Thoughts on Leviticus

The most wonderful aspect of Leviticus is that it was easier to read than Exodus. It was mercifully shorter too. That's about all I have for you in the way of positives. Sad.

Leviticus spends a lot of time on rituals and animal sacrifice. We also learned that people are very bad, often unclean and perpetual sinners.

Back in the days of Adam and Eve, humans were vegetarians. During the time of Noah and the flood, we became meat eaters. By Leviticus, God is blood thirsty and pretty much loves dead animals. Hundreds if not thousands of animals are slaughtered in Leviticus. What the hell would God need with a dead animal anyway?

Moses is thought to be the author of this book. What a nice coincidence that the priests get to eat the meat of a burnt offering. The priests of course are Moses' kin.

This book is stupid. The end.

Leviticus 24-27

As you might expect, the Lord spake unto Moses some more in Leviticus 24. Aaron is to tend to the lamps and put out the bread in the tabernacle.

An "Israelitish woman's son" curses the Lord. Big mistake. He is brought before Moses and stoned to death. This chapter repeats a familiar phrase - eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Somehow that explains getting murdered for taking the Lord's name in vain. By this measure, I'd be dead about 20 million times over by now.

Big shock, but in Leviticus 25, the Lord spake unto Moses some more. Fields are to be planted for six years and left fallow during the seventh year. What is it with the number seven? Every 50 years, there will be a jubilee during which slaves will be released. So for all you slaves out there, hold out hope. It's just 50 short years to freedom. It's all part of God's plan, see?

Leviticus 26 explains that all will be well if you keep God's laws. You will be fruitful and live in a peaceful land. If you do not obey God's commandments, you will be punished seven times over. Your farming will go to shit. Wild beasts will rob you of your children and destroy your livestock. Pestilence will visit you, and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. The land will become desolate, and your family will be scattered around the land. Ye shall eat the flesh of your children, and God's soul will abhor you. But he's a just God who loves you.

Leviticus 27 explains the tithing process. Hey, God needs dough like everybody else. You can also tithe land and livestock - clean beasts only, please.

Leviticus 22-23

Leviticus 22 explains the eating of an offering. Of course only priests get to partake, and only the best, unblemished animals are to be sacrificed. Quite a racket the sons of Aaron have going.

If a priest is unclean - say, leprosy or a case of the clap - he cannot eat the meat of an offering. You can also become unclean by touching an unclean thing, a dead thing or a creeping thing. To become clean, wash yourself and wait until evening.

Strangers aren't allowed to eat the meat of an offering, but slaves purchased by priests can. What a nice little perk for them. If a priest's daughter marries a foreigner, she is out of the meat offering diners club. But if the ole gal becomes widowed or divorced, doesn't have kids, and comes crawling home to daddy, she's back in again.

There's also rules on how long to keep a bull, sheep or goat before slaughtering it and some other related nonsense, but who cares? God ends this chapter by reminding us not to take his name in vain. He's very uptight about this.

Chapter 23 outlines the feast days and how to handle the sacrificial animal, bread and whatnot. There's wave offerings and drink offerings and so on and so forth. A memorial blowing of the trumpets. A day of atonement. Waving your sheaf before the Lord. Rejoicing by the willows of the brook. And ye shall dwell in booths (tents) seven days.

Leviticus 19-21

God spake unto Moses some more in Leviticus 19, continuing with his instruction on how to be holy. Molten images and taking God's name in vain are still out of the question, but offerings of various dead animals continue to please the Lord greatly. Don't steal, don't deal falsely with others, don't curse the deaf, and don't put a stumbling block in front of a blind person. It's also very important that you refrain from rounding the corners of your head or your beard. If you force yourself on your slave and she's engaged, she will be scourged. Great news though - she won't be put to death because she was not free to decide on the sex connection. So if she's raped, she won't be murdered? Thanks, God! Also, stand up as a gesture of respect to old people, don't mix cattle breeds, and don't get any tattoos.

Favorite verse in Leviticus 19: "Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness." Don't sell your daughter into prostitution, but not because you're concerned for her welfare. Be more concerned with the state of the land, like any good parent would.

The Lord continues to drone on to Moses in Leviticus 20, but he's getting more agitated about all his rules and regulations. God brings up Molech again. Instead of just saying not to worship this counterfeit god, he says you'll be stoned to death if you do. You don't have to read very much of the bible to see how various religions and sects justify murdering people of differing views.

Those who commit adultery or have homosexual sex will be executed. For I am the LORD your God. The next time some numskull says homosexuality is immoral, tell them this part of the bible also says you'll be executed if you curse your parents. If a man sleeps with a gal on the rag (if he uncovers her fountain of blood), they will be cut off from the chosen people forever. How did they police this one?  If a man fucks an animal, he will be put to death. And so will the animal. Jesus.

Leviticus 21 focuses more on the sons of Aaron, the priests. They are not to shave their heads, cut their beards or get tattoos. High priests are to keep their heads covered and their clothing in order. They are to marry virgins, not widows, divorcees or harlots. They must not be near dead bodies. This would make it hard to officiate at funerals, no?

The best part of this chapter is the list of who is not eligible for the priesthood. Let's say you're a son of Aaron and are super devoted to the Lord your God. Well, that's not good enough. You're forbidden from becoming a priest if you have a blemish, are blind, lame, have a flat nose or anything superfluous. You are similarly unwelcome if you are brokenfooted, brokenhanded, crook backed, a dwarf, have a blemish in your eye, have scurvy, scabs or are infertile ("broken stones"). You are not holy if you are any of these things. Scram, ugly folk.

Leviticus 18

It turns out that celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is quite time consuming. I have my work cut out for me finishing Leviticus by the end of the month, but I know that through Him all things are possible. Also, I've already read it. I just need to write up my thoughts.

We have reached the chapter on sexual behavior. Because verse 22 gets so much attention, I'm going to spend this entire post on one chapter.

We see "I am the LORD" six times in a 30-verse chapter. It's just randomly tacked onto the ends of various verses. Try that sometime in your everyday speech, and LORD is always capitalized so put a big emphasis on that. It's in the bible; it must be right.

OK, enough banter. And the Lord spake unto Moses:

1. Do not uncover the nakedness of any of your kin. You would think this covers the topic of getting naked with any family members, but no. God spells out the many variations, so listen up.
2. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father and mother. Various bible translations say "have sex connection" instead of uncovering nakedness. So don't take your parents' pants off, and don't fuck them (your parents, not your pants).
3. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's wife, also known as your mother.  
4. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy sister, whether she be born at home or born abroad.
5. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy son's daughter or of thy daughter's daughter.  Sons are OK though.
6. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's wife's daughter. I think we have some overlap here with #4. 
7. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's sister.  
8. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother's sister. OK, so no aunt fucking. Glad that took two shalt nots.
9. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's brother or his wife. Again, why not just leave it at "kin"?
10. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter-in-law. Sons-in-law are fair game though.
11. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife, although your sister's husband is up for grabs.
12. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son's daughter, or her daughter's daughter. This variation is "wickedness." Obviously.
13. Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex [her], to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life [time]. What?
14. Thou shalt not have a sex connection with a woman on the rag. God really hates that.
15. Thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbor's wife, to defile thyself with her. Didn't the all encompassing and perfect Ten Commandments already cover this one?
16. And then we have an oddball one about worshiping other gods: Thou shalt not let any of thy seed (aka children) pass through the fire to Molech (a rival god), neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God. Again with taking God's name in vain. Why is God so insecure about this?
17. I'm directly quoting this verse, since it gets so much attention: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it [is] abomination." You hear that, Adam and Steve? God is clear on this one, pree-verts. It is abomination!
18. Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it [is] confusion. So no screwing of the livestock.

We can all plainly see how relevant and useful this list is. God is very interested in what is going on with your various sex connections, and yet he doesn't say a thing about rape or sex with children. One would think a list of forbidden sexual behaviors would mention that. Works out nice for Catholic priests though.

Leviticus 16-17

Sometimes I think I should explain more about the footnotes and what this bible babble supposedly means. For example, Leviticus 16 is the foundation of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Then I think, if you want to become a biblical scholar, I might not be your best resource. So if you're wondering why I don't say something that's obvious about a given reading, it probably was not obvious to me as I read this POS. And/or I don't care.

And now, I'll continue summarizing and commenting on my reading in any way I see fit.

The children of Israel are to meet once a year for a mass sin offering. There's dead animals and blood sprinkling and the standard slaughter rituals we've grown accustomed to by now. To me the most interesting thing in Leviticus 16 was the introduction of the scapegoat. Did you know that pushing the blame on an innocent party has a biblical origin? In this case, the priest symbolically places the sins of the Hebrews on the head of a goat. So the first scapegoat was literally a goat. Wild.

If you kill an ox, lamb or goat, and it's not for the purposes of an offering, then you'll be cut off from the chosen people forever. If you eat an animal that died of natural causes or was killed by another animal, you are unclean until the evening and need to wash your clothes. Leviticus 17 rehashes the same tired old dead animal rituals: sprinkling the blood round about the altar and so on.

And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. What?

If you eat blood (WTF??) you're also out of the gang, for the life of the flesh is in the blood. Also, eating blood would be disgusting.

Short summary today but this book is so GD repetitive. Gear up for next time - Leviticus 18 has some absolute gold about nakedness. It also reveals there's no Adam and Steve... or does it?

Leviticus 13-15

When the plague of leprosy is in you, visit a priest. That's right. Don't go to the doctor. Hightail it to a priest. He will look at your rising of the flesh, scab or bright spot and determine if you have the plague or just a garden variety boil. The color of the sore is meaningful, as is the color of any hair found in the pus bubbles.

If you are afflicted, you will be quarantined. You will need to wash your clothes or maybe even burn them. You might need to shave off all your hair including your eyebrows and beard. Interesting that our timeless God didn't understand we'd conquer leprosy in due time. Or maybe he did realize it -- he is all knowing, after all -- but decided it was still one of the most important things to cover in his holy book.

