The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

Back to one of my previous premises. I don’t see the point of being an atheist. Or, as they are now most fashionably called, a “humanist,” for Pete’s sake. Seems like as soon as a word gets a bad rap with the group it labels, they come up with some new word to spin them in a different direction. “Afro-American” is one example. “Gay” is another.

Anyway, what do they get out of it? The only benefit I see is the freedom to do anything you want to, without feelings of remorse or guilt. Someone else have something you want? Take it. Don’t like someone? Beat ’em up. Kill ’em. Whatever. There’s no moral code except, of course, the law of the land, and that’s nowhere near uniform. I’m not a student of Sharia law, but from the little I know it seems very different from, say, the laws of the United States and, in fact, Oklahoma. But that’s another subject. The point is, you get born, you live and then you die. End of story. Pretty wretched existence, if you ask me. On the other hand, if you believe in God, heaven, nirvana, the happy hunting grounds, or whatever, at least you have something to look forward to. You also have something that gives meaning to your existence.

Imagine how the slaves would have fared if they didn’t believe in some kind of afterlife. Life was already and always so incredibly cruel and hard for many, if not most, of them I don’t believe they could have survived without the promise of a better place (Swing Low, Sweet Chariot).  How did the Chinese “coolies” survive? Or the Irish? Or any other group that was tortured and humiliated without recourse? They found their recourse in the presence of God and in the afterlife. There was another group, of course, who used some kind of God to justify criminal activity, and still another that said, in effect, “screw God. I’m going after what I want now; maybe I’ll pray later.”

I wonder if Maher (or the other “humanists”) would hang on to their belief there was no help except on earth if his son, or daughter, was diagnosed with cancer? The old saying, of course, is “there are no atheists in foxholes.” I would hope they’d have the courage to remain steadfast, and not suddenly begin seeking extra-human help. But I know from bitter experience that many would fall on their knees and pray for their child to be healed, as I did. Not that it helped; my son died, anyway. And then I, too, became a “humanist” for a time. But other events have happened since that have brought me back to strong and sincere belief. I won’t go into the details, because everyone’s beliefs are their own, and often are founded on wisps of truth that would mean nothing to someone else.

As I’ve said before, my biggest problem with the “humanists” taking God out of our schools, government offices/buildings, etc., is that they take with Him our moral code, leaving nothing in its stead. And perhaps that’s why there are so many thieves, liars, perverts, sexual deviants, and other unsavory people in positions of power in our local and national government, and in our corporations. If there’s nothing in heaven to guide us, there’s nothing on earth to stop us.

I’m about through, here, but I would sincerely be interested in knowing what moral standards guide Maher’s life, and from whence they come. And I’d love to know why the ten commandments are so intrusive we don’t want to see them in public. I already know why “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” doesn’t work. If a jidahist, for example, thinks it’s appropriate to blow up a restaurant full of people, then “do unto others” doesn’t keep him from doing it. Do you follow that?

Okay, I’m through. Let me just say what I started out to say some time ago. I think Bill Maher is an arrogant, smirking, narcissist. And not just because of his liberal bumfoolery or, of course, his race. if he was a republican, or afro-american, or native american, or eskimo, I’d still think he was one.

Eldridge Hubbard once told us to “Pray like there is no help on earth, and work like there is no help in heaven.” That seems to me  a pretty sound life philosophy.

Sorry I’ve had my head under a rock or something, but I just discovered the abbreviation B.C.E., used in connection with a date: 2500 B.C.E. I couldn’t figure out what it meant, so I Googled it and found it stands for “Before Common Era,” and is used by people who would rather not bring religion (i.e., Christ) into the equation. Talk about hiding your head under a rock. So then I find out they don’t like A.D., either, so they’ve substituted C.E. The reference on Google says those definitions will probably gradually become the common way of expressing those two periods. What?

Uhmmm… pardon me, but does that make any sense to you at all? I mean the two periods are pretty obviously based on the (representative) date Jesus was born. Like “Before Christ,” and “Anno Domini” (year of our Lord.) But I don’t like the thought of making some religious figure the center of my calendar, so I’m going to put my hands over my ears and go “Yayayayayayayayayayayaya” until it goes away. Obviously, the way to avoid using BC and AD is to use some calendar other than the Gregorian. Like the Julian, for example.  Oops. That’s based on the same focal date: the birth of Christ.

