Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel? (Judges 21)

Ah, doesn't this story keep getting better? No, not really. Apparently all of a sudden, the Israelites start realizing that--especially to the extent that they have butchered an entire tribe of Israel--two wrongs don't make a right. So naturally, they do what anyone would, and decide to see if maybe three wrongs will do the trick.

Since they had made a vow that they would never allow their own daughters to marry one of the Benjamites, they're in a quandary. They want to help the remnant of this tribe rebuild, but they can't do it without breaking their vows. The remaining Benjamites might have women of their own actually, but since there are such a small number of survivors of this genocidal rage we saw in the previous chapter, it seems to me that those women would probably be the daughters and sisters of the surviving men. Or it may be that they truly did destroy every city, and all inhabitants, which would have been all the women, the only survivors being a handful of fleeing Benjamite soldiers. Whatever the particulars of the situation, the Israelites show their moral fiber when they have to choose: On the one hand, they can break their rashly-made and morally-pointless vows, or they can kidnap, murder and pillage in the town of Jabeshgilead, the inhabitants of which are not bound by such a stupid vow and, apparently alone in all Israel in that day, had no blood on their hands. They of course choose the latter; you can't expect them to break their word, can you?

So they kill every man and every non-virgin woman in the city. I have no idea why this was supposedly necessary rather than simply kidnapping the virgins, but I don't understand much that these people do. (You almost imagine, what with the way they've conducted themselves in the previous chapter, that they got together and said, "But what if someone from the town complains?" Think...think...think. "I've got it! We'll just kill everyone, then they can't complain!") They bring the women back to the survivors of Benjamin, but there are only 400 virgins for what I assume is about a thousand soldiers. So, not nearly enough. What to do?

Solution? More kidnapping! (At least they didn't kill anybody else, I guess.) The people assembled, who I assume were not from the region of Shiloh, suggest that during an upcoming festival in Shiloh, the remaining unmarried Benjamites lie in wait for some young women who will come out to dance in the vineyards as part of the festival. If they simply drag these women off and marry them, then it's reasoned that their fathers will not be breaking their vows, since they didn't willingly allow their daughters to go. So they do it.

Summing up, kidnapping, lying, scheming, rape (of female virgins), arson, stealing, and mass murder are all considered to be preferable to breaking one's vow to the Israelites during this time, for "every man did that which was right in his own eyes."

Why am I summing up rather than explaining or excusing? I don't think there's much one can explain, and pretty much no excuse for this behavior. You can't blame it on God, though; you can't blame it on the Mosaic Law. These aren't people acting in the name of God; this is essentially random, bloodthirsty mass insanity.

Why is it here in the Bible? The SAB labels this passage in various places as essentially violent, unjust, misogynistic, and displaying a warped sense of family values. I'd be curious as to whether there is anyone alive today who professes belief in the Bible who disagrees with such an assessment; I certainly don't disagree. On the one hand, the simple fact is that this is supposed to be history. If this event actually happened--and indeed, who would want to make up such an event and put it into their own country's history?--then I think it would be immoral to simply sweep the whole thing under the rug. In the same fashion, Christian believers in the Bible need to deal with this story, and not pretend it doesn't matter. It's from this very nation, this very group of barbaric, bloodthirsty warriors, that the people we consider heroes of the faith arise. King David, the prophet Daniel, John the Baptist, even Jesus himself comes from these people.

The thing to realize from this, and so many other stories in the Bible, is that the Jews are God's chosen people. Not the best people in the world, and despite what you might think from this story, not the worst people either, just the chosen people. As such, they are simply people. What does the Bible tell us about people? "[T]he imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth", God says in Genesis 8. "[T]he heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live", King Solomon observes in Ecclesiastes 9. Jesus himself tells us in Mark 7 that, "For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly." And yet, it was this very same Jesus who gave up his life for the salvation of all of mankind. Why did God choose the Jews? Deuteronomy 7:7-8 says, "The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt." Why did Jesus decide to die for sinful people? Romans 5:6-8 tells us, "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." It's in the stories of the very worst that humanity has to offer that we see the depth of the love of God: that despite our best efforts to be as evil and reprobate as possible, God still insists on reaching out to us in love. This horrible chapter in Israel's history is not the final chapter; it's only the beginning.

