Joshua: And the Walls Come Tumbling Down

Hello, and a grateful welcome to those of you who may be reading. Hope you’ve been enjoying yourself so far. And more importantly, hope you’ve been thinking about things so far, whether you agree with my interpretations or not.

Today we are inaugurating our discussion of the Book of Joshua, which describes the Jewish invasion of Canaan (aka “the Promised Land”). Over and over up until now, God has been promising this land to the Israelite people, and commanding them to utterly obliterate (down to the women, children, and livestock) the people who already live there. So now we shall see how the people carry out that commission.

We start out with God commanding Joshua to lead the invasion, promising that they will claim all the land of Lebanon and the wilderness, and the land of the Hittites from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. He further promises that “no man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life.” Joshua then commands the people to start making ready, because in three days’ time they are going to cross the Jordan and start to take possession of the land.

While they’re getting ready, Joshua sends a couple men to spy out the land they’ll be coming to first. And the process starts out with hilarity.

“Jos 2:1 And Joshua the son of Nun sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying ‘Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged there.”

Go on… tell me that’s not hilarious! He sends some guys out, and the very first thing they do after getting out of sight is shack up at a whorehouse? Bwahahaha!

Although, to be fair… nothing in any of the draconian sexual laws presented so far actually forbids men (married or otherwise) from seeing a prostitute. For that matter, nothing prevents a divorced or widowed woman from seeing one either. It’s just that Israelites are not allowed to be prostitutes.

Anyway, somehow the king of Jericho found out about the spies, and sent men to arrest them. But Rahab hid them in the thatching of her roof, and told the would-be captors that the men had already left the city. So they took off in hot pursuit. Since it was nighttime, the city gates were closed after them.

Then Rahab went to the spies and told them that the people of Jericho had heard all about how God had given the land to them, and that all the men were afraid of the coming invasion. And how she was eager to sell out her own people. So she asked them to promise that if she helped keep their business secret, the Israelites would spare her and her family when they invaded the city. The spies agreed, and told her to tie a scarlet ribbon in her window when the invasion started, so the Israelites would know to spare everyone in the house. Then Rahab advised them to head into the wilderness to avoid the king’s patrols, and helped them get out of the city by lowering them from a rope out of her window (since her house was built into the city wall).

So… remember how God ordered the Israelites not to make any deals with anyone in the promised land, or to allow any of them to live? The invasion hasn’t even begun, and that command is out the window. Rahab didn’t even promise to start worshipping Yahweh exclusively or anything! But, y’know… who won’t go that extra mile for someone who gives them sex (even if it is for money)?

Anyway, the spies then hid out in the wilderness for a few days until the patrols had stopped, then crossed back over the Jordan to report to Joshua. So Joshua told everyone that they’d be marching across the Jordan the next day.

In the morning, Joshua sent a group of Levitical priests ahead of the people carrying the ark. God promised Joshua that he’d start doing miracles to prove to everyone that Joshua was in charge, and that to start with he should have the priests with the ark walk out into the Jordan. As soon as the priests’ feet touched the water, the flow was cut off upstream of them, so that the water raised up in a heap behind the cutoff point and the people could proceed across just by walking over the dry river bed. The priests stood in the middle of the river with the ark while everyone else trooped across.

Once they were across, God told Joshua to have a man from each tribe pull up a river stone from the place where the priests were standing, and take that to their encampment to set up as a memorial. They did so, and then the priests followed them up out of the Jordan. As soon as they were clear of the riverbed, the water started flowing again.

Now for some odd reason, although it had been the custom of the Israelites to circumcise their sons all the time they were living in Egypt, none of the boys born on the trip through the wilderness after the exodus had been circumcised. There had been no order to that effect, heck it wasn’t even mentioned anywhere in the four books written to describe that journey, but here we are told that the whole people had apparently abandoned the practice for no particular reason. And because of that, once they crossed the Jordan, everyone had to be circumcised.

The people remained in camp until they healed, and from then until Passover. And the very next day after Passover, they started to live off the food of the land and the manna ceased to fall.

As they approach Jericho, Joshua comes across a man with a drawn sword in his hand. So Joshua demands to know whether the man stands for them or against them. I’m certain the ensuing exchange is meant to be meaningful, but I think it falls under the heading of unintentional hilarity. The fellow answers:

“Jos 5:14 And he said ‘No; but I am the commander of the army of Yahweh. Now I have come.’ And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshipped and said to him ‘What does my lord say to his servant?’ 15 And the commander of Yahweh’s army said to Joshua ‘Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so.”

That’s it. That is the whole conversation between them. God sent the commander of his army to tell his chosen prophet on earth to take off his damned shoes. And that’s where Chapter 5 ends.

Then we jump into Chapter 6, and by verse 2 God is speaking directly with Joshua again. So what the hell was even the point of having the commander as the intermediary two verses earlier? Was God just unwilling to put in an appearance in the presence of unholy sandaled feet?

Sometimes I feel like the author put shit in here for no other reason than to make the reader do double takes.

But anyway, when God speaks to Joshua he lays out the battle plan for taking Jericho. You all may be familiar with this – they made us sing the song in Sunday School. Though both the song and the Sunday School lessons left out a few details (not least of which is the fact that the people of Jericho had never done a fucking thing to the Israelites).

The people are supposed to line up in front of the ark, with seven priests bearing rams’ horns directly in front of it. For six days in a row, they’re supposed to march around the city once, with the priests blowing on the horns. On the seventh day, they’re supposed to march around seven times, and after the last time the priests are supposed to give a long blast. When they hear the long trumpet blast, everyone is supposed to shout as loud as they can, and the walls will fall flat.

So they do all that marching around and blowing trumpets stuff. And just before the final trumpet blast, Joshua pauses to give some instructions about what they’re supposed to do once the walls fall. Which is kill everything that moves, set aside the gold, silver, bronze, and iron stuff for the Lord’s treasury (i.e. Joshua) because they are holy to God (i.e. valuable), and burn everything that’s left.

