The book of exodus comes between the book of genesis and the book of leviticus. It is the second book in the pentateuch, which are the five foundational volumes of Christianity, Islam and Judaism (the “abrahamic” religions). The book details the journey and events around the character of moses, however it is supremely important in those religions because it lays down the law that their god expects everyone to follow (but which no one does).
For more analysis about the complete journey and the events of moses et. al. (books two, three, four and five), and why the story is nothing but an obvious work of fiction, please see “exodus? Get outta here!” (on this web site).
It’s believed that exodus was compiled between 800-550 BCE, however the earliest portions of the work are found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, circa 250 BCE.
As usual, no attempt has been made to capitalize words describing fictitious characters and places.
So, on with the story…
The chapter starts by reminding us about 11 of the sons of jacob: reuben, simeon, levi, judah, issachar, zebulun, benjamin, dan, naphtali, gad and asher, and how they, and the others that came with them (70 in total according to genesis chapter 46) traveled to Egypt (due to a famine in Canaan). There they met with their brother joseph (whom they had earlier sold into slavery) and how the entire clan had prospered and had “increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty, and the land was filled with them“.
Eventually “joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation“, but because their descendants had done so well, the new king of Egypt (unnamed of course) started to worry that the “children of Israel are more and mightier than we“. To counter the anticipated problem, the pharaoh turned the Israelites into slaves. However he still found them troublesome, so he made them perform harder labors such as building with mortar and bricks (including the cities of pithom and raamses) as well as all manner of service in the field. There is the question as to how the pharaoh managed any of that if the Israelites really were “mightier than we”, but we’ll let that slide. No one is exactly sure where those cities were, although their location can be speculated upon reasonably accurately. There is of course no evidence that the Israelites built the cities.
That still didn’t satisfy the pharaoh because he spoke to the Hebrew midwives (of which there were two: shiphrah and puah) and told them to murder any Israelite babies if they were male. The midwives declined the order and, when asked what had happened, lied to the pharaoh by telling him that the Hebrew women were more lively than Egyptian women and had their babies before the midwives could attend the births. The deception by the midwives pleased god and “he made them houses” (made their descendants prosper).
Still, the pharaoh didn’t give up easily and he charged all of his people to cast every new Hebrew baby into the river. Problem solved, right?
Of course, no ruler of a country would resort to murdering babies; instead, a simple system of taxation would go a long way to discouraging a certain group of people from wanting to remain in a country – and the ancient Egyptians had a highly organized taxation system which largely involved payment-in-kind.
So the author(s) of this “history” were aware of the names of two inconsequential midwives (who are not mentioned ever again) but not of the most important person in the land: the king (the pharaoh)? Yeah, right. The other thing to keep in mind with this chapter is the issue of scale. As we’ll see, there are up to two million Israelites involved in the “exodus”, however much of this book is written as if there are only hundreds, or perhaps only thousands of people. And are we really expected to believe that the king was as stupid as he’s made out to be? So some lies from two midwives is enough to defeat a king with all the resources that he must have had?
For a number of reasons, it’s obviously a fantasy story from the very start.
We next learn about a levite man and his levite wife and how she decided to hide her new-born baby because he was a “goodly child“. It’s not explained how a mother detects goodliness in a new-born. After three months of hiding she decided that she could no longer keep the baby secret so she constructed a raft and, in the site of the baby’s sister, abandoned the baby to float away on a nearby river.
It just so happened that shortly after the pharaoh’s daughter (no less) came down to wash herself at the river and upon seeing the raft, sent her maid (aka her slave) to fetch it. When the raft was uncovered, they saw the baby (who was understandably upset and crying), and somehow the princess just knew that the baby was a Hebrew child. All of this was still being watched by the baby’s sister who then suggested to the pharaoh’s daughter that a Hebrew woman be called to nurse the child. The pharaoh’s daughter agreed and even committed to pay wages to the nurse when she was presented.
The baby grew and was secretly brought up by the pharaoh’s daughter who called him moses “because I drew him out of the water“. Upon growing up, moses started to take an interest in the plight of his brethren – although how he learned about his heritage is unexplained. One day moses saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, and after waiting for some privacy, he murdered the Egyptian and “hid him in the sand“. This does raise an interesting point: namely that even though the ten commandments had not been handed down yet, moses knew that killing was wrong (waiting until he would not be discovered). If that’s the case, why did we need to have that particular commandment carved into stone? If that one was obvious before being told, why couldn’t it have been the “nine commandments”?
A couple of days later, moses went out walking and found two Hebrews fighting each other. Upon questioning them, one of the dudes asked moses why he had the right to intervene in their dispute: “intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian“? Since moses had performed the murder in private, it’s not explained how anyone else knew what had happened. Still, moses feared that his deed had become public, and in fact news traveled fast because when the pharaoh found out he sought to slay moses. This was too much for moses because he fled to the land of midian where he found a well at which to rest.
Continuing at a rapid pace: it turned out that the priest of the area had seven daughters who liked to use the well moses just happened to have found. The local shepherds didn’t like anyone else using their well, so they drove away the daughters. Being a kind-hearted murderer, moses stood up and helped the daughters to water their flock. The daughters returned to their father and explained how an Egyptian had assisted them in getting water. Upon hearing that, the father insisted moses be brought home to partake in their bread.
That’s not all that moses partook in because after living with them for a while, the priest gave him his daughter zipporah as a wife. Despite being “a stranger in a strange land“, it wasn’t long before they had a son – named gershom
Eventually that particular (unnamed) pharaoh died, however the bondage of the Hebrews was so bad that they cried and groaned until even god remembered his promise to them (via “his covenant with abraham, with isaac and with jacob“). Really, the omniscient creator of the universe forgot something that he had said?
More silliness. So the second-most famous kiddie in all of the religious texts just happened to be found by a member of the royal family out for a stroll? And it’s not even original fiction because a similar device was used in a much older tale: that of Sargon of Akkad – a Mesopotamian legend. And there’s no way that baby could secretly be brought up (for years and years) in a royal household. There would be too many eyes loyal to the pharaoh for a person to remain hidden. So the woman moses was to marry just happened to come down to the well he was recovering at following his flight after committing murder? It’s all just too neat to be anything other than a fiction. And by the way, is it an allegorical tale when it has elements based on earlier fictions?
Settling into his new life, moses kept the flock of his father-in-law who was now identified as jethro. On one of his outings with the sheep, moses came to mount horeb which the text calls “the mountain of god“. No one knows where that mountain is, nor why it should be endowed with god-like qualities.
Something was up that day because an angel appeared to moses as a flame coming out of a bush however the bush was not consumed by the fire. It got better because the lord spoke via the bush and told moses to take of his shoes to respect the surrounding holy ground. The lord explained who he was (again) and told moses that he had been listening to the suffering of the people back in Egypt and how he intended to rescue them and deliver them to a land of milk and honey – currently occupied by “the canaanites, and the hittites, and the amorites, and the perizzites, and the hivites, and the jebusites“.
Upon hearing that god intended him to go and have a pow-wow on the issue with the pharaoh, moses seemed reluctant and pointed out that he wouldn’t be able to answer the people when they asked him what was the name of the god that had sent him (moses) to help them escape from Egypt. The lord decided to solve that issue by stating “I AM THAT I AM” and that moses should tell them “I AM hath sent me unto you“. So presumably shouting “I AM” was the way for the listener to know for certain that moses wasn’t a nutcase? The lord then told moses to explain to the people that he was the god of their fathers (abraham, isaac and jacob) and that he fully intended to deliver them unto that land of milk and honey (even if it was currently occupied, but hey, what could possibly go wrong?).
To make the plan a little more concrete, god told moses that he must first visit the elders of Israel (who would apparently listen to a stranger) and that he would then approach the pharaoh (who would apparently listen to a stranger) and explain how the Israelites (slaves) needed a three-day holiday to journey into the wilderness to worship their god. The bigger-picture plan was that god was certain that the pharaoh would refuse and that would be an opportunity for god to get medieval on his ass – resulting in the pharaoh having a change of heart.
In fact, god was so certain of his plan that he said that the Israelite women should borrow jewels, silver, gold and raiment from their Egyptian masters – utterly without any intention of returning them on the way out of the country on their way to the promised land. That act of theft would presumably go towards making up for all the years of slavery during which the Israelites had suffered under the Egyptians?
Really, here we have the omniscient creator of the universe (and therefore of all matter and life) having to hatch a sordid little plan of heart-hardening, lies and theft to achieve an outcome? Why? Why not just tell moses to return where he would meet the people coming out of Egypt? The lord of everything could surely make the pharaoh and his army fall into a deep sleep for a day or two while the people said adios on their way out?
And bushes don’t burn without being consumed, or talk for that matter – so that’s the first instance of magic in this book. It won’t be the last.
In fact, there’s more magic immediately because, after moses repeats that he doesn’t accept that the people in Egypt will believe him if he cold-calls them with the divine plan specified in the previous chapter, god turn moses’ staff into a snake after he casts it on the ground. He then instructs moses to pick up the snake by its tail, at which point it turned back into his staff.
In case moses didn’t believe that to be enough, god instructed moses to put his hand “into thy bosom” and then withdraw it – at which point it had turned leprous. Yuck. Not to worry though because when moses repeated the act, his had had been cured. The lord then gave moses a clincher by telling him that if the people still didn’t believe that he had been sent by a god the god, he was to take water out of the river and demonstrate that it had turned into blood when poured onto the dry land.
Still, moses found an objection by pointing out that he was “slow of speech, and of a slow tongue“. This dissent angered the lord who then tried to sweeten the point by pointing out that he would have moses’ brother, aaron (the levite) who was a much better speaker, accompany him to do the talking. That and the three magic tricks were enough and the plan got the green light.
Upon getting the approval from jethro, and upon hearing that all the Egyptians who wanted him dead were deceased themselves, moses gathered his wife and sons, put them on a donkey, and set off. There was a slight downer when the lord reminded moses to use his staff to perform the magic tricks but also pointed out that the pharaoh wouldn’t be impressed as he would have had his heart hardened by the lord. That doesn’t sound like the best way to build up the confidence of someone who had recently expressed doubts about getting the job done. Perhaps trying to reassure moses, god reminded him of the plan: to tell the pharaoh that the Israelites were the lord’s chosen and if the pharaoh didn’t let them go, then he (god) would kill all the Egyptian firstborn. Wow, that certainly took it up a notch.
It’s not explained why, but as the travelers passed an inn, the lord turned up and tried to kill moses. Not to worry because moses’ wife (zipporah) whipped out a sharp stone, circumcised one of their sons, rubbed the foreskin on moses’ feet and declared that since her husband was a “bloody husband” the lord should leave them alone. This must have appeased the lord because he let them go. So why would the omniscient creator of the universe fail to kill a mere mortal upon trying, and why would such a being be talked out of an action by another of his creation, and what does some blood on someone’s feet indicate about the character of that person that wasn’t present in the few moments before the blood was forcibly placed there? Fundies, are you still certain that you want to hitch your carriage to this sort of engine?
The lord then convinced aaron to go meet moses on the “mount of god”, which he did, causing the brothers to kiss. O…kay. Upon explaining the plan and showing the magic signs, the brothers traveled back to Egypt, met the Israelite elders, explained the plan and showed the signs. Luckily, the Israelites believed the lads and “bowed their heads and worshipped” when they realized that god had remembered them.
Somehow, moses and aaron immediately got an audience with the pharaoh and demanded that he let the Israelites go on a three-day journey into the wilderness so that they could worship and sacrifice to their god. Despite being told that their god was the one who requested the leave, the pharaoh was not impressed and suggested that the people got back to their duties. In fact, the pharaoh was so unimpressed that he decided to make things harder for the people by getting them to first gather the straw that they needed to make the same quota of bricks – as opposed to simply being given the straw. That’ll show ’em.
For some reason the people were forced into being “scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble instead of straw“, and this resulted in them being beaten when they were not able to produce the required number of bricks. Whinging to the pharaoh proved to be of no help to the people because he just repeated his belief that the people were idle. This made no sense because the people were only requesting to be idle for three days and had not actually been idle yet.
Nevertheless, the people weren’t impressed with the outcome and conveyed their unhappiness to moses and aaron, saying that they were worried that the Egyptians would soon have a reason to slay them with swords no less. Keen to pass on the message, moses whinged to the lord by asking why he had organised such an evil thing to be inflicted on the people? He even went as far as to question the omniscient creator of the universe as to why he (the lord) had sent him (moses) to carry out the plan? Trying to win the debate at once, moses pointed out to the lord that the plan hadn’t been as effectual as was promised, i.e. no people had been released yet.
It’s all a silly made up fairy tale, and that’s no more obvious than when the text asserts: “And moses returned unto the lord…“. Really, so the lord had materialized and set up shop in Egypt? Where? Behind the third house on the left? So how did the author(s) of this – almost a thousand years later – know that moses “returned unto the lord” for a chat, let alone what was said?
The lord reassured moses that the plan was still on track and even went as far as to reveal his true name (as yet unused): jehovah (a.k.a. yahweh). Why would the omniscient creator of the universe feel the need to play games by hiding his own name?
Becoming repetitive, the lord reminded moses about how he had made a covenant with the Israelites that promised them deliverance into a promised land, and suggested that he go and remind the people of that. That moses did, however the people did not warm to moses’ message due to their “anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage“.
The lord then told moses to have another go at talking to the pharaoh about letting the people go, however moses reminded the lord that he wasn’t the best at public speaking (“who am of uncircumcised lips“). The lord thought the best way of dealing with the problem was to have moses (and aaron) learn a large amount of genealogy that would no doubt impress the pharaoh after he realized the many tribes that had descended from abraham, isaac and jacob. Here are the fruit of jacob’s loins (well, the males born to three of his twelve sons):
- reuben
- hanoch
- phallu
- hezron
- carmi
- simeon
- jemuel
- jamin
- ohad
- jachin
- zohar
- shaul (the son of a Canaanitish woman)
- levi (who lived to 137 years):
- gershon
- libni
- shimi
- kohath (who lived to 133 years).
- amram (both sons born to jochebed, his father’s sister). amram lived to 137 years.
- aaron (all sons born to elisheba, daughter of amminadab, sister of naashon)
- nadab
- abihu
- eleazar
- phinehas (born to a daughter of putiel)
- ithamar
- moses
- aaron (all sons born to elisheba, daughter of amminadab, sister of naashon)
- izhar
- korah
- assir
- elkanah
- abiasaph
- nepheg
- zichri
- korah
- hebron
- uzziel
- mishael
- elzaphan
- zithri
- amram (both sons born to jochebed, his father’s sister). amram lived to 137 years.
- merari:
- mahali
- mushi
- jochebed (daughter, and eventual mother to aaron and moses)
- gershon
For some reason, the offspring of the other nine sons of jacob are ignored in this chapter. Apparently the lord thought the above was enough and he urged moses to once again go to pharaoh and impress on him the need to let the above, and their armies go: “bring out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt according to their armies“. Unfortunately, moses was still stuck on his self-perceived inability to inspire verbally and once again asked “how shall pharaoh hearken unto me“. This question previously seemed to bother the lord, but he had obviously softened on the issue as the chapter ends without violence.
So moses and aaron were born to the union of their father and their great aunt. That’s more incest.
The three lifespan ages mentioned above all violate the rule specified in genesis, chapter 6 about the maximum age being reduced and set at 120 years.
The well-read will have noticed another problem, and it’s a big one. From jacob to moses is five generations (jacob -> levi -> kohath -> amram -> moses), so how is it possible that there were up to two million Israelites involved in the exodus from Egypt? And what armies? The text stresses that the Israelites were slaves (who were spending their time making bricks for the pharaoh), so how did slaves have armies? And if the text means that the Israelites were to leave in a military-like fashion (not as a disorganized rabble), then we’re back to the problem of numbers because there simply could not have been enough people in the generations under jacob to warrant the numbers that will be revealed in a later text (the book of numbers).
The lord then tried to reassure moses by telling him that he would appear like “a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet“, but then it got weird because god said that he would harden pharaoh’s heart while multiplying the signs and wonders that he would cause in the land. The lord assured moses that the pharaoh would not agree to the demands that he (moses) was being forced to put to the pharaoh. The lord then did a bit of bragging as to the show he was going to give the people of Egypt – just so that they would know with whom they were dealing as he extracted the Israelites.
So, moses (aged 80) and aaron (aged 83) approached pharaoh and performed a little preliminary trick (magic trick number zero, if you like). As the lord had requested, aaron threw down his staff and it turned into a serpent. That was a nice trick but it didn’t impress the pharaoh as much as hoped because he simply called his wise men and his sorcerers (magicians, apparently) and they reproduced the trick by throwing down their rods, turning them into serpents. Luckily, “aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods“. Unfortunately, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened and “he hearkened not unto them“. For some reason the lord then pointed that out to moses by saying “Pharaoh’s heart is hardened, he refuseth to let the people go“. Well, what did you expect, god?