Maybe the Babylonian Calendar? Well, it seems that one doesn’t have any starting point. And a calendar kind of needs a starting point, except no one really knows with any degree of accuracy, when the world started, so we can’t really start there. The Jewish calendar won’t work, because it’s religious, too, but at least it has a starting point — the result of adding all the ages of people in the bible back to creation — although everyone, even the Jews, admit that’s a figure you can’t actually hang your hat on. The thing is, since we can’t really pinpoint the beginning of the world, a really simple workaround is to pick a date, like Jesus’ birthday, and count days before it as minus, and days after it as plus. That way you don’t have to know the world’s precise starting point, and any date you happen to find by carbon dating or any other method, fits easily into your calendar. Wow. Me, Pope Gregory, genius!

But I digress. Okay, we can’t find a calendar that really works without bringing some kind of religious belief into it. Damn. Wait! Here’s a solution! Let’s just take out the word “Christ,” substitute something else, like “common,” and that will take care of it. Bam! Christ goes away. Like… ummm… I don’t like the sun, because it has a lot of religious connotations, like from the Egyptians and so forth. So I’m going to make it go away by renaming it, ummm, Herbie. Yeah. That’ll do it.

Watch it. There are some really stupid people out there.

What if the things Jesus said are true? That is, basically, believe it and you can receive it; you have the power; the kingdom is within you, etc., etc.  In other words, what if — as many before me have suggested — Jesus was the first “Mind Over Matter” guy? The first Maxwell Maltz, Tony Robbins, Joseph Murphy or Napoleon Hill. Note I’m not telling you this is true; I’m just offering it for discussion. If it were true, however, the Lord’s Prayer might have gone something more like this:

Manifest Consciousness
I know you are there, and I respect you.
Clear a place in my mind and heart for your presence
Empower me, in spite of all difficulties
To bring your vision into reality.
Satisfy my daily needs and desires
Clear my mind of my past failures and disappointments
Rekindle my belief in the potential of others
Keep me from distractive thoughts
And let nothing stand in the way of my fulfillment.
So be it.

Hmmmmm.

Whatever we take from a casual reading of the Old Testament, the truth is the Jews weren’t monotheistic; many gods abounded. Want proof? How about Yaweh commanding the Israelites to “have no other god before me.” Obviously not necessary if there were no other gods. (A man named Colin Wells, by the way, in an article published by Boston University in their Journal of Humanities and the Classics, delved into this subject with style and substance.)

But beyond the Jews, gods were of course ubiquitous and timeless. As I said in another piece, “From the cave men who might have worshiped the moon, or a polar bear, to the Egyptians, Romans, and up to present day. All had some sort of physical representation of their god or gods, mostly human. With all the human characteristics inherent in themselves, their tribe, their society. Good and bad. Like the God in the bible.”

So how did all those gods get boiled down into one? Where did that phenomenon originate? Fascinatingly enough, Wells tells us it was an inevitable byproduct of the Age of Reason, beginning around 800 BC, when the Greeks upgraded the alphabet to include vowels, making it, as Wells says, “a much more flexible and precise instrument.”

He continues, “For writing and thinking go together, and the dawn of this new literary age was simultaneously the dawn of reason.”

I’m stating it much too simplistically, but this new age of intro- and extrospection gave rise a couple of hundred years or so later to an early naturalism, in which the Greek philosopher Thales decided to explain the world in secular terms, thus inventing science. Thales proposed that nature could be explained by a single unitary principle – water, which he saw as an inherently divine material substance. Later Air, Fire, and the Infinite were added by his followers.  In other words, all of nature could be explained by the existence of these four divine – but not Divine – agents. No supreme overarching, originating authority needed – nature could do and has done quite well all by itself; no “gods” or “spirits” needed. If you think about it a moment, I think you’ll understand, as I do now, what a momentous hypothesis this was – in the face of thousands of years of gods of all sorts that could somehow overrule and manipulate nature.

As Wells says in his essay, “Thales forever split this world, creating two separate conceptual realms, the natural and the supernatural—or in the common synecdoche, the seen and the unseen—that didn’t exist before. Rather, they existed, but the hard-and-fast conceptual boundary between them didn’t. Putting up that boundary was the most significant act in the history of human thought.”

Because his thoughts could be described and explained coherently – thanks to the new alphabet – Thales was able to publish them, which inspired new areas of thought as well as criticism among those who read them.

