israelite soldiers and to concentrate only on the king.  Since Jehosephat was dressed as a king and Ahab was disguised as a random charioteer, this did not bode well for Jehosephat.  Enemy soldiers began pursueing him immediately.  He prayed to God though and the Lord protected him.  The enemy soldiers realized that he was not the king of Israel and stopped following him.  Meanwhile, Ahab was struck by a random spear and died by nightfall.

  Jehosephat wasn't completely off the hook though.  He had gone to war on the side of Ahab even though he knew that a prophet of the lord had spoken out against it.  As soon as he got back home, his own prophets of the Lord gave him an earfull.  But, he did tear down all the Ashera poles so he bought himself a little bit of leeway I guess.

  Some people from the east came in later and tried to invade Judah, but Jehosephat went before the Lord and prayed about it.  He asked God if He would allow someone to come in and take the land that God had given to the Isaraelites back in the day, especially since the only reason they were neighbors with these people from the East anyway was because God had forbidden Aaron and the original Israelite armies from wiping these guys out.  Now God is surprisingly susceptible to cogent arguments in the Old Testiment so He agrees that it's not fair for foreigners to come in and swipe the land He gave to them, so if the Judean army goes out and stands their ground in an act of faith, they won't even have to fight.  They do, so they don't.  Judah wins without firing a shot when the other army tears itself apart in the night.  Judah even gets the plunder.

  Jehosephat rules for 35 years which it a huge amount of time compared to most other kings.  The impression I get from him is very devout, but a little naive.  Aside from that misguided alliance with Ahab, he also tries to reconcile with Israel a second time by allying with Ahzakiah, another king of Israel, to build some ships for trading.  God still doesn't like Israel though so all his ships sink.

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 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 5 Genesis 16-18

Now by this time, even though God keeps promising Abraham and Sarah lots of children, they still haven’t had any and they’re getting worried. Sarah says that, since she can’t seem to have any kids, Abraham should sleep with her servant girl to start a family and he very graciously accepts that directive.

He sleeps with Hagar and she does become pregnant, but then I guess she gets all uppity around Sarah because she’s having a kid and Sarah isn’t. Sarah comes to Abraham blaming him for Hagar’s behavior and Abraham tells her basically, “Hey, she’s your servant, you need to deal with this if you have a problem.” So Sarah starts beating Hagar and generally being a jerk to her until she runs away.

The angel of the Lord comes to her while she’s out and tells her to go back and that she’s having a son and she needs to name him Ishmael, which means God hears, because God heard her plight.

Ishmael gets kind of a left-handed blessing from God, who says that he’ll be the father of many tribes, but he’ll be a wild-donkey, always “living to the east of his brothers.” I guess each of those was an idiom at the time that meant he’d always be fighting his neighbors.

I heard that the history of Islam runs through Ishmael, that Muslims believe that they are descended from the line of Ishmael instead of Isaac. Abraham is revered in Islam just like in Judaism and Christianity, but they say that the true line progresses through Abraham’s first son.

After all this happens God comes to Abraham again and tells him (again) that he’ll have lots of kids. This time Abraham sounds more skeptical, laughing and saying he and Sarah are too old to have kids. Then he asks instead for a blessing on Ishmael, assuming he will be his only son. God does bless Ishmael, but insists that he and Sarah will also have a son. The catch is that everyone in the household has to cut off the tip of their dicks. Every man in the family as well as all the slaves and anyone bought into the family. When new people are born or bought, they have to be circumcised within eight days.

The next time the Lord visited Abraham there were three visitors. It’s a little vague about the exact mechanics, but the text seems to imply that one of the visitors was the angel of the lord and the other two were the two angels who were (spoiler alert) about to go destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

God, as a change of pace, promises Abraham that he’ll have lots of descendants. Sarah overheard this time though and laughed, which God confronted them about and Sarah denied. In chapter 15 God had credited it to Abraham as righteousness that he believed Him when God told him he’d have many descendants, so I assume Sarah’s laughter irked Him. Abraham just had pretty much the same reaction in the last chapter though so maybe it’s just that God’s patience is starting to wear thin with them.

God says he’s going to scout out Sodom and Gomorrah because he’s been hearing rumors about how awful it is there. Abraham argues with him about it though and convinces him that if there are fifty good men in the city then God shouldn’t destroy it for their sake. Then he haggles all the way down to ten people, so God agrees that he won’t destroy the city if there are ten good people in it.

The tough part of this section is that obviously God knows already exactly how many good men are in Sodom and Gomorrah, and he already knows whether he’s going to destroy them or not. I think the official party line here is that He’s not really arguing with Abraham in good faith, and that he already knows where this conversation is going and that’s what he intended the entire time. C.S. Lewis wrote some about how prayer is more for our own benefit than for God’s. That seems a reasonable interpretation to me. I don’t know why it was necessary to have that conversation at all, but I’m sure it accomplished something.