Okay, okay, let’s take a moment. So the pharaoh had lost his free will? Well, then what was the point of the exercise? So the author(s) of this nonsense believed that some Egyptians were magicians who could turn their staffs into snakes? There is zero evidence for that, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the ability to do that would have made it into a large number of the writings the Egyptians left. They didn’t mention it. Just a reminder that this was all magic – something that fundies can’t stand when mentioned by other belief systems and cultures. Also, how do aaron and moses keep getting access to the most powerful person in the land? If you were to pick any king or prime-minister in the world today and demand to have an audience with that person to show off your new magic trick, how far do you think you would get?
Because of the “failure” of the first attempt, god told moses and aaron to met pharaoh at a river he frequented each morning and tell him to let the people go (to worship in the wilderness). Anticipating the result, he told aaron that he was to stretch out his staff across the water and it would turn to blood. And not only would the river turn to blood, but so would all the water throughout all the land of Egypt, including the water that was being stored in vessels of wood and stone. This aaron did – with such success that the fish died, the river smelled really bad, and the Egyptians could not drink. Abracadabra: “plague” magic trick number one.
Weirdly, this magic trick was also repeated by the pharaoh’s magicians. The text is strangely quiet as to how they were able to demonstrate their version of the trick when the water had already been turned into blood? Wouldn’t it have been a far better response if they had removed the blood from the water? As per the first magic trick, this second one (although much more impressive) didn’t impress the pharaoh and he “turned and went into his house“. Well, that’s what comes from having a hardened heart.
The waters in Egypt remained as blood for seven days and the people were forced to dig “round about the river for water to drink“. Exactly why the water “round about” the river was not also blood if all the water in Egypt had been affected, is not explained.
Continuing with the plan (via magic trick number two), the lord told aaron to stretch out his staff to produce an abundance of frogs that would appear from the river and just get everywhere, e.g. into people’s houses, beds, ovens and kneadingtroughs – which he did. Strangely, the pharaoh’s magicians were able to reproduce this trick via their own enchantments. Exactly why they would want to inflict more frogs on the general population is not explained? It’s also not explained how anyone could tell that the magic trick had been reproduced because it certainly would not be obvious that frogs had been added everywhere to a situation where frogs were already everywhere?
The pharaoh begged moses and aaron to remove the frogs and even promised to let the people go so that they could “do sacrifice unto the lord“. It looked like everything was a success because the lads said that the frogs would be removed the next day and then trotted off to have a word to the lord about their progress. The lord then removed the unwanted frogs and put them into piles where they rotted and stank. You’d think that the situation had been resolved, but once again the hardening of pharaoh’s heart proved otherwise.
So it was on with magic trick number three as aaron held out his staff and turned all the dust throughout the land of Egypt into lice. Yuck. The pharaoh’s magicians had another go at reproducing the magic trick but were unable to do so. That disappointment caused the magicians to report to the pharaoh that the tricks must have been “the finger of god“. Still, because of a hardened heart, the pharaoh did not agree to let the people go.
Magic trick number four involved the promise of swarms of flies if the pharaoh did not comply. A slight update on the plan was that god promised not to have the flies invade the lands occupied by the Israelites (“the land of goshen“). It’s not explained why they had to suffer the effects of the first three magic tricks if they were spared this one? It seems that the pharaoh did not comply because “a grievous swarm of flies” were produced. This also was too much for the pharaoh because he told moses and aaron “go ye, sacrifice to your god in the land“. Weirdly, the boys rejected this offer and explained to the pharaoh that the Israelites would risk being stoned because sacrificing would be considered an abomination by the Egyptians. It seems the issue was that the Israelites had to travel for three days into the wilderness so that the Egyptians would not see them practice the abomination of sacrifice. What? Who’s in charge? If the pharaoh was giving permission, why would the Israelites be in danger of doing what they had been authorized to do? But you do have to admire the Egyptians on this one because if you saw someone killing an animal in the name of their god by slicing a knife across its throat, you’d no doubt consider the act an abomination. It’s important to stop from time to time and remember just how creepy the people who wrote this stuff really were.
The pharaoh gave permission for the three-day sojourn, and moses promised that the flies would be removed the next day as long as the pharaoh did not “deal deceitfully any more in not letting the people go to sacrifice to the lord“. What? The pharaoh had done nothing but want to comply since the magic tricks had gone up a notch, however he was not permitted to comply due to a hardened heart. After moses reported the success to the lord, the flies were removed from the land, however once again the pharaoh reversed his decision – due to another bout of heart-hardening.
So the supposed Egyptian magicians had no problem turning staffs into snakes, turning all the water in Egypt into blood, and producing countless frogs out of thin air, but they were not able to turn dust into lice? Why? Who granted them limited magical powers? It’s revealing when a fundie refers to the “miracles” in Egypt that they will always skip over the details. It’s also revealing that the “miracles” were only what could be imagined by the author(s) writing in about 500 BCE. If they really wanted to make a statement that would make future atheists think, they could have had god deliver unto all the children of Egypt a Switch 2 ™ with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild installed – and then refuse to recharge the batteries upon first draining. Now that would have been suffering. Didn’t the lord know that we would move on from the horrors of frogs and lice when he left “his word” for his beloved creation – for all time?
It was “rinse and repeat” time because magic trick number five involved the Egyptian horses, asses, camels, oxen and sheep being killed by disease (a “murrain”) while all the Israelite animals were untouched. The loss of all of those animals in the land would have been devastating to the Egyptian economy, and of course no such event is recorded in any way by the real Egyptians. Still, the pharaoh refused to comply (due to his hardened heart).
Magic trick number six involved moses and aaron taking handfuls of ashes from a furnace and then sprinkling them “toward heaven in the sight of pharaoh“. As usual, it’s not explained how the lads could gain such easy access to the most important person in the land? The falling ashes caused boils (pus-filled bumps under the skin) to “break forth with blains upon man and upon beast“. Upon beast? It seems that the author(s) forgot that those beasts had been killed by magic trick number five. Contradiction anyone? The boils only affected Egyptian people and animals, but due to his heart-hardening, the pharaoh again refused to comply. Note that it isn’t possible to reach all the parts of Egypt by throwing handfuls of ash into the air. So was this metaphorical or was it literal? It can’t physically be literal, however there’s a lot of detail for it to be metaphorical. Over to you, fundies?
Prior to the next magic trick, there was a bit of gloating from the lord as he promised that his displays would prove his magnificence and how his name should be “declared throughout all the earth“. Amazingly, the pharaoh is accused: “as yet exaltest thou thyself against my people, that thou wilt not let them go“. What? How was he supposed to “let them go” with an enforced hardened heart? And “throughout all the earth”? Really? So the Australian Aborigines or the ancient Chinese dynasties knew something about the effects of all of these magic tricks?
Magic trick number seven was meteorological in nature because the lord promised to send the worst hail storm ever. Because of that, it was necessary for the Israelites to gather all of their cattle and other beasts and bring them home (to goshen). So it seems that slaves could own significant livestock? It was over to moses for this one, and as he stretched forth his hand towards heaven, the lord “sent thunder and hail … throughout the land of Egypt“. It seems that it was special hail because somehow it had been mingled with fire. The result was that the hail “smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field“. That is, all except the places occupied by the Israelites. And once again, the author(s) forgot that the Egyptian animals had been kill during magic trick number five when they added beasts to the affected list of the current magic trick.
This was too much for the pharaoh because he basically begged moses and aaron to pack up their stuff and leave – after turning off the fiery hail of course. Weirdly, the pharaoh stated that he had sinned (presumably because he hadn’t let the people go) and that his people were also wicked. Why? That’s the first mention that somehow the Egyptian people were involved in all this, except to have been adversely affected by the events. Why were the people wicked? What, all of them?
Weirdly, the text tries to explain the affects of the fiery hail. It states that the flax and barley were smitten however the wheat wasn’t because it had grown up. What? So wheat plants can somehow withstand the worst hail storm ever (with added fire), however the flax and barley were toast? And of course, fire is never associated with the conditions that produce hail, so this is evidence that the author(s) were trying to work into their story some cultural memory of a volcano.
The author(s) were definitely playing a tired record by this stage because the pharaoh changed his mind the next day and wouldn’t let the people go. Well, that’s what happens when you’ve had your heart hardened.
It’s worth remembering that the text explicitly states that the omniscient creator of two trillion galaxies in the visible universe had somehow managed to acquire a group of favorite people on one tiny planet in that universe (“my people”). That is of course ridiculous, but it does reveal the point of these texts: namely, that one group of people (the author(s) in about 500 BCE) wished to cement their power play with some sort of “authority”. It’s all a fairy story designed to achieve a very nasty and greedy outcome, and definitely not some sort of recording of history.
The strange thing about the text is that the pharaoh is usually not described as having been given a chance to comply prior to the magic tricks; instead, it states that despite seeing the effects of the trick, the pharaoh refused to let the people go – due to having a hardened heart. So do people have free will or don’t they? Fundies?
The chapter starts with god telling moses that he has to visit the pharaoh again so that the tremendous signs and magic tricks can continue to impress. It seems that not only had the pharaoh’s heart been hardened, but so had his servants. It also seems that the lord was keen for his mighty powers to be recognized by the descendants of the Israelites. This is of course a ridiculous thing for the creator of a universe to want to achieve, however it is exactly the sort of thing that ignorant and superstitious author(s) writing in about 500 BCE would imagine would impress their readers.
The lads approached the pharaoh and warned him that if he continued to refuse to let the people go, then magic trick number eight would involve a plague of locusts that would devour what was left of the plants in the fields. In fact, it would be so bad that the little critters would fill the houses of the Egyptians and their servants. This threat bothered the servants enough that they entreated the pharaoh to comply. It must have bothered the pharaoh a bit as well because he summoned moses and aaron and asked who exactly they were requesting to be let go? This is a bit of a surprising question because it seemed kind of obvious that “letting the people go” involved, well, everyone. This is something that moses confirmed by saying: “we will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds“.
For some reason the pharaoh tried to negotiate the terms and suggested that only the men should be allowed to go and sacrifice animals to their god. As expected, this didn’t go down well and god had moses stretch out his staff to summon an easterly wind that brought the called-for locusts. The locusts “covered the face of the whole earth” and ate “all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left“. This caused the pharaoh to again summon moses and aaron to admit that he had sinned against their god. As already mentioned, it’s not clear how that was possible based on his hardened heart, however he would pretty much have been a basket case by that stage. The pharaoh entreated the lads to do what they could to remove the locusts – which they did because god called up a westerly wind to drive the locusts into the Red sea.
Despite having a fully-compliant pharaoh at their disposal, the lord once again played his game of hardening the pharaoh’s heart into not letting all of the Israelites go free.
So, it’s on with magic trick number nine which involved moses once again stretching out his staff, causing darkness to fall throughout all the land for three days. The weird thing about this one was that darkness would have affected the Israelites as well as the Egyptians, however the text makes an attempt to explain that by stating that “all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings“. Really? The Egyptians suddenly didn’t have the light that they would have had prior to the three days of darkness? Why? One can only assume that no Egyptians entered their slaves’ quarters for three days because the collision of reality and the supernatural could have ended the universe as we know it?
Despite magic trick number nine being a fair bit more pleasant than the locusts, the pharaoh caved and told moses that all of the Israelites could go, however their flocks and herds had to stay. “Nah, uh” said moses as he pointed out that their animals were needed to perform their barbaric sacrificial rituals. Again due to a hardened heart, the pharaoh refused to comply. The pharaoh went as far as to tell moses that he now needed to stay away because if he was to see moses’ face again, he would have moses put to death. This didn’t seem to phase moses as he agreed not to see the pharaoh’s face again.
One does wonder, in the absence of a pow-wow with god, how moses was able to agree to that order? There had by then been nine magic tricks, so how did moses know that god didn’t want to perform a few more – which would have required moses confronting the pharaoh, as had been required for the previous magic tricks? You do have to keep reminding yourself that the author(s) were inventing a fairy tale.
It’s worth noting that the combined effects of magic tricks seven and eight would have caused widespread devastating and long-lasting famine, however there is no Egyptian record of any such event occurring during the period.
Eventually the end of the “pleasant” magic tricks had to be reached, and it seemed that god had arrived at that point as he explained to moses how he planned to take things up a notch or two. The plan was to perform one more “plague” upon the Egyptians which would result in the pharaoh agreeing to let the Israelites go. However before that, god told moses to speak to the Israelites to “borrow” from their neighbors “jewels of silver and jewels of gold“. With no intention of returning the items, this can only be described as theft. They are described as slaves, so they probably couldn’t expect much in the way of payment for services rendered; and in fact they did seem to have some recompense for their efforts since they apparently had their own homes and cattle. Something doesn’t add up. Still, some silver and gold on the way out would do nicely, it seems.
Even though he had an order to stay away (or face execution), moses once again met the pharaoh (apparently moses was considered to be great in the land) and explained what was to happen during the tenth plague. The plan was for the lord to murder all the first-born Egyptians in the land – all the way from pharaoh’s first-born to the first-born of the lowliest maidservant. This would naturally cause a great anguish among the Egyptians, especially when they observed that the Israelite first-born were untouched. To his credit, moses was pretty angry that things had come to this and he took his leave of the pharaoh for the final time (definitely final this time).
Despite a reminder of all the terrible things that had been done to the Egyptians (via the nine plagues), the pharaoh refused to let the people go. That’s what happens when suffering from heart-hardening.
Most stories have ups and downs. For example, ups such as: love, heroism, triumph, comedy, etc., however these religious texts have avoided those. Instead, they have: injustice, murder, genocide, lies, cowardice, racism, incest and tribalism. Some of the chapters are worse than others and this chapter is one of the worst – by far.
The chapter begins with the lord giving moses and aaron the instructions for what will become the passover feast. In the first month of the year (which is in March or April of the modern calendar), each Israeli household was to select a lamb (or goat) on the 10th of the month and then kill it in the evening of the 14th of the month. The animal was to be without blemish and if a house was smaller, it could come to a sharing arrangement with their neighbors. For this first “passover”, some of the blood of the animal was to be smeared on the sides and top of the house’s front door frame. The roasted animal (yep, couldn’t be eaten raw or be cooked with water) was to be eaten that night with unleavened bread and “bitter herbs“, and anything leftover was to be burned the next day. And weirdly, “shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste“. So everyone owned a staff, did they?
Then it got nasty because the lord said that he would pass through the land that night and kill every firstborn man and beast that wasn’t guarded by a house marked with the blood on the front door flame. Okay, what did the beasts do wrong in all this? They didn’t prevent the Israelites from being released. During many of the plagues described in previous chapters, it’s stated that the lord managed to spare the Israelites from the effects of the plagues, so why the need for the bloody symbolism on the doors? Couldn’t the omniscient creator of the universe tell who was behind the doors with markings?
It is estimated that in 1,500 BCE there were between 2.5 and 3 million Egyptians living in Egypt. Of those, there would therefore have been somewhere between 250,000 to 500,000 males murdered by the “merciful” god of the Israelites. To celebrate this, god told moses and aaron that the passover feast was to become an annual memorial event forever. So, when you’re sitting down to your passover feast this year, please remember to lift a glass to the hundreds of thousands of males (including babies) murdered by your god simply because they were Egyptians.
For some reason it was important that the people only eat unleavened bread (no yeast) from the first to the seventh day of the first month. In fact, it was so important that they had to remove all leavening from their house. Anyone not complying with the yeast rule was to be “cut off from the congregation of Israel“. Of course there is zero reasoning given for this superstitious practice and brutal punishment. This ritual is still practiced today by various devotees of iron-age superstition. It’s interesting how people today are willing to follow the “easy” rituals from their religious texts, while somehow turning a blind eye to the “difficult” rituals – such as slaughtering a blemish-free lamb (or goat). To the fundies: why do you get to choose which of the omniscient creator of the universe’s rituals suit you?
Then it was time for action as moses called for the elders to enact the sacrifice and blood ritual of the first passover. There was first a quick reminder that the passover was to be practiced by the people upon reaching their promised land so that they would always have a reminder about what god had done for them, and then god performed the bloody deed (plague number ten) at midnight. Congratulations god: hundreds of thousands of dead males and cattle – including the pharaoh’s own first-born son. How did you kill them god? Did you make their heart just stop so that they only had a few minutes of agony followed by brain damage and then death after about 10 minutes?
Of course this “plague” was noticed by the pharaoh and all Egyptians because “there was not a house where there was not one dead“. That is statistically impossible because in the hundreds of thousands of houses there would have been at least one where a second-born male and his wife only had daughters or no children at all. The pharaoh called for moses and aaron and, as expected, agreed to the people (and their livestock) being let go to serve their god. He certainly wasn’t waiting around for plague number eleven.