After countless centuries of “gods,” this postulation was difficult for most of the world to accept. A couple of centuries later, along came Plato and his hybrid philosophy of the Demiurge, “a divine craftsman who shapes the material world after ideal forms that exist on a perfect immaterial plane,” which Aristotle later called an “Unmoved Mover.” Something like the “Great Watchmaker,” I guess. Not a god per se, but a prime mover who sets the events in motion.

So we creep along. Centuries later the Jews assimilate this “Unmoved Mover,” analogous to one responsible entity above nature,  but move him from a prime mover to one who is still interested in what happens in his creation, and begin the transition to one god. One small problem – how to make this idea palatable to, well, all the “pagans” out there. So along comes Philo, a contemporary of Jesus, who writes: “God is One, but he has around him numberless potencies.”  Again according to Wells, “Philo’s ‘potencies’ would soon become the angels and demons (including Satan) whom early Christians would equate with the traditional gods of Greek polytheism as Christianity split off from this evolving Jewish tradition.”

Basically what I hear Wells saying is until the thought appeared that there was no god, that nature was everything, with no extranatural authority, then and only then could there be any dispute about the existence or non-existence of God. Not “a” god, but God with a capital G.

The Jews, and much of the rest of the world, reluctant to believe they were here by themselves, at the mercy of nature, with no recourse, took to this idea and expanded it. As Voltaire opined: “if god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.” Needless to say, there was widespread belief in “gods” of some kind, and always had been.

One important change here was the transition to a new kind of “belief.” In fact, until this point it was not really necessary to believe in the god you were petitioning; petitioning the gods was more the act of saying the right words and hoping there would be a response. Faced with the possibility that gods might not be or have been required at all to create and regulate the world, the Jews and others felt compelled to sew up that problematic possibility with the invention of a God who not only created the earth, but also inserted Himself into the lives of His creations.

This had to be done not in the manner of the Greek and Roman gods, who were for the most part very much like the humans who created them, and who were each responsible for some geologic formation or human emotion. This required the creation of a new kind of god – an all powerful god who, to quote my old Catechism, “was then, is now, and forever shall be.” As Wells says, “In Darwinian terms, rational inquiry changed the religious environment, and  exclusive monotheism was the new class of religion that evolved as a result.”

Obviously we couldn’t have a plethora of gods squabbling with each other. Someone needed to be in charge, which presented another problem: which of the contemporary gods to choose as The God among all those out there: El Elion (“God Most High”)? El Olam (“God Eternal”)? El Shaddai (“God the Mountain”)? El Ro’i (“God All-Seeing”)? Hadad/Ba’al (the Storm God)? Dagon (God of the Harvest)?

The Jews solved this problem by simply entering into a kind of “my god can beat your god” competition. Consider the confrontation in 1 Kings 18, in which Elijah tells Ahab to gather all the people of Israel, and 450 prophets of Ba’al, and meet him on Mount Carmel.

Then Ba’al’s followers cut a bull into pieces and set it on a wooden altar, as did Elijah by himself, for he was the only one left of the Lord’s prophets, due to Jezebel’s purge. Long story short, the test was to see which god could ignite his bull and his altar. Ba’al couldn’t strike the match, and Elijah’s Lord could, settling the matter.

So then Elijah called to the Israelites and told them to gather the 450 prophets of Ba’al together and take them to the Kishon valley, where every last one was slaughtered. Which set the stage for countless acts in the bible in which the Lord’s (Yaweh’s) followers – or Yaweh Himself – slaughters everyone they can find who do not accept Yaweh as the one true god.

Not that the Jews are undefeatable. But their belief is so set that even when they lose a battle they assume it’s not evidence of their god being weaker, but of Him causing their defeat as punishment for some sin they have committed (which also sounds pretty Catholic.)

Eventually the Jews evolve from knowledge of, but not necessarily belief in, other gods, to belief in one and only one God, made clear by the author in Isaiah 44:6: “This is what the Lord says— Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.”

All this, of course, is the result of detailed research about the times, the people, and the social structure, and appears to be in contradiction with the old testament, in which God creates heaven, earth, and all its inhabitants, including man and woman.

However, God does use the plural in Genesis, when he says “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” Was he inferring there were other gods inhabiting the chaos with Him, or was He just using the royal “we”?

Is a puzzlement.

It does raise a pretty serious question, though. If I choose to believe in a god rather than whatever science offers, what god – or kind of god – should it be?

