Category: Bible

Numbers Chapter 21

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Like much of the Bible so far, Chapter 21 is pretty unhinged. Let’s see if I get the gist of it. First, the king of Arad (a Canaanite) fought against the Israelites and held some of them captive. The non-captured ones swore to God that they would utterly destroy their towns if they could get their brethren back. God handed over the Canaanites and the Israelites killed them and destroyed the towns. I looked back at the chapter and this pretty well matches up with the first paragraph.

Then they set out again to go around Edom because they weren’t allowed to go through and they started with their whining again. So, God sent poisonous serpents down to bite the Israelites because…of course he did. Moses prayed to God (who was responsible for this) and God told him to make a poisonous serpent and put it on a pole and when anyone who was bitten looked at would live. Does this make any sense? Please, tell me I’m not the only one who is a tad bit confused.

Then we get a travel log from Oboth to the wasteland overlook before heading into the land of the Amorites. They sent messengers to King Sihon with the usual request, let us pass, no drinking, no stopping, yada yada. King Sihon got an army together and went to fight Israel, but Israel won and took his land. They did the same to King Og.

Didn’t God tell them that they wouldn’t get the land that he promised them? I guess he was just having a cranky day and needed a cookie. The Bronze Serpent thing was the only interesting part of this chapter. I’m looking forward to moving on from the Pentateuch because this section is long.

Numbers Chapter 20

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Is the God of the Old Testament petty? Well, after reading this section…yes.

Once again, the Israelites are mad at Moses and Aaron because they brought them out into the wilderness and there is no water. So they go off to the tent of meeting to tell God why the people are mad at them this time.

7The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 8Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and your brother Aaron, and command the rock before their eyes to yield its water. Thus you shall bring water out of the rock for them; thus you shall provide drink for the congregation and their livestock.

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 324). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Simple enough. Now let’s continue…

9So Moses took the staff from before the LORD, as he had commanded him. 10Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Listen, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” 11Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff; water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their livestock drank.

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 324). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

There we go. Moses did the thing that resulted in the thing happening and now the people are happy. Let’s see what’s next…

12But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.” 13These are the waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarreled with the LORD, and by which he showed his holiness

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 324). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

What? OK, it took me a couple times reading this through and then having to look up a scholarly explanation of this section. It turns out that because Moses hit the rock twice with his staff, it showed a lack of faith in God and, therefore, the Israelites won’t be allowed to take over the land of Canaan. Do I think God is petty in this case? YES!

So then the Israelites are refused passage through Edom in what sounds like it was probably a poem or the refrain of a song. They promise to stay on the King’s road, eyes forward, taking nothing, and looking at nothing. But the king threatens them with the sword. Then he shows them the sword. The Israelites turn and walk away.

Finally, Moses takes Aaron up to Mount Hor and is stripped of his vestments and they are given to his son Eleazar is. I guess means that he is now a high priest. Israel mourns for thirty days.

Numbers Chapter 19

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I’ve been wondering how I’m going to tackle this chapter. On one hand, it’s another directive from God that involves the slaughter of an animal for a purpose that seems completely unrelated to the purpose of the animal. I mean, nobody is going to eat it or use its hide for clothing or shelter. Instead, it’s being destroyed to ash for a purification ritual.

On the other hand, this chapter is seen by some religious groups as an end times prophecy. Apparently, when the perfect, flawless red heifer is found, then the tribulation is sure to follow. I may read up more about this and save it for a special post down the line.

I think one of the reasons why it might be seen as a prophecy by some is that it doesn’t have a corresponding chapter where the ritual is carried out. Many of the rituals described in the Bible are followed either in the same chapter or the following chapter with a nearly word for word account of that ritual being done. Not so in this case.

Numbers Chapters 17 & 18

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First off, let me chuckle at the title of the first section of Chapter 17:

The budding of Aaron’s rod

OK, it’s out of my system now. Anyway, quick summary of Chapter 17 is that God wants to stop all the complaints of the Israelites toward Moses by choosing the staff of one of the leaders of the twelve houses, including Aaron who will represent the House of Levi. God will do this by causing one of the staffs to sprout. Gee, I wonder who will win. Obviously, Aaron’s is the chosen staff.

So, I have a problem with these two chapters because it gives away the game. Moses and Aaron were already the defacto leaders of this group and were the only ones who God “spoke” to and who had access to the tent of meeting. So they could have set this all up like a parlor trick in order to keep their hold on power.

In Chapter 18 God tells Aaron that, as the one responsible for the sanctuary, he and his Levite brothers have the right to eat the offerings of the people because they are holy. These offerings include the first fruits of the harvest, the best animals, and shekels of silver (obviously they won’t eat those). They are told that only they are to approach the tent of meeting and that anyone else that approaches will die. That’s a good way to keep people away, by issuing a stern warning and a threat of death.