So the Israelites packed up their unleavened dough (they were in a hurry apparently), their kneadingtroughs, their clothes and the gold and silver that they had “borrowed” from their Egyptian neighbors. To help with that, god had influenced the Egyptians into treating the departing people with favor. Another example of god removing free will when it suits the narrative?
The text states that about 600,000 men “journeyed from Rameses to succoth“. As will be seen later, that was probably the men of fighting age, however “a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle“. Weirdly, the text states that the people “were thrust out of Egypt“, however that doesn’t really tally with the events because the pharaoh, having been so terribly defeated, was in no position to do any “thrusting”. The text then states that the total time that the people were in Egypt was exactly 430 years (to the day!). That’s approximately 18 generations, so the number of 600,000 (fighting-age) males could be approximately correct. That will become important when the problems associated with such a large number become apparent in the following books of the pentateuch.
There was an extra restriction on their last meal (on the passover) because no foreigner was allowed to partake of the food, and if any paid-for servants (slaves) wanted to share the meal, then they had to be circumcised. So the Israelite “slaves” had slaves themselves? Further, the food had to be consumed inside the house and no bones in the food were to be broken. Strangers were permitted to take part in subsequent passover feasts, however they, and all the males in their household had first to be circumcised. There is of course no explanation given as to why eating is linked to the absence of a foreskin that had been provided to males by their god.
Why does it feel like the author(s) of all this were pushing it to find rules within the little they had to work with? To any Jewish people today: as it seems that you actively encourage strangers to partake of your passover feast, do you check to see if they are circumcised? Your god specifically states that you must.
Finally, that “selfsame day, that the lord did bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their armies“. By “armies”, the text means tribes (or houses). But what does “selfsame day” mean? Did they have to leave at night with full stomachs after their passover feast? it’s simply not possible for up to two million people to gather all their stuff and animals and leave a place (tribe by tribe) in one evening after a feast.
Apparently the lord had further words with moses, although how the author(s) of this text knew that (let alone what was said) almost 1,000 later is not explained. The lord told moses that all of the first-born children and beasts would be his, forever. Exactly what that means or how it would be put into practice is not explained. So if you are a first born and thought that you belonged to: yourself, or your parents, or your society, then nope, apparently you belong to a being invented by superstitious and ignorant iron-age men. It’s also worth noting that the text explicitly states that the important first-born were males; yep, first-born females were not relevant.
It was also important (said moses to the people) to remember unleavened-bread event (eaten for seven days) because that was a symbol of the haste with which they had to leave Egypt. It would also be a reminder of how wonderful the lord had been in relocating the Israelites and therefore how they were to obey his laws. It seems that all this happened during the month of abib (“green ears of grain”), which is in March and/or April.
For everything that follows, it’s worth mentioning one of the more obvious problems: communication. Up to two million people and their livestock would require a circular area that had a radius of at least 20 kilometers (over 12 miles), and possibly up to 30 kilometers radius. When the text says “moses said” or “the lord said”, how is it possible that the people anywhere in that vast area away from the very center of action could possibly have had any idea of what was being said? How long would it take for passed verbal messages to travel 20-30 kilometers and what would be the rate of degradation in those messages due to misspoken and/or misheard words?
However it all took a darker turn when the lord reminded “everyone” that they were heading to lands (of milk and honey) which were currently inhabited by canaanites, hittites, amorites, hivites and jebusites. But that was a small problem for the future.
Weirdly, the first-born thing got a bit out of control when it came to donkeys (asses). Because asses were considered unclean, a lamb had to be sacrificed in their place. If a lamb was not available, then the neck of the first-born donkey had to be snapped. All this first-born killing was of course a reminder of the dirty work that the lord did in Egypt to convince the (heart-hardened) pharaoh to release the Israelites. For some reason, the reminder (via killing of first-born animals) is not considered important these days – even to fundies.
Despite having the omniscient creator of the universe on your side, the people were not led anywhere near the land of the Philistines because the lord was worried that the battles that would be encountered in those areas would dismay the people and they would want to return to their lives in Egypt. Instead, the lord led the people “through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea“, although some translations have that as the Reed sea instead.
As a touching symbol, moses took the bones of joseph with them on the journey because of the prophesy (of the journey) made by joseph. It’s not explained what moses did to reacquire those bones.
To kick things off, they traveled from succoth to ehtam, which is supposedly on the edge of the wilderness (even though no one today knows where these places were supposed to have been). So that the two million would not get too lost, the lord led them by turning into a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night. Because the horizon can only be seen from a maximum of about 5 kilometers (3 miles), the people at the back (up to 100 kilometers behind) never could have seen the pillars and must have just played follow-the-guys-in-front.
The Israelites were heading to the coast via pihahiroth, migdol and baalzephon. Although the exact location of those places is unknown, it seems that they were heading in a north-easterly direction – which was correct if the goal was to hit Jerusalem in a few weeks.
Unbelievably, the lord decided that he wasn’t done with the pharaoh and once again hardened his heart into believing that he shouldn’t have let the Israelites go, and that it was worth pursuing them. What? After the ten plagues, you could ask why other high-ranking Egyptians didn’t have a word to the pharaoh, or more likely, try to overthrow him based on any decision about having anything to do with the Israelites, but it turns out that the pharaoh’s servants had also had their hearts hardened.
The pharaoh “took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them“. Remember that this was still in the bronze age (in case you are wondering about iron chariots – judges 1:19, nudge nudge, wink wink). You do have to wonder what was pulling the chariots since the previous plagues had wiped out the animals, and therefore presumably also the majority of the horses?
Somewhere around pihahiroth and baalzephon the pharaoh’s army overtook the Israelites. As the census in a later book will confirm, the Israelites had about 600,000 war-ready males, so the odds were very much in favor of the Israelites. Despite that, the Israelites began what would be the first of very many whinges directed at the omniscient creator of the universe as they cried out that it would be better to be slaves in Egypt than to die in the wilderness.
The lord reassured moses that he would take care of things, and that would be accomplished by moses stretching out his staff to part the waters so that the Israelites could walk across dry land where the waters used to be. To assist that, god organised an angel to cause a cloud to form between the two camps so that the Egyptians could not attack during the night. You have to question if moses was wondering about the point of his stretching out his staff since he must have known that he had no powers at all? Perhaps next time you go to one of those slick magic shows in Vegas, hold out a walking stick during the act and try to take credit for the performance?
Regardless, moses held out his stick, the waters parted, the Israelites walked across in safety, moses again held out his stick, and the waters crashed back upon the Egyptians who had followed – murdering all of them. It’s noted that following this event, and upon seeing the dead Egyptians on the shore, the Israelites once again feared god and believed his servant, moses.
The problems with this fairy story are covered in more detail on the page: exodus: Get outta here! (on this site), but the most problematic points are worth repeating here. For example, two million people take a very long time to cross a waterway that has recently been drained of water. Being generous, but remembering that there were children, elderly and livestock, the Israelites would have taken about four days to make the crossing. So moses stood there with his staff outstretched for that long? When he finished, was he on the starting side or the far side of the crossing? So the pharaoh and his army simply watched and waited for that many days before trying to attack? This event, especially following the recent plagues, would have devastated the Egyptian people and their economy, however no such outcome is documented by either the Egyptians or their neighbors (who would surely have taken advantage of a severely weakened Egypt). We know very well the lineage of Egyptian pharaohs and there is no record of one having been lost while out on a heart-hardened excursion with his entire army.
The text is clearly an example of the author(s) effortlessly moving back and forth between the cases of there being only a few thousand Israelites and there being closer to two million Israelites. They simply wrote individual parts of the story in ways that suited their aims and didn’t feel they needed to keep things logically aligned with other parts of the story. However the point is then that the text is obviously not the word of the omniscient creator of the universe. Right, fundies?
Pleased at the murder of so many Egyptians, moses created a little song to honor the murderer:
The lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my god, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s god, and I will exalt him. The lord is a man of war: the lord is his name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea. The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone. Thy right hand, O lord, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. And in the greatness of thine excellency thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee: thou sentest forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble. And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters. Who is like unto thee, O lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them. Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away. Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thine arm they shall be as still as a stone; till thy people pass over, O lord, till the people pass over, which thou hast purchased. Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O lord, which thy hands have established. The lord shall reign for ever and ever.
Apart from George Frideric Handel (who figured out something pretty good with the final six words), it’s amazing that no one has turned the “song” into a top-forty hit!
It seems that aaron’s sister miriam (a prophetess) enjoyed the song so much that she took up a timbrel (similar to a tambourine) and danced with all the other women. Since there would have been about one million other women, that must have been quite a sight. By the way, there’s no such thing as a prophetess – or prophet for that matter. There might be people who pretend to know something about the future, but sure the omniscient creator of the universe would know the difference?
Following the festivities, the lord led the people for three days into the wilderness of shur. Upon reaching marah, the people began to complain to moses that they couldn’t find drinkable water (all the water in those parts turned out to be bitter). In the first of many such message relays, moses took up the issue with the lord, who promptly showed moses how to cast a certain tree into the waters to make them sweet. The lord then promised the people that if they kept all the statutes and commandments (what commandments?) then they will not be cursed with the diseases that had been inflicted on the Egyptians. The sweet-tree business is another example of magic in the texts.
Finally, the people camped at a place called “elim, where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees“. And that’s another case of the author(s) forgetting the number of people that they had decided to involve on the journey. That’s one palm tree for approximately every 28,500 people, and one well for approximately every 160,000 people. Assuming that every person took 10 seconds to drink their fill, that’s over 2.5 weeks for all of the people to get a drink – and that’s not including the animals. Sorry fundies, you can’t have it both ways. Either the numbers in the censuses (still to come) are incorrect or the journey is a logistical impossibility – and in both cases the text can’t be the word of your god.
After leaving elim, the people arrived at the wilderness of sin, a place that is of course not known today despite being told that it is between elim and mount sinai (whose location is also not known). This is supposed to have happened on the 15th of the second month after departing Egypt.
Quite reasonably, the people started to feel that it would have been better to suffer their fate in Egypt rather than to die of starvation in the wilderness. They expressed their issue to moses and aaron, who must have had another word with god, because he told moses that he would make it rain bread (manna) from heaven each morning so that the people could gather their required amount, and in the process realise how wonderful god was. He was so wonderful that he told them that on the sixth day each week they could even bring in twice the amount they needed (for the sabbath requirements). The required amount of manna turned out to be one omer, which is approximately 2.2 quarts (about 2.1 liters). There were even rumors of flesh that would be given to the people in the evening. Everything appeared so wonderful that management started to wonder why the people had done any murmuring at all?
To get the message across, moses told aaron to “spake unto the whole congregation” that they should look towards the wilderness and “behold, the glory of the lord appeared in the cloud“. Was that the first example of pareidolia (the psychological term for the human tendency to attribute familiar patterns to random stimuli) – a practice that will cause no end of problems in the millennia to come for those wanting to find something “concrete” on which to add structure to their beliefs?
The protein course turned out to be quails that the lord whooshed into existence. Quails, like all animals, don’t like being caught and eaten, so did they also have their hearts hardened into sitting meekly while being captured and killed? It takes about two quails to make a meal portion for an adult, so that would be over three million quails delivered each day, and spread fairly evenly over a circular area with a radius of at least 20 kilometers (12 miles)?
The people were instructed to take the manna they needed but not to leave any on the ground till the morning. Unfortunately, some did leave manna, which bred worms and stank and caused moses to be wroth with them. There’s always a few, eh? The weird thing about manna is that the people were told to bake it for the sabbath (to avoid spoilage). So was manna a type of bread that was ready to eat (as everyone is told in Sunday school), or was it a type of raw dough-like substance? There is a later verse that states that “it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey“, so was it more like a grain (that could be measured as an omer)? If it was a raw product, how was it collected after it fell from the sky and dispersed in the dirt and sand on the ground? The author(s) seemed unable to extricate themselves from the grave they dug concerning the “manna”.
Some people really didn’t get the message because they went out on the sabbath and didn’t find anything. This did get the attention of the lord because he asked moses “how long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws“? The author(s) had a little reality break here because they forgot that the commandments and laws (note the plurals) hadn’t been handed down yet.
The manna was considered so symbolic that moses told aaron to collect a potful of the stuff and to “lay it up before the lord, to be kept for your generations“. What? If the stuff attracts worms and rots to the point where it stinks overnight, then there’s no way it’s going to survive for generations just because it was placed in a pot.
Finally we’re told that “the children of Israel did eat manna forty years“. That should have been accompanied with a “spoiler alert” message because we haven’t got to the bit where the reason for that will be revealed (numbers 14:33-34).
Finally, final, we’re informed that “an omer is the tenth part of an ephah“. Good to know, lord.
There is the issue of how could aaron have “spake” to the “whole congregation”? So he could yell loudly enough to be heard by up to two million people? Also, the sky does not contain the correct constituents to form bread-like products, so that’s more magic. So people wandering in the wilderness were in a position to bake? How? Up to two million people found wood to make fires?
A diet that consisted of bread (made from white seed) and quail would lead to severe problems because it lacks fiber, antioxidants and a wide array of essential vitamins and minerals such as vitamin C, folate and calcium. The people would start to suffer from scurvy, constipation, damage to the digestive system due to microbiome disruption, cardiovascular disease and stroke due to increased LDL cholesterol, kidney and gout problems due to high levels of protein and purines, and multiple issues to do with weakened immune systems. If the lord knew anything about human nutritional requirements, he would have also made it rain citrus fruit and some vegetables, but of course the author(s) of the text knew nothing about health and medical issues when they tried to invent “solutions” to the obvious problems that their fiction created.
From the wilderness of sin, the people traveled to rephidim (location unknown) where they again whinged that it would have been better to stay in Egypt than to live in places where there was no water to drink. That’s reasonable, however moses pointed out that they were once again tempting the lord. You’d have thought it would have been a better approach for management to arrive a little before the people and organised things like water?
Following a little whinge of his own to the lord (fearing that he would be stoned by the people), moses was told to take his staff and the elders of Israel, and go to a certain rock on mount horeb (also known as mount sinai, but location unknown). There, he was to strike the rock to produce water for the people. That was done and the place was called massah and meribah.
Striking a rock to produce water is more magic. The issue has been covered before, but two million people would take weeks (at the very least) to drink from a source found at one place. That would mean that the vast majority of people would die of thirst either before or after their turn at the water. Their animals would also die of thirst. The rock-striking trick would make another (devastating for moses) appearance in a later text, see the book of numbers chapter 20. It’s estimated that two million people (in a hot wilderness) need between 8 and 16 million liters (about 2.1 to 4.2 million gallons) of water per day to survive. That’s the amount of water needed to fill roughly four to seven Olympic swimming pools, and that’s impossible for a rock to produce each day.
The text then turns to matters of war – an important theme for the so-called loving god of peace. It seems that the amalek people turned up and picked a fight with the Israelites in rephidim. That caused moses to call on joshua to select the fighting Israelite males to go to war the very next day. It turns out that the israelites had a little trick up their sleeve because moses was going to stand on a nearby hill and point his staff at the battle action, somehow causing a favorable outcome for his side (more magic).
So joshua did as was requested, while moses, aaron and someone named hur went to the nearby hill. It turned out that moses was unable to hold his staff out for extended periods, and when he lowered his staff, amalek got the upper hand. To address that, moses sat on a stone and aaron and hur supported his arms. That got the job done, the battle was won, and the lord promised to “put out the remembrance of amalek from under heaven“. The victory was to be memorialized in a book so that joshua would always remember what god had done for them (by effectively murdering an entire group of people). Also as a memorial, moses built an altar and called it jehovahnissi. Strangely, the lord promised that there would be war with the amaleks “from generation to generation” despite them having just been put out of remembrance.
War requires machinery and resources. People can’t go to war without weapons, shields and some form of armor, and those require a means of production such as tools, anvils and furnaces, not to mention the mining of ore and smelting apparatus to produce and repair the equipment. How did people in the wilderness/desert accomplish those things?
So do people have free will or not? What exactly was the staff of moses doing? Certainly it’s another example of magic, but it must have been negatively affecting the minds of the amalek soldiers. If war is so important in the outcome of these texts, are we to conclude that the Israelites were not deserving of their cherished outcomes on their own merits? What does it mean if you won by effectively cheating?
If moses was unable to hold out his staff for extended periods, how did he manage to do it for the days it would have taken the two million Israelites to cross the parted Red sea?
Word of goings-on filtered through to jethro, who was not only the priest of midian but also moses’ father-in-law. He was so impressed that he decided to come visit and brought moses’ wife (zipporah) and their two sons (gershom and eliezer). Apparently moses had sent them back before he took part in the exit from Egypt.
