Numbers 15-17

Hi again Holy Bible Blog Review readers. It's been a long time. I spent my summer working and studying the GRE which I passed. So now I'm back, at least until I'm a grad student.

I would summarize what we went over last time but this whole blog thing is already a summary of a book so if you need a refresher, read the past entries or don't. You're your own person. Onward!

Chapter 15: 

Lord talks about the kind of food gifts you can/should/absolutely have to give him unless you want to burn with the fire of a thousand suns. It is a very complicated system with very specific instructions about the type of food, down to the gender of the meat, the way it is burned, and the fraction that is to be given. Lord must be such a pain in the ass at restaurants.

If the whole community sins accidentally, and if you have seen how many rules there are, you can see how that can happen, the whole community must offer up a single ram to Lord.

If an individual sins accidentally, they must offer up a one year old female goat.

I can mostly get behind this. I am also more forgiving if people give me food. Though I'm not as picky as Lord. I'll accept any number of food items if you offend me accidentally or purposefully. However, Lord will not accept any food items for purposeful offenses i.e. intentional sin. Lord insists that an individual be forever cut off. He's still working on that whole merciful God thing.

The next section has a mini story. Once upon a time, the Israelites found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath. They took the man to Moses because they weren't sure what to do with him. Moses asks Lord what they should do with the man who did a thing on the Sabaath. Can you guess what Lord suggests? Is it:

a. Burns him with holy righteous fire
b. Has the whole community stone him to death in a way that's sure to bond them
c. Opens the ground beneath him to swallow him whole and also maybe a few innocent bystanders fall in
d. Forgives him and lets the man learn from the experience to then tell others of his super great leader

Hint. It's not d.

I'll tell you at the end of the blog and if you got the answer right, I want you to give yourself a little pat on the back.

The next section is Lord's fashion decree. He wants Moses and the Israelites to sew blue fringe cords on the ends of their clothing...so that they will not explore the lusts of their own heart or eyes?

The fringes help her reflect on her promises to the Lord.

Chapter 16:

250 men from various tribes get all jealous that Moses gets all this special attention from Lord considering they are all supposed to be the chosen people, and try to rise up against him. Moses gets so mad that he falls on his face then suggests that they all light some incense and see if they are worthy to approach the tabernacle.

Moses tries to send for some back up and back up is having none of it. Their reasons...confuse me:

"We won't come up! Isn't it enough that you've brought us up from a land full of milk and honey to kill us in the desert so that you'd also dominate us? Moreover, you haven't brought us to a land full of milk and honey"

You took us away from the land of milk and honey! Moreover, you actually never took us to a land of milk and honey in the first place!

So everyone gets their incense together as an offering to Lord. Moses tells Lord to pay no mind to the offering from the rebels.

Lord: "Stand aside a sec, I'm going to sort this out real quick."

Moses and Aaron:  "Wait, wait, Loooord, you're not planning on killing EVERYONE are you?"

Lord: "Would...that be an issue?"

Moses and Aaron: "Maybe...you could just kill the individuals that were actually causing a problem and not kill the entire community?"

Lord: "Fiiiiine, but everyone better get out of the way because I'm about to open the ground up and if anyone innocent bystanders are too close to the rebels" *shrug*

Lord then tells them to melt down all the incense censers that the rebels used, melt them down, and put them on the altar. He tells them to do this since the incense censers were in Lord's presence, they are now holy. Lord's not too concerned with modesty.

The very next day, after Lord's display of "mercy" more Israelites come to complain some more. They are not pleased with all of the murdering. I wouldn't be too pleased either but at this point, I'd be smart enough to keep that shit to myself. The Israelites are not so Lord plagues them some more with some plagues.

Aaron starts an incense ritual for reconciliation because Lord really calms down when he gets a whiff of that anti stress lemon grass smell. Eventually the plaguing stops, after only about 14,700 chosen people die. There's going to be so much free open space in that Land of Milk and Honey.