So then they give their mighty shout, the walls fall flat, they storm the city, and they kill everything: “men and women, young, and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys…” Except for Rahab and her household, whom the men are instructed to retrieve from her house (you know… the house that was built into the walls… that had just collapsed… but whatever, poor storytelling is poor). And Rahab and her family are allowed to live happily ever after among the Israelites.

Then Joshua lays a curse on the remains of Jericho that anyone who tries to rebuild the city will do so only at the cost of his children’s lives. ‘Cause if you’re already being a dick, you might as well piss on people too.

Oh, but then a problem arises…

“Jos 7:1 But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things, for Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things. And the anger of Yahweh burned against the people of Israel.”

The “devoted things” here refers to the stuff they were ordered to destroy when sacking the city (i.e. anything other than the precious metals). Achan, one guy, secretly kept some of that stuff as plunder, so everyone is considered to have broken faith with God.

But before any of this comes to light, Joshua sends some spies to a nearby town called Ai. And when they come back, they tell him there’s no need for everyone to go all the way there – about two or three thousand men should be enough to take Ai. So Joshua sends a force of three thousand me. But when the people of Ai come out to fight, the Israelites suddenly turn chicken and run, so the people of Ai give chase and kill thirty-six of them before the Israelites make good their escape.

When Joshua hears about this, he turns into a little bitch, wailing and crying to God about how now they’re all doomed to be destroyed. God then basically tells him to quit his whining, the Israelites sinned by taking some of the stuff they were supposed to destroy in God’s name, and they won’t be able to stand in battle anymore until Joshua finds that shit and actually destroys it. Oh, and burns the person responsible to death along with all he has.

So God tells him that he’ll find the culprit by drawing lots, first to narrow down to the tribe, then to clan, then to household, and finally down to the man. ‘Cause, y’know, God couldn’t just say a fucking name or anything. Or, for that matter, maybe mentioning something about it before getting a bunch of men killed in battle as punishment for it? Less theater that way, I guess.

The next morning Joshua gathers everyone around, and goes through the rigmarole of drawing lots until he finally gets down to Achan. Confronted, Achan admits that he’d taken a cloak, a gold bar, and some silver and buried them under his tent. Joshua sends messengers to dig them up and bring them back to complete the proof of Achan’s guilt.

“Jos 7:24 And Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver and the cloak and the bar of gold, and his sons and daughters and his oxen and donkeys and sheep and his tent and all that he had. And they brought them up to the Valley of Achor. 25 And Joshua said ‘Why did you bring trouble on us? Yahweh brings trouble on you today.” And all Israel stoned him with stones. They burned them with fire and stoned them with stones.”

Now, I gotta say, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Achan. After all, as a participant in the sacking of Jericho, he is no doubt a murderer of women and children several times over in addition to being a thief. But so is everyone who’s stoning him. Nobody here seems to give a flying fuck about the child murder, though, because God ordered it. Whereas stealing against God’s command is a capital offense.

Also, it’s rather strongly implied up there that his children were stoned and burned as well. Which, in addition to being abhorrent, is explicitly prohibited even by the fucked up moral sense of Mosaic law which states that a child shall not be put to death for the sins of his father (Deuteronomy 24:16).

It’s shit like this that makes it hard to take seriously the claims of Christians that they have an objective moral basis. Because even if you were to buy into the moral laws presented in the Bible, God overrides them all the fucking time. Which means the only consistent law here is “obey,” and “obey” is not a moral basis – it’s the complete abrogation of personal moral responsibility. To say nothing of the fact that no one can even objectively demonstrate that they receive any communication from this God thing in the first place, which boils all of it down in the end to “do whatever arbitrary shit you can convince yourself to believe strongly enough to think God wants you to do.”

Ok, rant over, and back to the story. Now that they’ve killed the sinner, the Israelites are ready to take a second crack at Ai. This time they take their full fighting force of 40,000 men, and God orders them to lay an ambush by hiding the large majority of their fighters on the other side of the city. Joshua takes a smaller force toward the gates, then has them turn and run away just like they had done the first time. The fighters from Ai, seeing them run and thinking this will be just like the first fight, stream out of the city to give chase.

So while the fighters are away chasing the decoy force, the ambushers bust into the city and kill all the undefended women and children. They set the city on fire, and at this signal the decoy force turns back to attack their pursuers. Then the ambushers came out of the burning city to catch Ai’s fighters between the two groups and slaughter them. Finally, everyone returns to the city to make sure they kill any remaining women and children, and to loot the place (this time, arbitrarily, they’re allowed to keep plunder). They hang the king, but then take him down and bury him beneath a pile of rocks at the city gates by nightfall (sure, that law they follow).

Seems a little odd that earlier in the story, Joshua’s spies tell him that a force of 3,000 men should be all that’s needed to take Ai, but his full army of 40,000 needs this elaborate ruse of an ambush to pull it off. Methinks I detect the gently wafting scent of bullshit on the air. Not sure where it is, so we’ll just let it float on by as we bring today’s post to a close.

So there we go. Through sheer, wanton brutality mixed with a bit of whoring about and internal injustice, the Israelites have gained their first foothold in the promised land. Can’t wait to see what they do next!

Until then, you all take care.

Deuteronomy: The Day The Music Died

Hey, I just realized that my last entry was my 50^th post! Wow, am I full of hot air or what?!

And since that only gets me to about 17% of the way through the Bible, that leaves me with an estimate of about 295 total posts (245 to go from here) to complete the whole thing. And at my current pace, that would be sometime in October of 2015. That’s… a long way to go. Probably best not to think about it, and just focus on one post at a time.

We’re approaching the end of Deuteronomy, and Moses has just invested a lot of time and creative effort in enumerating the many horrific curses God will delight in inflicting on the Israelites should they choose to disobey him. Now he goes on to talk about making a covenant between the people and God.

He talks about it as if it’s some new covenant, but it really seems to be the same one he’s been going on about since Sinai. The Israelites will be God’s people, worship him, and follow his laws, and as long as they do then he’ll bless them with good stuff. And if they turn away to worship other gods, he’ll fuck them up like nobody’s business. It’s the same line, really, that’s been getting repeated over and over since way back in the Abraham stories, although back with Abraham there was far less emphasis on the “he’ll fuck you up,” portion of the deal.