The group met up and moses “did obeisance, and kissed” his father-in-law, and they enquired of each others’ welfare and retired to moses’ tent. As you’d expect from these misogynistic author(s) there’s zero mention of moses being reunited with his wife or children. The recent events were retold to jethro and he was very pleased, stating that he knew how wonderful god was. Strangely, jethro states “now I know that the lord is greater than all gods“. So if this text is the word of the omniscient creator of the universe, then that god believes that there are other gods besides himself – especially since the quote was coming from a (so-called) priest who the author(s) must have believed knew something about the topic. Which gods? Who created them? Whatever; they all decided to kill animals as burnt sacrificial offerings to the lord. They then had a big meal at which bread was served. How very rustic.
It turns out that moses was a busy boy because he had to sit and help the people who came to him, from morning until evening, as to judgments arising from “the statutes of god, and his laws“. Once again, the author(s) had forgotten that the laws had yet to be handed out. However jethro wasn’t happy with the situation because he thought the duty was too onerous for one man – which, based on a ratio of one man to almost two-million people, is a fair call.
The solution, according to jethro, was for moses to teach the law to the two million people
(how?) but to have delegates who would become rulers over groups of people – groups numbered by thousands, by hundreds, by fifties and by tens. However those sub-judges would not have free reign because the bigger issues still had to be brought to moses. The text doesn’t explain who was able to determine which were the smaller issues versus which were the bigger issues.
The new system was implemented and it worked so well that moses let his father-in-law return to his own land.
The Israelites departed rephidim, and in the third month after leaving Egypt they came to the desert of sinai and camped before mount sinai. This barely seems noteworthy as just two chapters ago, moses had been to mount sinai to strike a rock to produce water. There is speculation that mount horeb (which is where they could now be) and mount sinai were not the same place. In fact, mount horeb was most likely an active volcano and a link to earlier myths and legends that the author(s) of the book decided to try and incorporate. That would at least explain why the chapter incorporates smoke, thunder and lightning. Anyhow, they’re back, wherever they are.
There’s another reminder from the lord about how wonderful he’d been in extricating the people from (sort of) slavery, and how, if they agreed to obey him and keep his covenant then he would treasure them above all other people, and that they would become a holy nation and a kingdom of priests. It’s worth repeating just how ridiculous that statement is from a being who created two trillion galaxies, each with hundreds of millions of stars in a visible universe 93 billion light-years wide. Why would such a being feel the need to single out one group of people on just one planet in that universe? It’s racist and nonsensical. The only way to make some sort of sense of the text is to remember that it was written by author(s) (about 1,000 years after the “events”) who were making an attempt to assert and win control over their part of the world.
Regardless, moses was taken in by it and let the elders know what god had told him. This in turn was relayed to the people who agreed, and moses let god know that everyone was onboard with the plan. The lord must have sensed the wind in his favor and he told moses that he would appear as a thick cloud when he spoke so that the people would have something believable to witness. He also told moses to go and sancify the people “to day and to morrow, and let them wash their clothes“. Things were about to really kick off because the lord told moses to warn the people that they (and their animals) would be put to death if they tried to approach, touch or climb the mountain. What they needed to do was to wait until they heard a trumpet, and only then could they approach (but no touchy-touchy).
Two million people barely had enough water to drink, however somehow they found the water to wash their clothes? The instructions then became very specific because the men were told to abstain from sexual activity with their wives. As usual, the point of view of the women is not given.
Then, on the third day, “there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud“. Everyone trembled. The sound of a loud trumpet (up to 110 decibels) can only carry (in perfect conditions) a little over one mile (two to three kilometers). Based on the circular area that close to two million people would occupy, that means that only about 1% of the people would have been able to hear the trumpet. Everyone trembled?
Then “moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with god“. There it is: the author(s) effortlessly switching between the scenarios of a few thousand people versus two million people. The later (supported by the numbers given in the text) would occupy a circular area with a radius between 20 and 30 kilometers, and therefore people could not practically meet anyone, let alone a single god. There’s then another reminder of the volcano-like nature of the mountain as god descended upon it. Despite the ruckus, moses ascended to the top of the mountain. Remember that he would have been about 80 years old at this point (give or take).
Despite jacob having seen the face of god (genesis 32:30), god told moses to descend and explain that no one (not even the priests) was to attempt to ascend the mountain to take a peek at the omniscient creator of the universe. Perhaps he was feeling his age because moses tried to reassure the all-mighty one that the people had been told not to approach the mountain, so they wouldn’t. Not good enough apparently because god insisted that moses descend to have a word with the people. There was a slight concession as god told moses that when he next came up, he was to bring aaron. Apparently it is okay for the elite to touch the mountain and to come into close contact with a god.
So, we arrive at the seminal chapter in all of religion. This is the big one. This is the one that makes the religious want to try and explain away all the other nonsensical and illogical parts of the pentateuch and old testament – just so that they can continue to try and claim moral superiority over the people who have trouble with all this stuff.
This is not the only point in the texts where these laws are handed down, and of course there are a whole heap of other laws specified in other parts of the text. However there’s no denying that these are the ones that people keep coming back to when they want to try and justify something – 2,500 years after they were written by ignorant and superstitious iron-age men. The issues with the following are explained elsewhere on this site (link coming soon…), but some issues are mentioned below. The gist of each commandment is noted in bold below, but the full text (often ignored by adherents) has been added to each point.
So, here we go with … (drum roll) … the “ten commandments” (supposedly spoken by god, although to which scribe is not stated in the chapter):
- Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
- So are there other gods around? Or is this one just a problem if you prefer (say) John Lennon to god? So is jesus a god? The literal reading of the text (which is of course the one intended since these are laws) is that the author(s) believed that there were many actual gods, and they really wanted the reader to believe in their one – or else.
- Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
- People have come to believe that the word “graven” means “bad”. It doesn’t. It means sculpted or carved. So a carving of mary placed in a church is a violation of the 2nd commandment, as is a carving of a fish or a bird. Read the commandment again. The bit about not making a carved object is a standalone sentence. There’s no mention about degrees of “goodness” of the thing that has been carved as a mitigating factor in it being allowed.
- So if someone were to make an image of (say) mary or a “saint” and place it in a church to be admired, then they are causing the displeasure of god to be visited unto the 3rd and 4th generation of those doing the admiring? What did the next generation do wrong (besides picking the wrong parents)?
- Thou shalt not take the name of the lord thy god in vain; for the lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
- It’s likely that every person has, at one point, said “oh, for god’s sake”. Is that taking things in vain?
- Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the lord thy god: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
- And here we arrive at a commandment that almost no religious person obeys. How is the sabbath defined? Is it a Sunday, or a Saturday, or is it from Friday-sunset to Saturday-sunset? Is it a full 24 hours or just the day time? Based on it being a commandment from a god, there can’t be different definitions practiced by people who claim to be fundamentalists. And what constitutes “keep it holy”? Can you check email on the sabbath? Can you operate a toaster? Can you open a refrigerator? Can you ask someone else (outside of your household) to do such tasks on your behalf? Can you pick up sticks (see the book of numbers, chapter 15)? Can you get on a bus that is being driven (someone doing work) on your sabbath? What constitutes work? The problem is that the definitions are easy to subvert to suit the person who is trying to achieve something – especially the control of others. So fundies, you feel it’s right to criticize someone for not following the ten commandments, but you don’t mind if you have a fuzzy definition for this one and therefore have a slipshod and variable way of following it?
- Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
- This is a difficult one because it does not take into account the case where a parent is not worth honoring. Some parents are just bad people. Do they need to be honored? What does “honor” mean? To pay respect? To always do as they say? To never question? To defend them even if they do something wrong? Why is this commandment linked to longevity more than, say, the commandment about not killing?
- Thou shalt not kill.
- This is one that causes no end of problems. There is no explanatory text for this one, so it stands by itself, without qualifications. Fundies will of course find any number of interpretations which permit them to support executions, or to own a weapon that can put a bullet through someone, or to go to war to kill a different type of person. And of course, these very texts are chock full of cases where people go a killin’ – after they have been explicitly and succinctly told that they shouldn’t kill. See the full stop after “kill”?
- Do you know who else didn’t take note of the full stop? Yep, moses. In chapter 31 of the book of numbers, moses orders women and children prisoners (captured after all the midianite men were killed in battle) to be murdered – except of course for the virgin women.
- Thou shalt not commit adultery.
- This is another problematic one for fundies who must have trouble having a knee-trembler with their babysitter or next-door neighbor while their fingers are crossed behind their back. But it’s obvious that this commandment is just generally good advice that other people (the masses) should follow, right? For some reason, this one doesn’t seem to apply to cases in the text where men were permitted to “have” multiple wives, concubines and slaves? Or is having sex with someone other than your first wife okay? Biblically, it’s a difficult one to define to achieve the desired outcome. Luckily for all, fundies have no problem defining it – for others.
- Thou shalt not steal.
- Okay, this one sounds reasonable, but once again, there is no mitigating text. If someone in your family is starving, is it okay to steal food from someone who has a surplus? Have you ever taken a pen from work and used it for personal purposes? Have you ever worked 7.75 hours and put down 8.0 on your time-card? Of course, pillaging the goods of people you have just slaughtered somehow falls outside of this commandment (see the events in the subsequent books of the pentateuch). In chapter 3 of this book, the Israelites stole property from the Egyptians. They were told to steal by god. It’s not enough to say that they were owed the property in lieu of wages due to the work they had done because that should be a matter for authorities to decide. So stealing is okay if you believe that it rectifies something that you perceive as a wrong? It’s hard to see that interpretation between the word “steal” and the full-stop in the commandment.
- Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
- In other words, don’t ever tell a lie because everyone is your neighbor (at least by some definition). This is another one that sounds reasonable but has no mitigating text, so it’s as all encompassing as a fundie wants it to be. So when soldiers come to your door and ask about the teenage girl you have hiding in your attic, are you allowed to say “we’ve not seen her”? So when fundies say “there is no evidence for evolution”, is that lie okay? So it’s okay to practice genocide against your “neighbor” but you can’t tell them a lie while doing it?
- Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor‘s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.
- There’s no getting away from the fact that this commandment deals with thought-crime. Unfortunately, there’s no definition of what “covet” means. Is the commandment about envy or desire? So when your mate gets that great new lawnmower and you shake your head and whistle as he glides past, are you breaking a commandment? Striving for better things is what drives evolution and therefore us. As long as I don’t bop my neighbor on his head to get his lawnmower, what’s wrong with
covetingadmiring it and putting in some overtime to get one of your own?
- There’s no getting away from the fact that this commandment deals with thought-crime. Unfortunately, there’s no definition of what “covet” means. Is the commandment about envy or desire? So when your mate gets that great new lawnmower and you shake your head and whistle as he glides past, are you breaking a commandment? Striving for better things is what drives evolution and therefore us. As long as I don’t bop my neighbor on his head to get his lawnmower, what’s wrong with
With the procedural part of the meeting over, the people saw the thunder, lightning, smoking, and trumpeting and decided to move further away from the mountain. They were happy for moses to speak with them but they didn’t want to hear things from a being who could obviously kill them with a thought. Even though moses tried to reassure them to believe enough not to sin, “the people stood afar off“. That goes without saying for the ones who were already 20 kilometers “afar off”.
In a bit of foreshadowing, the lord told moses to tell the people that they have witnessed him talking to moses from heaven and they shouldn’t make idols of gods out of silver or gold. Of course it was okay for the people to make an altar to honor just one god and to sacrifice animals as burnt offerings. Apparently this was necessary to receive blessings. So heaven is associated with that one mountain, is it?
To make things simpler, the altar was not to be made from cut stone (for some reason, lifting up a tool would pollute the altar). Finally, there’s the instruction “Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon“. Was anyone planning to walk up to a public altar with their bits hanging out? Or was that bit an analogy?
The “ten” part of the commandments is of course an early form of marketing. If there had been another commandment, say:
11. Thou shalt not practice slavery.
do you think the “eleven commandments” would have had the same impact over time? “Ten” is a round number and sounds more encompassing, whereas “Eleven” would lead to questions about what else was missing.
It’s interesting that there’s no indication of punishment for transgressions against the commandments. Does lying (no. 9) result in the same punishment as adultery (no. 7) or for saying “that piece of halibut was good enough for jehovah” (no. 3)? So it’s one size fits all? Or is it up to an elite group as to how they dish out punishments for “transgressions”?
Fundies generally believe that the commandments are unique to their religion, and that their religion was the first to come up with the entries in the list. It’s a pity that the education of those people didn’t extend to reading about the attributes of religions that predated their own. To the fundies, perhaps start by reading the Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi? Sorry, the fundamentals of your commandments were well known to civilizations that long predated the one you now base your lives upon – or more likely, just want others to base their lives upon. The author(s) of these texts were simply adapting earlier writings to suit their own purposes.
There were lots of rules/laws that didn’t make it into the “big 10”, and this chapter makes a (horrific) start on those. As you read these, keep in mind that these texts are all about a privileged class controlling people. Speaking of slavery…
If someone bought a Hebrew slave (stealing one was punishable by death), then they had the use of that person for six years. The slave had to be released in the seventh year, and if he had a wife prior to the start of the six years, she could also go free. However, if the owner of the slave selected a wife for the slave, then the wife and any children would become the property of the owner after the slave was released in the seventh year. This is an obvious way of turning people into slaves for life.
The slave even had an opt-in policy. If he stated that he loved his master (and his own wife and children) and that he didn’t want to go free, then his owner could bring him before the judges and then to a door post where he could push an awl (a metal spike) through his ear, indicating that he would now be the owner’s slave for life. Yep, humans branded like cattle.
Bad? It gets worse.
“And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do“. There you go: explicit instruction that a women can be sold and that she (a person) has less rights than a man – in this case that she can be kept indefinitely. If she gets married to her master (note the use of the word “master”) and she fails to please him (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) then he is allowed to sell her, but not to a foreign nation. There must have been an international slave-trading racket in place to need that condition.
“And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters“. This keeps intact the 100% record in the texts of marriage being non-consensual.
And then it gets worse because if an owner of a betrothed female slave takes another wife then he is not permitted to deny that slave “her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage”. If he does deny any of those, “then shall she go out free without money“. So understand this: a man is allowed to buy a female slave for life, marry her, have sex with her, deny her food, and then release her penniless and hungry into the open market for other “masters” to consider. Multiple wives? Family values? Moral values? Fundies?
There may be readers who are indignant about using the word slave as opposed to “servant”. A servant is someone who is paid for their work, has rights, and does not have conditions (including on their family) placed upon their servitude. As soon as those things are present, then the “servant” is a slave. There is no sense of ownership of a servant, however there is of a slave. For example, a servant doesn’t have his wife and children kept by his employer if he decides to leave his position. Only a slave could suffer that. The text also explicitly states that money changes hands when “servants” are traded. Can you read the conditions presented in this chapter and honestly believe that anything other than slavery is involved? Stop trying to legitimize the horrors that are documented by your religious texts.
The text then moves onto another issue: killing.
“He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death“. The word “surely” is interesting. Did god not know if the punishment should be carried out? If so, then the word “surely” is not needed in the text; yet, it is always included. If the death is accidental, then god “will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee“. There’s much more on that amazing topic in later places in the pentateuch.
“And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death” and “he that curseth his father, or his mother, surely be put to death“. Oh really? So giving an abusive father a taste of his own, or even being disobedient by calling him a sack of poo for his abuse, are punishable by death? So are these some of god’s laws that are enforced today by the fundamentalists? At worst, assault charges would be laid for the smiteth, but the death sentence? How come religious people are allowed to pick and choose which of their god’s laws they are allowed to follow these days? So they want certain laws to be followed by all of society, but they get to pick and choose which laws they follow themselves?
If a man strikes another with a stone and he doesn’t die, then he shall pay for the time that it takes for the injured man to recover. Amazing, a rule that seems fair. Of course there doesn’t seem to be any punishment for the striking and there is no mention of the required rate of pay.
Back to the slaves: if an owner strikes his slave and the slave dies, then there shall surely be punishment (although that punishment is undisclosed), however if the slave lives for at least a day or two then “he shall not be punished: for he is his money“. Wow. So if an owner becomes good at assault to the point where he always makes sure that the victim survives for at least 24 hours, then there is no retribution? And make no mistake: the text explicitly states that the slave exists as property of the owner, and that the slave’s purpose is to make money for the owner. That’s not a “servant”.
If two men who are fighting injure a pregnant woman and cause her fetus to abort, and if that act doesn’t lead to further “mischief” (presumably further violence to those still alive), then a fine will be paid by the one who struck the woman. So killing a living person is punishable by death, but killing an unborn person is punishable by a fine? To the religious pro-lifers: so when does life begin? If it begins at or shortly after conception, then why doesn’t god treat the unborn the same as the born? If “mischief” (undefined) follows the deadly assault on the woman, then the one performing the mischief shall be killed.
Then we have the famous, but morally tricky: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe“. So it seems that for the omniscient creator of the universe, two wrongs do make a right.
Back to the slaves: if an owner smites the eye of his slave or beats that slave so that they lose a tooth, then the slave may go free. So if an owner beats someone so violently that they lose an eye, there is no further punishment for the owner except to lose his human property?