Chapter 17:

Lord tells Moses to take a staff from each chief of the twelve households and to write the chiefs' names on the staffs. Aaron takes over the Levi Household because the Levis are part of his priesthood. Once they do this, Aaron's staff sprouts blossoms and almonds which is okay. Everyone in this book seems really impressed with healthy food like almonds and apples. I mean, I think I'd be more inclined to accept Aaron as special if his staff grew waffles and more waffles. Moses shows the staffs to the Israelites and then puts it on the covenant to serve as a sign to the rebels. The Israelites are not pleased.

"We are perishing. We are being destroyed. All of us are being destroyed. Anyone who approaches the LORD's dwelling will die. Are we doomed to perish?"

Probably.

Is this book a long horror novel about an all powerful murderer who starts off with good intentions until he slips into madness?

Did you guess the right punishment for the wood collector? It was b. the community stoned him to death! Give yourself a pat on the back.

I Haven't Given Up On This

In case you were actually worried. I haven't forgotten or given up on this blog. I mostly just have time for working and studying for the GRE at the moment, but will return to the exciting adventures of the bible after August 17th when I take my test. Promise. And to make up for the abandonment, I'll draw another embarrassingly horrible bible related drawing.

Numbers 11-14

Chapter 11: 

Chapter 11 starts with a real bang.

"When the people complained intensely in the LORD's hearing, the LORD heard and became angry. Then the LORD's fire burned them and consumed the edges of the camp. When the people cried out to Moses, Moses prayed to the LORD, and the fire subsided."

Let's say you go to a party, and maybe you didn't really like the snacks, so you kind of mutter to your friends about the lack of variety in the snacks and then the host of that party's solution is to....set everyone and everything on fire? This is kind of like that. This whole chapter is kind of like that.

In the next section, the COI complain that they miss eating meat. They might have been slaves back in Egypt but they apparently got to eat really well. They are not at all deterred from complaining after almost being burned alive. I've been complaining a lot about the character of Lord God. We've established that he's a sensitive soul who isn't very good about criticism or disagreement and his responses are a bit sporadic and...extreme, but let's turn to the COI for a moment. They have learned nothing. They prefer slavery over a hike in the desert. They hate hiking so much that they'll continue to piss off the guy who has shown that he isn't at all afraid to kill every single member of the COI in new, painful, and creative ways. If you want to be a slave that badly, go back and be a slave. Moses, let the people go back and be slaves.

So in this section, they complain that they miss meat. Moses goes to talk to God and complains about how he's sick of trying to lead the whiny complainers. LG allows Moses to set up a committee to share his powers and take some of the workload off. LG then says that he's going to give the COI the meat they've been missing. How strangely generous of him.

"A wind from the LORD blew up and brought quails from the sea. It let them fall by the camp, about a day's journey all around the camp and about three feet deep on the ground. Then the people arose and gathered the quail all that day, all night, and all the next day." . . . "While the meat was still between their teeth and not yet consumed, the LORD's anger blazed against the people. The LORD struck the people with a very great punishment. The name of that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had the craving."

THIS IS NOT A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP.

Chapter 12:

After a bunch of people die from eating the meat, the COI learn their lessen about questioning LG and everyone gets along famously forever.

Just kidding. Moses's sister and brother get jealous about Moses's special God conversation privileges. LG agrees to meet with them...so that he can give Moses's sister a skin disease. Moses begs God to cure her but LG's all "just shun her to live in the wilderness for 7 days she'll be fine." I'm going to choose to believe that the brother isn't punished because God already murdered his sons and not because of penis privilege.

Chapter 13:
LG tells Moses to send scouts out to the land of Milk and Honey i.e. Canaan. When the 14 scouts return, they tell Moses to say that the land is ACTUALLY full of milk and honey. What does that mean? Are there rivers of milk? A slow sticky water slide made with honey? What?

Of course, aside from the world's worst water slide, there's a catch. The land is full of powerful giants called Nephilim, that already live there.

Chapter 14:

The COI complain that LG is sending them to their deaths in the Land of Milk and Honey. They say that they should go back to Egypt. They even say that they'll pick a new leader and head back. LET THEM. Moses tells them to seriously shut up, LG's going to hear, seriously just be quiet, you know how he gets, but it's too late. LG gets his feelings hurt. Moses and LG have a chat.