First, it should obviously be one capable of at least getting things started on Earth, then either walking away or staying to watch (and possibly measure) the result.

Second, if my god is going to involve himself with the affairs of his creation, he should be the kind of god Jehovah Himself claimed to be – and obviously was not: “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth; keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” Wow. He was so not that.

The city of Gibeon is being attacked  by the armies of the five kings because the inhabitants have made peace with Joshua and the Israelites. So the men of Gibeon send word to Joshua, who is camped about twenty miles away at Gilgal. Joshua and his army march all night and reach Gibeon the next morning, catching the five kings and their armies by surprise. Then the Lord steps in and causes confusion in the five kings’ armies, raining great stones on them from the heavens – referred to as hailstones in many translations — letting Joshua’s forces slaughter and chase after them as they try to escape to the hills.

Worried that his enemies might return to their homes under cover of darkness, regroup, and return in force, Joshua makes a request of the Lord, saying: “Sun — in Gibeon stand still; and moon — in the valley of Ajalon.” In other words, “give me time before night falls to complete this victory.”

“And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.” Obviously there is a tremendous amount of controversy about this verse. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way of scientifically proving whether or not it really happened, since there is no information from precise instruments from that period in time. However, it has been scoffed at by a vast majority of scientists, astronomists, and just about everyone else, except for true believers.

Problems abound such as “for that to really happen the earth would have to stop rotating, or as least slow down dramatically, which would cause catastrophic damage to life everywhere.” The atheistic view was propounded in the classic play about the Scopes “Monkey Trial,” “Inherit the Wind.” Drummond asks “Have you ever pondered just what would naturally happen to the earth if the sun stood still? If they say that the sun stood still, they must’ve had a notion that the sun moves around the earth. Think that’s the way of things? Or don’t you believe the earth moves around the sun?”

Brady responds that he has faith in the bible.

Drummond: “Now if what you say factually happened— if Joshua halted the sun in the sky— that means the earth stopped spinning on its axis; continents toppled over each other, mountains flew out into space. And the earth, arrested in its orbit, shriveled to a cinder and crashed into the sun. How come they missed this tidbit of news?”

He goes on to ask if Brady believes in natural law, to which Brady responds: “Natural law was born in the mind of the Heavenly Father. He can change it, cancel it, use it as He pleases. It constantly amazes me that you apostles of science, for all your supposed wisdom, fail to grasp this simple fact.”

A perfect answer from a true believer’s point of view. After all, if God is able to stop the rotation of the earth He’s certainly capable of keeping everything in place when He does it.

In searching for a reasonable explanation, some have suggested a brilliant comet came into view at that moment, and not only lit up the area, but also rained “stones” down on the five kings armies. That would either have been one of history’s biggest and most fortuitous coincidences, or, of course, it would have been placed there by God.

The problem, it seems to me, is a too literal interpretation of the words by non-believers. Looking past what was said to the effect, we find there was “daylight” for 24 hours. The suggestion of the comet might work. Another possibility is simply the creation of a great light in the sky – much like the light that heralded the birth of Jesus. As for the “stones,” hailstones the size of a bowling ball have been reported, which – falling at a speed of one hundred miles an hour — would certainly kill anyone they hit. Act of God not necessary for a hailstorm; just another fortuitous coincidence.

Like pretty much everything else in the bible, though; anything is possible for God. Whether you believe or not is up to you.

So Moses died at the age of one hundred and twenty, and the Lord buried him in a valley near the town of Beth-Peor, and Joshua took his place as leader of the Israelites. One day the Lord told Joshua to lead Israel across the Jordan to “the land I am giving to all of you,” saying “I’ve commanded you to be strong and brave. Don’t ever be afraid or discouraged! I am the LORD your God, and I will be there to help you wherever you go.” So Joshua gathered the tribal leaders and approached the Jordan.

Then the Lord told Joshua to have the priests go a little way into the river, which they did, and the Jordan stopped flowing as if someone had built a dam across it, and the Israelites crossed over. When they were across, the Jordan started flowing again.

They set up camp at Gilgal, near Jericho. One day Joshua saw a man with his sword drawn standing some distance in front of him, and asked whether he was on the side of the Israelites or on the side of their enemies. The man answered “Neither. I am Prince of Jehovah’s host.” Hearing those words, Joshua “fell on his face to the earth” and asked what the Lord wanted him to do.

