Numbers 2-5

A few people have asked about the break I've taken from the good book. It wasn't planned and I'm not busy. The reason is simple: this book sucks. Back before the flood, people may have lived for hundreds of years, but their life stories were reasonably short. We're now on our third book featuring Moses. For the love of God, will he never die? And how did Joseph and his kin scurry to Canaan and back multiple times, yet Moses is taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r to get past Mt. Sinai. I'm ready for God to spake unto someone besides Moses, but it doesn't look like there's any relief in sight. I'm going to plow through some content tonight if it kills me. Praying to God for strength and wisdom.

And now on with our story.

Chapter 2 repeats the long list of tribes and headcounts. This book, besides being absurd and boring, is unbelievably repetitive. "Then the tribe of Benjamin: and the captain of the sons of Benjamin shall be Abidan the son of Gideoni. And his host, and those that were numbered of them, were thirty and five thousand and four hundred." That's the kind of detail you need to tell me only once but thanks, bible, for making sure this pointless minutia is run into the ground.

In Chapter 3, the Levites are tallied. Instead of counting the men age 20 and older, God's interested in every male one month old and up. "On the day that I smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I hallowed unto me all the firstborn in Israel, both man and beast: mine shall they be: I am the LORD."  If you're wondering who's included, think along the lines of Kohath, Amram, and Izehar, Hebron and Uzziel. God instructs Moses to pay Aaron for the Levites. So these fellows now belong to God, whatever that means.

Chapter 4 outlines the responsibilities of Aaron and the Levite priests. The sons of Kohath carry the holy things. Aaron and sons cover the ark of the testimony with a vail, badger skins, a blue cloth and shall put in the staves thereof. The sons of Gershon between the ages of 30 and 50 are in charge of the tabernacle curtains. The sons of Merari between the ages of 30 and 50 are in charge of the tabernacle boards, bars, pillars and sockets thereof. If you want to live a good moral life, you need to understand these very important words of God. Otherwise, enjoy eternal hellfire, heathen.

The Lord spake unto Moses some more in chapter 5. "Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead." So I guess these sad folks just get shunned out of their camps and are left to fend for themselves in the desert? But he's a just God who loves you. God also explains that people need to pay up to be forgiven for their sins. Let the trespass be recompensed unto the Lord. God needs the money. He is saving up for a down payment on his first house.

Then finally the story gets interesting. Adultery, hooray! If a man suspects his wife is having an affair, they can go before a high priest with a meal offering of a tenth part of an ephah of barley meal (without oil or perfume, obviously). The priest in turn will put some dust into a bottle of holy water and put a jealousy offering in the woman's hands. If cheating couples of today would just do this, so many marriages could be saved. The divorce rate would plummet. We must spread the good news! Anyway, the woman drinks some bitter water and the priest casts a spell (sorry, witches, but that's pretty much what is happening here). The bitter water will travel through the woman to her very bowels. If she's innocent of adultery, she will remain fertile. If she's guilty, her gut and legs will rot away and she'll be a curse among her people. This is the law of jealousies.

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.