Actually, come to think of it, I don’t recall God ever saying to Abraham that there was an “I’ll fuck your descendants up if they don’t obey me” portion of the deal at all. That just seems to have been added after Moses entered the picture. I’m kinda reminded of what Darth Vader said to Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back when Lando protested that he hadn’t agreed to have Han Solo turned over to Boba Fett: “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”

Was Darth the hero, or the villain in this story? And was this behavior consistent with his hero/villain status? It’s OK to say the answer if you know it.

Anyway, back to Moses and his Covenant. After going on at great length about how anyone who violates the covenant will have Bad Shit^TM happen to them, he gets on to a part about how after all those horrors happen, the people turn back to God, then he will forgive them, bring them back to the promised land, and start blessing them again. Then he’ll start pouring out all the same curses he had been inflicting on the disobedient Israelites on the people who persecute them instead. How swell.

He repeats this bit, with variations, over and over (any lie repeated often enough, and all that), before getting on to telling people that since God won’t let him cross the Jordan with them, Joshua will be taking his place as their leader.  Afterwards, he writes down the law and gives a copy to the priests, ordering them to read it out loud to all the people every seven years when they gather at the temple for the Feast of Booths.

So then God summons Moses and Joshua to the tent of meeting so that he can “commission” Joshua as the new leader. The meeting starts off with God appearing as a pillar of cloud, and telling Moses that he already knows that the people will turn away from following his laws once they have taken over the promised land. But fear not, God has a solution: he wrote a song to rebuke them with, which Moses is to write down and teach to them before he dies.

The song is… not particularly inspiring. It kisses God’s bum for a little bit, then gives a brief and fanciful history of things God did for his people before getting to the “but then you spurned him,” part. From there it kinda devolves into a violent rant filled with insults and threats of blood-drenched vengeance.

After Moses taught everyone the song, it was time for him to die. So God told him to go up Mount Nebo so he can look out from it and see the promised land before he dies. Before departing, Moses gives Israel his final blessing. This is long and drawn out, blessing each of the tribes uniquely and individually. You can read Deuteronomy Chapter 33 if you’re really interested in the details.

With the blessing done, Moses climbs the mountain, sees the promised land, and dies. God supposedly buried him in a valley, though no one know his exact resting place. So Joshua took charge, the people spent thirty days in mourning, and Deuteronomy comes to an end.

Wasn’t that a fun book? Next post, we’ll dive into the Book of Joshua, which is much like a fantasy novel about an invasion by an evil horde, as told from the horde’s perspective. There’s war, sex, betrayal, defeat, and triumph… should be a blast!

Until then, be well!

Deuteronomy: Are you Going to Eat That?

Blogging, blogging, blogging, keep on Bible blogging… oh! Hello there! Welcome back to my Bible blog!

We’re in Deuteronomy, and for the last several posts Moses has been laying down the law in a protracted and rambling speech. And it seems that I have once again fallen into the trap of trying to put down everything in the interests of completeness. But since it’s not my intention to lay out a list of laws for people to follow (and actually, I’d be pretty opposed to anyone following quite a large number of these), there’s not really much value in doing that. It just makes things difficult to read. So, I’ll once again try to reign myself in and restrict my commentary to just those things that actually catch my interest.

And the first of those is…

“Deu 24:16 ‘Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.”

This is of interest for a couple reasons. First of all, doesn’t this imply that the Original Sin doctrine (you know, the one that says we are all stained by Adam & Eve’s sin of disobeying God, and that death is the penalty we pay for it) is complete bullshit? Secondly (spoiler alert), during the coming invasion of the promised land, the Israelites are going to be killing children, and even infants, by the truckloads. Since the infants, obviously, wouldn’t have been able to commit the sins for which God supposedly wants those nations wiped out, it stands to reason that they are being put to death for the sins of their fathers. So this is a contradiction, or at the very least blatant hypocrisy.

Maybe it’s just another of those laws that’s meant to apply only to God’s chosen people, and fuck everyone else. Or a case of “this is what you will do, but God will do whatever the fuck he wants.”

There’s an interesting bit at the start of Chapter 25 about beating the guilty party in any dispute brought before the judges, with the number of lashes being proportional to his offense. To my recollection so far, there’s only one offense for which beatings are recommended (falsely accusing a woman of not being a virgin on her wedding night), and there aren’t really degrees of that offense by which to give a proportionate number of lashes. Pretty much everything else requires death, a monetary payment, a sacrificial offering, or has no actual penalty specified. Are we to assume that the offenses for which penalties aren’t specified are punished with beatings? Or that there are whole categories of offenses for which beatings are required that simply aren’t covered in the Bible? In either case, the fact that none of this is specified kind of suggests the Bible is incomplete, doesn’t it?

If two men are fighting, and one guy’s wife tries to rescue her husband by grabbing the other guy by the balls, then her hand should be cut off. Guess God feels pretty strongly about going after a man’s junk in a fight!

Seems like an oddly specific rule, though. Sounds to me like it’s something that happened to the author, and he was pissed off enough about it to feel like he needed to make a law.

In a more generally applicable vein, there’s an actually good law that requires the people to be honest and fair in commercial dealings by forbidding them from using doctored weights or measures for determining the value of goods.

Moses finally meanders on to the end of his speech without saying much else truly new or interesting. But then he has some proclamations to make about some specific actions the people are to take once they cross the Jordan into the promised land.

Among them are: set up piles of stones on Mount Ebal, cover them with plaster, and then write the whole law on them; build an altar to God out of unworked stones and sacrifice burnt offerings on it, and then write the words of the law on those stones. Then the tribes are supposed to divide themselves between Mount Gerizin and Mount Ebal while the Levitical priests stand in the middle and declare a series of curses.

The Levites are to declare a curse for anyone who does the following: makes a carved or metal image, dishonors his father or mother, has sex with an animal, has sex with his sister (Abraham, still looking at you), has sex with his mother-in-law, strikes down his neighbor in secret, takes a bribe to kill an innocent, or does not follow the law.

