1 Chronicles and God

Summary: It’s David’s reign.  Again.  Also, there’s a bunch of lists of people’s families and descendants, which are even more boring than rereading a story I just read.

Originally, I wanted to write about God in Numbers.  But then I realized I had some things to say about the Israelites, and I figured “Well, I’ll get back to God when I don’t have anything else to talk about.”  And now I get to write some more on a story I’ve already read and discussed, because 1 Chronicles and 2 Samuel are pretty much the same exact thing.  Also, I get to pull from old books because this book is just pulling stories from old books, and these are my rules and I say so.

So, God!

The tough thing about God is that, of course, we don’t really know anything about him (and I’m not capitalizing the word him because I am following the format of the Good News Bible, which is the translation I am reading).  He apparently has a plan, though we mere mortals can never know it.  He sets rules about killing, among other things, then orders his people to break those rules on a whim.  He supposedly never makes mistakes, but wishes that he had never made Saul king.  David thinks he wants fame (1 Chronicles 17:24), but he has no real way of knowing that.  So the question is: What’s up with God?

Let’s start out answering this question by taking a trip in the Wayback Machine!  There are some things in Numbers that I was disappointed I didn’t get to talk about.  Like how, in Numbers 11, God gets all pissy about the Israelites having the temerity to complain that they didn’t have any meat to eat, and kills some of them.  Or how in Numbers 14, God asks Moses (not a typo) how much longer the Israelites are going to complain about their lives being shitty, as if Moses is the one who would know that, Deity-Who-Is-Telling-Moses-What-To-Do.  Or how in Numbers 20, God kills Aaron for not acknowledging that God was the one who made water come out of a rock, as if that’s an appropriate punishment for that crime.

Also, I have no idea how this works: “That night God came to Balaam and said, ‘If these men have come to ask you to go with them, get ready and go, but do only what I tell you.  So the next morning Balaam saddled his donkey and went with the Moabite leaders.” (Numbers 22:20-21).  That seems pretty clear to me.  And here’s the very next thing that is written in the book: “God was angry that Balaam was going…” (Numbers 22:22).  It’s frustrating how utterly bizarre this book is sometimes.

I guess the striking thing about the Bible – the whole Bible, not just any one book – is how it really doesn’t agree with the modern notion of God.  What I’ve always heard is that God is infallible, omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving.

First, God isn’t remotely infallible.  Way back in Exodus 32:10, God said this: “Now, don’t try to stop me.  I am angry with [the Israelites] and I am going to destroy them.  Then I will make you and your descendants into a great nation.”  Then in 32:11-13, Moses talks to him a little and in 32:14, we have this: “So the LORD changed his mind and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.”  And in Numbers 16, Moses and Aaron change God’s mind about killing a bunch of people by burning some incense, and there’s also the little matter of Saul, whom God regretted making king of Israel (“The LORD said to Samuel, ‘I am sorry that I made Saul king…'” (1 Samuel 15:10-11)).  So, not infallible.

What about all-powerful?  There’s a lot to back that one up.  But one of my examples above is also proof that he’s not all-powerful, and it also debunks all-knowing, so that makes my life easier.  God had to ask Moses (that’s still not a typo) how much longer the Israelites were going to complain.  To those of you who might say that he was trying to teach Moses a lesson, I say bullshit.  That’s bullshit when some troll on the Internet tries to justify his existence, and it’s bullshit here.  But that passage does show that God doesn’t have the power to see the future, and that obviously he doesn’t have the knowledge of the future.  So, not omnipotent or omniscient.

And all-loving?  Seriously?  I have to do this?  The God who kills people for complaining about not having food is all-loving?  The God who orders the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people who are just living in Canaan making pots or farming or whatever, that’s an all-loving God?  The God who kills on a whim?  I don’t think that’s what all-loving means, but thanks for trying, book.