The Lord tells Moses and Aaron he will afflict some Canaanites with leprosy. They will provide offerings to Aaron or one of his priests, and their houses will be boarded up with stones and plaster. Those poor folks aren't going to know what hit them. And what an immoral, mean thing to do. What have the Canaanites done wrong? Nothing. They just live in the wrong place.

Now it is time for an offering. Find two birds, cedar wood, scarlet and hyssop. Kill one bird. The priest will take the other items and dip them in the blood of the dead bird. He will sprinkle blood on the leper seven times and set the living bird free. The leper will be pronounced clean. Unless he's still unclean, that is. More shaving and ritual sacrifice will ensue, this time two lambs and a ewe. If the leper is poor, one lamb and two turtledoves or pigeons are acceptable. Blood and oil will be rubbed on the leper's right ear, thumb and big toe. The priest will make an atonement and the leper will be clean. If the priest gets mixed up and rubs the bloody oil on your left ear, thumb and toe, I guess you're screwed.

Leviticus 15 addresses man's uncleanness in his issue. Bible translations call it an issue of the seed, unclean flow or discharge. We have unnatural issues (like gonorrhea) and natural issues (semen). Anything a man has worn, touched or sat on when he has his issue is unclean. If you touch anything the unclean man has touched, you too are unclean (so pretty much the entire world is unclean?). After washing up and waiting the required amount of time, your final step to purification involves... can anyone guess? Prayer? Community service? More jacking off? No, sorry. The answer is animal sacrifice.

If a man's seed of copulation touches his wife, they're both unclean. Figure that one out. You'll be shocked to learn that menstruating women are unclean. Everything a gal on the rag wears, sits on, looks at or thinks about it is unclean too. She needs to be locked up for seven days and then take two turtledoves or pigeons to a priest. He will burn them and make an atonement to the Lord for her uncleanness. God created this whole period business, and yet he has a problem with it. He's pretty much an ignorant dick during today's reading. So tell me, if one of the priests gets leprosy, does he dab himself with blood and oil? And if God jacks off, does he offer an animal sacrifice to himself?

Leviticus 9-12

After Moses and the gang's seven days in the tabernacle are up, guess what the first item on the agenda is? That's right, animal sacrifice - a calf and baby goat for a sin offering; a ram, calf and lamb for a burnt offering; a bull and ram for a peace offering; and a meat offering mingled with oil. And Moses said, this is the thing which the Lord commanded that ye should do: and the glory of the Lord shall appear unto you. Thankfully there is a never ending supply of animals to slaughter, or I don't know what we'd do.

Aaron and sons carry out the familiar rituals - mutilating the dead animals, sprinkling blood round about, washing the inwards, smearing blood on the altar, waving the breast and right shoulder in the air, and so on. This pleases the Lord very much, for "the glory of the Lord" appeared before the people. I'm not sure if he's in person form or if it's one of his shape shifter incarnations. A fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat. When the people saw, they shouted and fell on their faces. My goodness that is a hilarious visual.

Just as everything is moving along swimmingly, tragedy befalls us. Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu mix up some incense and fire at the altar. Standard stuff, but the only problem is God has not commanded them to do so. Penalty: death. You pull a stunt like that and you've got it coming. God blasts them both with flames and murders them. Moses instructs the remaining kin to carry the toasty departed out of the camp and explains how to avoid the same fate.

The Lord spake unto Aaron, instructing him and his sons not to drink wine or strong drink in the tabernacle. Penalty: death. God also clarifies his expectations on sin offerings, wave offerings, peace offerings and heave offerings.

I bet you have many questions about what is clean and unclean and what you can eateth. Some guidelines:

• Livestock: If it has parted hooves, is cloven footed and cheweth the cud, it is clean and you may eat of it. Swine, camels, coneys and hares are out. Do not eat them or touch their carcasses.
• Fish: If it has fins and scales, it is clean and you may eat of it. Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters is an abomination. I guess that's why we don't eat dolphins. Sidenote: "abomination" is used four times here, so God is serious about this one. If I were you, I wouldn't eat any shrimp.
• Fowls: It is an abomination to eat the eagle (regular and gier), ossifrage, osprey, vulture, raven, owl (little, regular and great), hawk (regular and night), cuckow, cormorant, swan, pelican, stork, heron, lapwing and bat. 
• Flying creeping things: You may eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth. Great news: we can eat beetles, grasshoppers and locusts. The other flying creeping things that have four feet are an abomination and you are not to even touch their carcasses (should this happen, you are unclean until nightfall and need to wash your clothes).
• Creeping things that creep upon the earth: Do not touch or eat the weasel, mouse, tortoise, ferret, chameleon, lizard, snail or mole. Where these creatures die is unclean. If one croaks in an earthen vessel, break it.

A woman who delivers a man child is unclean for seven days and shall continue in the blood of her purifying for 33 days. If she has a maid child, she is unclean for 14 days and needs 66 days for purification. She shall touch no hallowed thing or visit the sanctuary during her unclean time. The final step in the purification process is, you guessed it, an animal sacrifice. A lamb and a pigeon or turtledove are preferable, but two turtles will be accepted if that's all you can find.

Next up: leprosy. A plague on the skin of thy flesh.

Leviticus 8

The Lord spake unto Moses, instructing him to gather Aaron and sons along with special clothes, oil, a bull, two rams and some unleavened bread. It's going to be a wild night, boys. They scamper to the tabernacle, wash and dress one another, then anoint each other with oil. And he girded him with the girdle, and clothed him with the robe, and put the ephod upon him, and he girded him with the curious girdle of the ephod, and bound it unto him therewith. Hey, it gets lonely in the desert. I'm not here to judge. He put the breastplate upon him and the mitre upon thy head. And he oiled him with the curious oil of his head. And he rubbed his ephod upon him. Gird! Gird! Gird! Again! Again! Again!

So everyone smokes a cigarette, and it's time for round 2. Moses anoints the tabernacle, sprinkling oil thereof upon the altar seven times to sanctify it. He sprinkles oil on Aaron, does more girding with girdles and puts bonnets on everyone. Then for the big finish, they murder the bull and smear its blood on the altar.

Now it's time to mutilate the dead bull. First they burn the fat, caul and kidneys on the altar. Next they take the skin, flesh and poo poo and burn it outside. With that out of the way, they murder ram #1. They sprinkle some blood round about the altar, then chop the ram into pieces and burn it. It's a sweet savour unto the Lord. And what could be sweeter really?

They set their sites on the remaining ram who has to be shitting itself by now, don't you think? It doesn't suffer long. They kill it of course, and Moses smears its blood on the tip of Aaron's right ear, right thumb and right big toe. He likes this so much he repeats the process with each of Aaron's sons.

Moses takes the ram's fat, rump, all the fat that was upon the inwards, the caul above the liver, the two kidneys and their fat, and the right shoulder. He grabs one unleavened cake, a cake of oiled bread and one wafer, and sets them on top of the fat and right shoulder. Moses and company wave these pieces and parts in the air as a wave offering. They burn everything as a burnt offering, a sweet savour unto the Lord. Moses waves the burned breast in the air, then sprinkles anointing oil and leftover ram's blood all over his brother and nephews. They boil the remaining ram flesh, eat it with some bread (unleavened, of course), and burn the leftovers.

Moses and the gang are to stay in the tabernacle and keep watch for seven days. The Lord hath commanded them to do this, so they die not.

Leviticus 5-7

Forgiveness of sins remains a gory business in Leviticus 5-7. You have your burnt offering, peace offering, meat offering, sin offering, wave offering, heave offering and trespass offering. It's a bad time to be an unblemished ram in Sinai. In some circumstances, if you can't kill a lamb, then two turtledoves or pigeons are acceptable. God is also agreeable to offerings of silver. Hey, he's got bills to pay just like everyone else.

When priests burn an offering, they wear special linen breeches. They change clothes when they carry the ashes to a clean place. Cooking methods are advancing because meat offerings are now breaded with flour and fried. The bible also reveals that Aaron and sons will eateth the "remainder" of the offering, I guess meaning whatever God doesn't chow down on first. Don't forget the unleavened cakes and wafers. Those are delicious dipped in oil.

Numerous rules explain how to cook the meat, sprinkle the blood, clean the vessel, handle the ashes and so on. This probably becomes quite routine after slaughtering your umpteenth animal. For best results, the priests should eat an offering the day it is burned. Leftovers have a specific shelf life. If the flesh of the sacrifice be eaten on the third day, it shall not be accepted, neither shall it be imputed unto him that offereth it: it shall be an abomination, and the soul that eateth of it shall bear his iniquity.

The fat of a sacrified ox, sheep or goat is particularly troublesome. If you eat this unclean substance, you will be cut off from the chosen people forever. The same rule applies if the beast dies of natural causes or is ripped apart by other animals. For peace offerings, the priest will burn the fat, then eat the baked breast. Aaron gets first dibs on the right shoulder.

Leviticus 2-4

Meal Offerings
It is time for a meal offering unto the Lord. God sure does work up an appetite smiting the wicked. Step one is to give Aaron and sons some flour, oil and frankincense to be burned at the altar. Then hand over your unleavened cakes. Unleavened wafers are also acceptable. God is flexible on this one as long as it's unleavened. For ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering made by fire. And the priest shall burn the beaten corn.

Apparently Aaron, I mean God, doesn't like bland meat. With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt. Also, bring fruit. Make it the good stuff and don't burn it. Aaron and his crew are getting pretty fat by now I would imagine. Pretty good gig they have going, instructing everyone what God wants and doesn't want.

Peace Offerings

• If your peace offering is a bull: Kill an unblemished male or female. Sprinkle its blood upon the altar round about. I think you get rid of the kidneys, liver, fat and caul, then burn the rest for a sweet savour unto the Lord. King James is kind of sloppy in his use of the word "it" which makes the rules difficult to follow. You might want to reference this chapter before you slay your next bull.
• If your peace offering is a lamb: Kill an unblemished male or female. The fat and the whole rump, it shall ye take off hard by the backbone. Again with the kidneys and caul and burning whatnots at the altar. What could be more peaceful than a dismembered lamb.
• If your peace offering is a goat: Kill and gut it appropriately. Burn it for a sweet savour unto the Lord. All the fat is the Lord's. He likes to put it in a coffee can and use it the next time he makes green beans.