In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver (Judges 17)

Seriously, SAB? No notes on Judges 17? Even if you're not a follower of the God of Israel, you've got to see how messed up this is. The fact that there were no notes on this chapter as well as no notes concerning the treatment received by Samson at the end of his life makes me wonder if the SAB is showing its prejudice in an odd manner, although I'm not sure what we're prejudiced against. Seriously, based on the pattern elsewhere, this text should be pointing out that clearly if this story is in the Bible, then the message is:

17:2 (Contradiction, Family Values) While the Bible says it's not okay to steal, apparently, if you steal from your own family, that's a good thing!

17:3, 12-13 (Contradiction) Micah's mother makes an idol, and Micah's cool with it, this mysterious Levite is cool with it, and apparently God is cool with it, because He doesn't kill them all then and there.

...and so forth. I mean really, there's primo material here! The SAB should be all over this. I'm sure we'll get back to it in a couple chapters (the next chapter is pretty devoid of commentary as well) but for now, I'm left on my own to comment.

The last few chapters of the book of Judges are really some of the nastiest in the Bible. While I think I did say Samson was bad, there are a number of other people who appear in the following chapters that, well, it's been suggested by many that they are so vile that there's a reason it's one of the longest stretches of the Old Testament without names being named. The thing that may not be realized by detractors is that in many ways this little episode with Micah and his idolatry is pretty nasty in its own way.

I feel like I've said it a million times, although it's probably only about four or five, but religious morality is ranked right up there with sexual morality in importance to God. It may even surpass the significance of violence. It's fitting both due to its importance in and of itself and in the fact that there is a presented idea behind most of the Bible that spiritual sin leads to more obvious worldly sin, that this story be the beginning of a set of stories that illustrate the depravity of the Israelites during this period. We even see that a Levite is brought into the mix, as apparently this idolater thinks having a Levite priest is going to validate his practice, an ironic and sad statement of the state of the culture and the ancient priesthood. Really, it's better to be an atheist than the follower of a false god, something that I think skeptics can agree with me concerning.

Don't get me wrong in what I am about to say; I am not one of those people who claims that atheists are incapable of being moral, in fact an atheist is at least far more likely to take personal responsibility for their morality, which is a good thing in its own way. What is a problem with the sort of idolatry we see here and throughout this age of Israel's history is that these people do largely take their moral cues from their religion, and if their religion is simply made up, then so is their morality. If your moral responsibility is to a lump of metal you keep in your living room, how much are you dedicated to honoring a "god" that can be picked up and carried away?

But then, that's the next chapter...

Thy speech bewrayeth thee (Judges 12)

Judges 12 is a short chapter with few comments from the SAB. It's funny, but I was reading this on my own over the weekend, and I anticipated what the comments would be; that's not always easy to do, as the SAB can be full of surprises.

Anyway, as yet another sad footnote on the time of Jephthah's rule, we see a bizarre and bloody fallout of this war that shows itself in some sort of intertribal warfare. I think this is the first time we see such a thing in Israel, but unfortunately it won't be the last. Men from Ephraim come to Jephthah and complain that they didn't get to take part in the battle. (Most likely, they wanted a share of the spoils of war.) Jephthah points out to them that the trouble had been going on a long time before the fighting broke out, and they had been asked for help before, a request that was ignored. Fighting breaks out, and a lot of slaughter ensues. In the midst of this, the infamous "shibboleth" event happens. Apparently, in those days it wasn't so easy to tell who was an ally or enemy. In this case, however, a known difference between these two tribes was that the Ephraimites apparently don't use the "sh" sound in their speech. So when a soldier came to the river to cross, he might pretend to be whoever he wanted to be, but the soldiers on Jephthah's side would ask the person trying to cross to say the Hebrew word for "stream". Ephraimites would give themselves away by pronouncing it "sibboleth". The guards would know they were an enemy and pluck them out of the water and kill them. Violent? Most definitely. Unjust? Well, the Ephraimites were waging a completely unprovoked war against the men of Gilead, so what can you say?

By the way, I expected it might be said that 42,000 were killed in this manner, but I also realized upon reading the passage that such a guess was probably a misunderstanding of the text, for what it's worth. I think the intended meaning is that 42,000 Ephraimites were killed in total on the whole battlefield; the thought of killing them one by one as they crossed the river seems unlikely, and the text does not expressly say that.