Some other notes…

• 2 Samuel 24 starts out with a story about how “On another occasion, the LORD was angry with Israel and he made David bring trouble on them” by taking a census, which was apparently a sin.  But fine, I miss the sin, but it’s there and God made him do it, which is still a little morally questionable but maybe he had the punishment (a plague on his nation that killed seventy thousand Israelites who again did nothing wrong) coming?  I don’t know.  But 1 Chronicles 21, which tells the same story about a census and God’s wrath and a plague, starts out like this: “Satan wanted to bring trouble on the people of Israel, so he made David decide to take a census.”  If I didn’t know who Satan was coming in to this book, that would have been so unbelievably confusing.  Also, pick one.
• Actually, how about a compromise?  Maybe Buddha made him take the census!  Glad I could solve that little problem.
• I don’t see why David should get credit for making Solomon’s sweet temple.  I mean, if this is how it happened then why wasn’t that mentioned in the original story of how the temple was designed and built?  I’ll tell you why: Because it’s not how it happened.  Someone wanted to beef up the legend of David, so he added this to the story.  It’s bullshit.  And it shouldn’t be surprising that in my essay about God, I’ve used that word multiple times.

Deuteronomy and Other Gods

Summary: Moses recaps the events of the last three books in a speech to the Israelites.  He then gives instructions on entering Canaan, among other things, publicly appoints Joshua as his successor, and climbs Mount Pisgah and dies.

Deuteronomy isn’t the first place where the worship of other gods came up as an issue (and it won’t be the last); it’s not really the first time that anything came up – the book is almost entirely Moses’ speech to the Israelites recounting the events of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.  But back in Numbers 25, the subject of other gods came up when some of the Israelites began to worship Baal, a Canaanite fertility god.  After Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, solved that problem and received the forgiveness of the LORD for the entire camp, God says “[Phinehas] and his descendants are permanently established as priests, because he did not tolerate any rivals to me…” [Num. 25:13]  When I checked a different translation online, it lacked the word “rival,” (which I found disappointing, if only because I didn’t get to use my “Patrick Swayze and Zack Morris weren’t rivals for the affections of Kelly Kapowski” joke) so I figured that was the end of it.

But then I came to Deuteronomy 13.  Here’s what Moses says in Deuteronomy 13 (I’m paraphrasing): First, it is possible that a prophet or an interpreter of dreams will promise a miracle or wonder, and then deliver upon that promise; it’s a test from God and you shouldn’t follow him.  Secondly, if a family member of loved one worships a different god and encourages you to do the same, kill him.  Thirdly, if some people in Israel begin to worship a different god and convince others to do the same, kill them, kill everyone in their town, kill their livestock, and burn down their town so it can never be rebuilt.

And it occurred to me: these are the words of someone who is scared.  This is exactly how bullshit artists act when they’re questioned.  First, they deny.  The people living three thousand years ago didn’t know which god was right, so the prospect of another god sending a prophet was very real to them.  And when their most cherished and important beliefs are questioned, they deny.  “No,” they say.  “He’s faking.  He’s not real.  He’s a test from our God!  His being right is proof you shouldn’t believe him!”  Religion doesn’t tolerate doubt or uncertainty, because they lead to questioning, and questioning requires logic, and logic and religion don’t mix.

But after the denial, there’s the anger.  How dare anyone doubt?  Where do these guys get off?  So, kill them.  But it’s not enough to be angry – you have to scare everyone around you into believing as you do. After all, there’s not going to be any real reason for them to believe in Yahweh over Baal or Zeus or whoever, so you have to scare them into it.  You have to make sure they know that they will be punished so harshly that they can’t afford not to believe as you do.

The thing is, monotheism was not what people believed at the time.  Moses was supposedly alive around 1300 BC or so.  Judaism never became the dominant religion in the world, and Christianity didn’t move from “silly sect” to “legitimate religion” in the mind of the world until around 300 AD.  And people would tend to see their gods in other societies, just with different names.  In The Histories, Herodotus mentions that the Egyptians call Zeus by the name of Amun (2.42) and that the Ethiopians worship Zeus and Dionysus (2.29), though to them, the names would have been Amun and Osiris; different cultures see their gods in the gods of foreigners.  So it would have been a natural thing for Israelites in Canaan to bring those Canaanite gods like Baal into their religion unless they were stopped.