Sin Offerings
If the children of Israel sin by breaking any of God's commandments, take a young unblemished bull to the tabernacle. Kill it before the Lord, and the priest will sprinkle its blood seven times in the sanctuary. Be sure and count because if he messes up and only sprinkles six times, your sins are totally not forgiven. Pour the blood at the base of the altar. Offer the fat as a sin offering. Burn the liver, kidneys and caul. Then take the bull's skin, flesh, head, legs, inwards and dung to a clean place and burn with some wood. These same steps are to be followed if the entire congregation sins.

If a ruler sins, take pretty much all the same steps except kill a goat this time. I'm stating the obvious here, but you'll want to skip the seven times blood sprinkling.

If "common people" (non-Hebrews) sin, offer a baby goat. Slay it for a sin offering in the place where they kill the burnt offering. The priest will put some goat blood on his finger and rub it on the horns of the altar. Burn the mutilated baby goat and the sins will be forgiven.

Leviticus 1

We begin Leviticus by bringing offerings unto the Lord. Some guidelines:

• Bulls: Kill an unblemished male, and Aaron's sons will sprinkle the blood around the tabernacle door just the way God likes it. Skin the animal and chop it into pieces. Make sure you set the pieces and parts on the fire in a very specific order, or else. The innards and legs are to be washed then burned.
• Sheep and Goats:  Kill an unblemished male on the north side of the altar, and Aaron's sons will sprinkle the blood around the altar just the way God likes it. Again with the skinning, chopping and specific ordering of the guts on the fire. The innards and legs are to be washed then burned.
• Turtledoves and Pigeons:  Kill it, then rip off its head. Squeeze out its blood on the side of the altar. Pluck the feathers on the east side of the altar. Crack the skeleton, but don't break it completely in half. Toss with olive oil and bake at 425 degrees for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the bird comes out clean.

Apparently God really enjoys roasted meat. This sweet savour unto the Lord will be an atonement for your sins.

Thoughts on Exodus

I cannot believe how bad this book is. If it is possible to suck more than Genesis, Exodus has done it. Well, that's not entirely true. There are a few - a very few - positive takeaways from Exodus. In the Exodus 21-23 post, we learned the following: Do not help a guilty party by being a malicious witness. Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. Do not execute an innocent or honest person. Do not accept bribes. Unfortunately, this small bit of good instruction is outnumbered by an avalanche of total crap, ranging from nonsensical to horrifying.

Leviticus is up next. My Christmas present to you is to get through the entire thing during the month of December. It doesn't seem terribly long and what I've read so far has been pretty entertaining, so I'm hoping it's easier to get through and write about than Exodus was.

I cannot stress enough how agonizing it was to plod through some of these chapters. I plan to never read Exodus again.

Exodus 35-40

Let's finish Exodus, so we never, ever have to read it again, mmkay?

The remainder of this book is so repetitive, boring and horrible that I can hardly believe I survived to tell about it. And with that sentence, you know all you need to know about the rest of Exodus. But because I'm so gosh darned thorough, here are some highlights from Exodus 35-40:

• Now that God has given us his terrific list of commandments, let's take him offerings, including gold, silver, brass, shittim wood, dyed rams' skin, incense, oil and onyx stones. I try to peel away the layers of this mind numbingly detailed ritual to find what's at the heart of it, and guess what? Nothing is there. OK, I didn't try that hard. I was too busy wishing I was done with this stupid book.
• Those with willing hearts, in whom the Lord put wisdom and understanding, will bring offerings for the Lord. What in the hell does God need with this stuff anyway? 
• And then there's the detail about the tabernacle. GAH! I wanted to gouge my eyes out reading this. Linen curtains of cubits and more cubits. Loops of fifty made he. Fifty taches of gold, curtains of goat hair, rams' skin dyed red, and badger skin. Sockets of silver and brass, bars of shittim wood, and purple and scarlet needlework. Gold overlay, gold rings, gold crowns, gold candlesticks, and gold cherubs beaten out of one piece made he them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. And he made his seven lamps, and his snuffers, and his snuffdishes of pure gold.
• Your altar needs pots and basins and fire pans and flesh hooks and shovels for the numerous burnt offerings you're going to have. You'll need to butcher animal after animal to make things right with God. What a gory, bloody place this tabernacle must have been. 
• The brass of the offering is seventy talents, and two thousand and four hundred shekels. I'm stating the obvious here.
• The ministers wear fancy outfits in the tabernacle. Girding thyselves with girdles. Wearing bonnets, rings of gold and wreathen chains fastened in the ouches (where are the ouches again? I forget). And an ephod bedazzled with onyx, jasper, amethyst, agate, carbuncle, sardius, emerald and gold in their enclosings. If all this sounds familiar, it's because we already read this same verbose description earlier in Exodus. Cut to the chase, God. Jesus Christ.
• God tells Moses to gather the congregation in the tabernacle on the first of the month. Light the candles, burn the incense, and slaughter some animals for the Lord your God.
• Aaron and his sons are the ministers. To prepare for the altar ceremony (which I guess you could call church?), they don their fancy boy clothes, dot themselves with oil and wash their feet. Then God will show up at the tabernacle as a cloud by day and fire by night.

Thank God we have finished Exodus. I was beginning to think it would never happen, but I just put my trust in God and it happened. That's the power of prayer.

Exodus 34

A few points of comparison between this chapter and the earlier set of commandments:

• Exodus 20 refers to the list as "my commandments"; only Exodus 34 uses the phrase "the ten commandments." 
• Unlike the verbal list in Exodus 20, Exodus 34 is written in stone. Which seems more official to you?
• The list in Exodus 34 is important enough to recreate after Moses brakest the original set of stone tablets a few chapters back.

Clearly this chapter provides the official, finalized, authorized ten commandments. And now on with our story.

When Moses saw the people of Israel worshiping a golden calf, he brakest the stone tablets written in God's own hand. God instructs Moses to cut two new pieces of stone. Obviously Moses needs to take care of this, because how the heck could God cut two pieces of stone? I guess in his current form, he doesn't have hands. Moses scampers up Mt. Sinai for yet another private 40 days and 40 nights with God. For an old man, he is quite the mountain climber. The two lads recreate the tablets. God twice indicates the wording mirrors the first set.

It is now time to reveal the much anticipated ten commandments. Now remember, this is the inerrant word of God:

1. Thou shalt worship no other gods. This is a match with Exodus 20 except it's lots wordier. Thrice this commandment tells us not to go "a whoring" after other gods. No problem! All gods will remain strictly separate of my numerous whoring activities.
2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. Good news -- this must mean graven images are now ok.
3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep in the month when the ear is on the corn. What month is that? Also, firstborn male sons, cattle, ox and sheep are God's. "But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem [him] not, then shalt thou break his neck." Stating the obvious here.
4. Six days shalt thou work, but on the seventh thou shalt rest. Another match with Exodus 20.
5. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks. I do enjoy a good feast.
6. Three times a year, the male folk are to appear before the Lord. How would this work exactly? Does God show up down here? Do the men visit him in heaven? Do they all go at once? How do they get there?
7. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread. This one's self explanatory.
8. The fat of my feast shall not remain all night until the morning. So I guess take the garbage out.
9. Take the first fruits of your land to the house of the Lord. This commandment is probably easier to observe if you farm. Well, assuming you know how to get to God's house, that is.
10. Thou shalt not boil a baby goat in its mother's milk. A commandment I am guaranteed never to brakest.

If you don't follow these holy guidelines, please know that God "will send punishment on children for the sins of their fathers." He will visit your kin with iniquities for four generations. But he's a just and merciful god.

Exodus 32-33

Moses heads up Mt. Sinai for a private talk with God. The people quickly decide he is gone forever and tell Aaron they want a new god (one that does what it should, one that won't make me feel too bad, one that won't make me feel too good). Aaron's response is to melt everyone's gold earrings and fashion a golden calf. He builds an altar for offering burnt sacrifices to their new god, and the numskulls start worshiping the golden calf.

When the Lord gets wind of this, his wrath waxes very hot against these stiffnecked people (stiffnecked?). Moses reminds God that these are his chosen people he brought out of Egypt to return to the promised land. Come on, God, you can't kill them all now. "And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people." So God gets pissed off, and Moses talks him down. The all powerful, all knowing, almighty God flies into a rage when he sees his people worshiping a piece of gold. These folks didn't get dumber all of a sudden. They've been somewhere between marginal to horrible the entire time. This shouldn't surprise God. In fact, isn't it pretty much his own doing?

Moses heads down the mountain with newly carved tablets containing the ten commandments (the familiar list you read in Exodus 20 is not THE ten commandments). He sees his people dancing around the golden calf, and he is very wroth. He slams the tablets into the ground, breaking them. This is the first document written in God's own hand and he breaks the damn things. Aaron distances himself, claiming the people pushed him into this and all he did was throw gold into a fire and the calf popped out on its own. Moses then notices that everyone is naked, "for Aaron had made them naked unto [their] shame among their enemies." What? Moses reclaims control of the situation and has the sons of Levi kill about 3,000 people. That usually gets your point across.

Moses tells the people he will atone for their sins and get everything squared away with God. He walks up Mt. Sinai yet again. God says these children of Israel are a stiffnecked people, have them remove their ornaments. And of course they do. That's really the best first step when you're trying to make amends with someone - remove your ornaments.

Moses walks down the mountain and heads into the tabernacle, followed closely by God in the form of a pillar of cloud (form of a pail of water, form of an eagle... wonder twin powers, activate!). The people see the pillar of cloud and stand by their tents and worship. These are the same morons who were just worshiping a hunk of gold, so what can you say? God proclaims, "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy." Well that narrows it down.

It's time for God to leave now, and he will pass by in glory but will cover thy eyes. "Thou shalt see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen." What are God's "back parts" anyway? Does God have a hiney? For that matter, does God have a face? Wasn't he just a pillar of cloud a few verses ago? Is he a shape shifter?