LG: "Why doesn't anybody like me? Is it the plagues and murder? Do you think I'm not doing enough of that? I'm going to go ahead and plague and murder some more."

Moses: "How about a different approach? You see, if you kill everyone who you promised you'd protect and lead to safety, other people might get the wrong idea. You  remember how you said you were a loving and forgiving God? Maybe follow up on that?"

LG: "Ok...I guess you're right. I'll be merciful. I'll let everyone 20 years and younger enter the promised land and all the oldies can just wander the desert and rot."

Moses: "That's the best you can do huh?"

LG: "But the young people still have to wander the desert for 40 years first."

When Moses passes along the news, the 20 years and older crowd decide that they'll just find the Land of Milk and Honey themselves. Now they really want to go? After all that bitching about wanting to go to Egypt? What is wrong with them?! So, they try to head to the mountains in the direction of the Land of Milk and Honey and are beaten and/or murdered by the giants.

That was all pretty bleak, but you know what? I didn't read about one single rule. No mention of ritual sacrifices, uncleanliness, or dietary restrictions. Just petty disputes, plagues, and murder. Things are starting to look up.

Numbers 7-10

Chapter 7:

God gets presents from all the chiefs. One chief comes a day and brings some gifts. There are many chiefs. There are many gifts given. Nothing cool though. Just like dishes and farm animals and stuff. This was before gift cards. I would have given God this:

Chapter 8:

The first section of this chapter is titled "The Lampstand" and it's about as exciting as you would expect.

After all the lampstand action, the Levites are offered up to God in a ram butchering and burning ceremony. God loves BBQs. God reminds everyone that the Levites are owed to him since he killed the Egyptian first born sons and no Jewish ones. Well done, God. We really owe you for not killing the children of the people whose side you said you were on.

Remember in Guardians of the Galaxy, how that blue guy was always reminding and guilting Starlord about being nice enough to not eat him when he was a child? God's kind of like that.

"Normal people don't even think about eating someone else, much less, that person having to be grateful for it."

Chapter 9:

You know that friend who just keeps telling the same stories over and over and who would never admit it if you tried to call them out on it? This section reviews the Passover rules. Lots about eating the right kind of bread on the right kind of day and being clean and not touching dead bodies in this section.

The COI go on a road trip through the desert and are led by a magical cloud. The cloud leads them on when they need to move and holds still over the area that they need to make camp at. Magical cloud eh? So....Moses first met God as a burning bush and uh...now God's a magical cloud leading them around? 

Chapter 10: 

God has Moses makes some trumpets to signal the people and God and stuff.

To illustrate the situation, Moses, the trumpet musician, must now lead his people to follow a magical cloud through the desert.

Why is everyone so uptight? This sounds like a great time.

Moses goes to talk to some guy name Hobab the slutty Kebab who isn't so sure about this music festival. He'd rather go back home and be a slave again. Moses says that the COI could really use his help in the desert finding their way, even though all they actually have to do is follow the cloud. Why is it that Hobab knows the desert any better than anyone else? Wasn't he also just a slave back in Egypt? Do the slaves get a study abroad program in order to become more well rounded and cultured slaves? Anyway, Moses promises Hobab that if he sticks by the COI and God, that God's totally going to bless him and the Land of Milk and Honey is going to be sick. Hobab gives in. I'm sure we'll hear about Hobab again and get his origin story straightened out soon and that this little exchange was in no way a pointless waste of time and plot.

Anyone else miss the sodomy and incest sections? When's that coming back?

Numbers 4-6

I am sorry for the month long hiatus. I am trying to be ambitious and prepare for grown up things right now and it hasn't left a lot of time for whatever this is. But I will try to do better for the 1-2 people who might have noticed my lack of posts and were genuinely disappointed. I'm hazy on what happened most recently, but if I had to guess, it probably involved contradictory rules that don't make any sense. Onward.