There seems to be some controversy about who or what this “man” was: an angel, the archangel Michael, Christ, or Jehovah Himself. However, it seems to be made clear in Joshua 6:2, which describes Jehovah speaking to Joshua about the coming battle. He gives him very detailed instructions on how to defeat Jericho, which is shut tight against the invaders.

These involve the ark, and seven priests, and seven trumpets, and the Israelites in a mass march around the town. On the seventh day they march around the city seven times, and on the seventh time the priests blow the trumpets, and Joshua commands the Israelites to shout, and the walls of the city come tumbling down. (You can find a very interesting description of the event from a military perspective in the Warfare History Network[1])

This was quite an achievement, since the walls apparently were made of stone six feet thick and fifteen feet high, topped with mud brick to a height in places of forty-six feet. Could they have walked around the city seven times in a day? Well, cities were a lot different then. Jericho was about nine acres in area, in an amoeba-like shape, surrounded by that huge wall. So the Israelites would have had to march about three thousand feet to get completely around it, or a little over a half mile. That would have taken them, at a normal marching pace of 3.4 miles per hour, just about an hour of marching time, disregarding problems with terrain.

According to the Warfare History Network, Joshua’s army was “a large force led by experienced commanders and equipped with the same weapons found in Egyptian and Canaanite armies of the day. It was highly trained and capable of executing a broad array of tactical maneuvers, including special operations and the ability to take fortified cities by storm. Its commander was a charismatic general, a veteran of many battles who had been a soldier all his life.”

imagine the terror that army must have caused the thousand or so inhabitants, watching a horde of seasoned troops circling their walls, hearing the wailing sound of the shofars, the shouting of thousands of voices, as they sat huddled in their homes.

“And they destroyed all that was in the city, from man even to woman, from young even to aged, and to ox, and sheep, and ass, by the mouth of the sword, and burned the city with fire, and all that was in it.” This was to signify that the conquest of Jericho was not for plunder, but as a sign of God’s vengeance against those who did not worship Him. But of course any treasure found – silver, gold, vessels of iron or bronze – these were taken for Jehovah’s treasury.

In spite of the interdiction to take nothing away from Jericho for personal use, Achan lusted after some silver and gold that he found, took it and hid it under his tent. When Joshua found he had done so, at the command of Jehovah he took everything from him, and sent him and his family, and his sons and daughters, and his flock, and his tent, and everything that he owned to the valley of Achor, where the Israelites stoned them to death and burned them.

Evidently forgetting His speech on Mount Sinai, where He proclaimed that Jehovah is “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth; keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.”

In fact, the number of people killed by God, or by others at His command, is staggering. Adding up the specific numbers given in the text, the total comes to 2,821,364. But this number, of course, does not include unnumbered events like the great flood, the plagues of Egypt, the killing of the first born, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. Adding estimates of these brings the total number by some estimates closer to at 25 million. Thanks be to Him for sending Jesus, who brought the concept of forgiveness, or the world might be empty as a basketball today.

As I’ve said before, those were different times, and the events in the bible were designed to impress the Jews (and others) of God’s power and the penalty for not worshipping Him as Jehovah, the one God. So the proof had to be indisputable and devastating, which it certainly is. As overboard as those events might seem to many of us, certain religious factions today still follow His old testament lead, ignoring the promises of Jesus, killing “idolators” and “sinners,” of which the destruction of the twin towers on 9/11 is a recent example.

It occurs to me that the authors of the old testament were presenting God as a stern, implacable, idealistic (to their way of thinking) father, who loved his “children” but punished them if they strayed from the path He had set for them.

Next Jehovah directs Joshua to the city of Ai and tells him how to attack it, which Joshua does, and kills everyone in the city – 12,000 souls – then sets the city on fire and destroys it.

I can’t discover exactly why God wanted to destroy Ai, unless it was part of a concerted effort to wipe out the Canaanites, who were, it seems idolaters, worshipping a number of gods, including Maltec, who evidently required that children be sacrificed as burnt offerings. It appears that Jehovah was intent on massacring anyone who worshipped false gods, and committed various “sins,” such as  idolatry, incest, adultery, child sacrifice, homosexuality, and bestiality. Some call it genocide; others call it capital punishment, since the old testament clearly states that anyone who does those things deserves to die. So Joshua, among others, becomes God’s final solution, the executioner of thousands who have sinned, and whom God believes are beyond redemption.