The next post will be the long awaited ten commandments.  Until then, I beg of you, do not offer the blood of a sacrifice with leaven.

Exodus 30-31

Chapter 30 continues with the rules for the tabernacle. Aaron is to build an altar of shittim wood on which to burn incense. No "strange incense" though, only the good stuff. God requires money offerings as an atonement for sins. Even the poor are to give at least half a shekel (if you're trying to calculate, a shekel is twenty gerahs). Is God low on cash? What does he do with the money? How does money pay off a sin?

God wants Aaron and company to wash their hands and feet in a brass basin. He also wants a holy ointment to be made from myrrh, cinnamon, calamus and cassia. You cannot put the oil on a stranger because they are NOT blessed. If you do such a foolish thing, plan on being cut off from the chosen people forever. God also likes perfume. He prefers a mix of stacte, onycha, galbanum and frankincense. Mix it just right and it's holy. However, if anyone makes a similar, imperfect concoction, they will be cut off from the chosen people forever. What does God need with frankincense and brass basins anyway? Where do you get these things when wandering across the desert for 40 years? Is holy behavior just about rituals and meeting absurd demands? If so, what good is it?

Chapter 31 tells us twice that we are not to work on the sabbath. Penalty: Death. Don't let anyone tell you this is just an Old Testament custom and it doesn't apply today. The bible is very clear this is a "perpetual convenant." That's forever, folks. "For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed." Why does the ruler of all creation need a day off to rest? If he is omnipresent (present everywhere, all the time, all at once), how is it even possible to take a day off? Am I missing something?

Buckle up - the golden calf and the real ten commandments are up next.

Exodus 29

I bet you're curious how to sanctify the altar and the tabernacle of the congregation. Well, wonder no more. Chapter 29 explains just what to do. These instructions were intended for Aaron and sons, but since the bible is the inerrant word of God, this information is easily adapted for your modern day life:

• Find an unblemished bull and two rams. Bring to the door of the tabernacle and wash with water.
• Put some unleavened bread, wafers and wheat flour into a basket.
• Get dressed in the proper attire: robe of the ephod, breastplate, mitre upon thy head, crown upon the mitre. Anoint your head with oil. Gird thyself with a girdle.
• Kill the bull and put its blood upon the altar with thy finger. Then pour the blood beside the bottom of the altar. Burn the bull's kidney and fat on the altar. Burn its flesh, skin and poop outside as a sin offering. I hope I'm not insulting your intelligence by stating something so obvious.
• Kill one of the rams and sprinkle its blood on the altar. Chop it into pieces and wash its insides. Burn the entire ram on the altar as a burnt offering.
• Kill the other ram and put some of its blood on your right ear and your sons' right ears, right thumbs and right big toes. Sprinkle the blood and some anointing oil on yourself, your garments, your sons and their garments.
• Wave some bread and the ram's fat, kidneys, butt and right shoulder in the air for a wave offering before the Lord. Then burn it on the altar as a burnt offering.
• Wave the ram's breast in the air for a wave offering before the Lord. Sanctify the breast of the wave offering, and the shoulder of the heave offering, which is waved, and which is heaved up, of the ram of the consecration.
• Whatever's left of the ram gets boiled. Eat that and some bread by the door of the tabernacle. Don't allow a stranger to eat of it, for it is holy and only for you. Whatever is left in the morning must be burned, for it is holy.
• Follow the above steps for seven days. 
• Offer a continual burnt offering at the door of the tabernacle.

And that's all there is to it. Happy sanctifying!

Exodus 24-28

God tells Moses, Aaron and some other important menfolk to come up unto him. Moses will have a one-on-one and the others will keep their distance. This is an essential part of making shit up. The make-believe conversations you're having with God can't be witnessed by anyone else.

Moses builds an altar, burns a few oxen and sprinkles blood around. Standard altar stuff you probably do at home. Then he spends 40 days and 40 nights with God on Mt. Sinai. God gives Moses directions for building a tabernacle, the good old ark of the covenant. I need to watch Indiana Jones again to see how he fits into this whole story. God goes into excruciating detail about how to build the ark. It's made of shittim wood with gold overlay, three branches of the candlestick, and tongs thereof. There are purple, blue and scarlet curtains of linen. There are cherubims, fifty hooks of gold, forty sockets of silver. There are brass rods, more shittim wood, cubits of this, and cubits of that. The detail is mind numbing.

Aaron and his sons become ordained ministers which appears to mostly involve wearing the right garments, including a breastplate, an ephod, a robe, a broidered coat, a mitre and a girdle. You must bedazzle your ephod with sardius, topaz, carbuncle, emerald, sapphire, diamond, ligure, agate, amethyst, beryl, onax, jasper and gold. Beneath the hem of the garment you are to put a bell and a pomegranate. I couldn't make this up, folks. Aaron's sons wear linen breeches to cover their nakedness. They also don bonnets and girdles. I guess the fancy boys like a little role play. Things can get a little dull trekking across the desert.

The whole idea is for Aaron and company to be dressed in a suitably holy way when they are at the altar. This brings us to Chapter 29 and the subject of how to minister. I was going to include that in this post but I just don't have it in me to trudge through another overly detailed chapter tonight. Soon though - stay tuned for more fun and godly learning with Moses and the gang.

Exodus 21-23

If you thought the ten commandments were an outstanding set of guidelines for living a moral, upstanding life, you are in for a real treat as we continue with Exodus. Law after glorious law.

• Hebrew slaves are to be freed after six years of service. If a slave brought his family along when he was bought, he can take them when he leaves. If he married one of his master's slaves, he's out of luck. If your slave asks to stay, have him stand against a door and slam an awl through his ear. Once you pierce his ear, he can be a slave forever. How lucky for him.
• If you sell your daughter and her new owner is not satisfied with his purchase, he can sell her but NOT to a foreigner. Well that's just common sense.
• If you kill someone, the penalty is death. If you didn't intend for them to die, God will find you a hiding place
• If you attack your parents, the penalty is death.
• If you curse your parents, the penalty is death.
• If you kidnap someone, the penalty is death.
• If you beat a slave to death, you'll be punished (but not put to death. I mean, it's not like you cursed your parents or something serious). If the slave lives for a couple days after you beat him, there's no punishment "for he is (your) money."
• If you punch a pregnant woman but she doesn't suffer serious injury, you'll pay a fine. If the woman is injured or miscarries, the punishment must match the injury (familiar phrase alert): eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
• If you punch your slave in the face and destroy his or her eye, you must let them go free.
• If you punch your slave in the face and knock out his or her tooth, you must let them go free.
• There's quite a list of livestock laws. Here's the first one, just to give you the idea: If your ox gores someone to death, you must stone it to death but don't eat its meat. If you've been warned about this particular ox, you get stoned to death unless you can afford a fine.
• If you catch someone breaking into your house, you can kill them without penalty unless it's daylight. Stating the obvious here.
• "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Boy, this one caused some problems.
• If you have sex with an animal, the penalty is death.
• It's odd to read something sensible in this list, but there are a few good points. Do not help a guilty party by being a malicious witness. Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. Do not execute an innocent or honest person. Do not accept bribes.
• If you offer a sacrifice to any other god, you will be "utterly destroyed." Sigh. Seriously?

God announces he will send an angel to Canaan ahead of the Hebrews. He will send his fear upon them and destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come. He will also send hornets to drive the people out. But not all at once. God wants to ensure the land and livestock are properly maintained in advance of the Israelites' arrival. These folks who've been minding their own business in Canaan for hundreds of years are in for a surprise.

Exodus 20

It's time for the ten commandments, boys and girls. Don't look now but this familiar list is actually not the ten commandments. The official "ten commandments" appear later in Exodus and you aren't going to believe it when we get there. I'll just say I hope you haven't ever boiled a baby goat in its mother's milk. But for now, God spake all these words:

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.  Remind me how this has anything to do with moral behavior? And when someone insists that we have only one God, remember this commandment. The big man himself says there are multiple gods.
2. No graven images, which the Basic English Bible translates as not making "an image or picture of anything in heaven or on the earth or in the waters under the earth." If your child draws a picture of fish in the ocean, this commandment is broken. Our "jealous God" promises he will visit "the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." So if you don't buy into this list, your great-grandchildren will be punished. Pretty sure that's not moral.
3. Don't take God's name in vain. Why not? I do it all the time.
4. Keep the Sabbath holy. I think only Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A follow this one. God gives his top ten rules and the first four have nothing to do with how we should behave or treat one another. So far he has focused on keeping people in their place and under his spell.
5. Honor your father and mother. This sounds good but is too simpleton in reality. What if your parents are abusive assholes? If you're the victim of incest, should you be held to this commandment? This sounds like a good rule for keeping people in their place. If someone has more power than you do, too bad for you. How about respecting and honoring those who have protected and helped you on your path through life? Wouldn't something like that be more useful?
6. Thou shalt not kill. The bible has done a shit job on this commandment so far. And what about euthanasia? Self defense? Soldiers at war? Do you support the death penalty? How many abortion doctors have been shot and killed with this commandment held up as justification? Wherever you stand on these issues, it's pretty clear it's more complicated than this one-dimensional edict.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery. If the rules for life are to be whittled down to a top ten list, I say this doesn't make the cut. Why not a more general guideline about keeping your promises? Or maybe we could have an item about treating people fairly and honestly. How about thou shalt not manipulate or take advantage of people. Why did adultery and graven images make the list but nothing about rape and torture? A bunch of 20th century Catholic priests could have used a commandment along those lines. A priest who rapes a little kid doesn't break a single commandment, unless he does it on a Sunday. And *I'm* the asshole for not believing this list is the greatest code of human behavior ever written?
8. Thou shalt not steal. I'm against stealing as much as the next guy, and it's easy to understand why we have laws against theft. However, if you survived Hurricane Katrina, were you wrong to steal baby formula for your child? Ethics are situational; the ten commandments don't have any notion of that. That's an important point for this entire list. This is also a good time to point out that without the ten commandments, we'd still have concluded that taking other people's stuff is wrong. Plenty of societies have figured this out without the bible.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Does this commandment pertain to courtroom testimony, or false statements against other people or any form of lying? Are white lies wrong? And who qualifies as a neighbor, and why include that phrase in the first place? Is God saying if you're a damn foreigner, I can bear false witness against you? Also, if I know where your battered wife is hiding I'm going to lie to you about it, commandments be damned.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, wife, slaves, ox, ass or property. This one is the thought police. Jealous of your neighbor's car? Envy their beautiful house? Wish you had a nice tight ass like theirs? All wrong, folks. It's OK to own slaves, just don't covet your neighbor's. Notice that women are property too. Stupid fucking list. Seriously.

