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.