Then we get yet another repetition of how God will bless them as long as they obey his laws. Riches, bountiful harvests, victory over their enemies, healthy children, etc., etc. The blessings (fourteen verses of these) are pretty commonplace stuff (not even any promises of mind-blowing orgasms), but it’s in the curses that follow for disobedience (fifty-four verses of these, so you know where the priorities lie) where the author gets really creative.

Let’s see a sampling of the curses God has in store for the Israelites should they disobey him. We start off pretty tame, with frustration and confusion in all their endeavors. But we quickly move on to wasting diseases, droughts, blighted crops, and rains of dust rather than water. God will cause them to be defeated by their enemies, and their dead bodies to be eaten by wild animals. They’ll get boils, tumors, and scabs that can’t be healed. They’ll be struck blind and mad, and people will oppress and rob them all the time while nobody comes to their aid. Their betrothed will be raped by other men before they can be married, their food, livestock, and children will be taken by other people. Locusts and worms will consume their crops (before or after they’re stolen by other men?). Then God will bring another nation to conquer and rule over them, who will consume all of their food and destroy all of their cities. And here’s the best one of all.

“Deu 28:53 And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom Yahweh your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you.”

That’s right, kiddies, if you disobey the all-loving and benevolent creator, he will make you eat your fucking children! Are you feeling the infinite compassion and love yet?

Oh, and just for a little extra added kick, you’ll become the kind of dick who won’t share his dead baby flesh with the rest of his starving family either. Guess the only thing worse than a cannibal is a selfish cannibal.

There are a few more curses after that, including scattering them among other nations where they’ll be so poor they have to sell themselves as slaves (except no one will want to buy them), but none of them come close to topping the cannibalizing-your-own-children thing. Though there’s an entertaining aside near the end about how God will “take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you.” Isn’t that the sort of thing we generally classify as evil?

So that pretty much brings us to the end of what Moses has to say about blessings and curses for the time being. He’s going to move on to another part of the speech, but we’re going to go ahead and call it a day here. We’ll pick up the next section in my next post.

In the meantime, be well! Oh, and seriously... don't eat your kids.

Deuteronomy: Keep Your Eye on the Real Victim

Welcome once more to my Bible blog! We find ourselves today deep in the midst of Deuteronomy, where Moses is spilling out an interminable speech on the laws the Hebrews are supposed to hold when they come to the promised land. In the last post there were some real doozies, and I don’t think today’s installment is going to disappoint on that front either. So let’s jump in, shall we?

So, how does one follow up a legal requirement to stone disobedient children to death? Well, Moses does it with an instruction that, if you put a man to death for a crime and hang him from a tree, you shouldn’t leave him hanging there into the next day. He should be taken down and buried in the same day, because “a hanged man is cursed by God,” and they shouldn’t defile their land by leaving hanged corpses dangling around.

Then we get a random collection of seemingly unrelated laws that include: requirement to return your neighbors lost possessions and livestock if you happen to find them, declaration that cross-dressing (by man or woman) is an abomination to God, a requirement that if you come across a bird tending its young or eggs in a nest you can take the eggs/young but must leave the mother, a requirement to put parapets around the roof of your house so people can’t fall off, prohibitions on sowing your fields with more than one type of seed, using an ox and a donkey together to pull the same plow, or wearing cloth of linen and wool mixed together, and a requirement to hang tassels on the corners of your garments.

From there, Moses moves on to some laws about sex, so you just know there’s some controversy to be mined here. And it starts off immediately with laws about the virginity of brides.

If a man marries a woman, and on their wedding night decides that he doesn’t think she’s really a virgin and accuses her of such, her parents are supposed to provide proof that she was. Apparently (although the Bible dances around the subject and doesn’t really explain clearly) this proof is supposed to consist of showing that the bedsheets have blood on them from her losing her virginity to her husband. If they can provide the proof, then the husband must be whipped and pay a fine of 100 shekels of silver. You know who he pays the fine to? The father of the girl he falsely accused. Oh, and he has to keep the girl as his wife and never divorce her.

If the parents can’t provide proof of their daughter’s virginity (and new flash: not every woman bleeds the first time she has sex), you know what happens to the girl? She gets stoned to death.

Yeah, remember that law earlier about how the accusation of a single witness can’t be enough to convict someone, and that other law that false witnesses are supposed to receive the punishment that the falsely accused person would have received? Apparently those laws don’t apply when it’s a man accusing a woman. But leaving aside the bullshit hypocrisy just within the structure of their own laws, let’s think a moment about what this really means.

If the man is in the wrong, he just committed a crime (bearing false witness) that could get a woman killed. He gets whipped, the victim’s father gets rewarded with silver, and the victim herself is punished by being forced to remain married to the man who tried to kill her. On the other hand, if the woman was in the wrong, she has committed a “crime” that harms no one in any demonstrable way, and she gets killed for it. There is no justice here.

But that’s not the end of it. Let’s move on and see what other gems of compassion and wisdom God’s prophet had to lay down regarding sex and immorality.

If a man has sex with a married woman, both are to be put to death.

If a man rapes a betrothed woman in the city, and she doesn’t scream loudly enough to bring help, they will both be stoned to death. Because I just guess they assume that if nobody heard her scream she must have been willing, and therefore committing adultery, and of course no rapist has ever used force and/or threats to keep his victim silent.

But if a man rapes a betrothed woman in the countryside, then it’s assumed that she cried for help and nobody was there to hear, so only the man will be put to death. Although this raises the question: if no one was there to hear her cry for help, who was able to witness the crime? After all, by law the woman’s word alone (as only a single witness) can’t be good enough to convict the rapist.

And finally, if a man rapes a woman who isn’t married or betrothed, then he has to pay her father fifty shekels of silver, marry her, and never divorce her. Because nothing makes up for victimizing a woman in the most intimate way possible like legally victimizing her for the rest of her life.

But then, it’s pretty clear that in the eyes of Moses and his God, if you rape an unmarried girl, the real victim was her father because of the economic loss in reducing her value to be sold as a bride.