I think these rules should be on display at every courthouse in America, don't you?

Exodus 18-19

Moses is spending a lot of time settling disputes and interpreting God's laws for the Hebrews. His father-in-law Jethro advises him to set up a judicial system. Moses hearkens to the voice of Jethro and rounds up the able God-fearing men who hate covetousness. He instructs them to settle the garden variety disputes, freeing him up to deal with the most complicated legal cases.

When the Hebrews set up camp in Sinai, God beckons Moses from the mountaintop. He reminds Moses that he destroyed the Egyptians while bearing his people "on eagles' wings." And he will raise you up on eagles' wings, bear you on the breath of dawn. Make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of his hand... Yes, this book is ridiculous, but I do dig the tunes.

God is going to deliver the most important rules for life, and Moses needs to prepare his people properly. They are to wash their clothes and abstain from sex. That helps you listen apparently. I do wonder how Moses spake this message unto 600,000 people. OK, so Moses will walk up into the mountainside, but the people are NOT to follow him. Penalty: Death. I bet you cynically think this prevents anyone from calling Moses' bluff and proving he's not up there talking to the almighty. Well, God is going to make himself known to the masses. He will appear with the thunders and lightnings, descend upon Mt. Sinai in fire, and bellow through the clouds. Really, why would you visibly appear to everyone and remove all doubt when you can quake the whole mount greatly? With that, the plans are in place. Buckle up - the ten commandments are right around the corner.

Exodus 15-17

The Israelites are joyful and triumphant now that Pharaoh's finest are dead at the bottom of the Red Sea. The Lord hath dashed the enemy into pieces. Hooray! They break out in song, and the ladies dance with tambourines.

Moses and company continue their travels, and after three days in the wilderness they find themselves without water. They discover water in Marah but darn the luck, it is too bitter to drink. The people complain and cry. God tells Moses to throw a tree in the water which as any idiot knows makes the water sweet. Problem solved.

They travel on and run out of food. The people complain some more. God and Moses talk some more. God makes it rain manna, a type of bread (unleavened, of course). There are rules for how much to collect and on what days. The Hebrews can't keep the rules straight and God gets pissy. They get it all straightened out, and the people eat manna for their entire 40 year journey to Canaan. Why is it taking so long to get there?

The next place they set up camp has no water. Sigh... this again. The people moan and groan. This time God tells Moses to strike a rock and water will come out. This isn't good enough for the Hebrews. They ask, "is the LORD among us, or not?" These people have seen thousands upon thousands of people murdered for no reason other than being born in the wrong place, and they know Moses is the only reason they've made it this far, yet they take every opportunity to bitch.

A battle breaks out with some people led by a fellow named Amalek. The Hebrews are led by Joshua, who is mentioned as though we've known him all along. Moses, Aaron and Hur watch the fight from a hilltop. "And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed." Moses' arms get tired so Aaron and Hur hold them up for him. I couldn't make this shit up, folks. Take a big guess which side wins. Right.

Moses builds an altar, and calls the name of it Jehovahnissi. Good choice.

Exodus 13-14

We begin today's reading with a recap on the numerous rules for eating bread. We also learn that Hebrews are to sanctify their firstborn sons and beasts to God. Apparently that means they are more special or something. Because, again, we are so thankful that when God slaughtered all those people, he spared us because we slaughtered a lamb. And because we're extra special for no apparent reason.

And it came to pass that Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt by way of the Red Sea. No one had time to pack the yeast before they hit the road, so they are stuck with unleavened bread for the trip. God seems to hate leavened bread though, so I think this works out. Moses has enough spare time to locate and dig up Joseph's bones so he can carry them to Canaan. Nothing odd about that.

The exodus from Egypt begins, and God takes the form of a pillar of cloud to guide them by day, and a pillar of fire to guide them by night. Recall Jacob's kin made this trek between Egypt and Canaan many times, but Moses' group apparently has a poor sense of direction. Although with a party of 600,000+, a pillar of fire might be a practical thing to take along.

The Lord hardens Pharaoh's heart yet again and has him decide he doesn't want to free the Hebrews after all. WTF. Pharaoh leads a group of 600 chariots to overtake Moses and gang. Because 600 chariots and crew can overtake 600,000+ people whose leader has already slaughtered them 10 times over. Right. And here's an idea - why doesn't God just murder everyone like he did with good old Er and Onan. Why all the games? Well, God repeatedly says he wants his presence to be known - remember this next time someone says God can't make himself visible to us because it's all about faith, and blah blah blah.

We've reached another scene that everyone knows. Moses parts the Red Sea so his folks can scamper across and get away from the moronic Egyptians who just keep coming back for more. Pharaoh and crew follow, and as you well know, the wall of water crashes down on them. "There remained not so much as one of them." Wouldn't there be a historical record of all the king's finest crew and horses drowning in 600 chariots?

"And Israel saw that great work which the LORD did upon the Egyptians: and the people feared the LORD, and believed the LORD, and his servant Moses." Yeah, great work, God. Way to murder everyone.

Exodus 12

Chapter 11 ended with the description of the 10th plague. Show of hands - who knew the 10th plague is actually Passover? Yes, that Passover. The Jewish holiday you don't particularly understand. Well, prepare to be dazzled. God has outdone himself on this one.

Chapter 12 explains the rules of Passover, when God passes over the houses of the Hebrews and murders the firstborn son and beast of the Egyptians. Something to celebrate, no?

• On the tenth day of the first month of the year, get a young unblemished male lamb. Hold it until the 14th day, then slaughter it at dusk. 
• Smudge some of the lamb's blood on the sides and top of the door. This will let God know where the chosen people are (shouldn't he know?). 
• Bake the lamb with its head, legs and innards. This should go without saying but do NOT boil it. 
• Eat all you can and burn the rest by sunrise.
• Make sure you're wearing your shoes. Holding a stick is also recommended. 
• During the night, God will kill all the Egyptian firstborn men and beast. It seems he does this simultaneously, unlike Santa Claus' nighttime routine where he visits houses one by one. God is just that powerful.
• From the first through the seventh days, eat unleavened bread. So is this just bread without yeast? Am I missing something? If you eat Wonderbread between the first and seventh days, you are cut off from Israel forever. 
• On the first and seventh days, hold holy meetings and don't work.
• From the 14th through the 21st day, same deal on the bread. If Wonderbread is even in the house, you're out of the tribe. 
• Slaves and house guests can take part in Passover rituals, provided they are circumcised.

Annual lamb and bread rituals are to be carried out forever. When your children ask, "Seriously, what in the hell are we doing?", your answer should be, "We are celebrating God not slaughtering us when he slaughtered all those other people. Let's slaughter something!" 

So God does all the planned murdering, and Pharaoh has finally had enough. He tells Moses to get his people out of Egypt. "The Egyptians were forcing the people on, to get them out of the land quickly; for they said, We are all dead men." No kidding. How are there any Egyptians left? And haven't the livestock been killed several times over by now? God tinkers with Egyptian minds so they look on the Hebrews with favor and hand over their silver and gold. That is just rude. Christ. I mean God.

And it came to pass that the Lord led 600,000+ Israelites out of Egypt. They are in too big of a hurry to pack the yeast so it's all unleavened bread for the journey. God tells them not to share their bread with anyone along the way who is uncircumcised.

Exodus 7-11

These chapters were brutal to get through, and you should thank me for summarizing it in the following manner.

• Moses: Let me people go!  Pharaoh: Nah, I think I'll keep them.
• To prove God's power, Egypt is subjected to a plague of:

1. Turning the river to blood and killing all the fish. The local magicians re-create the same plague.
2. Smiting the land with frogs. The magicians pull this stunt too. Note: It would have been more useful to make all the frogs disappear.
3. Afflicting every creature with lice. The magicians are powerless to keep up. Obviously only a real god can do this one!
4. Creating swarms of flies that completely destroy the land.
5. Killing all the Egyptian livestock.
6. Making boils appear on all men and livestock (which were killed one plague ago).
7. Raining forth a storm of hail and fire that kills everything that somehow survived previous plagues.
8. Covering the land with locusts that eat everything that's left.
9. Blanketing everything with darkness so dark you can feel it (ooh! scary!), and yet providing light for the Hebrew houses. Because that's how light works. You can totally partition it off between houses.
10. Sending God around Egypt at midnight to kill all firstborn sons of Egyptians and their slaves as well as the firstborn sons of all the livestock that no longer exist (see plagues 5, 7 and 8).

• Pharaoh, stunned by the severity of the plague, relents. OK, your people can go.
• An act of magic ends the plague.
• After a moment of reprieve, Pharaoh changes his mind. Actually God changes Pharaoh's mind for him by hardening his heart. Dick.
• ** Return to first list item above and read through the list again, selecting the next plague in the list. Lather, rinse, repeat. **

Each plague is very obviously nonsense, but let's pretend it's real and look at other elements of this story. God causes Pharaoh to change his mind. What is the point? Are we chess pieces or puppets? What about free will? And if the point is to prove he's the all powerful god, why not visibly appear to everyone instead of only in secret to Moses? Why don't the Egyptians who survive a given plague rise up and kill Pharaoh when they realize he's the a-hole who's extending this whole mess? And what is up with magicians who can recreate the first few plagues? Even if you buy the notion that God is behind all these other plagues, shouldn't the magicians be your clue this story might not be true?

This story needs to start sucking less. I'm getting fussy.