Numbers Chapter 16

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Three guys took a group of two hundred fifty Israelites to tell Moses that they were just as holy as everyone else in the congregation. Moses told them to prepare their censers with incense and gather at the tent of meeting when God will decide who is holy and who isn’t.

This is another chapter of repetition as the same things are repeated at least twice. The paragraphs following the order above is the action being carried out in the same amount of detail instead of the author saying, “and they did just that.” Is that easier? Maybe I’ll rewrite the Bible and call it the Plain, Everyday Language EditionTM.

Anyway, long story short, the two hundred fifty-three men show up armed with censers and are ready for a smoke-off with Aaron and Moses for God’s affection. Well, God already picked his winner and it’s Moses. The families and possessions of the families of the three men, including slaves and animals were swallowed up by the earth and sent down to Sheol alive.

I was reading another of the tracts that were sent to me by a SecretSatanTM and according to the author of that tract, Sheol is Hell. According to Hebrew scholars, it is not, it is sort of a (my term) waiting room for the dead. Guess which one I tend to believe more? (if you’re new here, the answer is the Hebrew scholar).

Continuing on, God isn’t done killing people. After the first wave of death, Eleazar gathered up the now holy censers and pounded them out as another decoration for the altar. This was to remind everyone that only a descendant of Aaron is permitted to offer incense to God. Well, the rest of the congregation didn’t like the fact that the earth opened and swallowed up all those people, so they let it be known. And God, who is a reasonable and thoughtful listener of complaints…who am I kidding? God started killing all of them until Aaron stepped between God and the congregation to make atonement for the people. Anyway, more than fourteen thousand died before Aaron could light up the censer. So I’m guessing that somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand people died in that chapter.

Numbers Chapter 15

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When it comes to the offerings to the Lord that are outlined, I’m pretty sure that’s the priests of the temple writing those up so that the people will give them their best food. “The Lord wants your most fatted calf, your choicest grains, your finest wine.” Actually, the priests probably want to have a party paid for by the congregants. There are a lot of offering rules given here and I’m not going through them all.

Whoever wrote this book had no system for organizing the subject matter, and after the previous section on offerings to the Lord upon entering the new land, we have a section on the penalty for violating the sabbath, and it’s just slightly more than a slap on the wrist.

32When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the sabbath day. 33Those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses, Aaron, and to the whole congregation. 34They put him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him outside the camp.” 36The whole congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as the LORD had commanded Moses.

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 315). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

This is a totally measured and completely sane…who am I kidding? My first question is, is the man that was gathering sticks even a member of the congregation or was he just some rando who was unaware that this particular god existed? Because this passage is not at all clear about that, and that’s the whole passage verbatim. And actually, it’s not the actual penalty that is the worst thing about this chapter, it’s the matter-of-fact telling of it. I would wonder if anyone thought that this penalty was a bit fucked up, but the way the Lord acted in the last chapter, I’m pretty sure people were only trying to think happy thoughts as if God was little Anthony Fremont from the Twilight Zone.

It’s at this point that I have to ask, if evangelicals and fundamentalists take this book literally, why do they seem to skip this law? I’m not saying that I want anyone to want to enforce this law, but why pick Leviticus 20:13 and not the above passage? I think it’s because the people who preach the Bible want the lessons to fit their prejudices.

So we go in a single chapter from offerings to God, to stoning people who gather sticks to fashion rules, this book is disjointed. It’s as if someone is just making it up as they go along. The final part of this chapter talks about fringes on the corners of garments so that they will remember all of the commandments that God has given them. Does this include the rules that will be made after this point?

Numbers Chapter 14

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Drama Llamas

The Israelites are complaining again and want to go back to Egypt because the idea of gaining the promised land looks like a slim possibility at this point. Moses and Aaron beg and plead with the people to trust the Lord, and Joshua and Caleb go full drama llama and tear their clothes. However, the congregation was not buying their description of the land, their praise for the Lord, or their dramatics, and threatened to stone them. God threatened to stricken the Israelites and disinherit them and then make a greater nation for Moses. So, as far as I can tell, instead of reassuring the people, God just wanted to replace them with yes-men.

Moses pleaded with God and basically guilt-tripped him into not disinheriting the people. Then he reminds of some words he spoke, I guess, at some point (I seriously don’t remember if this was iterated at an earlier point.

18‘The LORD is slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love,
forgiving iniquity and transgression,
but by no means clearing the guilty,
visiting the iniquity of the parents
upon the children to the third and the fourth generation.’