And aside from the highly questionable assertion that it’s even remotely just to put people to death for having sex, think about the implications. Got fifty shekels to spare and a hankerin’ for a girl who won’t give you the time of day? Just rape her, and she’s yours for life! These laws are fucking sick.

Oh, and to end this bit on sexual horrors, we get a low-key prohibition on sleeping with your father’s wife without specifying a penalty.

The next bit is about those “excluded from the assembly of Yahweh.” It’s not really explained precisely what that means, and I haven’t turned up a lot online that seems to really agree about it either (not that I searched all that hard – if the Bible can’t be clear enough to stand on its own, I see little reason to care what anyone else has to say about what it means either). But I’m sure it meant some kind of second-class status for these people. And the excluded people are: eunuchs, anyone born from a forbidden union and any of their descendants (like… all the Israelites, who I remind you are all descended from the son Abraham fathered on his own sister), Ammonites and Moabites (these last two, the Israelites are actually forbidden to make peace with or give aid to forever). Edomites and Egyptians are allowed to enter into the assembly after three generations (three generations of what, I don’t know… intermarriage with Israelites, and/or worshipping Yahweh perhaps?).

The bits about descendants of forbidden unions, as well as Ammonites and Moabites, both include “unto the tenth generation” as a qualifier, but then one tacks on a “forever,” as well, so I’m not certain whether that means the condition follows for literally ten generations, or whether the phrase “unto the tenth generation” is supposed to be a euphemism for a status that follows all descendant generations for all time. Regardless, it’s still just an example of penalizing people for stuff that other people did, which is kinda bullshit.

Next on the legal agenda are some rules of warfare, in which the Israelites are instructed to “keep themselves from any evil thing” when encamped for war. Note that “any evil thing” does not include genocidal wars of aggression, but rather nocturnal emissions and failure to bury your feces outside the camp. Apparently this is done because the war camp is supposed to be a holy place where God walks among them, so they don’t want him to see anything indecent and turn away from them in the face of their enemies. I imagine God’s “turning away” bears a striking resemblance to dysentery, which is the usual result of leaving piles of open sewage inside your camp.

Following the Bible’s usual organizing principle of “whatever floated through the author’s mind at the time,” we then move onto another random collection of seemingly unrelated pronouncements. So there’s a prohibition against returning escaped slaves to their masters (it’s kind of unclear whether they just mean slaves who have escaped foreign masters and fled to Jewish lands, or if this is just a general prohibition against returning any escaped slave to any master even among Jews), followed by a prohibition against Jewish men or women becoming cult prostitutes or using any prostitute’s wages to make payments to God’s temple, then a restriction against charging interest on loans to other Jews (while explicitly allowing interest to be charged to foreigners). Then we get an instruction to fulfill any vows to God quickly because failing to fulfill them is a sin, whereas simply never making any vows is not. And then there’s permission to eat as much food as you like from your neighbor’s fields, so long as you don’t try to carry any extra away (yeah, because there’s no way that law could bite anyone in the ass).

Anyway, I could go on with more of the random brilliance that characterizes God's law, but this post is getting long and random pronouncements get to be boring as all get-out. So we’ll call this a stopping point, and I’ll leave you to get on about your day while I figure out how to approach the next post.

Hope all is, and continues to be, well with you!

Deuteronomy: Scattershot Law

Hello once again, dear reader. I’m guessing by now you know that this is my Bible blog, in which I discuss my impressions of the Bible as I read through it. At present I’m making my way through Deuteronomy, and Moses is giving speeches laying down the “final” versions of the laws that the Israelites are supposed to follow in their promised land. At the end of my last post, he had just gotten through the extremely sketchy section on what kings are supposed to do.

We rejoin our genocidal hero as he returns to the topic of Levitical priests (he seems to like to tell the people a little bit about a subject, then go talk about something wholly unrelated, then come back to the previous subject. He does this quite a bit and imo, it’s a horrible way to organize a treatise on laws). In this spot, he’s just reminding us that the Levitical priests are entitled to eat a portion of the offerings made to God at the temple. Also, any Levite living elsewhere can decide at any time that he wants to go become a priest at the temple, and when he does he will also be entitled to an equal share in the food from the offerings.

After that, he returns for at least the third time to the subject of abominable practices of the people whose land they’re about to take that God will not stand for among his people. Here’s the list:

“Deu 18:10 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, 12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to Yahweh. And because of these abominations, Yahweh your God is driving them out before you.”

OK, so, burning your son or daughter to death is pretty abominable (and it’s been established that God wants his people to be willing to do if he told them to). But in the practical sense, everything else on that list is bullshit and fraud. However, if you look at it from a worldview in which this stuff is literally true and actually happens, a good bit of it is stuff that Yahweh’s followers have done or claimed to do and been rewarded for (e.g. Joseph claimed to be a diviner, and he most certainly interpreted omens and dreams to tell the future).

Next, Moses tells the people how God has promised to raise up a new prophet (the Hebrews may not have sorcerers, charmers, and fortune tellers, but they have prophets, who appear to do much the same stuff, they just claim to do it in Yahweh’s name rather than some other god or from their own abilities) once Moses dies. Like he did with Moses, God will speak directly to this prophet and have him convey God’s wishes to the people. False prophets can be identified by the fact that they will give predictions in God’s name that won’t come true, and such people are condemned to death (hear that, Robertson?).

Then, just like that, we’re of that topic and onto cities of refuge. I’ve covered them in another post, and nothing seems to have really changed, so I won’t bother repeating it here.

Randomly: you’re not allowed to move your neighbor’s property markers.

And then we’re back to legal disputes and judges. Dammit, Moses, finish a topic before spraying twelve more out onto the page!

In this part about legal disputes, we get it repeated that that one witness alone isn’t enough to convict someone of a crime. Also, if someone bears false witness at a trial, their penalty is the same as what the falsely accused man would have received (actually, I think that’s a pretty cool idea).