Exodus 5-6

Take a guess what bubbled up to the surface as I read Exodus Chapter 5. Sunday school memories? Religion class in high school? Lessons from CCD? No, no and no. My first thought was Nervous Night, the Hooters' cassette tape I played the crap out of in junior high. Holy Moses met the Pharaoh. Yeah, he tried to set him straight. Looked him in the eye. Said let my people go! ... All you zombies, show your faces, all you people in the street. All you sitting in high places, the rain's gonna fall on you.

And we danced, like a wave on the ocean, romanced. Had I known Exodus was so good to rock out to, I would have read it a long time ago. Nothing lasts forever, only fades away. Day by dayyyy.

Just like the Hooters taught us, Moses tells Pharaoh to let his people go. Pharaoh says, bitch please. And with that, it's on. Pharaoh's first little stunt is to withhold straw from the Hebrew slaves yet demand they make just as many bricks. Apparently straw is a key supply. There are beatings when the brick production slows down.

Moses informs God his initial convo with Pharaoh didn't go so well. God responds, "I am the LORD" (I like how he yells some words) and reveals he is also named Jehovah. A nickname, I suppose. God says the groaning of the Israelites reminded him of his covenant with Abraham. I guess he was a little out of it while things got out of control in Egypt. And now Moses is his go-to guy to return these folks to Canaan. God tells Moses to get back in the game, man.

God runs through the list of Abraham's descendants, and tells Moses to repeat the whole thing to Pharaoh. Moses is concerned about his uncircumcised lips, which according to other versions of the bible means his unskilled speech. How you get from A to B on this one is beyond me.

Exodus 3-4

As Moses leads his father-in-law Jethro's flock, he happens upon a burning bush somehow not consumed by the fire. An angel of the Lord appears in the flames and talks to him. When Moses answers, God pipes up. The angel is kind of like a secretary. Please hold for God on line 2. God wants to free his people from oppression. He'd like them to reside in the land of milk and honey (hey, another familiar phrase) and return to the land of the Canaanites (also the land of Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, but I'm calling it Canaan unless it becomes evident I should call it something else). Recall Canaan is also Noah's grandson, who was forever enslaved because his dad saw his grandpa naked. Say what?

Moses learns he will be instrumental in getting the chosen people out of Egypt. He is nervous about dealing with Pharaoh, but God says he'll be there alongside him. You just won't see or hear him. Moses will tell the Hebrews the god of their fathers has sent him, but how will he respond when they ask who that is? How will Moses answer a stumper like that? God responds, "I AM THAT I AM." Why can't he just say the god who sent him is God, as in THE God?

God gives Moses the ability to perform magic tricks and gives him a magic staff. Moses is still hesitant and says he is a poor speaker. God is getting pretty pissed off with the excuses and says to drag his brother Aaron along. God will do the talking through him. Here's an idea. Why doesn't God just visibly appear to everyone instead? It's the same kinda deal with people who talk to God today, so at least God is consistent I suppose. The guy is really fond of secret one-on-ones.

Moses finds Jethro sitting on a park bench, eyeing little girls with bad intent. Snot is running down his nose, greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes. Drying in the cold sun, and watching as the frilly panties run. Feeling like a dead duck, spitting out pieces of his broken luuuuuck. Jethro tells Moses to go in peace, so he does. Recall Moses fled Egypt after killing someone. Well, God has seen to it that those who were after him are dead now. I guess it pays to be one of the chosen people.

God is going to tinker with Pharaoh's brain so he will not set the Hebrews free, no matter how many magic tricks Moses performs. He's going to "harden his heart." I wonder if he's gonna swallow his tears too.

The topic of killing of firstborn sons is back in the picture. Moses has an infant son whom God is ready to murder. Zipporah, Moses' old lady, circumcises the baby with a sharp stone (wha??). She throws the foreskin at Moses' feet and says, "a bloody husband thou art to me." God is suitably impressed and doesn't kill anyone. Outpatient surgery with a dusty rock on an infant's penis. Ummmkay.

Moses meets up with Aaron and the elder Israelites and gives them the lowdown on the magic tricks and whatnot. They believe everything without question. They just know good times are ahead.

Exodus 1-2

The days of Genesis are long behind us. Jacob's children, the 12 tribes of Israel, are dead and gone. Their descendants are very fertile and have "waxed exceedingly mighty" in Egypt.

A new Pharaoh takes the helm and is concerned the Israelites are a little too plentiful and strong. It isn't clear how he can tell Egyptians from Hebrews. Does he look for the circumcised? This wouldn't include the gals though. Or maybe it's skin color/racism? Somehow he knows who the Hebrews are and enslaves them. Makes sense. The Egyptians work them extra hard, yet they keep multiplying with wild abandon. Pharaoh has had enough so he instructs the Hebrew midwives to kill male Hebrew newborns. The midwives are too God fearing to do so, and God rewards them with houses. Good choice. He also makes Jacob's people extra, extra fertile. Take that, Pharaoh. Then Pharaoh extends his order to everyone in Egypt: "Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive." This is some sinister stuff. It also makes zero sense.

The Hebrew babe we will later know as Moses is born. His mom can tell he is a goodly child, and it takes her three months to dump him in the Nile. She builds him a little ark of bulrushes, so technically she is meeting Pharaoh's demands, and yet the wee one has a chance of survival. Provided the elements don't get him first. Or wild animals. Or a leaky ark. Or hypothermia. Or starvation.

Pharaoh's daughter finds the baby. Wouldn't there be lots of babies in the water? This is a horrifying image. Or is Moses' mom the only one who complied? Or has only one baby been born? The lady feels sorry for him and selects a wet nurse from the nearby Hebrew slaves. And wouldn't you know, it's Moses' mom! She weans him and hands him over to Pharaoh's daughter to raise. How did she then get rid of Moses' birth mom, and how did she swing bringing a Hebrew kid into the family without Pharaoh knowing?

One verse later, Moses is a grown man. He somehow knows he is an Israelite. He sees an Egyptian beating an enslaved Hebrew and something in him snaps. He murders the Egyptian, then high tails it to Midian to hide. He finds a girl there to marry. She conceives (a son, of course) and they name the baby Gershom, "for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land." I like finding familiar phrases like this as a I read along. I have to wonder though - how did we pluck a little nugget like this and somehow get past/ignore the ludicrous story where it appears?

OK so the stupid Pharaoh dies. The enslaved Israelites groan and wail loud enough for God to hear. Apparently he's been out to lunch this whole time. He takes notice and is concerned. Because slavery is evil and wrong? Why, no. Because the Hebrews are the descendants of Abraham. And that causes God to remember his little old covenant with Abraham. Hope everyone is circumcised.

Thoughts on Genesis

One book down, sixty five to go.

I'm surprised how much of Genesis was familiar to me, considering I'd never read the entire book before. So has anyone read this but me? It's ridiculous. Seriously. I feel like the kid in The Emperor's New Clothes.

It's alarming how much influence the bible has over modern society. Take the creation myth. It spans two simpleton chapters. Is this really what creationists and intelligent design folks look to as proof of how we got here? I don't know how our story began either, but that doesn't mean God did it. The fact we don't know something is not proof that God did it. And I don't have to prove he *didn't* do it. In fact, I can't; the burden of proof is on the side making the claim. I also can't prove Jupiter is not full of cotton candy. If you think it is in fact full of cotton candy, it's on you to provide the evidence. I'm not wicked or immoral if I don't believe it. Same concept.

Abraham and his kin are nothing special. Actually they often act horribly, and yet they're the chosen people. Was circumcision, the symbol of their covenant with God, a new concept when the bible was written? If yes, why on earth would you agree to it as a token of your agreement with God or anyone else? Wouldn't you back away in horror instead? And if circumcision was known to the bible authors, weren't they simply writing about something they understood?

The bible is pretty plainly a product of its time. Rainbows weren't understood so they were described as God's cute little reminders to himself. We now have a straight forward scientific explanation for rainbows. This is one simple thing you can write off in the bible. If you dismiss this one thing as silliness, how do you buy the rest of it? If you also dismiss a talking snake, impossibly old people and Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt, where do you draw the line on what is "real" and what is not? OK, so maybe you write off the obvious baloney and hold up the bible as the ultimate reference for how we should behave. Well what about slavery, women as property, murder, rape, burning people alive, animal sacrifice and lots of other behavior that simply cannot be defended as moral?

I didn't find one good takeaway from the entire book of Genesis. On to Exodus.

Genesis 46-50

We begin Chapter 46 with an animal sacrifice. God likes those. He promises to protect Jacob and the gang as they journey to Egypt. Jacob's descendants are named in agonizing detail. These sort of verses are taxing just to skim. A sampling: "And the sons of Benjamin were Belah, and Becher, and Ashbel, Gera, and Naaman, Ehi, and Rosh, Muppim, and Huppim, and Ard." zzzzz

And it came to pass the threescore and ten souls of Jacob, which came out of his loins, arrive in Egypt. Father and son finally meet again. They fall upon each other's neck and weep.

Joseph's family tells Pharoah of the terrible famine back in Canaan and asks if they can stay in Egypt. The famine is still underway in Egypt, but whatever. Pharoah approves their stay, and Joseph gets them all set up with the best of the land.

Joseph ends up with all the money, all the land, all the livestock in Egypt. Well, except for the land of the priests (huh?). Locals pay Joseph for the food they grew in the first place. Seems fair. Joe enacts a law where 20% of everything Egyptians grow will be a tax given to the Pharoah. He gets to make laws now evidently. So the Egyptians survive the famine, but it's no picnic being them. Meanwhile, Joe's carpet bagger family is rich and continues to crank out babies. Hey, they're the chosen people.

At 147 years of age, Jacob is near death. He asks Joseph to bury him in Canaan with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and the sister wives Rebekah and Leah. Joseph promises by putting his hand under his dad's thigh (and where would that be?). Jacob blesses Joseph's sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. He puts his left hand on Manasseh (the first born) which is all wrong. Joseph tries to get his dad to put his right hand on the older son. How can the blessing work if his hands are mixed up? Jacob insists the younger will be greater than the older and his seed shall be a multitude of nations.