Chapter 4: 

People from different families are going to be assigned to carry stuff from the meeting tent. They are going to do this because the Israelites are going on a road trip. Aaron and his sons must prepare the things by covering the things up because if the other people see them with their worthless peasant eyes, they'll die. BECAUSE REASONS. People have very specific things they are supposed to carry. OR ELSE. Here's a taste of how exciting this chapter was for me:

"When it's time to break camp, Aaron and his sons will enter and take down the screening curtain, and they will cover the chest containing the covenant with it. Then they will place a covering of fine leather on it. They will spread a whole cloth of blue over it, and they will set its pole in place. They will spread a blue cloth on the presentation table and place on it the plates, the dishes, the owls, and the container for the drink offering. The usual bread will be on it. They will spread on them a red cloth, cover it with fine leather, and set its poles in place. They will take a blue cloth and cover "....this goes on.

Chapter 5:

"The LORD spoke to Moses: Command the Israelites to send out from the camp anyone with a skin disease, an oozing discharge, or who has become unclean from contact with a corpse. You must sent out both male and female. You must send them outside the camp so that they will not make their camp, where I live among them, unclean."

TLDR? God's a total germaphobe. He wants them to kick out all the sick folks before they they for the next place. I thought he was all powerful but he's apparently helpless around cooties.

Next, there's a section about what to do with a woman accused of adultery. Basically, if a husband gets jealous, EVEN IF HE HAS ZERO PROOF OF ANYTHING, he brings his wife to the priest. The priest throws some dust from the ground into some water and makes her drink it. It is called "the water of bitterness."

If she is guilty, her uterus will drop it likes it's hot, or as the bible puts it: "(her) womb will discharge and make (her) miscarry."  Sooo if she happens to have a particularly heavy period, or if her husband had happened to impregnate her and it didn't go well, she's fucked.

There's no mention of what happens if a woman gets jealous of her husband potentially committing adultery. That must come later right?

Chapter 6: 

This section is about men or women who want to be Nazirites, who I guess are just more special and more dedicated to LG. Can you guess what it takes? If you guessed giving up fun stuff and following arbitrary rules,  you'd be correct!

Things Nazirites can't do:

• drink wine
• drink brandy
• consume wine vinegar
• consume brandy vinegar 
• drink grape juice
• eat grapes
• eat raisins
• shave
• cut their hair
• go near corpses-if you do, you have to shave your head and kill some cute animals

Sooo are the Nazis somehow connected to this? Were they big fans of this book? If so, I don't remember them having crazy long hair or beards, so if that's what they were going for, they really sucked at it. 

LG has Aaron say something nice to the people for once: 

"The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace." Unless you fuck up the slightest minute detail of one of my hundreds of rules of course. 

Numbers 1-3

Chapter 1 "First Census":

Brace yourselves for some excitement guys. We jump right into an action packed plot here in numbers. The Almighty God commands that Moses shall take a census!

Moses is to count the men over 20 who are eligible for military service. Moses's census team shall be composed of 12 men from the 12 different tribes who have awesome sci-fi warrior sounding names like Zebulun, Pedahzur, Ochran, and then there's...Dan. Dan must be such a disappointment. Even his father, Ashminadab has a cool name so it isn't a family thing. Ashminiadab must have known his son Dan's destiny and greatest achievement was to be a census taker.

The 13th tribe, the Levites, are excluded from census duties and get to babysit the Tabernacle i.e. God's special dwelling place. They must defend it with their lives. If anyone approaches the Tabernacle, the Levites will kill them. The Levites get this special honor because they were the only tribe that did not worship the golden calf and they did not hesitate to murder their loved ones who did worship the calf when God asked. The Levites are really intense teacher's pets.

Chapter 2 "Wilderness Camp's Arrangement" 

God wants each of the 12 Israeltie camps to have their own banner with a symbol of their household just like Game of Thrones. God's a huge fantasy nerd. The Camp arrangement will have the bloodthirsty, approval seeking Levites at the center guarding the tabernacle, and a square around that with 3 tribes at each side of the square.

