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  Apr. 5th, 2010 04:48 pm
  The final two chapters of Numbers, detailing how to punish murderers (kill them) and how to keep a daughter's inheritance in the family (that she'll only get if there are no male children) by marrying her off to family members.
  That's the end of Numbers, Deuteronomy starts tomorrow.
  Apr. 4th, 2010 10:13 pm
  Mostly a recap chapter about the journey the Israelites took in the wilderness with some details of how they should go about dividing the land of Canaan between themselves now they've driven the Canaanites out.
  Apr. 3rd, 2010 10:46 pm
  A religiously motivated massacre followed by some more counting.
  * Moses sends his 12,000 of his people to kill some people who aren't followers of their God. They brought too many prisoners back, Moses only wanted the virgin females, so all the male children & non-virgin women have to be killed as well. It appears that they were offered as human sacrifices along with a fair number of their livestock.
  Apr. 2nd, 2010 09:42 pm
  Yet more animal sacrifice and some misogynistic rules.
  * Hard to believe that God has thought of some more situations and dates on which large numbers of animals should be sacrificed in particular ways. These people were just complaining about a lack of food. Today I happened to see parts of the Charlton Heston film The Ten Commandments and, as I'd expected, none of the biblical passages demanding these sacrifices are mentioned, despite the fact that all this stuff appears to be very important to God.
  * So some women got a few property/inheritance rights in the last few chapters, in chapter 30 we are told that a woman can only make an oath or vow if her husband or father permits it, lovely.
  Apr. 1st, 2010 09:34 pm
  God is forgetful so asks for another headcount of the Israelites. Some sisters demand property rights.
  * I'm fairly certain that the headcount came to the same total as the last one a few chapters ago. This is despite all the random killings that God has presided over or caused every time his people upset him.
  * Surprisingly the sisters who demand their inheritance (as their father had no sons) actually get an agreement from God that the inheritance of any man who dies without sons should go to his daughters, and then a fairly logical progression if he has no children, no brothers and no relations of his father, though no other female relatives or wives are thought of in these rules of inheritance.
  Mar. 31st, 2010 10:30 pm
  More sacrifice, more plague and more xenophobia.
  * That guy who talks to God and his donkey from the previous verses will talk to God for you if you build 7 altars and sacrifice 2 animals on each. This happens 3 times for the same man and each time just spouts parables about how great the Israelites are and that God has blessed them after talking to God on his own with no witnesses.
  * The Israelites get excited by the women in a city they stay in and get in trouble for whoring. So 24,000 of God's chosen people are killed with a plague, the only reason more weren't killed is because an Israelite and one of the daughters of a prince of the city are killed with a javelin. God likes this so much that the man who killed them is rewarded with a priesthood.
  Mar. 30th, 2010 09:39 pm
  Genocide and talking donkeys.
  * Anyone that gets in the way of God's people is slain, though they are not immune from God's wrath themselves, this time their complaints about a lack of food gets them bitten by snakes.
  * A man who apparently has the ear of God but doesn't appear to be one of the Israelites is asked to ask God to curse the Israelites for what they've been doing to the people of the area. God says that the Israelites are blessed (could've fooled them) and that this man shouldn't help the people that want to curse them. Oh and God makes the man's donkey talk which convinces him that God is serious.
  Mar. 29th, 2010 10:20 pm
  More emphasis on the importance of proper animal sacrifice and even Moses and Aaron fall foul of God occasionally.
  * All this animal sacrifice stuff and the fact that noone who follows the Abrahamic religions does them anymore just goes to show that they do think that it is possible for their religion to evolve, if only they'd drop a few more of the out of date old testament ideas.
  * God's people are dying of thirst in the desert and are about to start another rebellion so God tries to be all impressive and make water come from a rock in front of them, but Moses messes it up by appearing to bring the water himself so Moses will not be allowed to enter the promised land.
  * Aaron is now dead, from exposure apparently, his clothes were all removed while up a mountain, can't be healthy for an old man.
  Mar. 28th, 2010 09:41 pm
  More petulant overreaction from God against people who dare question him.
