Chapter 11:
As you might remember, God has been playing weird puppet-master mind games with the slave children of Israel and the Egyptians. Moses gets to be God's secretary and relay his messages back and forth between God and the Pharaoh keeping the COI under slavery. God keeps telling Moses to pass on threats to the Pharaoh and then God keeps hardening the Pharaoh's heart on purpose to make him say no anyway then all the Egyptians suffer for it, then the Pharaoh says that he'll totally change his mind if God stops the suffering so God does then the Pharaoh's all "psyche" then God comes up with another creative way of punishing the Egyptians. It's been a weird little game.
Now God has the ultimate punishment to threaten the man who's heart he intentionally hardens, he's going to kill all the Egyptian first borns babies.
The days of childish God pranks are over now. No more frogs. No more bugs. No more turning phallic objects into snakes. Now God is going to commit infanticide to make a point. All the Egyptian first borns babies are going to be taken out. Even Egyptian cow babies. What's that you say? Cows can't pick religions and haven't actually oppressed the Hebrews? What else is that you say? Babies aren't capable of oppressing people either and have nothing to do with this? In fact, most of the Egyptian parents who are about to lose their children have nothing to do with the Pharaoh (whose heart is being hardened by God) not letting the COI go? All logical arguments. Unfortunately your logic has no business here.
Chapter 12:
Now, if the Hebrew parents want to keep their first borns alive, they must kill a lamb and put its blood on their doors. When God sees the blood on the door, he will pass them over. They also have to eat unleavened bread for 7 days. God's all about the dietary restrictions.
Things get pretty horrible:
"And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was no one dead"
After the Egyptian babies are smoted, the Pharaoh kindly suggests that the COI get the hell out of his country. And to take your cows too. He even throws this suggestion in:
"and bless me also"
The 600,000 COI (not including women or children or cows) rushed out of their homes to leave Egypt for good. They didn't have time to wait for their bread to rise but they did manage to find the time to loot the Egyptians for their gold and silver.
The COI make a holiday to celebrate this day in the future called "Passover" and God tells them how they can celebrate this holiday with strangers who might like to join in the future:
"And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised"
The COI don't break unleavened bread with foreskin wearers.
Chapter 13:
Moses gets excited about future party planning and lets all the Hebrews know that the whole week long unleavened bread thing is going to be a tradition and so is the circumcision thing. All the boys have to get their foreskin removed with a lovely flint knife to maintain their covenant with God. For once, I'm super fine with women being overlooked.
Moses carries around Israel/Joseph/Loki's bones with them so that he may remain with his children. The COI do a lot of desert wandering in search of the promised land of milk and honey. Sorry lactose intolerant Hebrews, you don't matter. God protects the COI with a pillar of a cloud during the day and a pillar of a fire at night. It's luxury desert travel.
No comments:
Post a Comment