[1] https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/military-history/joshua-in-canaan/

Jehovah, Moses, and the Israelites then begin a killing spree of mass proportions – by the sword, by fire, by the earth swallowing people up, by hanging, and (we suppose) by various other means. But this all pales against the slaughter of Midian, accomplished by 12,000 soldiers from the 12 tribes.

“And they warred against Midian, as Jehovah had commanded Moses, and killed every male.  And the sons of Israel took the women of Midian captive, and their infants, and all their livestock, and all their possessions. And they plundered all their wealth.”

Not finished yet. Jehovah commands Moses to “kill every male among the infants; yea, you shall kill every woman having known a man by lying with a male.”

Which leaves, of course, only virgins, of which Moses evidently found 32,000.

This gives us a benchmark by which we might be able to approximate the population of Midian. I’m not smart enough to do that, but it obviously had to be in the many, many thousands. Midian was also evidently a rich city, yielding vast amounts of booty to the conquering Israelites: 675,000 sheep, 72,000 oxen, 61,000 asses, 32,000 virgins, plus tons of gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, and lead, including over 400 pounds of gold jewelry, which Moses “placed in the Lord’s sacred tent to remind Israel of what had happened.”

Moses then distributed all this booty among the tribes.

Left to smolder about how the Israelites and their God have treated him and his people, the Pharaoh has another change of heart. Actually God makes that happen, saying “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he shall follow after them; and I will get me honor upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host: and the Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah.” There He goes again. “I’ll teach those dratted Egyptians a lesson, and they’ll find out how powerful Jehovah really is.”

So Pharaoh gathers his armies and tells them to chase down the escaping slaves, slaughter them all, and retrieve all the valuables they took with them. “And the Egyptians pursued after them, all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army, and overtook them encamping by the sea, beside Pi-hahiroth, before Baal-zephon.”

Seeing Pharaoh’s army drawing near, the Israelis were naturally frightened. With the army behind them, and the Red Sea in front of them, there was no place to run. They appealed to Moses, who appealed to God. Then the pillar of fire moved behind the Israelites, preventing the Egyptian army from attacking. “And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and Jehovah caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all the night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.”

In addition to the cloud and pillar of fire, which are two pretty good miracles, there are actually two immense ones here: 1) parting the Red Sea and 2) drying and firming the ground that had lain under it, making a road for the Israelites to walk across. The Egyptians pursued, but Jehovah hindered them, knocking off their chariot wheels, making the going so difficult the Egyptians said “let us flee from the face of Israel; for Jehovah fighteth for them.”  But  before they could escape, Jehovah told Moses to stretch his hand over the sea “so the waters would come against the Egyptians, their chariots, and their horsemen.”

Moses stretched out his hand, and the sea returned, and “covered the chariots, and the horsemen, even all the host of Pharaoh that went in after them into the sea; there remained not so much as one of them.” The entire Egyptian army slain in the blink of an eye.

“And Israel saw the great work which Jehovah did upon the Egyptians, and the people feared Jehovah: and they believed in Jehovah, and in his servant Moses.” So I guess there was some kind of method to His madness, even if it necessitated killing tens of thousands of people.

The Israelites then spent 40 years in the desert (there’s that 40-year time frame again), eating manna that Jehovah sent from heaven, drinking water that Moses made sweet or brought forth from rocks.

When they reach Mount Sinai, Jehovah calls Moses to the mountain, and gives him three days to “sanctify” his people, saying He will appear in a cloud, so “the people will hear in My speaking with thee.”

On the third day Moses brought the people out and stationed them at the base of the mountain, whereupon Jehovah appeared as fire and smoke, and the mountain trembled. Moses spoke, “and God answered him by a voice.“ There’s considerable disagreement about this line. The Cambridge Bible interprets it not as a voice per se but as thunder, which was taken by the people to be God’s voice. Matthew Poole says the voice spoke in plain, distinct, and audible words, so the people might hear. Gill’s Exposition says God’s voice was “a still and gentle one, in order to encourage and comfort him (Moses).” The word kole apparently works for any of those interpretations, and many more, so what kind of “voice” God spoke with is evidently up to the reader.

At any rate, God calls Moses to the top of the mountain and gives him a long list of laws and covenants, including the ten commandments. While Moses is receiving this, his people become bored, and ask Aaron to make them some gods to worship. So he gathers all their gold, evidently melts it down, and casts a golden calf.