Next topic: warfare. The Hebrews are instructed not to fear armies greater than their own, because God will help them fight. Before battle, a priest is supposed to give an inspirational speech. Then the officers are supposed to send home anyone who has a new vineyard they haven’t eaten from yet, those who have new homes that haven’t been consecrated yet, those who have fiancés they haven’t bedded yet, and people who are just plain scared (so that their panic doesn’t spread). Then they choose a commander and commence with the ass whuppin’.

When they attack a city, they’re to offer “terms of peace,” (i.e. surrender). If the city surrenders, everyone in it becomes slaves. If they fight back, then every male in the city is to be killed, and just the women and children enslaved. But these rules don’t apply to the cities in the promised land: every living thing in all of those cities are to be “devoted to destruction.” They are explicitly ordered to commit genocide against the Hitites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Interesting how these days we can abhor someone for committing a single genocide, while for some reason we’re expected to admire Moses and his successor Joshua for committing five (not counting the ones they’ve already committed before this point in the story).

Oh, but at least they’re instructed not to cut down the fruit trees to make siege weapons. So there’s that.

But as barbaric as the warfare rules are, at least they make a sort of sense - unlike the batshit crazy stuff in the next section on unsolved murders. See, if a man is found murdered and no one can figure out who did it, then the elders of the nearest city have to take responsibility for dealing with it. And “dealing with it” consists of murdering a cow to make up for the man’s murder. I shit you not. The elders are required to take a heifer that has never worked a plow, take her to a valley with running water in it, break the poor thing’s neck, wash their hands over its dead carcass while a priest gives his blessing, and declare that since they spilled no blood in killing the animal, God should accept it as atonement for the dead man’s blood and not hold the people guilty for it. What kind of madman comes up with this shit? Did the priests make a drunken bet amongst themselves to see who could get the people to do the craziest damn things in the name of God?

Then on to marital matters. We start with the rules about war brides. Women captives can be forced to marry their captors, but only after shaving their heads, cutting their nails, and being allowed to mourn their murdered relatives for a month. If you decide after bedding her that you don’t want her after all, you have to let her go rather than simply selling her as a slave.

A man with multiple wives still has to give the firstborn’s share of his inheritance to his actual firstborn son, rather than to the son of the wife he likes best.

And speaking of sons…

“Deu 21:18 ‘If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, 19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20 and they shall say to the elders of his city , “This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.” 21 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.’”

“The fuck?!” you say?

How fucking sick does a society need to get before this law makes it onto the books? Though really, I almost have to read this as something thrown in there just so parents can hold it over their kids’ head as a threat and not because they expect anyone to actually do it. “Eat your peas, or I could totally kill your ass and nobody would say ‘boo’ about it!”

But then… something else occurs to me. If this is the parenting model these people were operating on, is it really any wonder they came up with such a douchebag concept of God? After all, the religion casts God as the father figure, and humans as his children. And if mortal fathers are expected to kill their disobedient children, then it only stands to reason that a godlike version of a father would kill disobedient children on a far more grandiose scale.

This law is actually kind of a microcosm of the character of God as presented so far in the Bible.

And as an aside… if death is deemed an appropriate punishment for a stubbornly rebellious child, that kind of implies that anything and everything short of death could legitimately be considered discipline. Put the right combination of rebellious son and pious father together, and you could easily have a household transformed into a legally sanctioned house of horrors. Just a thought.

This seems like a good place to call it a day. The laws are coming fast and furious, scattershot all over the place in terms of theme and ranging in value from “not horrible” through “utter nonsense,” and deeply into “screamingly psychopathic.” It sure makes for plenty to talk about! Hope you’ll come back next time to see more of the moral brilliance that will descend from God’s law. In the meantime, you keep yourselves well!

Deuteronomy: Yadda Yadda Laws… Yadda Yadda Kill the Heretic

Hello hello, and welcome back. Glad to have you as my guest for the continuing odyssey through the Bible. We’re currently in the midst of Deuteronomy, where Moses is giving his farewell series of lectures to the Israelites before he dies and they cross the Jordan to invade the promised land.

We’d just gotten through a section on the treatment of poor brothers. From there, Moses goes on to discuss what to do with fellow Jews who are sold to you as slaves. As has been covered before, they serve six years, and then you’re supposed to let them go (unless they choose to stay with your household, in which case you mark them with an awl through the ear as your slave forever). It kinda strikes me as odd that the slaves’ only choice is leave after six years or be a slave forever – conditions change in life, and the situation that made you not want to leave after six years could easily be altered later on, but too bad you’re fucked?

Also of note here is that Moses says the six year tenure applies to women as well as men. Again, this is a change in the law, as Exodus 21:7 says that women don’t get to leave unless the owner decides he doesn’t like her (in which case she may be bought back only by her father – so even that isn’t so much about setting her free as restricting who he’s allowed to transfer ownership to). Now, in my opinion, this is a direct result of the issue with women now being allowed to inherit property if their father dies without any male heirs (see my post titled Numbers: Screw Interfaith Marriage, We Prefer Murder!). This fact kind of forced the acknowledgment that it’s possible for an unmarried woman to exist in a state where she isn’t just the property of some man, and so they needed to be able to do something with female slaves that they couldn’t just sell back to dad. They probably decided that the easiest solution was just to make the same rule apply to female slaves that already applied to male ones.

Of course, one might expect that an omniscient God would have foreseen that issue when writing the original version of the law, so it would have been accounted for right from the beginning. Just sayin’….

Anyway, the law also includes an instruction not to let these slaves go empty-handed, but to provide them with some livestock and produce with which to start their lives over. That’s not too shabby an instruction, really – but remember, this whole release and payment scheme is limited to fellow Jews only. Nothing here changes the old rules about keeping foreign slaves as property forever.

Moses gets off the slavery issue next to remind everyone that the firstborn males of their herds and flocks are to be dedicated to God, and no work can be done with them. And once the temple gets built, that’s the only place they can be eaten. Then he gives reminders to celebrate Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Booths, all of which will also have to be celebrated at the temple. Every male Jew must appear at the temple on those three feast days every year, and all must bring an offering with them.

Next, he gives instructions to appoint judges in all the towns, who are required to be impartial and not to accept bribes.