Jacob gathers all his sons and says a little something to each of these twelve tribes of Israel. Of course Joseph is the most blessed. Jacob does speak to the murderous acts of Simeon and Levi. He solves that little dilemma by scattering their descendants around Israel. Glad we got that addressed. Let's see. Judah is a lion's whelp, his ass's colt unto the vine. His teeth be white with milk. Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens. Dan shall biteth the horse heels. Blah blah blah, and Jacob dies. Finally.

The Eygptians mourn for threescore and ten days. Why? What has this guy done for them except hog all the good stuff? Joe and his descendants and a few of Pharoah's slaves haul the body to Canaan and bury it. Then they return to Egypt. They do a hell of a lot of traveling between Canaan and Egypt.

Now that Jacob is dead, the brothers fear Joe will requite them all the evil which they did unto him. To his credit, Joseph doesn't. He tells his brethren God has promised them the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The chosen people. The promised land.

Joe gives up the ghost at the age of 110 and is put in a coffin in Egypt. It was a good ride, old man.

Genesis 42-45

Ten of Joseph's brothers head to Egypt. Benjamin stays with Daddy who wants one son safe at home if tragedy befalls the others during their travels.

Joe recognizes his brothers but they don't know who he is. He returns to his jackass habits of the past and toys with them quite a bit. He puts them in jail for three days, then decides to send all but Simeon home to retrieve the missing brother. He says this will prove they are not spies. While Simeon is tied up, the others haul some corn home. They freak out when they realize their corn sacks contain money that isn't theirs.

Jacob is unhappy when informed of the need to take Benjamin to Egypt. Reuben replies, hey if I don't return Ben and Simeon safe and sound, you can kill my two sons. A tit-for-tat kind of deal. Good thinking. Jacob asks why did you mention Benjamin in the first place? Why couldn't you be liars like me? But alas, they're out of corn and must return to Egypt. And, oh yeah, Simeon is still in jail. I don't feel sorry for him though as he did massacre a bunch of people a few chapters back.

The brothers return with gifts (myrrh and whatnot), money for more corn and the money that was slipped into their corn sacks. Joe tells them to relax about the money, frees Simeon, lets them wash their feet and gives their asses provender. When Joe sees Benjamin, he gets antsy to reveal who he is. "For his bowels did yearn upon his brother." He's so excited he could poop. They have a big feast and marvel upon one another.

Joseph sends the 11 off with more corn and cash, this time slipping a silver cup into Ben's corn bag. He then sends his goons after them and "they speedily took down every man his sack to the ground." Ouch. They find the "stolen" silver cup and haul everyone back before Joseph. Joe threatens to kill Ben, and Judah pleads to take his life instead. This test proves the brothers are reformed and worthy, so he finally tells them who he is. And thank God, because I didn't think this chapter would ever end.

Chapter 45 ties up this little episode nicely. Joseph says if he hadn't been sold into slavery, he couldn't have saved Egypt from famine. God sent him to be a prisoner, so he could become a lord of Egypt. This reasoning could be used to justify some shitty behavior -- sorry I pushed you into slavery but, well, it was God's will.

Hugging and kissing ensues, and everyone weeps upon thy brother's neck. Pharoah and his slaves are very pleased. Slaves love a good family reunion. Pharoah announces all the good of the land of Egypt belongs to Joe's brethren and sends them home with wagons of gifts. Joe's career is well established, so he stays put in Egypt.

When Jacob learns Joseph is alive and well, he pledges to see him again before he dies. That's right, they're going back to Egypt. Again.

Genesis 39-41

Potiphar can see the Lord is with his new slave Joseph (whatever that means) and puts him in charge of the house. Because Joseph is such a goodly person and well favored, God blesses Potiphar's home, crops and possessions.

Potiphar's wife has the hots for Joseph, but he continually refuses her. She gets pretty animated about it and grabs his garment while demanding sex. He flees. She uses the clothing as evidence that the Hebrew servant tried to rape her. Potiphar is very wroth and throws Joe in jail next to Pharoah's butler and baker.

The guard can see the Lord is with Joseph (again, what?) so he puts him in charge of the butler and baker. The prison guard puts a prisoner in charge of the other prisoners. Right. The butler and baker dream some dreams. You can listen to the soundtrack for details. "And Joseph came in unto them in the morning, and looked upon them, and behold, they were sad." Supposedly they are sad because they don't understand the meaning of their dreams, but until this point in the bible the phrase "came in unto them" has been reserved for naughty time. Bow chicka wow wow. I guess it is a prison. Anyway, Joe informs them the butler's dream means he will be released from jail in three days (and he is). The baker's dream means Pharoah will hang him from a tree in three days (and he does).

Two years later Pharoah dreams about seven skinny cows eating fat cows, and seven pitiful ears of corn eating seven beautiful ears of corn. And, behold, it was a dream. Clearly it means something very important. So how do these folks know which dreams mean something and which are the random nonsense that everyone dreams every night? Pharoah summons all the magicians in Egypt but they too are stumped. The butler tells Pharoah about the faithful Hebrew servant Joseph.

Pharoah calls for the imprisoned Joseph, who shaves, changes his clothes and "came in unto Pharoah." I guess that's one way to break the ice. Joe, wouldn't you know, can interpret the dreams: Egypt will have seven years of feast and seven of famine. Pharoah is impressed with Joseph's obvious talents and makes him his second in command. He gives Joe fine clothes, jewelry, a chariot, a wife and a new name: Zaphnathpaaneah.

During the seven plentiful years, Joseph directs all the surplus to be stored. Apparently being in a dungeon the past few years has sharpened his leadership skills. His wife bares two babes (sons, of course), Manasseh and Ephraim. And then the famine strikes. People somehow know food is stored in Egypt and show up in droves from other lands. Pharoah directs all the hungry people to Joseph. Chapter 41 ends as Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy corn. We're right on the cusp of a brotherly reunion.

Genesis 37-38

Joseph is 17 when Jacob/Israel takes the clan to Canaan. One of Joe's favorite pastimes is tattling on his brothers. "Joseph brought unto his father their evil report." If it's acceptable to these folks to trick all the men in a town into circumcision and then - ha! ha! - murder them, I wonder what qualifies as evil.

For no apparent reason, Jacob loves Joseph more than his other sons and makes him a coat of many colors. How he loved his coat of many colors. It was red and yellow and green and brown and blue.

Joe's other favorite pastime is interpreting dreams. He informs his brothers of his dreams that clearly indicate the 11 of them will someday bow down to him. Needless to say, they aren't big fans of Joe. One day Joseph checks up on his brethren as they feed the flock, and they see their chance to get rid of him. They sell him to some passing Ishmeelites, then kill a goat and splatter its blood on the amazing technicolor dreamcoat. They show the evidence of Joe's untimely demise to Dad. Doesn't this sound like a charming premise for a musical? There's one more angel in heaven. There's one more star in the sky. Joseph, we'll never forget you. It's tough! But we're gonna get by.

Meanwhile, Joe is sold into slavery to Potiphar, an officer of the Pharoah. Potiphar had very few cares. He was one of Egypt's millionaires, having made a fortune buying shares in pyramids.

And then we hear an adorable little story I don't seem to recall in the musical. Joe's brother Judah goes in unto his wife and has three sons, Er, Onan and Shelah. Unfortunately for Er, he is "wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord slew him." That's right. God murders him.

Judah instructs Onan to go in unto Er's wife Tamar, marry her and raise Er's family (huh?). Onan is not completely on board with this idea. Oh, he goes in unto her all right, but he spills his seed on the ground instead of, uh, finishing up inside Tamar. This infuriates God who then murders Onan. The moral of the story, kids, is when you fuck your brother's widow, whatever you do, do NOT pull out. Penalty: Death.

Judah sends Tamar to live with her dad until his (Judah's) son Shelah "be grown" and can come in unto her, so she has that to look forward to. Poor Tamar. And then a bit of sad news - Judah's wife dies. In his grief, he visits his sheep shearer friends. He sees a disguised Tamar and mistakes her for "an harlot." And, you know, a hooker can really cheer a guy up. So they discuss the going rate and settle on a goat (to be provided later) and some other whatnots. Judah and Tamar roll, roll, roll in the hay, and she conceives.

While looking for Tamar to hand over the goat to her, Judah learns she "is with child by whoredom." Judah initially wants her burned alive (hey, she lied!) but then remembers he gave her not unto Shelah as promised. So, she lives. Hooray!

As Tamar delivers twins (boys, of course), one sticks his wee baby arm out of the birth canal and a midwife ties a red thread around his wrist. OK then. He yanks his arm back into the uterus. The other twin slides around him, takes his place at the front of the line and is born first. Because even fetuses understand the value of being the first born.

Genesis 33-36

Jacob reaches Canaan. Fearing Esau's reaction, he sends his slaves and their kids first, then Leah (the wife he doesn't love) and her kids, then Rachel and her kids. So if there's any trouble, people can be slaughtered in the order most suitable to Jacob, I suppose.

And then the first heartwarming thing I've read so far happens. Esau embraces his brother. Just like that. Fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. Esau had grounds to be a real monster to Jacob, and yet he forgives. He tells Jacob the gift of livestock is not necessary, but Jacob insists that he keep them. They part on good terms. Jacob travels through a few places, buys some land and names the place Elelohe-Israel. Again with the naming of places. I don't get this at all.

Leah's daughter Dinah catches the eye of Shechem, son of the local prince. "He took her, and lay with her, and defiled her." That makes him sound like a total rapist but the next verse indicates he fell in love with her. I don't know what Dinah thinks of the situation. As a woman, she gets no opinion. Dinah's brothers Simeon and Levi get wind of this and they are very wroth, even though Shechem apparently has fallen for the gal. His soul clave unto her.

Shechem and his father pledge to pay any dowry for Dinah's hand in marriage. The brothers say we sure would like for you to marry our sister but look at that uncircumcised penis. We can't have that. In fact, everyone around here looks to have a foreskin. So the prince returns to his town and, you guessed it, it's circumcision for everyone! That must have been quite a party. Ah, but Simeon and Levi have played a little joke on Shechem. They remain very wroth. They take their swords and kill Shechem, his father AND all the local men. They steal all their wealth, all their livestock, all their children, and all their wives. Jacob is worried this will make him look bad.