And it would have been just as natural a thing for the priests to try to stop them.  The Bible reads like preventing the Israelites from worshipping other gods was a goal, but maybe as an afterthought.  In Exodus, when Moses led his people out of Egypt, God sent the plagues not to show that the other gods were not real, but that he was greater than them.  And the existence of other gods isn’t explicitly denied until Deuteronomy 32 in Moses’ song.

So I can’t speak for what the people who wrote this book thought 3000 years ago, but I can say what it looks like to me.  And to me, it looks like a con job.

Some other notes:

• Near the end of Deuteronomy 3, Moses says “Because of you people the Lord was angry with me…” (3:26)  Yeah, Moses.  It was their fault.  They made you take credit for drawing water from a rock.  Look, either blame God or blame yourself.  Don’t blame people for being thirsty when they’re living in a damn desert, okay?
• “[God] does not show partiality and he does not accept bribes.” [10:17]  I have to say, God seems pretty partial to the people of Israel (not to mention the reason Cain killed Abel back in Genesis was specifically because God showed partiality to him), and bribes to his priests are mandatory to appease him and avoid his holy wrath and stuff.  So, not quite.
• 21:10-14 says it’s totally cool to rape women prisoners who were taken from the villages of defeated peoples in war.  But – and just to be clear, there’s no free lunch, guys! – you do have to marry her.  Later, she can leave if she wants to leave the guy who raped her and forced her to marry him, for whatever reason she might want to leave that prince.  I mean, what does a guy have to do?  Not only does he show her that she’s attractive by raping her, but he also shows her that she’s an important person by marrying her.  Morality in the Bible: totally sweet.
• For anyone who travels back in time to Israel circa 1300 BC or so, a pretty good way to insult someone’s family is apparently to call them “the family of the man who had his sandal pulled off.”  OH.  SNAP.

Numbers and The Israelites

Summary: Moses takes a census of all the Israelites. Some more rules. Spies who go into the Promised Land lie about what is inside, and God punishes them by not allowing any Israelites to enter it for 40 years. Some Israelites rebel against Moses’ leadership, so God kills them. God gets water out of a rock, and becomes angry with Moses and Aaron that they do not give him credit for it. Consequently, Aaron dies. God helps the Israelites attack various cities and civilizations. One of the enemy kings tries to get the blessing of a man named Balaam, but he can only bless the Israelites due to God’s will. Moses takes a second census and then God instructs him to choose Joshua as his successor, and after that he is to climb a mountain and die.

One of the more annoying parts of Exodus was what I lovingly call “That stupid gold bull thing.” What happens is this: Moses is up on Mount Sinai receiving commandments, and he’d been there for a while. The Israelites, deeply bored (conjecture) and even more deeply stupid (fact), tell Aaron to make them a new god to lead them. So he melts down some of their jewelry and makes a gold bull-calf which they immediately start worshipping as their god. “The people said, ‘Israel, this is our god, who led us out of Egypt!'” (Ex. 32:4, and no, it’s not out of context)

(The crazy thing about that story, and in retrospect maybe I should have written about this for Exodus, is how people are willing to believe any religion whatsoever whether or not there is any reason to believe in it. The irony is killing me)

So maybe the Israelites learned their lesson, you’re saying. Maybe that one time in Exodus taught them a lesson that would last throughout the ages about never defying God.

…no.

These people are fucking morons. Here’s a good way of thinking about how they’re acting: Imagine if, on every other page of every Superman comic, the people of Metropolis would talk about Superman and say “Well, we’re not sure if he can fly.” Then Superman flies past them. Their acceptance of this lasts almost a page, and then they begin to doubt him again.

Also, Superman kills them for doubting his power every time he flies by. That’s important too.

And yet, these people don’t believe. Keep in mind, they recently saw the parting of the motherfucking Red Sea. They recently saw a large body of water separate long enough for them to walk through it, only to watch as it closed in on the enemy troops who were trying to catch them and return them to slavery in Egypt. And they were there in Egypt too, when only the animals of their tribe were spared, and only their firstborns got to live. But conclusive proof apparently doesn’t make them believe.