There is no mention of what the symbols of the banners are for each tribe so I've put down suggestions for a few of them. Here's a diagram:

If you, dear one of my 3 readers, has a suggestion for a cool banner symbol for the tribes, you should put it in the comments or draw it and I'll put it in the next blog. 

Chapter 3 Aaron's Sons (or what's left of them anyway): 

As you might recall, Aaron's older sons Nadab and Abihu died from an "unauthorized offering" to God. His two left are Eleazar and Ithamar. The Levites tribe work for the remaining sons of Aaron and are a "gift" to Aaron. We're talking about slaves again right? Is this a slave thing? God goes on about how if anyone other than the Levites approach Aaron for the new priestly job, they will be put to death. God's job agency is pretty fucking serious about you showing up to the right interview.

Moses and the Census Bureau count up all the Levites that are over 1 month old because that's the age where you've really got to stop being such a freeloader.

God then goes on a bit, reminding the COI of their debt to him because he killed all the Egyptian first born sons back in Exodus but none of the Israelites sons.

"The LORD spoke to Moses: I claim the Levites from the Israelites in place of all the oldest males who open an Israelite womb. The Levites are mine because all the oldest males are mine. When I killed all the oldest males in the land of Egypt, I reserved for myself all the oldest males in Israel, both human and animals. They are mine; I am the Lord. 

God wants to make it clear that all the oldest sons in town belong to him. Apparently, God's been a teenage girl this whole time.

Now I want you to picture this as God for the rest of the book.

Now the firstborn sons belong to him but he'll graciously let the Levites stand in for the first borns and all the first borns have to do is pay 5 shekels for the Levites service. It's a lot like hiring interns.

Leviticus 20-27

I didn't think it was possible, but I actually long for the days of reading lists of men who begatted other men. I thought Exodus was a bunch of boring towards the end, but I'm just going to call it now. Leviticus is the worst. There are no redeeming qualities in this section. Why didn't the publisher catch this and cut it out in editing?

Like...I think we covered most of these rules in Exodus. We get it. God likes rules. And doling random cruel punishments. His character is very much established. I miss reading about brothers getting into fights and running across the country and other brothers selling brothers into slavery and other brothers murdering their brothers then getting sassy about it. I even miss the sodomy. I especially miss the sodomy.

I'm trying to hold out but I don't know how much longer I can push through this. I didn't think I'd ever actually say this about anything, but this section of the book has less of a plot than TWILIGHT. Get it together Jesus and James. Who is Leviticus anyway?

Chapter 20 Executions: 

Basically all the rules are repeated and God mentions that he would kindly appreciate it if all those rules breakers were executed via being stoned to death or maybe burned to death. God has unaddressed OCD issues about "cleanliness."

Worthy rule mentions:

"If someone, whether male or female, is a medium with the dead or a diviner, they must be executed. They will be stoned; their blood is on their own head."

"If anyone curses their father or mother, they must be executed."


Don't talk back to your parents.

Other reasons to be burned or stoned as a COI (Child of Israel): if you're a man and somehow manage to have sex with a man in the same way you would with a woman (clearly because you'd then be a sorcerer and as mentioned earlier, sorcerers must also be put to death), if you have sex with a daughter in law, your father's wife, have sex with a married woman, if you marry a woman and her mother, if you have sex with an animal, if you're a woman who even attempts to have sex with an animal.

Luckily if you have sex with a woman on her menstrual cycle, marry your sister, sleep with your aunt, or marry your brother's wife, you'll only be shunned and who'd want to hang out with these guys anyway?

The big takeaway here: Marrying your sister is slightly less offensive to God than sleeping with your daughter in law, father's wife, or some other married woman who isn't your sister...

Chapter 21 Priest Rules:

"None of you are allowed to make yourselves unclean by any dead person among your community except for your closest relatives: for your mother, father, son, daughter, brother; also for your unmarried sister, who is close to you because she isn't married-you may be polluted for her sake. You must not make yourself unclean for in-laws, defiling yourself by doing so."