He moves on to forbidding people to plant trees as Asherah (once again not explained – a bit of research turns up that these as sacred trees dedicated to Asher, a goddess commonly worshipped in the area at the time) beside God’s altar, or to give God offerings of any animals with blemishes or defects. He also forbids the setting up of pillars, and seriously the reason given for this is that God hates pillars. Maybe they remind him too much of penises, and we know how he hates seeing those from his threats to kill his high priests if they don’t wear special underwear under their robes to hide those things from accidental viewing whenever they enter God’s sanctum.

Then we get the obligatory instruction to kill any fellow Hebrews who convert to the worship of any other gods. Now you might think that Moses (or God, if we’re to take these laws as Moses passing on Yahweh’s instructions) earns a little credit here for the follow-up instruction that nobody can be put to death on the strength of only a single witness. But then you realize that we’re talking about how many witnesses are required to have you killed for the equivalent of saying that Frodo Baggins is cooler than Luke Skywalker (or, given the character thus far displayed by this god, saying that Sauron is cooler than Darth Vader). No points awarded.

After that pronouncement, Moses goes back to talking about judges. Specifically, he instructs that any case that is too difficult for the local judge should be kicked up the ladder to the judge and Levitical priests at God’s temple. And that once they decide the case, failure to abide by their ruling is to be punished by (what else?) death.

It strikes me that it’s gotta be kind of a pain for anyone trying to actually follow these laws to sort through them in any coherent way, since there doesn’t seem to be any kid of organizing principle to them. Take the previous section as an example. Moses talks about appointing judges, then goes off on a completely different tangent about forbidden worship practices and the death penalty for apostasy before coming back to describe the actual extent of the judges’ authority. Although, given the number of times this section alone talks about killing people for worshipping other gods, maybe that is the organizing principle: the order to kill apostates must be repeated every so many verses even if that means interrupting whatever other discussion is happening at the time. Killing people for their religious beliefs is just that important!

Moving on from judges, the people are told that once they have their land they can set a king over them if they wish. This is kind of amusingly phrased, though.

“Deu 17:15 You may indeed set a king over you whom Yahweh your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.”

Now, if God is supposed to choose the king, why even bother putting additional restrictions on who it can be? It’s not like the people have a choice in the matter. What’s this supposed to be about? Is Moses saying “Hey, if you guys want a king, God will pick him. But, y’know… if you decide to ignore God’s decision in the matter, at least pick a Jew, ok?” Or is it kind of a tacit admission that, yeah, it’ll actually be people picking the king and Moses is just trying to guide the choice a bit?

Anyway, the king is supposed to refrain from gathering too much personal wealth or too many wives, nor is he allowed to pack all the Jews off to Egypt again in exchange for horses (…the fuck? Just horses specifically? Can he send them back to Egypt for other stuff, or are the horses just supposed to represent any exchange in general?). He’s also required to create a personal copy of the laws, and read from them daily to keep them fresh in his mind. And that’s… pretty much all Moses has to say on the subject of kings.

Think I’m going to cut it off here for today. We’re still in the middle of the same speech, and not even at some dramatic shift in theme within the speech. The thing kinda jumps around so much that it isn’t easily divisible into sections. I just feel like I’ve written enough for one go. We’ll jump back into the middle of it when I come back for my next post. In the meantime, you be well!

 

Deuteronomy: Obey! Whatever that Means

Well now, it’s been quite a time since my last post, but I’m still plugging away at this. Just been working some pretty crazy hours lately, and of course the same content issues from last time are still going on.

When we last left off, Moses was in the middle of another big speech hammering the themes of obey God and commit genocide and be rewarded, or disobey and be punished. He also makes much of all the times that the people had pissed God off, and how it was only because Moses begged and prayed for them that God spared their lives. Meanwhile, he keeps reminding them that the blessings they are to receive are contingent upon them obeying “the commandments I will give you this day,” but it takes forever for him to actually get around to giving any of those commandments.

When he finally does, around Chapter 12, we learn that God will pick a place in the promised land and “make his name to dwell there.” After the Israelites destroy all of the inhabitants’ holy places, they are not to use those places to worship God. Instead, all of their offerings and such are to be done at that one place that God will pick. Also, they’ll finally be able to eat as much meat as they like without God poisoning them for asking. Bonus!

Moses then admonishes the people not to use the religious practices of other peoples as a way to worship God.

“Deu 12:31 You shall not worship Yahweh in that way, for every abominable thing that Yahweh hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.”

Now, I find this very interesting. Abraham’s signature act of faith was his complete willingness to sacrifice his own son to his god. But now that same willingness is an “abominable thing,” huh? Consistency is not a strong suit.

Moving along, we have instructions that if a prophet appears who does signs and wonders that actually come true, but tries to use them to convince people to worship another god, well, that’s just God testing you. The correct reaction is to kill said prophet. Basically, a way of dismissing the religious experiences of other religions while promoting religious warfare.

Moving on… if a close friend or relative tries to convert you to another religion, you should be the first to condemn them and lead the congregation in stoning them to death. And then there’s a command that if one of their cities should convert en masse to the worship of another god, then that city and all of its inhabitants even down to the cattle should be destroyed as offerings to Yahweh. And all the valuables should also be gathered together and burnt, and what remains of the city torn down and never rebuilt.

Then we get a reiteration of the rules about what animals you can and cannot eat (including again the erroneous claims that rabbits chew cud and bats are birds). Interestingly, Deuteronomy 14: 20 says that all winged insects are unclean and can’t be eaten, even though Leviticus 11:21-22 provides a list of winged insects that they are allowed to eat. Is this a revision of the law? Was God wrong about how edible those things were back in Leviticus, or did he just change his mind?

Moses also explains that, while the Israelites aren’t allowed to eat any animal that died on its own, they are allowed to sell them as food to foreigners. And he reminds everyone again not to boil a young goat in its mother’s milk (was this really a serious problem back then, that it had to be repeated so often?).