God tells Jacob this would be a good time to get out of Dodge. How about you make a nice altar for me in Bethel? Jacob, recognizing this is a small price to pay for escaping the outright murder of who knows how many people, gathers the household and hits the road. He asks everyone to give up their "strange gods" and earrings first. Obviously you'd want to leave those behind. As they travel, the terror of God is put upon all the neighboring towns so no one will mess with them. Yes they are murdering thugs, but they're the chosen people, the descendants of Abraham.

They build the requested altar in Bethel which pleases God very much. He says from now on Jacob will be called Israel, the same name the hot man love wrestler gave him (so I guess that guy was an angel?). God says, "kings shall come out of thy loins." Again, what have these people done to deserve such favor? Massacred innocent people? Stole and tricked and lied at every turn?

Rachel dies in childbirth. Her parting words to Jacob are she'd like the baby to be named Benoni. Jacob promptly names him Benjamin. Hey, she's dead, she won't know the difference. And Jacob, if you didn't know, is the best!

Isaac reappears out of nowhere and "gives up the ghost" (love this phrase) after 180 years.

Chapter 36 is unbearable and I would rather take a beating than read it. It lists all the generations of Esau. Forty one verses of crap like this: "And Husham died, and Hadad the son of Bedad, who smote Midian in the field of Moab, reigned in his stead: and the name of his city [was] Avith."

Genesis 32

After this chapter, I'll group a few together. I gotta pick up the pace or I'll never finish this damn book. Plus, we're getting to the Jacob and the Technicolor Dreamcoat story, and you can listen to the soundtrack to fill in the blanks. I have to tell you, trudging through the bible is a genuine chore. The sex scenes and absurdities do help liven things up, so thank you God for that.

Jacob starts the trek home to Canaan. He's nervous about reuniting with his brother Esau. Recall that Jacob was an a-hole to Esau, stealing birth rights and such. He divides his slaves and livestock into two groups. I guess if there is trouble, only half of Team Jacob will get slaughtered. He doesn't put himself in harm's way though. He prepares a gift of 530 livestock for his brother. Here's some camels and she asses, sorry about screwing up your life. The fraidy cat gives them to his slaves to deliver.

Jacob sends his family and servants ahead of him and spends the night alone. Well, not exactly alone. "There wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day." We don't know who the man is, or how/why they met, but they went at it all night. There doesn't seem to be any anger in the wrestling, in fact they part ways in the morning with a blessing. It certainly was a rough-and-tumble night though, as "the hollow of Jacob's thigh" gets bruised up. Ooh la la. The guy won't tell Jacob his name. Probably best to keep these things discreet. He renames Jacob "Israel" before he scampers off.

And Jacob called the place Peniel. Who could make this up? Ah yes, I had a wild night with a mystery man here in thy place, I name thee Peniel.

And what is with bible men naming places as they travel around? How do they know a given place is not already named? Or that the town name is not already in use? And who are you to decide what gets named? Small detail but you can poke holes at every turn in this book.

P.S. The children of Israel will not eat the sinew of the thigh of any animal, as a result of Jacob's injury during his special night with the "wrestler." Good thinking.

Genesis 28-31

Isaac wants Jacob to marry someone worthy (one of their own kind) and sends him to take thee a wife from Rebekah's brother Laban's clan. Esau overhears and realizes his Canaanite wives are second rate so he takes a third wife, this one Ishmael's daughter a.k.a. his cousin.

Jacob dreams of angels walking up and down a ladder and of course God makes an appearance. And big shock, God says Jacob and descendants will be very blessed. What makes Abraham's descendants so special, other than the lack of foreskin? I must have missed something. And if such things are predestined, what does behavior matter? As we've seen by now, Jacob can be a major league asshole, so I guess it doesn't matter. And why does God show up in dreams?

Jacob wakes up and proclaims surely the presence of the Lord is in this place. I can feel his mighty power and his grace. I can hear the brush of angels' wings. I see glory on each face. Sing it with me! He names the place Bethel and seals the deal by setting a rock on a pillar and pouring oil on it. I guess he had to make do with what he had. He says if God will feed, clothe and protect him, then the Lord shall be his God AND Bethel shall be God's house. Pretty sweet deal for God.

Jacob meets his Laban and falls in love with Laban's daughter Rachel. He agrees to work for Laban for seven years if he can marry Rachel. That's love. Or maybe Laban is a manipulative bastard. Turns out it's both. On the wedding night, Laban uses the cover of darkness to pull the old bait-and-switch and sends his daughter Leah into the tent.

Jacob goes in unto Leah and in the morning realizes he nailed the wrong cousin. He is pretty pissed, although he's getting a taste of his own medicine with this lying trickery. Laban is unapologetic. He wanted the elder daughter married off first. But great news - work another seven years and THEN Rachel will be his. Fourteen years isn't that much for these folks who live hundreds of years. After seven years, he goes in unto Rachel, making Leah and Rachel for reals sister wives.

Jacob doesn't love Leah (she's tender eyed after all, and who wants that?), so God makes her fertile and Rachel barren. Makes sense. Leah starts cranking them out. All sons of course. Desperate for children, Rachel gives her handmaid (slave) to Jacob. He goes in unto her and she delivers a few sons. Meanwhile, Leah's uterus has run out of gas, but she is not giving Rachel the last word on this babymaking business. Leah gives HER slave to Jacob and he goes in unto her, and guess what. That's right, a couple more sons!

One of the sons finds "mandrakes" which some bible translations call "love fruit." Leah and Rachel quarrel over it. I guess Leah wins because Jacob goes in unto her and two more sons arrive. And, oops, a daughter (Dinah). God decides to open Rachel's womb for business (so the love fruit wouldn't have mattered, I guess) and she finally has a son, Joseph.

Jacob and his father in law are constantly trying to dick each other over. Jacob makes sure Laban ends up with the feeble livestock, keeping the best for himself. Laban changes Jacob's wages and pulls other dickery to cheat Jacob out of what he's owed. Jacob decides to take the brood to Canaan and sneaks out in the dead of night. On the way out, Rachel steals her dad's idols.

Laban hunts them down and demands to know why they didn't say goodbye. The best part of this whole exchange is Rachel hides the stolen idols in a camel saddle, then sits on the camel while Laban frantically searches for the goods. She lies to her dad and says she got her period and can't stand up. He buys it. Classic.

Somehow Laban and Jacob part on decent terms, forming a covenant that involves... wait for it... a sacrificed animal.

Genesis 26-27

It's like father, like son with Abraham and Isaac. Both lived through famines in their younger days and both go to Gerar and pass off their wives as their sisters. WTF is that about? King Abimelech figures out Isaac is a liar before he sleeps with Rebekah and warns his people if anyone toucheth either of these freaks, they'll be put to death.

Isaac sets up shop in Gerar with his many crops, animals and slaves. He is very successful while his neighbors aren't, but hey he is blessed and they aren't. Too bad, so sad. The king eventually asks Isaac to move along, and he heads to the valley. Isaac names the many wells his slaves dig. It helps him pass the time. One night God appears to him in a dream, and in the morning Isaac builds an altar and has the slaves dig another well. OK then.

We end Chapter 26 with Esau's marriages to two Canaanite women, which his parents aren't wild about (I think because they don't have an acceptable heritage).

As Isaac lay nearly blind and dying, he asks Esau to kill something for him to eat and he'll give him a blessing before he kicks off. Rebekah and Jacob conspire so he can get the blessing instead. You already duped Esau out of his birth right, jerk. Isn't that enough? Rebekah puts some goat hide on Jacob so he will be nice and hairy, and the old man thinks he has blessed his favorite son.

Esau arrives home to find what his lying jerk of a brother has done. He begs his father for a blessing, but apparently he can only give one. He says Esau will live far from the fertile land and dew of heaven. He will live by the sword and serve his brother. So not only is he not blessed, his life is going to suck. Esau is raving mad, and Rebekah tells Jacob he better get out of there before his brother kills him. She also wants him to find a wife from another land. These girls from Heth are no good.

Genesis 25

No kinky sex in Chapter 25, just garden variety slavery, infertility and impossibly old people. Ho hum.

Abraham marries Keturah and the babies show up in droves, but Abraham gives everything he has to Isaac. That sucks for everyone else. He also has children with the sister wife concubines. He gives them gifts, then shoos them out of the house. Abraham "gives up the ghost" after 350 years, and he is buried with Sarah.

Ishmael, Abraham's son with the slave Hagar, has a bunch of kids, 12 of whom are princes. He "gives up the ghost" at the tender age of 137.

Isaac marries, and wouldn't you know it, Rebekah is barren. When Isaac talks to God about it, she gets pregnant. It's a rough pregnancy which God explains like so: "Two nations [are] in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and [the one] people shall be stronger than [the other] people; and the elder shall serve the younger."

Rebekah gives birth to twin boys. Esau, the firstborn, is red like a hairy garment (what?), outdoorsy, and favored by his father. Jacob is a "plain man" and mommy's boy. He's also kind of a dick who tricks the more dim-witted Esau. One day Esau comes in from the field so famished that he stupidly trades his birthright for a bowl of Jacob's lentil soup. I guess it doesn't much matter as God has already announced the elder is predestined to serve the younger.

Genesis 23-24

Sarah dies at the age of 123 and Abraham finds a place to bury her. This takes 20 verses, and you should thank me for not going into more detail.

Abraham summons an old favorite slave: "put thy hand under my thigh." I did a little reading about this and apparently it means, come over here and cup my balls. Abraham explains he doesn't want Isaac to marry someone from Canaan (where they live). The slave takes ten camels and heads to the home land of Mesopotamia where he finds Rebekah and knows she is the one. She and her family are quite hospitable to him and the camels, and he in turns gives them jewelry and explains he's there to find a wife for Isaac. Her family happily sends her on her way to become the "mother of thousands of millions."

It's love at first site for Isaac and Rebekah who immediately make a little lovin'... a little turtle dovin' on the Mason-Dixon line. This makes Isaac less broken hearted about Sarah's death, which is good because they're lying in her bed.