You’d think all those rules about killing and violence would come in handy for the Israelites, but of course the rules won’t apply when they are murdering in the name of their god.
Then it gets weird. If an ox gores someone then the ox shall be stoned to death and its flesh not eaten. If it turns out that the ox had done that before (e.g. if the owner had not previously stoned the animal to death for goring), then the owner shall also be put to death – unless money is owning on the animal, in which case just the value shall be paid as some sort of ransom. If the ox gores a slave, then just a fine of 30 shekels (about US$400) will be paid (as well as stoning the ox). That’s more indication that slaves were treated worse than non-slaves. Perhaps it would be better to treat the animal with respect and not put oneself in a position to be gored? The animal only acted in a way commensurate with how god had designed it. And why just oxen? If a horse or donkey does the same, why shouldn’t they be stoned? And why stoned? The other oxen aren’t going to learn due to the brutality of the punishment.
If a man leaves a pit uncovered and an ox or donkey falls into it, then the owner of the pit shall recompense the owner for the lost animal (however the payment means that they get to keep the dead animal).
If an ox kills another ox, then the live ox shall be sold and the money divided, and the dead ox shall also be divided. However if the ox was known to have killed before, then the owner of the live ox shall pay to have the dead ox replaced (however that payment will mean that he gets to keep the dead ox). Good to know we’re covered under such laws today.
It’s worth noting that almost none of these rules have the slightest relevance to modern day readers. Did the omniscient creator of the universe not realise that time would outrun his laws? Where are the rules about having to recompense someone with an ox if they can successfully prosecute the perpetrator of an Internet phishing scam?
More rules; so many rules…
- If a man steals or kills an ox then he has to restore five oxen to the owner, however for an unexplained reason, the penalty is only four if it’s a sheep instead of an ox. If the stolen animal is still alive, then the thief shall return two of the animal.
- If a thief is killed while thieving then there will be no repercussions. If the thief is not killed in the act (by the time the sun comes up), then the thief has to make full restitution for their theft. If the thief can’t pay, then he will be sold as a slave. As the crime is the same, why should a time limit (of only hours) affect the punishment? So a smart thief would only do his stealing just before dawn?
- If a man’s animal feeds in someone else’s field, then the man shall make restitution.
- If a man starts a fire in someone else’s crop or field, then the man shall make restitution.
- If paid money or goods are stolen from a man’s house, then the thief (if found) shall pay double the stolen amount. If not found, then the judges will decide who was guilty of the theft.
- For any manner of theft, both parties involved shall come before the judges and whoever is found guilty shall pay double the goods or money involved in the theft.
- If someone delivers an animal as payment and it dies or is hurt or simply disappears, then everyone is considered innocent if they make an oath to the lord that they didn’t do wrong. Funny how this rule don’t consider the act of lying to be an exit strategy.
- If someone borrows an animal and it is subsequently stolen or is hurt or it dies, then the borrower has to make restitution to the original owner. However if the animal is torn apart (e.g. by a wild animal), then no restitution is needed as long as some of the bits can be produced to prove what happened. All this only applies if the borrower is not with the animal when the problem occurred. If the borrower is with the animal then no restitution is needed.
- (Now that all the important bits to do with animals are out of the way, we can get to the rules of injustice involving people…)
- And we start with horror: “And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins“. So fundies, is this a rule from your book of rules that should be followed in today’s society? If not, then who decides which rules should be followed today? You?
- “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live“. So your god (via the author(s) of this text) believes that witches exist? The text is the word of god, isn’t it? And what if there is a crazy cat lady somewhere who has come to believe that mixing substances together produces a cure for something? Should that person be put to death? Can’t they be quietly ignored? And how is witchcraft defined? Is it witchcraft if someone believes that holy water mixed with dust has the power to determine if a women has been unfaithful? If you think that is witchcraft, then you’re going to have some explaining to do when you get to the book of numbers, chapter 5.
- “Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death“. The book of leviticus takes this one step further and states that the beast shall also be put to death – which supports the theory that the text is an incremental thing and not the word of a god. There is no evidence that this type of behavior was a problem at the time the “exodus” is said to have occurred, however it obviously was a problem (hence needing rules) at the time the fable was written (in about 500 BCE). Gives you an idea about the society and the sort of people who wrote this stuff.
- Sacrificing to anything other than the one true god will result in utter destruction for those involved. What other gods? This is a pretty easy one to test: simply sacrifice that fish you just caught in the name of zeus and see if you get destroyed. Nothing bad happened? Oh, well.
- “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt“. Oh, really? What about all the strangers who will be murdered by the Israelites on their way to the “promised” lands?
- If you disadvantage any widow or fatherless child and they cry out to the lord regarding their misfortune, then god will kill you with a sword. Again, this one should have been easy to verify via centuries of actual data. Do you think there’s ever been a case where an afflicted widow has prayed for vengeance however her perpetrator ended up not being killed via a sword (or via any other means except old age)?
- It is not permitted to charge interest or fees if lending money to Israelites. The modern-day banking system seems to have found a way to ignore this law from their god.
- If someone has accepted a neighbor’s clothes (e.g. a cloak) as a pledge toward payment, then the clothes have to be returned before sunset (so as not to disadvantage the downtrodden). It’s not stated if the clothes can be reclaimed at sunrise if the debt still hasn’t been paid.
- “Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people“. What gods? The writers of this stuff certainly believed that other gods existed, but wait a minute … isn’t the text the word of god? So if the ruler of people is unjust, then that ruler can’t be cursed? Does that mean that people shouldn’t speak ill of Pol Pot or Idi Amin or a certain US president?
- Don’t delay in offering the first-born of fruits or liquors. Regarding oxen and sheep, the first-born shall be taken from their mothers on the eighth day (for sacrificial purposes). Oh yes, and “the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me“. There’s no explanation around the human element to this law and it’s unclear what “giving” something to an invisible entity even means? There’s no way to rule out human sacrifice here, but let’s give the people of the day the benefit of the doubt and call this one symbolic.
- Finally there’s a rule about not eating the flesh from an animal that has been found killed in the field. Instead, the meat shall be thrown to the dogs. Good to know.
You have to wonder why all these laws are showing up in a book titled “exodus”. They have nothing to do with the advertised story and seem to be more about what will happen when people settle down in their “promised” lands. Remember that at this stage in the “story” two million people were in the wilderness and will be staying there for decades – so how do most of these rules apply? Did they need rules about what happens with crops or lending money? The author(s) were laying down rules to control the population in their own day (about 1,000 years after the “events” of the “exodus”).
And for a nice change, here are even more rules. The rules in these chapters are sometimes referred to as the “book of the covenant” or the “mosaic covenant”.
- “Thou shalt not raise a false report” nor be an unrighteous witness. This is a strange one because it appears to be covered under the big ten (commandment number nine). It’s almost like no. 9 wasn’t specific enough to be useful.
- Don’t follow or support a crowd if they are doing evil. Did this one affect any of the 600,000 war-ready Israelites as they went off to commit genocide on their way to their “promised” land? Or isn’t it considered evil to push a sword through a (say) teenage boy who has been labelled (by an invisible “deity”) as one or your enemy?
- Don’t side with someone just because they are poor, and don’t withhold justice from someone who is poor.
- If you find your enemy’s ox or donkey, then return it to him. If your enemy’s animal has collapsed under its load, then help out. As mentioned, this sort of good will to an enemy doesn’t seem to extend to not pushing a sword through him on the way to the promised land.
- Don’t give a false report that may cause harm to the innocent and righteous. The lord ain’t going to look favorably on you if you do.
- Don’t accept a gift because it can blind the wise and pervert justice. Some of the religious people in government probably haven’t got to this one in the text yet. You can assume that this law doesn’t apply to birthdays.
- There’s a repeat of a rule from the previous chapter when the text warns not to oppress a stranger.
- You may sow your lands (e.g. crops, vineyards, oliveyards) for six years, but they must rest and lie still every seventh year. Interestingly, this is not stated as being done for the purpose of rejuvenation of the land; instead, it is done so that the poor and the beasts of the field may eat. The obvious problem arising from that is that the poor and the beasts have to fend for themselves for 72 months out of every 84 month cycle. It seems that the omniscient creator of the universe didn’t appreciate that modern farming techniques can cause soil to be productive for 84 months our of every 84 month cycle – to the point where even poor people can eat regularly.
- You must rest on the seventh day. This is another one covered in the big-ten, however here an explanation is given: “that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed“. Why does one get the distinct impression that the handmaids (aka slaves) didn’t get quite as much rest on the seventh day as those mandating the seventh day of rest?
- “Make no mention of the name of other gods“. Again with the other gods. Which other gods?
- You will keep three feasts (unto god) each year. These were covered above, so just the highlights here (in case you already forgot one or more of them):
- Unleavened bread. Yeast equals bad during this period. Remember not to mix any blood with the bread, and no fat shall remain by the next morning.
- Feast of the harvest. Sacrifice the first of everything, but remember not to boil a baby goat in its mother’s milk.
- Feast of ingathering. Celebrate everything that god (and the priests) did to help bring in the crops, which is … nothing.
The author(s) went a little nuts at this point because they claimed that god said that he was going to send an angel (who must be obeyed and not provoked) to keep everyone on the straight and narrow – or else. If however the people obeyed the angel, then god would be an “enemy unto thine enemies“. Needless to say, there are no non-biblical reports of that promised angel. And to be perfectly honest, there aren’t even any biblical reports of that promised angel.
Apparently it was also a war angel, because it would cut off the enemy and “bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites“. All that “be nice to your neighbor” stuff didn’t last long.
The next bit is interesting: “Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images“. We’ve all got the warning about worshiping other gods (many times), but this text has the omniscient creator of the universe explicitly stating that those other gods actually do works of their own. Which works?
Then the author(s) went too far: “And ye shall serve the lord your god, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee“. There is zero scientific evidence that the devout have less sickness than those who do not “serve the lord”. This contradiction should be the end of the matter (of religion) for billions of people, but sadly, no.
It got even sillier because the lord promised that, should they serve him, the Israelites will always have lots of children and that all their enemies will be destroyed: “I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee“. So Israel, there’s no need for you to use thermobaric weapons (Wikipedia link) on your enemies because your god (the one you believe in, right?) has stated that he will cause your enemies to be afraid and to run away.
Even better than modern weapons, god promised to send hornets before the Israelites to drive out their enemies. The lord then promised to not send all the enemies away in a single year because that would cause the land to become desolate and allow the wild beasts to multiply. Instead, he would drive the enemies out little by little. Couldn’t the two-million Israelites just move into the deserted land and take over?
The Israelites were then promised all the land from “the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river“.
In case any of the Israelites softened re. the neighbors, the lord stated that “thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods“. In fact, to finish the chapter: “they shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee“. Again with the “gods”. Which gods?
Think about it. The “real” god had just demonstrated his power by (supposedly) parting the sea, and appearing as a smoking pillar that issued thunder and lightning when he spoke from a mountain. On the other hand, the other “gods” were obviously little more than carvings that sat next to candles and did nothing practical for the people. If any of this really happened, then there shouldn’t have been the slightest doubt in anyone’s mind as to who to follow. The text makes it clear that the author(s) believed in precisely zero gods, but were trying their best to get the masses (of their day, in about 500 BCE) to follow the rules they wanted, by pushing their scary “god” – or else.
Then moses was instructed to come up to the lord (but not too high), however “aaron, nadab, abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel” had to worship from afar. After hearing the words and judgements of the lord (as relayed by moses), the people promised to do as they had been told.
Perhaps not being completely convinced by the verbal method, moses wrote down all the laws (from memory!) and then early one morning built “an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel“. He then “sent young men of the children of Israel” who made burnt offerings of oxen to the lord. Note that it is never explained why the omniscient creator of two trillion galaxies in the visible universe found bits of burnt cattle an attraction.
The burnt flesh wasn’t enough because moses took half of the blood and put it in basons and the other half he sprinkled on the altar. Just to make sure, moses took the book of the covenant and read it to the audience of the people – who promised to be obediant and do as they were told. It got creepier because moses took more of the blood and sprinkled it on the people to (somehow) strengthen the covenant that they had just made.
Note that, because there were close to two million Israelites, it would have been impossible for moses to have read the work to more than a few hundred people. There’s a good chance that over 99.9% of the people therefore had no idea why they were there. This is an instance where the author(s) forgot all the aspects of their fairy tale and reverted to a story involving a manageable number.
The lads (moses, aaron, nadab, abihu and seventy of the elders) then went up (the mountain) and the text says that they actually saw god. Wow. It’s a pity none of them wrote a single word describing what a deity looks like. What the author(s) of the text did manage to describe was the floor that the lord was standing on. Apparently it was made from sapphire stone, and it was as clear as the body of heaven. This of course was a mechanism employed to impress the poorest of people being told this story – which would have been most of them. Most people would only have experienced floors made from dirt, timber or stone, so a floor made from “sapphire stone” must have been a wonder beyond belief, and certainly what a deity would have, right?
For some reason it was thought important to point out that the lord did not lay his hand on the nobles of the children of Israel. However it was pointed out (again) that they did see god (so it must be true, right?), and they even did eat and drink with the lord.
The lord then told moses that the two of them had better meet higher up the mountain so that he could receive tablets of stone that recorded the commandments for the people. It’s not mentioned whether moses told the lord that he had already written everything down and had even read it out to (some of) the people.
Then moses left the others (including aaron and hur) behind – telling them to go do whatever it was that they had to do, while he went up the “mount of god“. When moses reached the correct elevation, cloud came across and covered the mountain for six days. On the seventh day the lord called moses forth from the cloud, and “the glory of the lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel“. Moving even closer, moses “gat him up into the mountain” in the midst of the cloud, and spent forty days and forty nights there. The number 40 being the symbolic way of saying “a long time”.
This is a practical chapter as it covers the details involved in practicing religion in the wilderness on the way to “promised” lands. It’s often pointed out that man cannot build what god (supposedly) can and that god never builds what man (definitely) can, and this chapter is a classic example of that.
To start, raw building materials were needed, so god gave moses a shopping list that he expected the “children of Israel” to fulfill: gold, silver, brass; blue and purple and scarlet fine linen, and goat’s hair; rams’ skins dyed red, and badgers’ skins, and shittim wood; oil for light, spices for anointing oil, and for sweet incense; onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod (a sacred apron) and breastplate.
It’s not explained why god didn’t just whoosh all that into existence … as he had done for his sapphire floor? If you were a deity that had relatively recently caused two trillion galaxies to come into existence, would you waste your time explaining to grossly inferior beings how to collect raw materials and then construct basic items to a certain standard? Wouldn’t you just click your fingers or wiggle your nose (or whatever it took) to create the required paraphernalia and then get the show on the road?
The people were then expected to make a sanctuary (a portable tent-shrine structure, also called a tabernacle) and it had to be up to the standards required by god because he stated that he was also going to dwell there. They were also expected to make an ark to a very precise standard. It was to be of shittim wood (guessed to be acacia timber), 2.5 cubits in length (about 1.2 meters or 4 feet) and 1.5 cubits in both width and height. It was to be covered in pure gold (inside and outside) and it had to be topped with a gold crown. It had to have a golden ring near each corner such that two long poles of gold-covered timber could be threaded through the rings and thus be able to lift and transport the ark (however, see below). The ark of course was to carry the testimony (commandments) that the lord was going to provide (which were still on his to-do list).
Next came the “mercy seat”. This was not a seat as we know it; it was a lid for the ark. Amazingly it had to be made of pure gold. On top of the lid would be two cherubims (powerful, supernatural celestial beings), one at either end, facing each other, with their wings stretching out towards each other over the top of the lid. The obvious problem with all that is that it’s getting suspiciously close to violating the 2nd commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven (carved) image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above…”. We know that there are no such things as cherubims, but the author(s) of the fairy tale believed that they existed in “heaven above”, so what was god doing ordering the construction of such images? Wouldn’t a plain timber lid (gold plated if you must) work just as well as a covering? Apparently god was planning to commune with people by appearing (in some form) between the two cherubims, just above the lid. Was the gold decoration needed to enforce some sort of authority? Could that be the sort of thing that superstitious and ignorant iron-age men thought was important when they invented the text?
