Numbers 20-21: God kills MORE Israelites, then he finally kills someone else

Miriam (sister of Moses and Aaron) is dead. Nobody cares. Surprise.

Once again, the Israelites have no water and are bitching about it. Moses does the old trick of hitting a rock with a staff (this time the magic Levite staff from chapter 17) and makes water come out of it. But apparently this time he fucks it up somehow, because God comes along and says that Moses and Aaron are going to die before they get to the promised land. Clearly, that is totally warranted.

Then the Israelites try to negotiate passage through the land of Edom (as I recall, Edom was Jacob's brother, aka Esau) but they are denied. They don't stop badgering the King of Edom about it until he sends his army out to threaten them.

Then God makes Aaron climb a mountain just to die naked on top of it, as (clearly) fair and just punishment for Moses somehow fucking up the whole 'making water come out of a rock' thing. He's naked because he has to hike up there with his son, and once up there, he has to give his priestly clothes to his son so he can be the next priest. Like they couldn't have done that before. Fantastic.

I like how everything Moses and Aaron do seems to take place on top of a mountain, or shut away inside of a tent...away from the prying eyes of the Israelites, in other words. These 2 sound like a couple of con artists to me. Aaron probably just took his son up there to tell him about the scam and then vanished into comfortable retirement or something.

The King of Arad hears that the Israelites are coming, so he sends out an army to capture some of them. Then the Israelites "completely destroyed them and their towns," with God's eager help of course. Fantastic.

While they are going around Edom, they start bitching once more about the lack of water and how sick they are of manna. So, obviously, God sends a bunch of poisonous snakes to bite them all. "And many Israelites died." Again. God is always killing his chosen people. And, as usual, the people repent and ask Moses to pray to God for them. He does, and God tells him to make a bronze snake, so all the people who were bitten and haven't died yet could look at it and be cured. Oh what a miracle, God saves a few people from the snakebites that he himself caused! God didn't kill quite as many of his own chosen people as he was going to! What. The. Fuck.

Seriously, I am so sick of this lame story. Israelites complain, God kills a bunch of Israelites, Israelites repent, God somehow manages to stop short of killing everybody, and for some stupid reason everybody is grateful. Ugh. How many times is this going to happen? I don't know who I hate more, God or the Israelites.

They hike on through the wilderness of 5 different places for who knows how long, until they come to a place called Beer (seriously). Here, God magnanimously decides he's going to give the Israelites water. Hey, good job God! You finally figured out the #1 reason the Israelites complain about you: you never give them water, even though you clearly have the power to. Then everyone sings a silly little song about a well. It never says whether they actually got their water, or if they were just promised it and then sang about it...I'll just assume they did get it.

Then they walk through 4 more places. After that, they ask the King of the Amorites for passage through his land. I don't get whey they walked through 9 places without talking to anybody, and then all of the sudden they do. Actually, I'm not even sure where they are going, it doesn't say. Are they just wandering around the holy land looking for a fight? It sure seems that way.

Anyway, he says no, and sends his army out to attack. The Israelites fight back, and apparently win, because they take over all the Amorite cities and "settled" there. They also left no survivors. Wonderful.

I guess after all that the Israelites aren't finished with the Amorites, because they also attack the surrounding areas to get the Amorites who managed to get away. Then they go to Bashan, fight their army, win, and again leave no survivors and take over their land. And they do it all with God's help. Hey, God is finally at least helping to kill somebody besides the Israelites.

Let the conquest begin, I guess. I wonder how long this goes on for?

Leviticus 8-10: Tabernacle = fiery death trap

So now we have the ordination of the new priests, Aaron and his 4 sons. Lots of detail of course. Seriously, it seems that all I've read out of this damn book lately is endless repetition about the tabernacle, animal sacrifice, and stupid rules like "don't cook a baby goat in it's mother's milk." Of course, this is the perfect and inerrant word of God, so he must have had a good reason to go into excruciating repetitive detail about inconsequential shit like this, while remaining conspicuously silent on matters like "who was Cain's wife," or helpful science-y things like medicine and the germ theory of disease.

Anyway, the ordination of the priests. Basically they dressed them in the priestly garments, doused the tabernacle and the priests with anointing oil, and sacrificed a bull, 2 rams, and some bread (without yeast, obviously). And they had to stay in the entrance of the tent for 7 days, and if they left they would die!

Flash forward to 8 days later. The ministry of Aaron and his sons begins! Basically they spend their first day sacrificing a shit-ton of animals for everybody. Being a priest sounds like you're effectively a butcher, plus a bunch of stupid ceremony. While all this is going on, the "glory of the LORD" appeared to everybody. (Side note: what the hell is the "glory" of the lord?) And what marvelous things did he do while he was there? "Fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar." God does love him some BBQ, I guess.

Then this happened:

Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them and added incense; and they offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, contrary to his command. So fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD.

I wonder if God found the aroma "pleasing." As usual, I don't get this. For all the plethora of rules we've heard out of God lately, there has been absolutely nothing about fire, authorized or otherwise. And the only thing it had to say about incense was that the recipe was holy and they should only use it for holy reasons; what's holier than burning it in God's presence? Well...I guess that's just what you get for trying to upstage God? I am so over trying to figure this shit out. God randomly and arbitrarily kills people, especially his chosen people. Great.

God kills so many people over such small things... I think my continued existence is the best evidence that this particular god does not exist. If he did, he'd kill me for this blog, among other things.

Of course, I have to wonder... these guys have still got anointing oil all over them, and they are playing with open flame. I wonder if they didn't just burn up cause they were covered in oil, and it turned into a story of God's wrath. Hmm.