The chapter closes with short and quick notes on three judges that follow Jephthah. Abdon in particular is apparently funny to Steve Wells for another mention of donkeys. It might be worth noting that while the KJV says "forty sons and thirty nephews", I'm not sure where that translation comes from. The Hebrew says literally "sons' sons", which surely ought to be "grandsons" as other translations render it.

And next time, we come to Samson, one of the oddest characters the Bible has to offer.

And the sun stood still (Judges 5)

Judges 5 is a familiar scene that we've seen before in the Bible, and we'll see again: Battle's over, and having won, the Israelites sing a victory song. Typical of this sort of thing, there's a lot of poetic language, some of which (such as fighting "stars") the SAB picks up on and criticizes, and some of which (such as God himself marching into battle) it does not. Anyway, my blanket response to most issues here is that this, being a piece of poetry, is not expected to be realistic nor completely accurate. Not that there is nothing that can be said beyond that.

So when God's marching into battle and mountains are melting, you might suspect that we're being figurative, but many of these figures of speech have some meaning behind them. Basically, most of what is going on here is a description of the idea that God was on the side of the Israelites, and therefore nothing could stand against them. This imagery could be the meaning of the claim that the stars fought against their enemies: the idea that when God is on your side, essentially all of nature is fighting for you. There may be another sense in which this is more literally true, however. It is common in the Bible for "stars" to be a metaphor for "angels", which answers a lot of questions. It may be in this case that they are claiming the battle was won with the help of angelic beings, which I know to some isn't much of an improvement, but it makes more sense than the idea of the battle being fought by flaming balls of nuclear plasma in space.

The song talks about Jael, and brings up the real issues that I addressed briefly in my last post. Jael is praised for murder here, and it seems odd, yet this was in the middle of a war. If Osama bin Laden were on the run from the marines and asked you to hide him, don't you think you'd at least consider killing him? Dying instantly in his sleep might be considered a mercy, as based on other cases where enemies were captured alive, you'd think much worse could have been in store for him.

Verse 30 may be a misreading on the SAB's part, but as in a few other places, it's hard to tell, as there is no commentary. The verse talks about dividing the spoils of war, including the conquered women. If you read it carefully in context, you realize that it is not a description of something that has happened, but a description of what the Canaanites imagine would happen if Sisera won.

The last verse presents two issues of a very different nature. First, the Israelites declare that they wish all the enemies of God would die. This does seem rather mean and intolerant, yes, but on top of other things I've said in the past about such topics, note that God Himself does not say that He wishes this, it's the Israelites saying these words, and for the umpteenth time, they're not exactly the apex of virtue.

Lastly, there is some poetic prose talking about "the sun...goeth forth in his might." Aside from being obviously (to me, anyway) more metaphorical, poetic speech, I think the SAB note is reading in something that is not there. The SAB says, "The sun, according to the bible, goes around the earth." This may be so, I have little doubt, but it does not say so here. There is nothing about where or how the sun "goeth forth", only an observation that it does so. And while I think it is not an issue here, it's as good a place as any to reiterate that even in today's culture, in which we know that the earth orbits the sun (which technically it doesn't) it's perfectly acceptable to say that "the sun rises in the east and sets in the west" even though, in fact, it is not the sun rising and setting, but the earth's horizon.

The holy women also, who trusted in God (Judges 4)

Chapter 4 presents us with a fair amount of repetition of issues I've already addressed. As I already said (and I guess I'll keep saying "I already said"), the book of Judges largely follows a repetitive pattern, perhaps illustrating humankind's tendency to fail to learn from history. Their previous leader dies, they turn back to sin, they reap the results and end up at the mercy of a foreign--well, non-Israelite--power.

The issue of iron chariots comes up again, and here it's labeled as an absurdity, but labeling it as such highlights something about this issue as a supposed contradiction in itself. Even supposing that it is true that God cannot handle it sometimes when iron chariots are involved, it's not really a contradiction. We're talking about warfare and attitudes towards what are state-of-the-art armaments of the day. Note that historically, hostilities between Japan and the USA ended quickly because the USA had nuclear weapons, but hostilities between the USA and the USSR stretched out for decades due to the same reason. Of course the difference was the fact that in the former case, they were actually deployed, and in the latter case, the power balance was much closer, but the point is that having powerful armaments has a great deal of effect on how a war plays out, but by no means determines the outcome. Here, I think we see a generation of people who, although they had turned away from God, turned back to Him with faith that even iron chariots could not stand up to them, if only God was on their side.