God, seeing this, is angry, and threatens to destroy them. Moses intercedes for them, and God relents. He gives Moses two tablets He has written, bearing the laws, and tells him to go down and set his people straight. Moses goes down the mountain and, seeing what his people are doing, becomes angry and smashes the tablets.

Then he calls the Sons of Levi to him and tells them to go through the camp and kill the most egregious offenders, no matter who they are. They found them in abundance, killing three thousand men. But evidently no women, showing us again how unimportant women are in the old testament.

A little later God and Moses have a conversation, and when God decides to leave, he covers Moses with His hand as He passes by, shielding him, because man cannot look in His face and live. When He has passed Moses, he lifts his hand and Moses sees His back, but not His face.

The Lord tells Moses to hew two new tablets, and He writes the commandments on them. Then a rather strange thing. Jehovah descends in the cloud, and proclaims what a wonderful god He is, saying “Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth; keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.”  Which to me, at least, doesn’t jibe with the God I’ve come to know so far. But that’s just me, I guess.

Then in interminable conversations with Moses, God defines an endless procession of laws, regulations, and guidelines for building an ark, and altars, and tables, and robes, unclean animals, and purification after childbirth and death, and much, much, much more. Among them is the admonition to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” which Jesus will repeat much later.

So begin the plagues.

Then, of course, come the frogs, and gnats, and flies, and livestock dying, and boils on man and beast, hail, locusts, darkness, and the threat of death to all newborns. But still the Pharaoh would not budge. Why? Because God (Jehovah) had hardened the Pharaoh’s heart, “that (His) wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.”

Wait. God puts Moses, the Israelites, the Egyptians, and the Pharaoh through all of this in order to glorify Himself? Yup. That’s what the book says. I have a problem with that. I understand the King of Egypt telling the midwives to kill all the Israeli first-born. I understand Herod, later on, to kill all of the infant male Jews. I understand why Hitler did what he did. Don’t condone any of it, of course, but they all did it for a purpose – the Pharaoh and Herod to hold on to their dominance, Hitler to build a new race. I don’t understand anyone, including God, murdering people just to prove He/he/she can.

After all, if He could harden the Pharaoh’s heart, he obviously could have softened it, and caused Pharaoh to let the Israelites go right after Aaron’s rod/snake’s big lunch. Or not make them captives in the first place. Instead He sends unimaginable misery on the Egyptians, at the same time “hardening the Pharaoh’s heart,” keeping him from relenting “that His wonders may be multiplied.”

Causing the slaughter of the newborns – the first Passover.

God lays down a set of guidelines for the Israelites to follow, including marking their doors with blood. I have another problem with that episode. If God is really God, he knows who is in every house, both Egyptians and Israelites. Why would His people have to mark their doors so the angel of death would pass them by? This is another instance, I believe, of the storytellers not thinking deeply enough about the story to make it believable to a neutral reader. Of course it was told in a time and in such a way that those who heard it didn’t question it seriously. The centuries that have passed since give us – or at least give me – another perspective.

Anyway, on one dark midnight God (Jehovah) smites all the first-born in the land of Egypt, including the Pharaoh’s son and all the first-born cattle. After which God evidently released His hold on Pharaoh’s heart, for he calls for Aaron and Moses, saying “get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve Jehovah, as ye have said.”

Whereupon the Israelites demand all the riches of Egypt – the jewels, gold, silver, etc. – prepare food for the trip, pack up and go, having “despoiled the Egyptians.”

Free at last, after four hundred and thirty years of bondage. And “God led the people about, by the way of the wilderness by the Red Sea: and the children of Israel went up armed out of the land of Egypt,” giving them a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to lead them.

But like any good story, this one doesn’t end there.

It’s the Horatio Alger story on steroids: the poor youth cast away by his parents who becomes the ruler of a vast empire, loses favoritism, is persecuted and eventually saves his flock by destroying the enemy. Wow! No wonder it’s such a memorable tale.

According to Wikipedia, “The modern scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is legendary, and not historical, although a Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C. Certainly no Egyptian sources mention Moses or the events of Exodus–Deuteronomy, nor has any archaeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure.”