First, there are the spies. All the spies except Caleb lie about the strength of the civilizations already in the Promised Land, which causes the people to revolt and God to tell them they may not enter the land for 40 years. Then, there is a rebellion of three people against Moses’ leadership. In response to this, God makes the earth open up and swallow them, and “So they went down alive to the world of the dead, with their possessions. The earth closed over them, and they vanished.” (16:33). Then, when they go into the wilderness and start complaining about not having any water, God makes a “great stream of water” (20:11) gush out of a rock. And finally, when the children of the men who originally revolted against entering the Promised Land are the bulk of the population of Israel, they try to make the exact same mistake until Moses sets them right.

There just aren’t words for how dumb these people are. And for those of you who are religious out there who are all “How can you call people retarded when you yourself aren’t respectful of the word of God?” I just want to say this: I’ve never seen God part the motherfucking Red Sea. That shit’s insane.

But more to the point, it’s not hard for me to watch an episode of The X-Files and think Scully was pretty stupid for trying to come up with a scientific explanation for something that was clearly a monster. And yet in real life, I don’t believe in monsters. But hearing her say something like, “I don’t think so, Mulder. Sure, we’ve seen werewolves, vampires, and aliens, but Bigfoot? Come on, science can explain this” could get a little frustrating because in X-Files World, science never explained anything, just like how in Bible World, God does explain everything.

A few other notes:

• I know that people in olden times weren’t the mathematical geniuses like we are now – and by that I mean we have calculators (oh sweet sweet TI 86) – but there’s no way there were 600,000 people there. None. Of course, this problem isn’t unique to the Bible among olden books. Herodotus claims the Persian army that invaded Greece had about 2 million people when it was probably only 250,000. But still. Six hundred thousand is way too many.
• In chapter 5, there’s this elaborate explanation for how to handle a situation where a husband suspects a wife might be unfaithful. Is there any punishment for an unfaithful husband? Not if the woman he’s with is unmarried! (At least, not that I could find in the first four books. It’s all pretty specific) You stay classy, Planet Earth.
• “I foresee that Israel’s future/ Will bring her no misfortune or trouble” (23: 21). Good call, Balaam!
• Balak is kind of a ridiculous moron. Let’s sum up his small part of the story: He sends for Balaam to get his blessing, which is apparently an important thing, on his (Balak’s) troops. Balaam says that he cannot bless them, as he can only do what God says. Balak then tries to get the blessing, and Balaam blesses the other side (the Israelites). Balak, instead of believing that Balaam really won’t do it, tries twice more with the same result each time. This book has the dumbest people in it of any book ever written.
• Speaking of dumb people, Moses and Aaron really aren’t very smart. They know better than anyone about how vengeful and angry God gets about the slightest injustice, and yet they claim to be the ones who get water out of the rock when they are really just using God’s power. This would be excusable from anyone besides Moses, but he should really know better.

Exodus and Expectations

Summary: The Israelites are slaves in Egypt. Moses is born and, spurred on by God, confronts the king of Egypt and demand their release. After being denied many times, they go. The Israelites make their way to Mount Sinai where Moses receives the Ten Commandments, along with other commands from God.

I have to wonder what I would think if I came into this without knowing anything about the Bible. I mean, this was also an issue in Genesis (and I wrote about it a lot there), which was filled with iconic characters like Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Noah, and Abraham & Isaac. But it feels like it was more of a problem this time because I badly wanted all of Exodus to be The Ten Commandments movie. Except I’ve never seen that movie, so I wanted Exodus to be the hacky Hollywood movie I’ve always imagined The Ten Commandments to be, which goes a little like this:

MOSES is a slave in EGYPT. He goes to PHARAOH to try to get free.

MOSES
Pharaoh, let my people go!

PHARAOH
(twirling his moustache)
Never!

MOSES
Oh Pharaoh, you heathen fool! God will surely rain plagues down upon you if you do not do as he wishes,

PHARAOH
Ha ha! Your silly religion is no match for the unstoppable power of Egypt!

Moses goes away and asks GOD to help. God sends some frogs or something and Moses and his people escape in the ensuing confusion. Pharaoh and his soldiers follow them to the Red Sea.

MOSES
Suck it, Pharaoh!