You know, a long time ago, I commented on the fact that the SAB's icons were (with the exception of "Good Stuff") always intended to make negative statements about the issues they were aimed at. If this is not true, then I wonder why verse 4 does not have the "Women" icon attached. Here in the book of Judges, we see for the first time in the Bible an instance of a woman holding a true position of power in Jewish society. Deborah is like Israel's Joan of Arc, but without the burning at the stake thing.

The SAB notes briefly that there seems to be a misnaming of Moses' father-in-law. As I said back the first time I came across this, despite the many examples of this given by the SAB, this particular verse is the only one I'll concede to be in error, apparently a typo of some sort, as Hobab was Moses' brother-in-law. (Actually, it may be a translation error, as the Hebrew word here is also elsewhere translated as "marriages"; perhaps it's an all-purpose term for relative by marriage?)

Anyway, war ensues, violence happens, it's pretty nasty, but such is war. What is rather odd, and clearly the author himself finds it noteworthy, is the fate of the Canaanite general Sisera. Fleeing from the battle, he asks for shelter from a woman named Jael. She lets him in, gives him a drink, put him in bed, and then puts a tent spike through his head. I'm not sure what to make of such an action. Sure, it was wartime, but at the same time, it has been noted by many, including myself, that hospitality to guests in the Middle East is taken pretty seriously; it's often used as part of an explanation of why Lot would offer up his daughters to an angry mob rather than give up his house guests. All's fair in love and war, I suppose.

The SAB asks whether Sisera was awake or asleep when he died. I think it's a pretty minor point to argue, but if it must be addressed, I have two thoughts. First of all, the verse from chapter 5 is part of a song, and it tends to be the case in songs like this for details to be embellished. It seems that often, when Israelites pause to sing a song after securing a military victory, they'll say whatever they feel like saying. Secondly, note that the verse in chapter 5 doesn't say Sisera was awake when he died, only that he bowed to Jael before he died, and the spot where he had bowed was the place he eventually died. I guess this is supposed to be ironic.

Whoring after the gods of the people of the land (Judges 2)

The second chapter opens with a rebuke of Israel from God, and an accompanying rebuke of the text by the SAB. Apparently, this rebuke is absurd, unjust and intolerant. Frankly, the only one I see is the intolerant bit, but as I have said before, absurdity and injustice are in the eye of the beholder, and I see no reason to excuse intolerant behavior on the part of God. They didn't do their job, now they suffer the consequences, and will repeatedly suffer the consequences throughout this book.

Actually, that covers pretty much all of the issues in this chapter. God is indeed intolerant, and it's a common view that it's not so much that God punishes them for turning their back on Him, but that turning their backs is its own punishment. Psalm 121 says "My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth." If you turn away from the source of your help, um, well... you'll be helpless, won't you?

And yes, the phrase "they went a whoring after other gods" is a bit harsh, but that's really part of the point. You might as well make yourself a prostitute as not follow God, or at least that's the metaphor used throughout scripture, most prominently in the book of Hosea.

Chapter 2 serves overall as something like an outline for the rest of the book; a "CliffsNotes" version of the book, if you will. The whole book is a repetition of the following process:

• God brings peace to Israel
• Israel gets complacent and turns from God to sin
• God allows them to be conquered by a foreign power
• Israel calls out to God for help and repents
• God delivers them from their situation through the use of a "Judge"
• ???
  
• Prophet!

Sorry, I couldn't resist that last bit; actually the first five essentially repeat over and over throughout the book, and probably one of the saddest things (or inspiring, as I have suggested before) is that even the people God chose to deliver Israel were far from great moral examples.

Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? (Judges, introduction)

I've been hesitating to start up the book of Judges for a number of reasons, one of which has not been that I was unaware of what an ugly book it is. I've known that from the first time I read it; you can't miss it. One thing that was lacking in me was a good idea of the proper way to say the things that needed to be said about it. Somehow, "This book is nasty. Let's go!" seemed a bit lacking.