Next he starts getting into tithes, and things get a little bit confusing. The people are instructed to take a tithe of everything their fields produce and the firstborn of their livestock, every year, to the place God chooses “for his name to dwell.” There, they are instructed to eat the tithe in the presence of God. Now… in previous books we’d seen a tithe set aside for the maintenance of the Levites and priests. Is this an additional tithe on top of that, or is this a new requirement on what to do with that tithe (eat it instead of giving it to the priests)? Or is it saying that the Levites and priests are to eat their share of the offerings at the place God will choose for his name to dwell, as opposed to the tabernacle where they’ve been eating it while they traveled? Because it seems more than a little impractical to have every Israelite (remember… the Bible claims 600,000 men among them, not counting women and children) gather in one city at the same time every year, and to eat a tenth of all of their food on that one occasion.

They’re also told that if they live too far from the place where God chooses to make his name to dwell (ok, that’s really unwieldy to keep saying – I’m just going to call it the “temple” from now on, since that’s what it will eventually be called anyway) to make carrying all that produce practical, they’re allowed to sell it and just use the money to buy what they want to eat when they get there. It seem like everyone doing that all at once might create some economic havoc, but I suppose if the economy is built around that schedule it would eventually work itself out.

Somehow, this tithing exercise is supposed to make them “learn to fear Yahweh your God always. Now, I suspect that a road trip and a big meal are far less effective in teaching fear than the food poisoning, venomous snakes, plagues, earthquakes and arbitrary mass slayings that God had been using up to this point. But since I’m not personally in the business of using fear to force people to obey my whims, I may not be the best authority on the subject.

Every third year, the tithe is supposed to be stored up in everyone’s home towns, and used to feed orphans, widows, travelers, and Levites. It’s hard to be critical of giving food to widows and orphans (though some people, oddly, have tried), so this one goes in the rather short list of positive Biblical laws. Unfortunately, it’s not the start of a trend.

Next Moses gets into the Sabbatical Year, which occurs every seven years and in which the Israelites are instructed to forgive the debts of their brothers. This seems like sort of a nice sentiment, except that Moses is pretty explicit that this applies to Israelites only, and so they don’t forgive the debts of “foreigners.” So it’s really just a rule about treating their own people better than they treat others.

From here Moses segues into some bits about the poor, and this section is going to merit some quotes.

“Deu 15:4  But there will be no poor among you; for Yahweh will bless you in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess – 5 if only you will strictly obey the voice of Yahweh your God, being careful to do all this commandment that I command you today.”

 

“Deu 15:7 If among you, one of your brother should become poor, in any of the towns within your land that Yahweh your God is giving you, you shall not harden you heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, 8 but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.”

“Deu 15: 11 For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’”

OK, first, kudos for ordering people to be generous to the poor. It would be even more laudable if it weren’t pretty clear that Moses is only talking about Jewish poor, but I guess you gotta start somewhere. But the amusing part is how, over the course of a mere eight verses we move from “there will be no poor among you…” to “if one of your brothers becomes poor…” to “there will never cease to be poor…” It’s kinda like Moses is totally talking out of his ass.

Now, astute observers might note that the first quote about there being no poor included the caveat “if only you will strictly obey…” And you could interpret these passages together to mean “If you obey God there will be no poor, but since you will never obey him there will always be poor. So treat them well in any case.” But that is not an interpretation entirely without problems of its own.

Firstly, it’s not explicitly stated that this is the case. Which leaves it up to inference, and therefore pretty much guarantees that some people will get it wrong through honest misinterpretation.

Also (and this is something that’s been kind of nagging at me for a bit), who exactly is the “you,” in the admonition “if you will strictly obey…?” You see, Moses is speaking to the Israelites as a people and some of the punishments he talks about are collective toward the whole people, but almost all of the laws he’s laying out have to do with individual behavior. So just how many Israelites have to disobey God before “the people” are considered to have disobeyed? Will poor exist among them if even one person disobeys? A quarter of the people? Half? Will the poor be only those people who disobey, or does God make obedient people become poor because somebody else disobeyed? If the former, this suggests that poverty is a punishment for being immoral and wealth is a reward for being moral (go ahead… pull the other one). If the latter… well that’s kind of unjust, don’t ya think?

But none of this is spelled out with any clarity whatsoever. And it might be a little nitpicky to bring it up in regards to the issue of poor people, but it’s kind of an issue that’s been nagging at me for a while in relation to a whole lot of pronouncements. There’s all this stuff about punishing the collective Jewish people if they disobey God, and the Bible seems to treat the collective as a single character. But c’mon… we know better than that. Individuals within a large group of people simply do not think and act identically. As such, there will be some people who obey God religiously (har har… see what I did there?), some who do so half-assedly, some who don’t obey, and some who think God is just Moses’ imaginary friend to whom obedience isn’t even something to be considered seriously.

So at what point is “the Jewish people” being disobedient? Or at what point are they being obedient, for that matter? None of it is explained, so are we to assume that God has no real standards for deciding? Or that he has standards that he chooses not to divulge?

Or maybe, it’s kept intentionally vague with the implied threat of collective punishment used as a mechanism to encourage them to police each other and enforce obedience. But here’s the thing… you only need that kind of policing when the authorities aren’t able to police everyone themselves. In this case, we’re supposed to believe that the authority in question is omniscient and omnipotent. It is literally impossible to escape detection and punishment of infractions under such an authority. Every single infraction could be punished in the instant that it happened. But what we see is that authority relying on the necessarily inferior mechanism of using collective punishment to encourage self-policing by the members of the group.

Yeah, yeah, free will. Except that there has been no mention of that concept at all up to this point. The only times freedom to choose has come up even incidentally so far has been when God is specifically taking it away in order to force people to act in particular ways. And the vast majority of those episodes have then been used as justification to inflict some horrific retribution on the poor schmucks (i.e. Schmuck does not want to do A, God forces schmuck to do A anyway, God punishes schmuck for doing A).

Whew! That was kind of a long aside! But since it’d been on my mind, I figured I’d finally try to put it in words. Not sure I got it across particularly well, but that’s for you to decide.

Anyway, gonna take a break here and get back to reading so I can push on through Moses’ interminable speech in the next installment. Until then, take care!