The Lord tells the COI (Children of God) to go to the land of milk and honey without him. He can't go with them because they are stubborn and would annoy him and then he would have to hurt them. Does this not sound like the words of an abusive boyfriend? "I don't want to hurt you anymore baby, but you keep making me because you're so damn stubborn."
Moses reasons with God that if he doesn't travel with the COI that the COI aren't anymore special or chosen than any other tribe that claims they are special. God says "You got me." Moses says that he would like to see God's glorious presence. God's all "No you'd die. but you can see my glorious butt." So they arrange for Moses to see God's glorious butt by playing a game of peekaboo. Moses will stand beside a rock, God with walk by and put Moses in the gap of the rock, cover it with his hand until he's passed by, take away his hand, then Moses will get to see the backside of God but not his face.
Here is a reenactment of God's peekaboo game drawn by someone who can barely use scissors to cut paper in a straight line, let alone create art.
Chapter 34:
Moses has to rewrite the 10 commandments because he broke the last ones in a hissy fit. He has to cut two more stone tablets and meet God on the mountain again, no one can follow, not even sheep.
God renews the covenant he made with the COI.
"The LORD said: I now make a covenant. In front of all your people, I'll perform dramatic displays of power that have never been done before anywhere on earth or in any nation. All the people who are around you will see what the LORD does, because I will do an awesome thing with you."
Oh YES. God's going to do a MAGIC SHOW and Moses is going to be his lovely assistant.
God repeats the rules of the covenant. Moses writes them down. This takes 40 days and 40 nights because writing things down on stone tablets is time consuming. Here are some highlights:
- Don't make a covenant with the foreigners. They're a bunch of prostitutes. Destroy their altars and smash their sacred stone pillars because tolerating other religions is lame.
- Don't make metal gods for yourself. Especially not any fucking cows.
- "Every first offspring is mine. That includes all your male livestock, the oldest offspring of cows and sheep. But a donkey's oldest offspring you may ransom with a sheep. Or if you don't ransom it, you must break its neck. You should ransom all of your oldest sons." What exactly does he mean by the firstborn sons being "mine"?
- Don't boil a goat in it's mother's milk. Still solid advice.
When Moses is done and goes down the mountain. His face is shiny because of talking to God. God causes oily skin.
When's the magic act happening?
Chapter 35-40:
Moses passes on the rules to the COI. It basically just involves the special dwelling they have to make for God and all the gifts they have to bring him. Everybody gets to work on it. The next 5 chapters are VERY detailed about EVERY material used and how people built it. Then God fills the dwelling with his cloudy presence. Some might suggest that these chapters were a little unnecessary and perhaps even self indulgent on the part of the authors. Some might wonder what the purpose of knowing that one hundred "kikkars" of silver were used to cast the bases for the sanctuary or where exactly God wants Moses to arrange his furniture "Place the chest containing the covenant inside the dwelling. Hide the chest from view with the veil. Bring in the table and arrange its items. Bring in the lampstand and set up its lamps. Place the gold altar for burning incense in front of the chest" and so forth. If you find God's interior decoration choices fascinating, go ahead and read these chapters on your own because I'm not dissecting them for you. Also, there wasn't any magic show.
Exodus is finished! 75 pages in and only 873 to go!
Next week we will read a section called "Leviticus" and hopefully there will be no more discussion of rules or God's opinion of feng shui.
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