There’s also the (insurmountable) problem that the ark would have weighed at least 2,000 pounds (about 1,000 kilograms) – remembering that the lid was solid gold. Lifting that would be quite a task for two timber poles. Especially since the number of people required to move the set up would be at least 50 (and more likely, up to 100 since it was to be transported miles each day). That means that there were between 15 to 25 people at each corner of the ark with their shoulders holding up the poles (that were threaded through the rings at each corner). If each person takes up about 75 cm (30 inches) under the pole, then the pole must have extended about 15 meters (50 feet) from each corner. That means that each pole must have been about 31 meters (just over 100 feet) in overall length. The big problem with that is that each pole (assuming that it was at least 6 by 6 inches in cross section) would therefore weigh at least 500 kg (1,100 pounds). So the whole setup was at least 2 tons (4,000 pounds) in weight (not including the stone tablets). And it’s very likely that the poles would have to be much thicker than that – compounding the problem. The other huge problem is that acacia trees in the Middle East can only yield timber that is at most 3-5 meters (10-16 feet) in length. So the text got it wrong by suggesting that there were just two poles. There would have had to be a means of joining up to 10 poles together to make each long pole. The events of the exodus are supposed to have happened in the bronze age, so how did the people effectively join the poles together? Further, if the people at the ends of the pole were holding the pole at shoulder height, then there’s no way, due to the flexing of the poles that holding up a ton of ark, that the ark would have been lifted off the ground by even the slightest bit – hence making it impossible to transport. The author(s) of the text didn’t bother checking these simple facts when writing their fairy tale. Remembering that it’s not a metaphor when precise building materials and dimensions are provided in the text, so it’s over to you fundies: is the text the word of your god? If this bit isn’t, then what else isn’t?
Next, a table was needed. It was to be made of shittim wood and overlayed with gold, and it too was to have a gold crown. It seems that god was a fan of a consistent decorating theme when it came to furniture. The table was to be 2 cubits long, 1 cubit wide and 1.5 cubits tall (about 100 x 50 x 75 cm, or 40 x 20 x 30 inches). That’s not so big, however it was to be slightly larger due to a hand-breath border all around. Surprisingly, the (not so large) table was also to have rings on each corner and wooden poles to support it.
Then it was down to crockery and cutlery because the lord ordered up: dishes, spoons, lids and bowls – all of pure gold. These were to be used (on their journey) to prepare a table (along with unleavened bread called “shewbread”) that was fit for a deity. To really add something to each meal, the lord then ordered a very elaborate pure-gold candlestick to be made. The candle was to include a shaft, branches, bowls, knops (ornamental bulbs) and flowers, and had to have three branches coming out of each side of the central shaft. The top of each branch was to hold a pure gold knop, and therefore seven candles could be supported (when the central shaft was also used). An elaborate candlestick needed elaborate tools and the lord ordered pure gold tongs and snuff dishes.
It’s not explained what the poor thought of all this display of wealth – especially since the people had to surrender their gold to construct it. It’s estimated that at least 200,000 personal golden rings would be needed to provide the gold for the project. That might be possible, however it ends the debate about whether there was a large number or a small number of people involved in the “exodus”.
There’s more “practical” instruction in this chapter as god moves on to the requirements for the tabernacle – which is a portable tent-shrine structure. The following is such a hot mess of micromanaged nonsense, that it’s just going to be listed as a sequence of points here. Apologies to anyone who thinks that diminishes the “poetry” of the text.
- The tabernacle will have “ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make them“. Were people wandering in the wilderness in a position to make such things? What equipment did they use to make fine twined linen?
- Each main curtain will be 28 cubits long and 4 cubits wide (500 by 70 inches, or 1,270 by 180 mm). There will be two groups of curtains (each being five curtains coupled together). There will be 50 loops of blue on the appropriate edges. The curtains will be coupled together with 50 taches of god (buckles).
- There will also be 11 curtains made form goats’ hair to be a covering of the tabernacle. These ones will be 30 by 4 cubits. The 11 will be made into two curtains by combining five together and six together. Each will have 50 loops on the out-most edge. To join the two, there will be 50 clasps made from brass. The thing about brass is that, even though it had unintentionally been made as early as 3,000 BCE, it wasn’t a material that was purposely produced until about 1,000 to 500 BCE. That’s commensurate with what the author(s) new, but is not correct for the time the story was supposed to have occurred (in about 1,500 BCE). The author(s) of the pentateuch forgot that little fact. Fundies?
- The various curtains will encase the tabernacle, including the sides. Additionally, there will be a “covering for the tent of rams’ skins dyed red, and a covering above of badgers’ skins“.
- To add some rigidity to the curtains, the tabernacle needed boards. The boards were to be made from shittim wood and each was to be 10 by 1.5 cubits (about 15 by 2.3 feet, or 4.5 by 0.7 meters). That’s quite long and is really pushing the length possible from the acacia trees available in the Middle East at the time. Each pair of boards will be joined by two tenons. The south side of the tent will have 20 boards. That means that the entire tabernacle was 46 feet (14 meters) long in one of its dimensions. 40 sockets of silver will be needed, one for each tenon. The north side of the tabernacle will also have 20 boards (and associated tenons and sockets). The other sides of the tent were to have 6 boards – making them about 13.8 feet (4.2 meters) long. Rings will be used to couple the sides to make corners. Additionally, 8 boards (and their associated tenons and sockets) will be used to add support for the other boards (although the construction of this becomes more vague). Then, five wooden bars will be added to each side for even more stability, with the middle bar reaching from end to end. All the boards, bars and rings will be overlaid with gold. Wow, that extravagant display of wealth must have looked freaky.
- Finally, a cover (vail or veil, take your pick) of blue, purple and scarlet fine-twined linen (of cunning work), covered in cherubims will be made to hang on four pillars of gold-overlaid wood (with golden hooks and silver sockets). The veil will be used to divide the tabernacle (hanging from taches) into two sections: the holy place and the most holy place. The ark was to go in the most holy section (well, duh). It seems that the table was to go on one side and the candle stick on the other side of the (not-most) holy section. The door of the tent was to have a hanging of blue, purple and scarlet fine-twined linen wrought with needlework. Finally final, the door hanging was to have a frame made from 5 pillars of wood, overlaid with gold, and of course having golden hooks, and five brass sockets.
In case your aphantasia is playing up, here’s a rough design of the compound/tabernacle (image sourced from Wikipedia):
With all that gold and fine-twined material, why didn’t they just hang a sign on the gate saying “Eff off plebes”?
You do get some puritanical fundies who love to tell everyone that there should be no ostentatious displays in religion. That sounds reasonable, but you can bet those guys have never walked into a “tent” such as the one described above!
If the text is really the word of the omniscient creator of the universe speaking to his beloved creation, why did he use the opportunity to tell us that the north “wall” of a demountable tent should consist of 20 boards? Why not use the opportunity to explain to us (say) why the act of observing a quantum system forces it to change from a state of multiple possibilities (superposition) into a single state, or more about the fundamentals of quantum entanglement, or what happened in the first 10-43 seconds after the Big Bang (after which our models of physics are understood), etc.? “20 boards”? Really? What a waste.
This chapter contains even more dictated construction plans:
- An altar shall be made of shittim wood, and shall have the dimensions of 5 cubits (8 foot, or 2.5 meters) long, by 5 cubits wide, by 3 cubits (4.5 foot, or 1.4 meters) tall. The corners were to have horns covered in brass. And what’s an altar without the required bits and pieces: pans, shovels, basons, fleshhooks, firepans, and vessels – all of which were to be made from brass. Also needed was a brass grate with rings in each corner. “And thou shalt put it under the compass of the altar beneath, that the net may be even to the midst of the altar” (whatever that means?). For transportation, two poles (covered in brass) would be inserted into rings (one on each corner of the altar).
- The tabernacle was just a part of the entire structure, and it sat towards one end of a large court. The court would be 100 cubits (about 165 feet, or 50 meters) long. On the south and north sides (the long sides) there would be hangings of fine twined linen, as well as 20 pillars, each with 20 sockets of brass and 20 hooks and fillets of silver. On the east side of the
compoundcourt there were to be hangings of length 50 cubits on 10 pillars, with associated sockets. On the west side (with the gate), there would be hangings of length 15 cubits with three pillars each with three sockets, on each side of the gate. If the court would have been 25% wider, then it would have been pretty much the same area as an eight-lane Olympic swimming pool. - The gate was to have hangings of twenty cubits and be of blue, purple and scarlet fine-twined linen, wrought with needlework. The gate would consist of four pillars, each with four sockets.
- All of the pillars were to be filleted with silver, their hooks shall be of silver, and their sockets of brass.
- As mentioned, the court was to be 100 by 50 cubits, and the keep-out fence was to be 5 cubits (7.5 feet, or 2.3 meters) tall.
- All the vessels used in the tabernacle and all the pins (pegs) needed for the court and tabernacle were to be made from brass.
(There’s no need to memorize any of of the above since it is essentially meaningless – as well as being fictional.)
Finally, the lamp (menorah) was to be kept burning via pure, pressed olive oil. In fact, it was to “burn always“, with aaron and his sons charged with making sure it was kept lit all night: “it shall be a statute for ever unto their generations on the behalf of the children of Israel“. How’s that going, fundies?
Remember that shittim wood is thought to be acacia (a hardwood), and therefore the described altar would have weighed over 1,000 pounds (almost 500 kg). If each person can lift about 20 kg, that would still take about six guys on each corner holding up their part of the wooden staves. That has a similar (but lesser) problem to the ark – in terms of transporting via flexing poles. Also remember that in about 1,500 BCE, brass was a material that was not yet used for the intricate overlaying work as described by the text – something that the author(s) forgot.
Here’s a view of the ark, compound, tabernacle, and (some) surrounds, as imagined by Gerard Hoet in 1728 (image sourced from Wikipedia):
The above is a passable interpretation of the text (in terms of scale) – except for the poles in the ark. There is no way that those poles could be used by four (or eight?) men to lift 2,000 pounds (about 1 ton) of golden ark and solid-gold lid. However it is the image that works in fairy tales. Also note that the equipment in the entire image (and beyond, for two million people) is what we are expected to believe that the Israelites managed to carry throughout the wilderness, and regularly set up and tore down, for 40 years. Also note that they had none of the set up when they hurriedly left Egypt, as slaves – so most of it came from foraging in the wilderness. The image is at least 10 miles short of how far the tents would have had to extend to accommodate up to two million Israelites.
This is the chapter where “authority” really starts to be established over the common people.
The lord instructed moses to get aaron (his brother) and aaron’s sons (nadab, abihu, eleazar and ithamar) and establish them in the priest’s office so that they could minister unto him (god). And then came the important bit: making the following holy garments for aaron and his sons: “a breastplate, and an ephod, and a robe, and a broidered coat, a mitre, and a girdle“. Yep, it was necessary for them to be distinguished from the people over which they were to exert control. Apparently the garments were to be made by those who had been filled with the spirit of wisdom by the lord.
The ephod (ornamental vestment) was to be made of gold, of blue and purple and scarlet, and fine-twined linen (of cunning work). It would have two joined shoulderpieces. The “curious girdle” would be made of the same materials (and presumably of the same cunning).
Two onyx stones would be used to engrave the names of the twelve tribes of Israel (six on each stone). Each stone would then be set in an ouche (ornamental brooche), and then set in each shoulder of the breastplate. Two chains of pure gold would then be made and they would support more brooches.
The breastplate was to be a bit speesh. Of course it should be made of gold, of blue and purple and scarlet, and of fine-twined linen, but it was also to be “Foursquare it shall be being doubled; a span shall be the length thereof, and a span shall be the breadth thereof. And thou shalt set in it settings of stones, even four rows of stones: the first row shall be a sardius, a topaz, and a carbuncle: this shall be the first row. And the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond. And the third row a ligure, an agate, and an amethyst. And the fourth row a beryl, and an onyx, and a jasper: they shall be set in gold in their inclosings“. The twelve stones were therefore to represent the twelve tribes.
There’s then a lengthy section detailing how golden chains were to be suspended from pairs of golden rings and brooches on the breastplate. The chain and blue lace was to be used to connect the ephod and girdle.
Then it gets really weird because aaron is told to bear something called the “urim and thummim” in the folds of the breastplate. These were (supposedly) sacred and mysterious objects that could be used like a Magic 8 Ball to produce answers to the sorts of difficult questions that might be put before a priest. The theory is that god would “speak” through the objects when they were used in a random way to produce an answer to the questions. This system will be very familiar to Dungeon & Dragons players as they roll fancy dice to achieve a random outcome. No one knows exactly what the objects were, but it is likely they were stones with markings that could produce “answers” such as “Yes” and “No” when manipulated (e.g. thrown) by the priest. Apparently aaron was to use the random objects to “bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before the LORD continually“. This nonsense should really make you question the motives of the superstitious and ignorant iron-age men who wrote the text.
It was then on to the robe of the ephod, which was to be blue. It was to be a binding or woven material and be sturdy so that it wouldn’t rip with use. It was to have a hem with “pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet” and have “bells of gold between them round about“. The bells were to sound so that people would be aware when the priest was in the tabernacle. All of the finery was to show reverence so that the priest wouldn’t be killed when approaching god (presumably by a startled god).
But wait, there’s more. A plate of pure gold was to be engraved with the words “holiness to the lord” and it was to be tied to the mitre (turban) with blue lace. Apparently the plate and its message (clearly visible to anyone approaching) was intended to allow the priest to bear the guilt associated with the “sinner’s” offerings (as they made them).
Finally, the best-dressed priest needed a coat of fine linen and a turban of fine linen, and the girdle (sash?) should be of needlework.
And of course, it wasn’t just aaron that got a new ensemble: “and for Aaron’s sons thou shalt make coats, and thou shalt make for them girdles, and bonnets shalt thou make for them, for glory and for beauty“. Not only did they require distinguishing clothes, but the wearers required anointing and consecrating and sanctifying so that they would be ready to minister to god.
Whoops! Forgot the pants. To fix that, linen breeches were needed “from the loins even unto the thighs“.
Not only were aaron and his sons to always get dolled up before doing stuff in the tabernacle, but all of their descendants had to as well “for ever unto him and his seed after him“. How’s that going fundies? Doesn’t seem so important to follow all those rules these days? Why not?
Apparently this is how the well-dressed clown priest looked:
(Used from a site that asserted no copyright over the image.)
The truly sad thing about this chapter is that religious people of today turn a blind eye to how absolutely meaningless it is. And that’s not just because they practice none of it today, it’s because of how ridiculous the instruction was. Is it in any way likely that the omniscient creator of the universe who (supposedly) created two trillion galaxies in a day would require one hapless example of his creation to dress up like a clown and pretend to do things in that creator’s name? It’s bizarre to believe that this chapter is anything but the ramblings of superstitious iron-age men. Of course, it’s far worse because it is also the dishonest attempt by those men to assert power and control over other people. Wearing expensive and elaborate clothes that were not available to the masses was one way to do that.
This chapter delves into god’s “love” for animals.
It wasn’t enough for the priests of the day to wear fancy dress, they also had to do things to animals to prove something about their deity. The chapter starts with one young bullock and two rams – without blemish.
It’s always “without blemish”. What exactly does that mean? Did the animal have uniform color on its fur, e.g. no markings of any sort? Did the animal have uniform skin, e.g. no pigmentation markings of any sort? Was the animal symmetrical? Did the animal have no genetic mutations (which is an impossibility)? Was the animal of a perfect temperament (whatever that meant)? It’s estimated that fewer than one in 250,000 calves meet the strict requirements of being “without blemish”, so how were the Israelites finding enough animals for what’s about to be described? Cows have about one calf per year, so the odds mean that there would have been only about one or two blemish-free animals among all of the Israelites each year. When that calf was slaughtered, where did the next “pure” one come from that year?
And why was blemish-free important? Fundies are going to bang on about purity and symbolism, but why was the look of something related to purity, and how did the “purity” of an innocent animal (and of course its blood) have anything to do with the outcomes supposedly derived from the sacrificial practices described in this (and many other) chapters?
To go with the flesh, unleavened bread and cakes tempered with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil (all made from wheat) were required and had to be placed in a basket. Where were nomadic people getting wheat? There’s no mention of anyone growing crops.
This leads to another consideration arising from the text: namely that there was a class of lazy so-and-so’s who required their food to be brought to them (as opposed to going out to work for it). And you guessed it: that class comprised of the the folks who were ready to dispense religion to the working classes. The offered sacrifices weren’t just thrown away; instead, they were given to the guys in fancy dress. Beats working.
To get the party underway, aaron and his sons were to be brought to the door of the tabernacle to be washed by the congregation. M’kay. Then, they were to be dressed in all the finery as described in the previous chapter and aaron was to be anointed with oil (poured on his head). This is another case where the author(s) forgot about the two-million-persons version of the story and reverted to a homely little gathering of wanderers in the wilderness. If the higher number is considered (as supported by the other parts of the fable), then there’s no way that the average person in a tent miles from the tabernacle would ever have anything to do with the “religious” proceedings, let alone even see what was going on in the central compound.
On with the killing! The bullock was to be brought to the door of the tabernacle where aaron and his sons could place their hands on it – and then kill it. Interestingly, there are no instructions as to how the killing was to be done. The blood of the bullock was to be smeared (via a finger) on the horns of the altar and then “pour all the blood beside the bottom of the altar“. The fat that surrounded the inwards, the liver and kidneys was to be burned on the altar. The flesh, the skin and the dung was to be burned outside of the camp as a sin offering.