Suddenly, the Red Sea PARTS and Moses leads his people through it. When Pharaoh’s soldiers try to follow, God makes the water crash down on them and they all die. Moses and his people go to MOUNT SINAI. Moses climbs it and comes down with two tablets that have the TEN COMMANDMENTS written on them.

MOSES
These are the rules by which we all must live!

MOSES’ PEOPLE
Yay Moses!

Fin.

And that’s pretty much what happens in the book (maybe slightly differently). And…it’s okay.

It’s not bad. It’s not some horrible piece of shit that makes me want to give up on this whole reading-the-Bible thing (I’m looking at you, Leviticus). But all the Charlton Heston puffed up chest theatrics that I expected from Moses’ meetings with the pharaoh weren’t there. It was either:

Moses: “Let my people go or bad things will happen.”

Pharaoh: “No.”

or

Moses: “Let my people go or bad things will happen.”

Pharaoh: “Okay.”

(After a short delay)

Pharaoh: “Wait, never mind.”

And there are ten disasters (Blood, frogs, gnats, flies, death of the animals, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and death of the firstborns) that strike Egypt, so these exchanges happen ten times. Not only do they get old pretty fast, but they’re pointless. The book says multiple times that the king is about to let Moses and his people go, but the LORD makes the king stubborn and he does not let them go.

What. The. Fuck?

The only explanation given for this is that God needs to demonstrate his power so that “the Egyptians will then know that I am the LORD, when I raise my hand against them and bring the Israelites out of their country.” (Ex. 7:5) Seriously? There’s no conceivable way to demonstrate your power that doesn’t involve the murder of the firstborn son of every Egyptian family? Not to be an overdramatic PTA mother about this, but this is literally God killing innocent children to prove how Godly he is. How about a giant sign in the sky saying “I am the LORD” or just a snap of the fingers and suddenly everyone knows who their creator and lord is?

But there is one thing in this book that qualifies as a massive letdown, and it’s probably the fault of my translation (I hate you, Good News Bible). Honestly, Raiders of the Lost Ark had me all excited to see the first appearance of the Ark of the Covenant, and in my translation it’s called the Covenant Box. The Covenant Box! This is a disappointment of a different kind than the whole Moses story, and I imagine I won’t be this disappointed by a passage in the Bible until Ezekiel 25:17 (Spoiler alert: Pulp Fiction is a dirty liar).

But the whole book is full of letdowns. First off, and I know this is an extremely petty complaint (If you don’t like petty complaints, skip this paragraph) (Seriously) (I’m nice in the next one, so you have that to look forward to), but God’s name is I AM (except in Hebrew it sounds like Yahweh or Jehovah). After a lot of research and elaborate scientific testing, I have determined that to be a pretty stupid name. There’s the constant repetition of how God will drive out the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, as if Moses didn’t understand it the first time he said he’d drive them out. There’s the boring songs and Moses just repeating whatever God says, like I didn’t just read it. There’s the part of the book, which comprises chapters 25 through 30 and 36 through 39, which is all just instructions about how to make stuff. Couldn’t God have told whoever wrote this down to not be a shitty writer? Is that really so much to ask of a divine being who is trying to get people to believe in him?

But it’s not all letdowns. You want to see God acting Godly? Hit up chapter 23. That’s where God lays down the law, tells his obedient followers what do do and how to do it, and promises to drive out their enemies. And then he gives a reason that he hasn’t driven them out already (if he did then the animals would all run free and there’d be too many for the Israelites to control), which admittedly you would think God and all his Godly power would be able to solve. But still, it’s a reason, and that’s a good thing and I don’t want to have too many problems with it.

So, in the good column: no moral lessons (other than “Don’t disobey God”), nothing that science tells us definitely didn’t happen. But it’s all a little empty. And I don’t really blame the book for that – this is the single most iconic story in the Old Testament, which carries some weight in my mind, and I already knew pretty much everything that would happen, which means that nothing in the story would be remotely unfamiliar or surprising. So it’s hard for me to bitch about the book (or find something better to talk about, honestly) when I came into it knowing every single beat.

Trust me, I too hope this will be the last thing I write about expectations.