Tag: Exodus

Exodus Chapters 33 through 40

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Chapter 33

God tells Moses to pack up and leave Sinai and head into the land of Canaan. God would send an angel ahead to drive out all of the people already living there since he promised this land to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However, he tells Moses that he will not go with them because the Israelites are a “stiff-necked” people. That is, I learned, stubborn. The people were really upset to hear such harsh language about themselves, so they didn’t get all dressed up with their ornaments.

Moses had set his tent up outside of the camp and God would visit him there in a whirlwind and they would talk face to face as friends. The people would bow to the whirlwind when it appeared. Anyway, Moses expresses disappointment that God will not go with them to the land of Canaan and tries to talk him into it. Lo and behold, God can once again be bargained with and he agrees to go with them. However, nobody could see God’s face and live. That’s it, that’s the bargain.

Chapter 34

I’m calling this the last chapter of any substance and it is quite interesting as we will soon find out. I’m calling this an egregious retconning of the commandments. God tells Moses to cut two stone tablets and God shall write upon them what was written on the first set. However (I use that word a lot in this book), as we will see, the commandments are nothing like the previous set. First though, God has to make his presence known, I guess.

6The LORD passed before him, and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 197). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Is it wrong of me to laugh at that, “slow to anger” line? Who flooded the globe again?

Moses is told not to make a covenant with any of the inhabitants of Canaan and to destroy their altars and pillars and cut down their sacred poles. That’s because they are not to worship any other gods because God is Jealous.

Do not make cast idols. Keep the festival of unleavened bread. All firstborn males of livestock, animals, and people belong to God and shall be redeemed. No one shall appear before God without an offering. Remember the sabbath. Observe the festival of weeks. Three times per year, all males will appear before God. Apparently God really hates yeast because the blood of sacrifice will not touch leavening. The best of the first fruits of the harvest will be given to God. And most importantly, no boiling a baby goat in its mother’s milk.

So once Moses wrote this all down, he came down…wait a second…I though they left Sinai, but he was back up there again. Anyway, he came down and apparently his face was shining. So he put a veil over his face unless he was speaking with God.

Chapters 35 through 40

The last six chapters are simply carrying out the instructions given in Chapters 25 through 31. It’s the building of the altar, the tabernacle, the making of the priestly vestments, the assigning of the priests, and the building of the Ark Of The Covenant. I skimmed through it to see if there was anything of interest, nope, not to me there isn’t.

I’m sure in Jewish traditions this is all very interesting and has some historical context and stuff, but for the purposes of this reading, I’m not going to bother. I’m actually more interested in the narrative stories and some of the more well-known laws.

A Lot On My Mind

~ AlienCG ~ 2 Comments

My mind has been active this week thanks to my Twitter feed, the Bible, and just life in general. Allow me the chance to dump all of this on you right now. Thanks.

The week started off with Dr. Frank Turek tweeting,

Eternity is a concept that is impossible to quantify. As I wrote a while back regarding heaven and hell, eternal reward or punishment for doing finite good or for finite sins is disproportionate at best and immoral at worst. Also, if there is an eternity of bliss or torture after this life, then this life in comparison become but a blink of the eye which renders any meaning here useless to consider. No, this is our one only life. Spend it making the lives of others better by doing good things. Moving along now…

I read through seven chapters of Exodus to come up with Monday’s post, which was comparably short for seven chapters. That’s because in the eleven total chapters from where God first starts giving Moses the laws, the first four commandments and the final seven chapters are all about the care, feeding, and proper worship of the all-powerful God. There is also a large section about the proper treatment of slaves which, if God is all-knowing and all-good, he would not have allowed for the ownership of slaves in the first place. There is one small section that contains laws that make good sense explaining how not to be a jerk, but that’s about it. I could keep going on this thread, but I’m moving on.

I saw a lot of so-called pro-life Christians tweeting about the injunction on the Texas abortion law which got me thinking about gun culture in this country (the US, in case you didn’t know). I tweeted,

How is this perfectly okay? Sure, kids have fire drills and tornado drills, but the latter is an act of nature, the former could be an act of nature or due to human error. An active shooter drill is preparing for the actions of a person who woke up that morning and decided to take up arms and end the lives of children. Think about that.

Announcements:

I only put out one post this week because of all the stuff on my mind. I don’t like forcing myself to write about something in particular when there is so much other stuff going on in my head.

Not that I’ve mentioned it here at all, but I’ve come to a decision on the rest of the Pentateuch. Since it’s mostly laws, I am going to read it through, but I will only be touching on the items of interest that people tend to cite and ignore.

Also, while I have been on a regular posting schedule (Bible posts Monday and Thursday, and the Saturday Sermon), I am going to drop the schedule for the Bible posts. I will still post somewhat regularly, but I need to read other things, too.