  * Some people are understandably questioning Moses' dominion over them and why he has a special place above them when all the people are God's people. God is so pissed by this dissension that the ground swallows a load of them up, he burns another 250 of them and then when other people start complaining that he'd killed so many he kills 14,700 people with a plague. Ruling with fear is definitely the best way to keep control of your people, they won't love you or respect you but they'll be obedient to your every whim.
  Mar. 27th, 2010 04:39 pm
  God sends spies to check on the land he's promised to his people (because he can't possibly see it himself), and concocts some more rules.
  * Apparently there are giants in the land of Canaan, and those spies who came back and were negative about the Isrealites' chances of beating the giants are killed. No dissension in God's congregation.
  * God has promised that noone over the age of 20 will survive the journey through the wilderness, he only didn't kill everybody because Moses convinced him that he'd look bad in the eyes of the Egyptians because it'd seem like he had killed them all because he'd failed to take them to their promised land. Can't go losing face in front of the other gods now can we.
  * And now more rules about animal sacrifice, just after they were complaining that they didn't have any meat to eat. God has a sick sense of humour.
  Mar. 26th, 2010 10:08 pm
  Complain to the Lord and get punished.
  * God's people are fed up of manna and would really like some meat, obviously sacrificing all those animals was a bad idea when journeying through the wilderness. First God burns the complainers and then says he'll feed them so much meat they'll be sick of it. Reminds me of the headmistress in Matilda forcing a child to eat a whole chocolate cake for stealing a small amount of cake. Then for good measure he sends a plague.
  * Aaron's wife get struck down with leprosy when they both complain that Moses is married to someone the Israelites are not permitted to marry. More unfair punishments for making complaints, perhaps some corporations could learn from this approach to customer relations.
  Mar. 25th, 2010 02:25 pm
  After making his people build a tabernacle with tonnes of gold, silver and jewels, God now makes them all follow a cloud across the wilderness, bringing the tabernacle with them as they go.
  * The whole cloud following thing is explained in a typically biblical roundabout way, could've just said that as long as the cloud sat above the tabernacle, which could be for a couple of days or for several years, then the people should stay in their camp but as soon as it moves away then the people should follow and bring their camp with them till the cloud stops again. But instead it repeats the instructions to follow the moving cloud several times, with constant reminders to uphold the commandments.
  Mar. 24th, 2010 09:44 pm
  All those rules are finally being enacted, starting with the most repetitive bible chapter ever.
  How hard is it to say 'Each of the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel brought the same stuff as offerings and for sacrifice' and then list it once? No, we have to list it twelve times, and then tally up the total at the end.
  Reading it felt like that game when each person lists some items and then adds one to the end of the list for the next person to remember (I went to the tabernacle and offered a load of silver to the Lord. I went to the tabernacle and offered a load of silver and a golden spoon to the Lord... etc...) except each list was long and exactly the same.
  In this one chapter, 240 animals have been sacrificed to sanctify the tabernacle in its first two weeks.
  Mar. 23rd, 2010 09:30 pm
  More leper bigotry, how to deal with a cheating wife and instructions for taking a vow to prove yourself to the lord.
  * Lepers and people with other ailments are to be thrown out of the community and left to fend for themselves, another prime example of God's boundless compassion for all people.
  * The biblical language is a little hard to decipher, but it seems that chapter 5 says that if a man suspects his wife of cheating, the priest will make her drink 'bitter water' which will cause an abortion if she did cheat but will not harm her if she didn't. The water is just holy water and dust so I would guess that in practice no women were ever proven to be cheating on their husbands using this method.
  * The Lord will give special blessings to anyone who goes into isolation, swears off all grape products and grows their hair for an indeterminate length of time before sacrificing another bunch of innocent animals.
  Mar. 22nd, 2010 07:35 pm
  God now wants to know how many Levites there are and assigns the lot of them menial jobs in the tabernacle, because he didn't like their ancestor Levi. Not sure how they'll all manage to do these jobs as there are thousands of descendants of Levi, that's going to be a nightmare of a schedule to work out.
  Mar. 21st, 2010 01:23 pm
  OK, so this book is apparently called numbers because we are constantly bombarded with amazingly unbelievable figures.
  * It seems that the population of the Israelites has expanded to an impossible level in a relatively short space of time, especially considering the fact that they were subjected to God's wrath a short while ago for not following God's rules that they didn't yet know. I think someone is over exaggerating the population for some reason.