Don't mourn your dead unless it's someone close like your mother, father, son, daughter or brother. But never mind non-virgin sisters, wives, or in-laws.

"Priests must not marry a woman who is promiscuous and defiled, nor can they marry a woman divorced from her husband, because priests must be holy to their God." ... "The high priests must marry a woman who is a virgin. He cannot marry a widow, a divorced woman, or a woman defiled by promiscuity. He can only marry a virgin from his own people so that he doesn't make his children impure among his people"

Priests can't hook up with women who've been "defiled" even if they were married and their husband died...even widows create impure children. You know...there seems to be a lot of hate toward vaginas and how "unclean" they mustn't be but the thing that's keeps making them unclean is when they encounter a penis. So the real question here is, what's wrong with the COI penises eh?  There's no mention of divorced, widowed or defiled men being impure because they encountered vaginas. So really it's the penises fault. Maybe they should clean their penises up and they wouldn't have these problems.

"If a daughter of a priests defiles herself by being promiscuous, she defiles her father. She must be burned with fire."

This is exactly what I'm talking about guys. You know what the solution is? The COI ladies should just be lesbians. No rule here mentions anything against it. It's only sodomy if there's a penis involved.

"None of your future descendants who have some kind of imperfection are allowed to offer their God's food. No one who has a imperfection will be allowed to make an offering: this includes anyone who is blind, crippled, disfigured, or deformed; anyone who has a broken foot or hand; anyone who is a hunchback or too small; anyone who has an eye disease, a rash, scabs, or a crushed testicle."

You must be this tall for God's love.

Chapter 22 If you have to keep saying it:


"I am the LORD." You must keep my commands and do them; I am the LORD. You must not make my holy name impure so that I will be treated as holy by the Israelites. I am the LORD--the one who makes you holy and who is bringing you out of the land of Egypt to be your God; I am the LORD."

Chapter 23 Sacred Times:

Sabbath and Passover rules AGAIN.

Chapter 24 Something actually happens:

Oh wait...what's that...a thing happens?

A boy got in a fight and used some naughty words while doing it so the Israelites stone him to death.

The lessen here. When you say bad words, you should be stoned to death.

Then there's an ominous section about not hurting or murdering others, just after the town stones a boy to death:

"If anyone kills another person, they must be executed." . . . "If someone injures a fellow citizen, they will suffer the same injury they inflicted: broken bone for broken bone, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

Chapter 25 Slavery's cool so long as you don't do it to your own race: 

"If one of  your fellow Israelites faces financial difficulty with you and sells themselves to you, you must not make him work as a slave. Instead, they will be like a hired laborer or foreign guest to you. They will work for you until the Jubilee year, at which point the poor Israelite along with their children will be released from you" . . . "You must do this because these people are my servants--I brought them out of Egypt's land. They must not be sold as slaves." . . . "Regarding male or female slaves that you are allowed to have: You can buy a male or a female slave from the nations that are around you. You can also buy them from the foreign guests who live with you" . . . "These can belong to you as property. You can pass them on to your children as inheritance that they can own as permanent property. You can make these people work as slaves, but you must not rule harshly over your own people."

It's not cool that you guys were owned as slaves based on your race but it's totally cool for you to own foreigners as slaves and mistreat them all you want. Knock yourself out. 2 wrongs do make a right.


Chapter 26 Covenant Blessings:

God gets all jealous boyfriend again. In the first section, he says if the COI listen to him they'll live in a paradise with rain and fruit and butterflies but if they don't listen...

"I will bring horrific things: wasting diseases and fevers that make the eyes fail and drain life away" . . . "I will turn your sky to iron and your land to bronze" . . . "I will send wild animals against you, and they will kill your children" . ..  "You will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters. I will eliminate your shrines, chop down your incense altars, and pile your dead bodies on the dead bodies of your idols."

It goes on like that for awhile...

Chapter 27 Dedications:


God talks about the value of people, animals, and land that are dedicated to God. It goes without saying that women are worth less than men.

END OF LEVITICUS

Next week we read a section called "Numbers."