Moses is, however, mentioned in many non-Judean writings. For example, Diodorus Siculus, a prominent and well-respected historian and author in the 4^th century BC, describes Moses as a wise and courageous leader who left Egypt and colonized Judaea, founded cities, established a temple and religious cult, and issued laws. Of course that reference – the earliest in non-Judean literature – was written many centuries after the events took place – if indeed they did.

Of course, whether Moses was real, or whether he did all that the bible says he did, is not the focus of this book. It’s a wonderful story that drives home the bible’s main goal, which is similar to the commandment stated in Deuteronomy and later restated by Jesus: “The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.”

Similar, yes, but as far as the intent of the old testament is concerned, it might be restated as “The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt trust and obey the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, or severe consequences are sure to follow.”

Which pretty much sums up the action in the Moses story, which begins with a theme that will be reprised many centuries later, at the time of Jesus’ birth. Joseph has died, and there is a new Pharaoh. Seeing how the Israelite have prospered, and their numbers are growing, the new Pharaoh worries that “the people of the children of Israel may become more and mightier than we, and may join with our enemies to defeat us.” He therefore commands the Hebrew midwives to kill all newborn children during birth if they are male.  But because the midwives feared God, they refused to obey the king’s orders, and let the males live, saying the Hebrew women are too healthy and too quick, not giving us enough time to get there for the birth. So the Israelites continued to multiply, growing more and more powerful.

Seeing this, and fearing them, Pharaoh gives the order to “cast every son that is born into the river.”

During this time, Moses was born, and his mother hid him for three months. “When she could no longer hide him, she made for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch; and she put the child therein, and laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.”

By the way, the story of his being found in the bullrushes and adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter is very much like the story of Sargon of Akkad’s Akkadian account of his own origins, which evidently preceded the Moses story by several centuries.

My mother, the high priestess, conceived; in secret she bore me
She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid
She cast me into the river which rose over me.

Hmmm. Well, a good story deserves retelling.

So the Pharaoh’s daughter finds him, adopts him, and names him Moses, or Moshe, a name which means ”I drew him out (meshitihu) of the water.” (This explanation links it to a verb mashah, meaning “to draw out”, which makes the Pharaoh’s daughter’s declaration a play on words. The princess made a grammatical mistake which is prophetic of his future role in legend, as someone who will “draw the people of Israel out of Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea.” Making it a very cool name, indeed.

One day, when he had become a grown man, Moses saw an Egyptian “smiting” a Hebrew, so Moses “smote” the Egyptian and killed him. When Pharaoh heard about it and looked for Moses to slay him, Moses ran away to the land of Midian, where he had a son for whom he chose the name Gershom, for, he said, “I have been a stranger in a strange land.”

Eventually the king of Egypt died, but the Israelites remained in bondage, crying out to the Lord for release. The Lord heard their cries, and remembering his covenant with Abraham, decided to do something about it.

So He sent an angel in a burning bush (evidently God’s preferred method of communicating with Moses), spoke to Moses from “the midst of the bush” and introduced Himself, and told Moses He was going to send him “unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.”

Moses, of course, asks “Who am I” to do that.

God explains “            I will put forth my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that (the Pharaoh) will let you go.”

But wait, there’s more. God then tells Moses “ye shall not go empty,” but will take “jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment… and ye shall despoil the Egyptians.”

Then, so Moses won’t have any trouble convincing the Israelites that he is doing God’s work, God gives him the magic staff, that turns back and forth from a rod to a serpent at Moses’ command. Moses still balks, worried that he is not eloquent enough, and God gives him Aaron to speak for him.

Finally out of excuses, Moses packs up his family, grabs Aaron, and heads for Egypt. Once there, he convinces his people of his mission and authority, and goes to see the Pharaoh, demanding that he let his people go. The Pharaoh, of course, declines. Moses then calls for a strike by the Israelites, who stop working and start praying. This irritates Pharaoh, and he comes down on them, causing Moses to ask God why his people are still being punished.

God kind of skirts the issue, telling Moses to take Aaron back to the Pharaoh, and when the Pharaoh asks him to do a wonder, to tell Aaron to cast down his magic rod. Which he does, and it becomes a snake. Which is evidently not an astonishing event in Egypt, because Pharaoh’s sorcerers and wise men then all cast down their rods and they also all become serpents. Oops. No problem, though, because Aaron’s rod/snake immediately swallows up all the others.

Pharaoh still won’t relent, so God directs Moses to take his rod to the river,  and smite it, upon which the river is turned to blood, as is all the other water in Egypt.