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 311). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Really? “Slow to anger”? Can we rewind to Genesis 6-8 when God had a conniption fit and destroyed every man, woman, child, infant, animal, tree, and plant except for eight people and a floating zoo. Maybe God should have sought out some behavioral therapy and not bottle up his feelings for so long. I guess we can safely assume that God is, in fact, a man. To be fair, the God of Numbers is probably not the same God as in Genesis.

Starting at verse 26, God has a tantrum and decides that this group of Israelites won’t make it to the land that was promised to them because they complained against him. So he can apparently do anything, like harden Pharoah’s heart, part the Red Sea, and appear as a whirlwind, but he gets his little feelings hurt when people complain? What a snowflake.

Anyway, the people over twenty who were told that they wouldn’t make it to the promised land attempted to make things right. It didn’t go well, of course. The people who currently inhabit the land that God wants to give to the Israelites showed up and killed them. So that’s that. Don’t trust anyone over twenty.

Numbers Chapter 13

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God orders Moses to send men to spy out Canaan because God is going to give this land, which is well established with villages and families, to the Israelites because…apparently he promised it to them. So we get a long list of names who were the sons of other names from the tribes of still other names. I swear, the Bible was written for NaNoWriMo. At the end of this paragraph, and I guess for the purpose of aesthetics, Moses renames Hoshea to Joshua.

I have a problem with this next paragraph, but I want to preface it with the verse:

17Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said to them, “Go up there into the Negeb, and go up into the hill country, 18and see what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, 19and whether the land they live in is good or bad, and whether the towns that they live in are unwalled or fortified, 20and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are trees in it or not.

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 309). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

What could Moses (with the blessing of God) be planning? Notice that he doesn’t tell his spies to find out if the people are friendly or if maybe they have enough space to house the Israelites so that they can live in peace. No, this is recon for an attack. Also, it’s another strike against God’s omniscience, because he tells Moses to send the men out to find out about the land. Shouldn’t perhaps an all-knowing deity already know what’s going on in the land?

The spies returned to tell Moses and Aaron that the people are strong and the towns fortified and large. Caleb thought that they should go and occupy it because they could overcome, but the rest of the men gave a big ol’ nope to that. They also reported seeing the Nephilim which made the spies seem really small.

Numbers Chapter 12

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Here we come to another point in the Pentateuch where it is likely obvious that it was not written by Moses.

3Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth.

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 307). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Truly the writing of a humble man. I would like to hear from someone who takes this book literally who can explain how Moses is so humble that he has to tell the reader that he was so humble. By the way, does this sound like someone we all know?

Prior to this, Aaron and Miriam were complaining about Moses because he apparently married a Cushite woman. According to the Oxford Bible Commentary, Cush could refer to Ethiopia (this would be Moses’ second wife) or an area in northern Arabia (this would be Zipporah, the Midianite woman he married in a previous book/chapter), the reason this is brought up is uncertain. However, they’re jealous because God only speaks through Moses.

So God calls them all out of the tent of meeting and appears as a cloud pillar and tells them that he speaks to Moses face to face and not in dreams and riddles like he does with other prophets. Then, because God can’t let anything go, strikes Miriam with leprosy for speaking against Moses. Then Aaron begged Moses not to let this happen, and Moses asked the Lord, and the Lord and the Lord said no dice, she’s gotta go bye-bye for seven days.

Numbers Chapter 11

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The Israelites are grousing because they don’t have any real food to eat, just the manna from heaven. They miss meat, fish, and vegetables, which I would too. God gets mad at them for complaining, but Moses, showing some backbone, tells God to put up or shut up (in more biblical terms). God tells him to gather seventy elders and he will put some of the burden of the people on them as well.

Then God tells Moses that he will give the people meat and they will eat not for a day or two, but for a month, until meat comes out of their nostrils.

19You shall eat not only one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, 20but for a whole month—until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you—because you have rejected the LORD who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, ‘Why did we ever leave Egypt?’ ”

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 306). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

There’s a pleasant thought, don’t you think? But Moses mentions that there are 600,000 people and asks the Lord if there are enough fish, flocks, and herds to feed them all for a month and here’s where we get a God flex.

23The LORD said to Moses, “Is the LORD’s power limited? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.”

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 306). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

So, I guess he’ll have to wait and find out. But first, the Lord had to give the elders some of Moses’ spirit and they went out and started prophesying, which concerned the rest of the people until Moses told them what happened.

Finally, God blows in a whole mess of quails from the sea and let them drop on either side of camp, three feet deep and as far as the eye can see. The people spent a day gathering what they could carry, but before they could finish eating, the master of the grudge, God himself, struck the people with a great plague (or maybe the dead birds weren’t fit for human consumption).