Actually, all the priests still have anointing oil on them, and there's anointing oil all over the tent, and they have been doing burnt offerings all day...and the alter is inside the tent. What a bunch of idiots. Of course, God supposedly told them to set it all up that way. Is God really that stupid? Or did God just want to create a fiery death trap for his priests?

Anyway, then Moses says something totally unhelpful to Aaron about how in killing his sons God is furthering his own holiness, or something (I'm finding this whole thing rather confusing). Poor Aaron.

Moses makes the dead guys' cousins drag them outside of the camp, where they apparently just leave them to rot (nothing more is said about it, anyway).

Then Moses tells Aaron and his 2 remaining sons that they are not allowed to mourn, or they would die. Also, they are not allowed to leave the tent (again), or they'll die. Then God comes along and tells them they can't drink alcohol in the tent, or they'll die. What, you thought God might say something more along the lines of "sorry I burned your sons to death?" Lulz.

Also, what's with all the threatening the priests with death? Seemingly, if they priests do anything, they die. That's the impression I'm getting so far, anyway.

Then Moses finds out that part of one of the sacrifices from earlier in the day that was supposed to be eaten was actually burned. He asks Aaron, "What the hell?" And Aaron is like, "Seriously, I've had a terrible day." And Aaron was not burned to death by God for fucking up the sacrifice, for some reason. That is so...inconsistent. I don't get it.

Exodus 32-40: Moses throws a tantrum

So, Moses is up on the mountain talking to God for 40 days, though I don't know why it had to take that long.

Meanwhile, the Israelites are getting restless. They get Aaron to make them the golden calf idol, and they sacrifice to it, and there's all sorts of "revelry."

God tells Moses to "leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” God is so predictable. But Moses convinces him that it's a bad idea. Wait, is it even possible to talk God out of something? Never mind.

So Moses goes down the mountain, back to the Israelites, with the covenant tablets. He sees the idol, and he sees them dancing, and flies into a rage (even though God already told him all about this, so I don't know why he's so surprised). He throws the tablets to the ground, breaking them. Then he ground up the idol to a powder and made everyone drink it. (I don't get this...why would you do that? Is it not good enough to destroy the idol...melt it down or something?)

Moses tells the Levites that God wants them to kill everyone. So they do that...they kill 3000 people. Of course, as far as the bible says, God never actually said that, Moses just made it up. God was going to just let it go! So that's just great.

Then Moses goes back up the mountain to talk to God some more. He asks God to forgive them, and God just says something about how anyone who sins will be "blotted out of his book." Err, what book? And he gives them a plague for good measure.

Then God tells them to go on to Canaan, but he won't be going with them, because they are "a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way." lol. Like God has any business calling anybody "stiff-necked."

Moses asks to see Gods "glory." So God says he's going to walk in front of Moses and say his (God's) name. But, since no one can see God's face and live (when did that happen?), God will be kind enough to cover Moses's face with his hand until he's passes, then Moses gets to see his back. There is a plan to do this, but it never says whether it actually happened.

Then Moses goes back up the mountain to make new tablets. They are supposed to be exactly the same as the ones that are broken. But, here's what God told Moses to write on this set of tablets:

• Do not make a treaty with the people already in Canaan; worship meee goddamnit!!!
  
• Do not make idols
• Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread
• The first offspring of every womb belongs to me (I still don't know what this is about...God's been going on about this since the very beginning of Exodus, but I still don't get the point, or even what that means)
  
• Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest
• Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year
• Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD, the God of Israel.
• Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast
• Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God
• Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk

So I know he said all this stuff before. But there's nothing about not killing, stealing, or any of the other stuff that makes sense on it's own. Nope. There's this, which is apparently the most important part. Seriously. And the bible actually calls these 10 things I've just listed "the 10 commandments." This is totally different than the 10 commandments that everyone knows (which the bible doesn't actually call "the 1o commandments"). That is just crazy.

I gotta say, the idea that the 10 commandments form a good basis of morality, or of US law, or anything else besides batshit-crazy-mumbo-jumbo, is completely ludicrous.

God also promises that he is going to go ahead of them and "drive out" all the people already in Canaan. And you people be damn sure to destroy all their temples and idols!!! For I am a ridiculously jealous and insecure god.

And Moses is up there for 40 days again, without food or water. Wow. That sounds horrible.

Actually, here's a great video summing up all this Mount Sinai stuff.



Lol. "They're the hos, I'm the pimp. And people needs to know who their pimp is." Yep, I could not have summarized Exodus any better than that.

Anyway, When Moses comes down from the mountain this time, he glows in the dark. Actually, he's "radiant" because he was talking to God. So after that, Moses took to wearing a veil, which he only removed to talk to God. I guess he didn't want to freak people out.

So then Moses goes about soliciting donations for the tabernacle, and getting people to build all that stuff. And it goes on for 6 chapters about how they made it, and how much stuff was used, and what the finished product was like. It is all extremely repetitive from before (like it wasn't boring enough to read one time. Seriously, this is a terrible book.)

Then God tells them that they are to set this up on the first day of the month. In all their travels, they set up the tabernacle on the first of the month, and then the "cloud of the lord" would descend on the tent, and they would wait (sometimes for days) for it to lift before they moved on.

I don't get the point of setting up a tent so God can visit, because I thought God wasn't going to be with them in their travels. Oh well.

I also don't get why they are hanging around at Mount Sinai to build all this stuff, when God clearly told them like 8 chapters ago that they have to get a move on to Canaan.

So I'm getting a clearer idea of why it took them 40 years to get to Canaan...not only do they have to haul all this stuff around, but every month they have to hang around for some indeterminate number of days waiting for God to clear off so they can keep going.

Anyway, this is the end of exodus. Pretty boring toward the end. If I had to sum up Exodus in just 2 sentences, it would have to be:

• "They're the hos, I'm the pimp. And people needs to know who their pimp is."
• No fucking yeast!