The ram was to get a similar treatment: hands on head, killing, blood sprinkled around the altar, cut into pieces, washed, and then burned on the altar. For some reason, the fat around the inwards of a ram wasn’t a problem? Apparently the smell of burning ram was a sweet smell that was favored by the lord. Keep reminding yourself that the author(s) of this stuff were writing about 1,000 years after the “events”, so exactly how they knew which burned flesh favored a deity is anyone’s guess.
It definitely got weirder because the other ram was to be killed and its blood was to be put on the tip of the right ear of aaron and his sons, and “upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great toe of their right foot, and sprinkle the blood upon the altar round about“. Then, the blood that was on the altar, along with anointing oil was to be sprinkled on aaron, his sons and their garments. This (apparently) was to make them “hallowed”. Why on the right? Besides superstition, what objective difference can there be between the right and left sides? What does the blood do on the big toe? If all this was important to a deity, it would be explainable. Just perhaps it’s not the word of a deity?
Okay, okay, okay, reality check time. If fundies today read that there were satanists or a recently-discovered tribe who believed in sacrificing an animal and smearing its blood on themselves and on a shrine they had set up, you just know that those fundies would scream loudly about the horror of that practice and the barbarity of the people involved, however when its described in the book that they use as the basis of all their decisions, e.g. the very same book that gives them their “ten commandments”, they remain silent. Why?
The people involved in this barbarity weren’t finished because the fat (from the inwards, liver and kidneys), and the rump, and the right shoulder of one of the rams were to be a consecration offering along with one loaf of bread, one cake of oiled bread and one wafer (from the basket of unleavened products). These were to be put in the hands of aaron and his sons and then taken back to be used as a burnt offering. Then “thou shalt 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“. These offerings (heave and peace) shall be a “statute for ever from the children of Israel“.
Then it’s down to dinner as bits from one of the rams were to be boiled in the holy place so that aaron and his sons could eat the flesh with the bread from the basket. Strangers were not allowed to eat because they were not holy. This is a weird rule because not allowing strangers immediately raises the question whether any of the two million in the congregation were allowed to eat? Surely they were not strangers? If any food was still left over by the morning, it had to be burned. That must have gone down poorly with any who were hungry.
The lads (aaron and sons) had to be consecrated for seven days, during which time they had to be offered a bullock (sin offering) every day. The altar also had to be cleansed and anointed for seven days. Why seven? Why not six or two or eight or 40? Anything that was to touch the altar had to be holy.
But wait, there’s more. Every day, two lambs had to be offered to the altar, one in the morning and one in the evening. With the morning lamb a “tenth deal of flour mingled with the fourth part of an hin of beaten oil; and the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering“. With the evening lamb, “shalt do thereto according to the meat offering of the morning, and according to the drink offering thereof, for a sweet savor, an offering made by fire unto the lord“.
Additionally, there “shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your generations at the door of the tabernacle” because the lord was going to meet and speak there to the children of Israel. Everyone was to be sanctified at the tabernacle. If all was done according to instruction, then god promised to dwell among the people. Despite the evidence (for which there is none), god justified his words based on having brought the people out of Egypt.
That ends the instruction (for the moment) to do with a loving god detailing the animal-sacrifice practices of a death cult. Remember that all the awful pageantry was designed as a mechanism to impress and ultimately control people.
There was an outdoor altar (see chapter 27), but god now gave instructions for a smaller indoor altar on which incense would be burned. It was made of shittim wood (thought to be acacia) and would be one by one cubits, and two cubits tall (a cubit is about 18 inches or 45 centimeters). It was also to have decorative horns. It was to be overlaid with pure gold (all around, including the horns) and it was to have a gold crown. It’s the thing in the center just behind aaron’s hand in Gerard Hoet’s illustration (above). It also needed gold-plated rings and poles so it could be transported. It was to be placed in the less holy section, just before the veil curtain.
The new altar was to be used each morning (when the lamps were being “dresseth”) to burn “sweet incense“. It was also to be used every evening to burn more incense just as the lamps were being lit for the night. The altar was not to be used for “strange incense” or for burnt sacrifice or meat offering or for drink offering. Yep, if some stuff got on an inanimate object, things could go terribly wrong. Weirdly, aaron was required to “make an atonement upon the horns of it once a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonements“. It’s not explained why a reboot of the altar was needed every 365 days.
There’s then a reminder to the readers of the day that “the lord spake unto moses, saying“, and it’s worth a reminder to the readers of this day that moses could not have been the author of these texts because he would not have referred to himself in the third person. (And of course because moses is a fictional character.)
Then it’s down to the money-making part of the venture. The lord instructed that everyone who was 20 years or older must pay a half-shekel (20 gerahs) “ransom for his soul” to take part in a census, else he risked getting the plague.
What? For what it’s worth, a half shekel of silver was equivalent to about two days worth of labor. So everyone belongs to god and has to pay to be in his presence? So it was a flat rate of taxation with the very wealthy having to pay the same as the very poor? So if someone didn’t pay they got the plague? How is money exchangeable for the atonement of a soul? Couldn’t the omniscient creator of the universe figure out how many people there were, at a glance? So the money was to be used to maintain the tabernacle and its paraphernalia? There were no shops in the wilderness, so who did the money get paid to in exchange for goods and services? It sounds very much like the entire scheme was simply designed to increase the wealth of the ruling class, as well as to get the people used to the idea of paying for a service that they were told that they needed. Approximately 67% of people in a population are 20 years or older, so that was about 1.3 million people who had to pay half a shekel (of silver). That equates to about 650,000 shekels of silver, which would be worth somewhere between $7 million and $10 million US dollars today. So they built all of the tabernacle, compound and associated bits and pieces for free (by acquiring the property of the people), but they needed the equivalent of millions of dollars to maintain it? And this was all done with the threat of getting the plague and losing the rights to your soul for noncompliance? Are you starting to appreciate the real purpose of these texts?
Next on the construction list was a lavar, or laver (a sort of a circular basin) that was to be used to wash people’s hands and feet. It was to be made of brass and was to be placed between the tabernacle tent and the main altar. Just a reminder that brass was not yet usable for such constructions at the time the events are set. The author(s) of the fable weren’t aware of that. Apparently, if someone didn’t wash their hands and feet properly, then they would die. It’s not explained why that is.
Then it’s on to the magic potion part of the text. The lord informed moses that he was to use the following ingredients in the following proportions to make an “oil of holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the apothecary“:
- Pure myrrh: 500 shekels. That would weigh about 12.5 pounds (5.7 kilograms). Myrrh is a gum-resin extracted from a few small and thorny tree species of the Commiphora genus, belonging to the Burseraceae family (thanks to Wikepedia for that one).
- Sweet cinnamon: 250 shekels. Cinnamon (Wikipedia link) is a spice that is obtained from the inner bark of several tree spieces from the genus Cinnamomun. Unfortunately, cinnamon was not native to the Middle East at the time the “exodus” fable was set. The author(s) of this text didn’t realise that.
- Sweet calamus: 250 shekels. This is thought to be from the flowering plant acorus calamus (Wikipedia link). Only those plants that grow in water bear flowers and unfortunately it also was not native to the Middle East in the times the “exodus” fable is set.
- Cassia: 500 shekels. This is very similar to cinnamon. It was also not native to the Middle East at the time the “exodus” fable was set.
- Olive oil: one hin (about 1.5 gallons, or 5.7 liters).
So were the foreign ingredients (cinnamon, calamus and cassia) trucked in for the Israelites as required? There’s no mention of trade routes into the wilderness to deliver goods to people who were supposed to be lost. How was word sent to the foreign locations that more deliveries were needed?
So apothecary is an art according to the omniscient creator of the universe? Fundies?
The magic oil was to be used to anoint the tabernacle and the ark, the table and vessels, the candlestick and vessels, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offering with all its vessels, and the laver and “his foot“. They shall therefore be sanctified and made “most holy“. It’s not explained why a mixture of the molecules of the organic compounds involved can transfer to something the condition of being “holy”. Let’s hope that no allergies were involved because also to be anointed with the magic slime was aaron and his sons – so that they could then minister unto the lord.
The lord then reminds the reader that the “holy oil” shall be used “throughout your generations“. When was the last time that you saw someone slosh on some of the prepared oil in preparation for a good ol’ ministering session? However please note that the oil was so special that it wasn’t to be used by the ordinary guy; just by the priesthood. A quick search on the Internet shows that the prepared oil is easily available and costs about US$15 for one fluid ounce (about 30 milliliters) – for the “real” stuff. It’s doubtful that the people selling the reproduction are too bothered about the dire warning “neither shall ye make any other like it” lest ye “be cut off from his people“. This was obviously an attempt by the author(s) to keep the magic component of the fable firmly in the hands of the ruling (priestly) classes.
Finally, we get down to the perfume. Here’s the formula (all in equal parts):
- Stacte. Believed to be an aromatic gum or resin, however the source is not definitively known.
- Onycha. Thought to be the dried, fragrant operculum (the hard trapdoor lid) of sea snails or mollusks, often sourced from the Red Sea. It’s not explained how people lost and wandering in the wilderness managed to obtain the ingredient.
- Galbanum. An aromatic gum resin derived from the milky sap of Persian plant species in the Ferula genus, specifically Ferula gummosa.
- Frankincense. An aromatic, hardened gum resin obtained by tapping Boswellia trees.
The “most holy” perfume was also to be made according to the art of the apothecary. It was to be beaten “very small” and then to be applied “before the testimony in the tabernacle” – where god would then be prepared to meet with the priests. The reason for the perfume was not given however with the people wandering in the wilderness with limited water, and with god having a nose (remember the “in the likeness of” bit in genesis?), the absolute necessity for the perfume should be obvious. There is finally a will-be-cut-off-from-his-people warning about anyone who attempts to reproduce the perfume. It’s not explained what happened when the output of the perfume and the incense fought for supremacy in the tent.
Thankfully, this is a short chapter that, for some reason, needs to tell us that the lord called upon bezaleel (son of uri, son of hur) of the judah tribe and aholiab (son of ahisamach) of the dan tribe to construct all of the courtyard, tabernacle and the bits and pieces in it. He didn’t just call them, he filled them “with the spirit of god, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship“. That’s more magic. Really, with two million Israelites, there weren’t skilled artisans who could make all that stuff without having to be placed under magic spells?
On an unrelated topic, the lord then reminded moses that the black sabbath had to be remembered and kept – or else. The else bit was being put to death for the crime of “defileth of the sabbath” or being “cut off from among his people” for anyone who does work on the sabbath. Strangely, the lord isn’t quite sure about the punishment. Not only is there the use of the wishy-washy “surely”, but in one verse the threat is “cut off from among his people” and the very next verse, it’s “he shall surely be put to death“. In both verses, the crime is for “whosoever doeth any work“. So which is it?
Regardless, the lord then emphasizes that the sabbath thing is a perpetual covenant for all generations. Fundies, have you ever caught a bus, bought a drink, or ordered a pizza on the sabbath? If so, did you report the person(s) doing the work for you so that they could be earmarked for death, or at the very least be cut off from their people? If you think the sabbath stuff doesn’t apply to you because you’re not one of the chosen children, then why should other parts of the various texts apply to you? So you can pick and chose from the words of your creator?
How do you define the sabbath? Varying religions do that differently. Some allocate Sunday, some Saturday, and some from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset. Is it a full 24 hours or is it just the main part of the day that you’ve been told it is? Have you ever tried to figure it out or do you just do what everyone else in your religion is doing? It’s strange that such a seemingly important issue (which can be punishable by death) is up for debate among billions of people? Why couldn’t the precise definition have been worked into the text near to the description of the mandated punishment for non observance? And of course, why would a guy with the ability to create a universe care if creatures he created honored him with a day off every week?
The chapter finishes with “And he gave unto moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of god“. That’s easy to state but hard to prove. Where are those “tables of stone”? It’s a pity that the omniscient creator of the universe picked a way of recording his testimony in a way that would not survive throughout the ages. Is that likely, or is it much more likely that the text is a work of fiction and there never were such things as: god, moses or tablets of testimony?
Remember for the stuff that follows that at the end of chapter 24 we were informed that moses was to spend at least 40 days up the mountain. It seems that was way too long for the people because they essentially gave up hope and asked aaron to “make us gods” so that they could be led by something.
So that’s how it works, is it? It’s not about a god who had parted a “sea”, had brought forth thunder, lightening, smoke and trumpet sounds on a mountain, and had performed all those miracles and plagues and heart-hardening to get them a ride out of Egypt? Instead, it’s about a “god” instantly created by a single man? That’s never going to work … or would it?
It would! You’d think that aaron would be seen to have doubts, but no, because in the very next verse he told people to “break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me“. There’s no doubt that many fundies today would frown on a guy wearing an earring, however apparently that was a common thing for the people in the book upon which those fundies think everything should be based.
There is doubt that any gold was left after the requirements of the previous chapters were fulfilled – however that’s never going to be a problem in a fable such as this. And by the way, why would the people need to be led by anything? Remember that they were only a few weeks of walking away from the promised land, so a more practical solution would have been to simply pack up their belongings and tabernacle and get going. And how many people out of the two million demanded a resetting of their god? Twenty? One hundred? Remember that the people were spread out for many miles in all directions, so how many were involved in wanting a replacement deity?
So, bad aaron fashioned a golden calf, built an altar, and proclaimed “tomorrow is a feast to the lord“. That’s interesting because was “the lord” the same lord as yesterday’s lord – just rendered and accessed via a different image? This pleased the people because they brought offerings and “sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play“. Apparently there was also dancing.
Of course that behavior didn’t go unnoticed by the omniscient creator of the universe who declared to moses that he wanted to wrath his wax hot against them. Strangely, moses managed to talk that omniscient creator out of his intended action by reminding him that he had made a promise to the likes of abraham, isaac and israel and that a good ol’ hot waxing would betray that promise and look really bad in the eyes of the Egyptians. You can imagine god looking sheepishly at his feet and saying “oh, sorry, forgot about that”. By the way, this is not the last time that god would be talked out of a stated action by the mere mortals that he (supposedly) created. How can that be? That can only be because “god” is an anthropomorphized character in a fictional story.
Continuing with the “plan”, moses descended the mountain with the two tablets that were inscribed on both sides with the “testimony”, via the finger of god no less. When he reached the camp (after collecting joshua on the way down) and saw the golden calf and the dancing he did a bit of hot waxing himself and threw down the tablets so that they broke. He grabbed the golden calf, “burnt it in the fire, ground it to powder, strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it“. Turning gold into a powder is not a trivial task and must have taken a very long time – an issue not addressed by the text. Did all two million get a taste or was it just the ringleaders? Notice how effortlessly the text swaps between there being a large number and a small number of chosen people?
After aaron explained what had happened in his absence, moses then asked the (for-some-reason now-naked) people who were still on (the real) god’s side? The goody-two-shoes levites put their hands up, “gathered themselves together,” and were told to go throughout the camp and “slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor“. This was accomplished and about 3,000 men were killed by the sword. What? FFS moses, “thou shalt not kill” was number six on the tablets you just broke. There’s nothing in the text about god ordering the killings, so that’s down to moses acting like a god. What does “every man” mean when there were two million people in the congregation? Via the six-degrees-of-separation principle, didn’t every man basically know every other man, even if that was a few times removed? How did the levite policemen know who to kill? Did they see who was participating in the dancing and keep a ledger? Was death-by-sword based upon a self-reporting system? Was it: first 3,000 in, first “served”?
After the vengeful murders, moses stated his intention to climb back up the mountain to “make an atonement for your sin“. Upon explaining to the lord what had happened, moses offered that he be blotted out of god’s book if god decided not to forgive the people. This seemed to pacify the lord who stated that he would only remove from his book the people who had sinned against him. He told moses to return to the people to lead them, and to help moses he would install an angel to lead everyone. However it wasn’t quite an end to the affair because god still promised to “visit their sin upon them” and did manage to inflict plague upon the guilty parties. What guilty parties? Hadn’t those people been murdered by the storm-trooping levites? What book did god have? So he had a book with everyone’s name in it, or was it a metaphorical book? It’s hard to see it as a metaphorical book when the text explicitly states that “thy book which thou has written“. You don’t need to write in metaphorical books. Wasn’t aaron instrumental in the calf-related events? Why wasn’t he murdered and/or visited with plague? He managed to struggle on for a couple more books of the pentateuch, and be in a position of power, so there appears to be a bit of a double standard there.
The chapter starts with the lord reiterating (yet again) that he did the heavy lifting in bringing the people out of Egypt and how he had promised them a land of milk and honey. He also assured moses that he intended to do something gruesome to take care of the canaanite, the amorite, the hittite, the perizzite, and the jebusite people. And of course, there would be a trusty angel to lead them in the right direction. What there wouldn’t be was a god because he’d had enough of the “stiffnecked people” and refused to make the journey with them. It turns out that he was doing them a favor because there was a real chance that he would be annoyed to the point where he simply consumed them. The text doesn’t explain if that calf god would have been equally moody.
