A Bible Study by the only people truly qualified to study the bible — those who don't believe.

My God... The smell! WTF!

In the three months of the Hebrews flight from Egypt, after the beginning of manna and quail from heaven and before their arrival at Mountain of Sinai, a few small items occurred that bear mentioning. We’ll have a bit of a house cleaning before the Great Lord Genocide lays down his most sensible and enlightening laws.  You know about those, right? No eating ham, no standing on one leg between four and six O’clock, no killing unless you think God may not like that person either. In that case, knock his frakking head off!   I paraphrase, of course, but I think I got the gist down quite well.
First in our tying up of loose ends is the battle with the Amalekites starting at Exodus 7/8. The Amalekites, my Bible helpfully tells me, are a group of aboriginal peoples of the Sinai Peninsula. For reasons unspecified, Exodus informs us that they went to war with the Israelites, and of course, this makes them bad, very very bad. Thus begins the great struggle between Israel and the Amalekites and this conflict rages through the early books of the Old Testament and culminates viciously in the absolute destruction of the Amalekite peoples in the Book of Chronicles.  But, we’ll get to that spiritually uplifting genocide later.  Everything in its time, but I should bring forth the actual Biblical quote here. It’s really quite informative.  Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this down in a document as something to be remembered, and recite it in the ears of Joshua: I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens.” That Yahweh’s quite the sweetie pie, isn’t he?
Personally, I find this part fascinating for multiple reasons. This is the great battle where Moses must keep his hands raised for the Israelites to win. As the Bible says:

As long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Israel had the better of the fight, but when he let his hands rest, Amalek had the better of the fight. Moses’ hands, however, grew tired; so they put a rock in place for him to sit on. Meanwhile Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and one on the other, so that his hands remained steady till sunset. And Joshua mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.

So God will help but only if Moses keeps his hands in the air. Does this strike anyone else as a rather stupid and random demand of divinity? Why would God put such a ridiculous stipulation on his chosen people for a victory over an aggressor? What could his purpose be?  Why not this: God will grant victory but only if Moses hops around the hilltop clucking like a chicken.  God will grant the Israelites victory as long as Moses stands on his head.  WTF? Come on people, does God really need Moses help here?  Now, I’ve heard it said that God wanted the Hebrews to work for it, for Moses to earn his victory. But were they not battling for victory with their very lives down in the valley?  Was that not enough?  Why make Moses also hold his hands in the air the entire day? Be honest now, does this not remind you of other blatant superstitions. Truly, what is the difference between this and swinging a dead cat over your head at midnight to cure warts or knocking on wood or avoiding black cats. Vast numbers of people have believed these things or something similar but none can point to any logical reason it must be so. What’s the mechanism involved?

I have to wonder if there was any resentment among the rank and file here.  ”What the hell did I do in the battle?  Well, I killed three barbarians, saw my best friend beheaded, and got this bronze spearhead impaled through my left testicle.  Why what’d you do?  You held Moses’ arms up all day…  Held up…  Why??? WTF?  You yellow-assed son of a bitch!!  If I could stand, I’d kick your ass you suck-ass piece of shit!”  Or something very similar.  Sorry for the vulgarity, but I’m a boilermaker.  I hear stuff like this every single day.

If the underlying reason for this absurd demand is to force Moses to suffer for his people’s victory then why allow him an easy way out? For the love of Darwin, he can cheat and use rocks or even other people to hold up his arms, but he can’t let them down or the Israelites will lose. What does any of this prove? What it tells me is the  letter of the law is more important than the spirit, that Moses “fooled” God, that as long as you obey the strictest interpretation of rules, you’re allowed to find any other loophole you can. Doesn’t seem like the best policy for the basis of law… or life.

Personally, I think this was Moses’ way of adding to the importance of Moses, and he always seems on the lookout for that.  ”Look, when I hold my hands up we kick ass. But when I let them down… See there!  Billy Bob just got stabbed through the testicle.”  Naturally, Billy Bob was going to get stabbed through the testicle anyway, but like the hard-working people of the Psychic Hotline Moses knew just how vaguely to word his statements.  Moses the Demagogue.

This also fits well into humanities need to control the uncontrollable, a recipe for victory, so to speak.  After all, isn’t this where most superstitions start?

Another oddity is against the literal interpretation of the 600,000 fighting men that Amalek would decide to fight at all. What kind of people could stand up to that kind of an invasion, not only that, but carry the day whenever Moses let down his arms? They must have been some tough mothers, let me tell you. They are presented as desert nomads, near savages really, so how many people could they actually bring to bear on invaders? A few thousand with some advanced planning? At the very most?? It’s more than likely that they had less, and this is a further indication of the absurdity of the number of Hebrews who left Egypt. 2.5 million people should have been able to sweep over all opposition, but a few hundred? Now that would be more plausible.  A few Bedouin type people could easily threaten a small group, but 2.5 million?  For a Lack-of-Christ’s-Sake, this is a larger population than that which crushed Rome during the barbarian invasions.  It’s goddamned absurd!

Exodus, Chapter 18 also details Moses meeting with his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian.  Now Jethro hands over Moses’ wife and sons which for some reason were in his keeping.  But seeing Moses having a court with himself as sole judge and seeing as how this was too much work for Moses to bear, he tells him to set up some lower judges so they can do most of the work, reserving all the important cases for himself.  Moses jumps all over this idea. I mean, hey, who wouldn’t?  An increase in power. A decrease in work. Who wouldn’t take that advice to heart?

Moses has himself quite a gig here, don’t you think?  He has all the power concentrated into his hands while leaving the larger share of work in the care of subordinates.  He has the entire people believing that he is King Shit and buying whatever he hands out.  The only being he is accountable to is God, but as God only “Speaks” to him alone, the accountability is  negligible.  Those damned priests had it all figured out.

Like I said, quite the gig.

I wonder where I can get a job like that?

Oh yes, That’s right!  Any evangelical church should do, any at all.  I’ll have to check to see if any have openings around here.  I may have found my… ahem… “Calling.”

Show me da money!