Exodus

Exodus is a book in three parts. God deals harshly with the Egyptians for refusing to let the Israelites go, the Israelites wander the desert for 40 years, and God orders some fine furniture.

As mentioned previously with Genesis, the viewpoint employed during reading directly influences the meaning. Whether it’s literal truth or a story makes a big difference. In the first part of Exodus, a new Pharaoh comes to town in Egypt and decides the Israelites living among them are to be a big source of slave labor, and as a general rule, slaves don’t get the best treatment. Moses comes along and is directed by God to lead his people (the Israelites) out of bondage, out of Egypt, and to the promised land which flows bountifully with milk and honey. The way that this is done is interesting. The method, repeated several times, is this. God says, “Moses, go tell Pharaoh to let your people go, if he doesn’t agree, tell him I’ll send Plague X on the Egyptians, and oh, by the way, I’ll explicitly make Pharaoh ignore you, thus ensuring the Egyptians suffer the plague at hand.”

This is literally how it goes through locusts, water turning to blood, horrible disease, other niceties, and ultimately death.

Moses: “Pharaoh, let my people go lest you be beset with irate blue-ringed octopi!”

God: (whispering) “No Pharaoh, don’t do it, he doesn’t mean it.”

Pharaoh: “No I say. Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.”

Moses: “Ok, you asked for it.”

The Egyptians: “AAAAAAAA!!! OCTOPI!!!!! Oh the humanity!”

Now, as a story trying to teach us the valuable lesson that we need to listen to God’s word, sure, this works, because hey, it’s just a story. As a literal event, let’s compare this to another example. A fundamentalist self-identified Christian does God’s holy work to the extent of killing a doctor at an abortion clinic. At this point, should God or society as a whole then condemn the Christian community as a whole? I think it’s generally agreeable that this isn’t a reasonable approach.

Pharaoh sounds like a real jerk. But, his policies and procedures are hardly indicative of Egyptians everywhere, many of whom were almost certainly good and decent people, yet just the same, God threatens punishment, then MAKES Pharaoh ignore his warnings, then proceeds to punish ALL of Egyptian society, men, women, and children with horrific plagues, and in fact kills many of them.

You have free will.

Except when you don't.

Now worship me or else.

Pharaoh lets the Israelites go after mass killings, then recants and chases after them. Moses parts the Red Sea, the Israelites make it safely across, then the Sea returns, killing Pharaoh and his army, thus spawning many movies and fulfilling the promise of Charlton Heston.

Now, though there would seem to have been many trips made in Genesis between Israel and Egypt…trips that didn’t require inordinate amounts of time…the Israelites then wandered the desert for 40 YEARS. Now, this isn’t like the Sahara or anything, but sounds more like an area of dry scrub land. Think Wyoming, but not as miserable. As a tale of Israelites learning lessons of trust in God and obedience to God, it’s great, but as a reality, it doesn’t make any sense. Much of this period is marked with Moses and some of the top brass talking with God, telling the Israelites they simply must be obedient or suffer the consequences (which you’d think would be seared into their brains after seeing the multitude of disasters that beset the Egyptians), then having to punish and wrangle said Israelites for straying and otherwise committing evil acts.

The Israelites are portrayed as a tribe with ADHD. “Wow, Moses has been gone for weeks, guess it’s time to forget everything we’ve been through up to this point and turn away from God, as surely that’ll work out well for us.” Repeatedly. So the people do things that are procedurally incorrect, they build false idols, and so on, but…nobody ever says “Hey, we’ve been in this here desert for a loooong time, what say we leave?”

All of this culminates with the Israelites constructing a golden calf which they then treat as their god and which they worship, thereby making the real God really mad. The resolution of this is nothing short of genius. The golden calf, which historians argue likely wasn’t even very large, is destroyed. Constructed in its place, by God’s decree, is a mobile tabernacle with several ornate gold-plated pieces of furniture including the Ark of the Covenant, a table and dishes, a lamp stand, and an alter. All told over a metric ton of gold and three-plus metric tons of silver (plus jewels and other lesser metals) were used. The procedures for worship are extensive, and death and exile are not far off as punishments for infractions. God is basically saying, I am too much for you to behold, so you can’t gaze at me directly, worshipping that false golden calf is evil, but you can worship at this very elaborately decorated tabernacle in which you can be assured I do reside. Not that gold…THIS gold.

Probably the main contribution of Exodus is the ten commandments, a good half of them which are good general rules of thumb whether you’re religious or not. One rule on the list, keeping the Sabbath holy, is more strict than I recall hearing through my may years of church lessons. Punishment for working on the Sabbath was death. Perhaps there are exclusionary rules later on for this sort of thing…perhaps it’s now “receiving multiple paper-cuts”, and perhaps it somehow excuses those pious “resting” folks from frequenting business establishments on that day of rest, taking advantage of the unwashed masses who’re violating this commandment. (aka. spending the day shopping)

Next up, Leviticus, in which we get a great many rules, some of which may or may not still be recalled depending on need, while others can apparently be safely ignored.