The people were dismayed when they learned that they were to make the trip sans a deity and they put on their ornaments (it’s not worth trying to figure that out). This didn’t improve the lord’s demeanor and he told the people to take off their ornaments – which they did “by the mount horeb“. It’s worth noting that the author(s) use the words “sinai” and “horeb” interchangeably when talking about the mountain, and it’s also worth noting that no one today knows exactly where that mountain is.
To try and diffuse the situation, moses pitched the tabernacle “afar off from the camp“. It was there that he was to interact with the lord – out of earshot of the Israelites. It seems that the author(s) forgot that the descriptions they had provided in earlier chapters made the tabernacle quite a complex business. It was large and involved a lot of moving parts that had to be assembled. There’s simply no way that a single 80-year-old man could have done that (as suggested by the text). Remember that the camp would have had a radius of 20-30 kilometers (over 12-18 miles), so what does “afar off from the camp” mean? This is another case where the author(s) simply ignored their own writings.
The people must have been a little sheepish about recent events because whenever moses traveled to the tent with religion they stood at their own tent “door” and worshipped him – which sounds dangerously close to breaking commandment number one. When moses entered the tabernacle, “a cloudy pillar descended” and the the lord and moses “talked”. This also made the people stand by their tent and worship the proceedings. Again, how did all of the people do as the text described when over 95% of them were miles (kilometers) from the action?
Apparently the lord “spake unto moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend“. When moses had enough of spaking face to face he departed the tent and left his deputy (joshua, son of nun) in his place. Why? To watch the silverware? Or did god also have a chat to joshua?
It must have been bothering moses that the lord had no intention of accompanying them on the trip, so he had another go at convincing the omniscient creator of the universe to change his mind. His chief argument was that, without a deity out the front, and in light of a recent regrettable incident with a golden calf, the Israelites would not have been able to distinguish themselves “from all the people that are upon the face of the earth“. Yep, there we go: a clear admission that there was nothing special about the congregation unless there was something out the front to prove to others how special they were. This is the philosophy that makes hood-ornaments (bonnet-ornaments) a thing.
In another case of a mere mortal getting a god to change his mind, the lord decided to go with the Israelites (“Oh, alright then, I’ll go on your little road trip”). In hindsight, it would have been far better for the Israelites if moses had kept his mouth shut (but that’s a story for a later book). The lord sealed the deal by promising to “be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy” – which would appear to say nothing more than anyone could say.
However we then get “thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live” which nicely contradicts the text in this very chapter: “and the lord spake unto moses face to face“. This restriction is of course stated merely to entrench the mysticism of a deity and is a device that is adopted by just about all fables involving a deity (long before these texts were written) – and clearly copied for this fable. The real problem is that, should anyone see the face of a deity, then they could potentially describe/draw that face, and that would lead to all sorts of downstream problems.
In terms of a practical solution, god tells moses to stand on a rock and as he passed by moses, he would shield him (via an outstretched hand) from his glory. Having passed, god stated that he would withdraw his hand so that moses could see his (god’s) “back parts: but my face shall not be seen“. The strange thing about this is that the trip was not going to be an overnight affair, so would there be a suitable rock every time god decided to progress the journey and pass by moses? And again, none of this squares up with “and the lord spake unto moses face to face” (earlier in the chapter).
Before setting off there was some housekeeping because the lord told moses to “hew two tables of stone” so that he (god) could rewrite the words that were on the tablets that moses had smashed. This is another strange case of the lord being willing to use magic to trace out words in rock, but not being willing to use magic to procure the two stone tablets. It’s not a trivial task for an 80-year-old to cut out two stone tablets which are smooth on both sides. It is a trivial task when the author(s) are writing fiction.
The lord then told moses to climb mount sinai (note, not mount horeb) the next morning to present himself. Importantly, moses was to come alone, and less importantly, there were to be no “flocks nor herds feed before that mount“. It gets more ridiculous because we’re told that moses managed to hew the two stone tablets before the next morning. So an 80-year-old man who is unskilled in stone work, cut out two stone tablets and smoothed them ready for writing, in just one afternoon? Sorry, nope.
But moses did as he was told and stood before the lord, who had “descended in the cloud, and stood with him there“. This caused moses to bow, worship, and promise that, even thought he represented a stiff-necked people, they deserved to be pardoned their iniquities and sins. We’re then given a bit about how wonderful, merciful, gracious, forgiving and good the lord is, right before we’re told how he will visit the “iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation“. What did the following generations do wrong? So god’s “forgiveness” is limited by conditions?
There’s then a bit of gloating from the lord about the wonderful things he was planning to do – such as wiping out the tribes of people that are in the way of the Israelites achieving their “promised” land. In reality, we have the omniscient creator of the universe admitting that he plans to do a “terrible thing” unto other people. And why? Because those people have their own gods – which is exactly what the Israelites achieved when they were left alone for 40 days and 40 nights (remember the golden calf?). Oh yes, and the bad guys go “whoring after their gods“. Talk about a straw-man argument. The point of this entire text becomes obvious from this section: that the author(s) were making a power play to have their version of religion dominate so that they could more effectively control people.
So that’s how it works is it? A deity can find no other solution except to do “terrible” things unto instances of his creation? It seemed that the lord didn’t want to do all the heavy lifting because he warned moses that no one was to make any covenants with the doomed people they encountered. On the contrary, the Israelites were to “destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves“. It’s never been explained why cutting down the foliage of a people destined to be genocided is necessary? The reason for all this is then given: “for the lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous god“. Can a perfect being who created everything show a character trait of jealousy? Well, that being can if he is an anthropomorphized fictional character who is being written by superstitious and ignorant iron-age men.
For some unbelievable reason, the lord then feels the need to go over the extra rules – again (we got a good dose of these in chapter 23 of this very book):
- For seven days in the month of abib, eat only unleavened bread.
- Every firstborn male among the cattle (ox or sheep) actually belongs to the lord.
- The firstborn male donkey had to be redeemed via the killing of a lamb, however in the absence of a lamb, the newborn donkey had to have its neck broken. Always remember that some people still believe that god really does love animals.
- Firstborn sons also had to be redeemed. It’s not explained what had to happen if there was nothing available to sacrifice instead of a human baby? It’s also not explained why the act of killing something in place of another is important, let alone achieves anything?
- “And none shall appear before me empty“. Yep: bring a bottle. For some reason the omniscient creator of the universe (the one that created two trillion galaxies in a day) feels the need for anyone approaching him to have something to offer. Note that there is not a single instance (in any text) explaining exactly what god physically did with the offerings made to him. Nice for the priestly classes who were “acting” on his behalf.
- Work for six days and rest on the seventh. This one was on the tablets, but it’s obviously so important that it is listed again.
- “And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end“. That’s the big three celebrations of the year at which all the “menchildren” were expected to appear before god. It was promised that no one would steal anyone’s land while they were away appearing before god.
- Don’t eat anything made from yeast during a meal involving a sacrifice, and make sure that everything has been cleaned up before the next morning.
- Don’t cook a kid (a young goat) in its mother’s milk. The text doesn’t say if it was okay to cook a kid in a different mother’s milk.
Weirdly, the lord then instructed moses to write down the ten commandments on the tablets – despite stating that he (god) was doing to do that (in verse one of this very chapter). This was a gruesome task for moses because it took 40 days and 40 nights during which time he didn’t eat bread or drink water. One can assume that moses was also denied protein shakes, so it’s worth noting that the absence of liquid for 5.7 weeks is impossible for a human to endure. In Hebrew, the ten commandments can be written in about 223 characters, so assuming a 12-hour day of chiseling, moses averaged one character every 129 minutes, or about one character every two hours and nine minutes. Really? That’s some slow inscribing work moses.
Apparently being in the presence of god makes one’s skin shine, because that’s what happened to moses upon descending the mountain with the tablets. This seemed to terrify aaron and the other people because they were afraid to approach him. There’s no mention of that effect after moses had first spent 40 days and 40 nights in the presence of the lord.
After moses had chatted with aaron and the “rulers of the congregation“, “all the children of Israel came nigh” and were given the wording of the ten commandments. This is another case where the author(s) ignored that the “children” numbered close to two million.
From then on, moses adopted the approach: take off a veil when he went in to talk to god, come out to talk to the people (who could see his face shining), and then putting on a veil until he was ready to talk to god again. What was the point of the veil since he didn’t use it for either god or the people?
This is another one of those boring chapters because it feels the need to state what has already been stated. People are tempted to think that the size of the bible confirms some sort of authority, however they are obviously unaware of the amount of repetition in the text. Of course they are: they have never read it!
In another blissful denial of population numbers, the author(s) said that moses “gathered all the congregation of the children of Israel together” to let them know about the updates from the lord. Yep, somehow the word was related to those standing a dozen miles away. The big news was that anyone working on the sabbath “shall be put to death“. It got worse, because apparently “working” extended to the lighting of fire in the household! For some reason, there no longer is mention of the lesser punishment of being cut off from their people (for the crime of sabbath work).
Next, moses told those who were of a “willing heart” to offer up their “gold and silver and brass” for the building of the tabernacle and all of it’s components. There was also a repeat of all the things that made up the tabernacle, and due to weariness, those will not be repeated here (please see chapters 25-28 above). The “children” went away and those with a willing heart brought back everything on the shopping list. It’s not explained how those without a willing heart occupied their time.
Then moses explained how bezaleel (the son of uri, the son of hur, all from the tribe of judah), would be doing the actual work. Apparently he, out of almost two million people, was the one skilled in: architecture, metalwork, carpentry, sculpture, blacksmithing, jewelry-making, goldsmithing and tailoring. The lord must have taken a bit of pity on bezaleel because he also “filled with wisdom of heart” a dude named aholiab (the son of ahisamach from the tribe of dan) to help out.
It seems to have escaped the author(s) attention that all of this stuff had already been described. Perhaps this was a different set of author(s) who wanted in on the credit?
In case you are concerned that the task of constructing everything was too much for just two guys, you can be spared worry because the lord also enlisted “every wise hearted man” in whom he had “put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary“. So that’s how it works? People just woke up one morning and discovered that they could suddenly perform a trade? That’s more magic.
Everything was going so well that moses had to tell the people not to bring any more offerings because apparently the workers had enough.
For some unbelievable reason, the author(s) then decide to repeat the description of the design (materials, quantities, sizes, etc.) of the sanctuary and its components. It’s all too boring to repeat here, so if you are determined to learn this stuff, please see above (chapters 26 and 27).
Next came a repeat about the construction of the: ark, mercy seat (lid), table, vessels, candlestick, lamps, incense altar, holy anointing oil, and of the incense itself. Again, it’s all too boring to repeat what has already been described by the text (see chapters 25 and 30).
Next came a repeat about the construction of: the altar of burnt offering and it’s associated paraphernalia (see chapter 27), the laver (see chapter 30), and the court with its pillars and curtains and gate (see chapter 26).
Really, hundreds and hundreds of (repeated) words from the omniscient creator of the universe about the design and construction of a tent, but nothing about how to cure cancer?
Apparently not, but we’re reassured that “This is the sum of the tabernacle, even of the tabernacle of testimony, as it was counted, according to the commandment of moses, for the service of the levites, by the hand of ithamar, son to aaron the priest“.
We are then given a measure of the display of wealth that these “slaves” managed to acquire prior to leaving Egypt. The text informs us of the following:
- All the gold that was occupied for the work in all the work of the holy place, even the gold of the offering, was 29 talents and 730 shekels.
- And the silver of them that were numbered of the congregation was 100 talents and 1,775 shekels.
- Every man that went to be counted (in a census) who was aged 20 and older was expected to pay one bekah (half a shekel) of silver. The total number of people said to be counted was 603,550 men. That’s 301,775 shekels of silver.
- And of the 100 talents of silver were cast the sockets of the sanctuary, and the sockets of the vail; an 100 sockets of the 100 talents, a talent for a socket.
- And of the 1,775 shekels he made hooks for the pillars, and overlaid their chapiters, and filleted them.
- And the brass of the offering was 70 talents, and 2,400 hundred shekels.
A biblical talent is estimated to be approximately 75 pounds (34 kilograms), and one talent typically equaled 3,000 shekels. That equates to the following amounts:
- Gold: 87,730 shekels. That is estimated to weigh 2,222 pounds (1,008 kilograms).
- Silver: 301,775 shekels. That is estimated to weigh 7,584 pounds (3,440 kilograms).
- Brass: 212,400 shekels. That is estimated to weigh 5,500 pounds (2,500 kilograms).
At the end of 2025, that was worth the following:
- Gold: US $140 million.
- Silver: US $8 million.
- Brass: US $ 16,000
So the Israelites had managed to liberate about US $150-million worth (in today’s money) of metal from Egypt. Even considering a different value/worth of the metal in those days, there’s no denying that a ton of gold was of considerable value. And they obviously had a great deal more silver since the tax would only have been a reasonably-small percentage of what they owned.
Next came a repeated description of the construction of the clothes that aaron was prescribed to wear (see chapter 28). It’s worth pointing out that the pentateuch devotes zero words to describing the abolition of slavery, however it finds the time to devote about 750 words (and repeated words, at that) to the construction of the outfit that the CEO head priest, and his sons had to wear.
Incredibly, we get another summation of all the bits and pieces of the sanctuary and tabernacle, culminating with: “And moses did look upon all the work, and, behold, they had done it as the lord had commanded, even so had they done it: and moses blessed them“. Oh really? So moses was somehow elevated to a position entitled to dish out blessings, was he? Wouldn’t that take some sort of divine origination?
One contradictory aspect about all this detail about how to build the sanctuary and tabernacle is that it had already been built: “And it came to pass, when moses went out unto the tabernacle …” (exodus 33:8). That was before moses ascended to collect the 10 commandments (second edition). Whoops.
The lord then informs moses that the tabernacle was to be set up on the first day of the first month (Abib) of the second year, and into it shall be placed the ark (containing the 10 commandments), and the veil shall be drawn to cover it. Then the other bits and pieces (table, candlestick, altar for offering, incense, door hanging, altar for incense, laver, court, gate, etc.) were to be set up. To make everything nice and holy, it was all to be anointed with the special oil.
When the paraphernalia was ready to go, aaron and his sons were to be brought forth and washed with water, then dressed in their costumes holy garments, so that they would be nice and sanctified and ready to “minister unto the lord in the priest’s office“. These were jobs that were then promised to their generations, forever. The text doesn’t suggest what one of those future generations should do if one of them just wanted to be an accountant in mergers and acquisitions.
The lord then gave moses the green light and he (moses) set everything up – for which we are subjected to another lengthy description of all the bits and pieces and how they work. This time however it was more than a dry run because moses actually managed to get a burnt offering and a meat offering going on the BBQ altar. All the important people washed their hands and feet before going into the tent to finish hanging the curtains and gate. This last bit was very important because only when there was no way that the masses could see anything important, did “the glory of the lord fill the tabernacle“. To be honest, the masses could tell that something was going on because “a cloud covered the tent of the congregation” when the lord was in attendance.
Despite having done pretty much all the heavy lifting, moses was “not able to enter the tent of the congregation“. It’s not explained if that’s because he did something wrong or whether it was just too bright in there. What is weird is that in an earlier chapter we are told that moses regularly went in to talk to god: “But when moses went in before the lord to speak with him…” (exodus 34:34). Consistency between chapters is not something for which this work is known.
The tabernacle (tent) was a demountable affair and whenever the Israelites were to travel, “the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle“. If the cloud was in place, then they stayed put.
Finally, we get: “For the cloud of the lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of of Israel, throughout all their journeys“. Note the extension of the volcano imagery by trying to make the whole thing more impressive?
Summary
Well, there you have it: arguably the most important book of the pentateuch because it contains the commandments that fundies believe others should be forced to follow. If the book didn’t contain those, it would be instantly forgotten as being irrelevant – as has happened for the following books in the pentateuch.
It’s also obvious that the text was written to suit both a small and enormous number of Israelites in the desert. Which was it, fundies? There’s also a large number of descriptions of acts of magic – something that fundies just hate when part of another belief system, but turn a blind eye towards when part of their own belief system.
Is it really necessary to remind the reader of this page that the entire sanctuary and tabernacle and altar-offerings and incense burning meant absolutely nothing and were merely a showing of authority to try and impress the readers? Did the author(s) really believe that the characters in their fable fared better or worse depending on whether they slaughtered and burned the first-born of a particular species of animal? Despite being crucial (to the lord apparently), no fundie today would consider sacrificial offerings a sane thing to do.
The book is ultimately a manual devoted to the control of the masses. It attempts to scare and awe the reader into a submission that suits the ruling classes (the religious folk of the day). It’s a pity that it’s still fulfilling that duty today.
The story continues in the book of leviticus.