The nastiness that is Judges needs to be addressed, and more than just admitted, it needs to be explained. Steve Wells points out that the book starts with a story involving the sending of body parts through the mail. The irony he forgets to mention is that, like a set of grisly bookends, the book's final story also involves body parts being sent through the mail. (EDIT: Oh, no, he does mention it. Did he add it, or did I somehow miss it on first read?) I remember the first time I read that particular story I thought, Sheesh, Stephen King's got nothing on the author of Judges! Horrifyingly, these stories are actually true.

Oddly enough, although I've been re-reading the book of Judges again lately to get back into it and get the right feel for it, it's the reading of a couple of other books, one by a more liberal theologian and the other by a more conservative one that have given me direction in this, although neither one mentions this particular book in their writings. Both of them point out the same thing about the Bible, a thing that I realized as a child reading the Bible for myself for the first time. I wasn't even in this book when it dawned on me (I was back in Genesis, probably reading about something like the story of Judah and Tamar) but I realized that in general, the Bible is not a book of heroes. It's not a book of great moral giants that we might look up to and model ourselves after. Adam eats the fruit. Cain kills his brother. Noah gets drunk and exposes himself. Abraham sleeps with his wife's maid. Isaac plays favorites with his children. Jacob lies and cheats his way through life at every turn. Moses commits murder. As I child, a light bulb went on in my head:

The Bible is a book full of screw-ups.

The funny thing about this is that there seem to be many people who come to a realization of this and it yields the opposite reaction in them from the one it did in me and so many people who know this to be true, and yet still use the Bible as a moral compass. People look at a book like Judges and they say, "How the Hell can I believe in a God who puts crap like this in His Holy Scriptures?" In many ways, the question is raised here, but the answer is hidden in the book of Jonah in the form of a question Jeopardy-style.

"And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" (Jonah 4:11)

Jonah is the only book in the Bible to end with a question, and if God thinks leaving the question hanging out there is good enough, I think He wants us to consider it deeply. These 120,000 people God refers to are probably children; God is pointing out that while Nineveh (and the world at large) is full of evil people, if it were even just for the sake of the children, isn't it best to give a chance for people to do better and try again? Some have pointed out that if God only accepted "good people" who never do the wrong thing, then Jonah wouldn't be there to have the question asked to him.

Actually, Jonah would never have been born, because the nation of Israel would have been destroyed in the time of the Judges. Heck, you might as well suppose that they would have been killed at the whole golden calf incident. Or back when one of the Patriarchs screwed up big. Hmm, or maybe God could have just squished Adam and Eve like bugs when they disobeyed, and then none of us would be here at all.

In the book of Judges, the people of Israel go through a repeating cycle. They turn from God. They get in trouble. They turn back to God. God sends someone to save them. They rejoice, and the cycle repeats.

Some call God the "God of second chances." He's also the God of third, fourth, fifth, and 490th chances. If God could use a guy like Samson, a guy who was a drunk, a womanizer, a "momma's boy", a killer, and just generally all-around unpleasant fellow, then surely God could use a guy like me.

That's the hidden message of the book of Judges, and really of the Bible as a whole. It's a message that Bible detractors and followers alike can tend to miss. God is the God of screw-ups and rejects. "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." (Luke 5:32) That's good news for all of us. Don't think you're a screw-up? Maybe you're just a liar.

Until the children of Israel have inherited every man his inheritance (Joshua 16-22)

Maybe I should have covered more material in the last post, as most of the issues, well, pretty much through the rest of the book are repeats of the ones I already covered. We see numerous notes of various Canaanites that couldn't be driven out, a giant or two here and there, casting lots to determine a course of action or division of land, etc. This is really the part of the book of Joshua that's much more on the dry side, being a list of a conquest here, a list of cities there, and I'm going to skim over it pretty lightly for the most part, pausing to comment on notable things.

I think actually, the latter part of Chapter 17 is notable in that it illustrates much more fully the principle of what's going on when conquests of parts of the land fail. The tribe of Manasseh complains to Joshua that they don't have enough land, and Joshua tells them that they'd have plenty if they'd just drive the Perizzites out of it. Manasseh complains that the Perizzites "have chariots of iron", and therefore they can't possibly win. Joshua tells them to buck up and just do the job they have to do, since God is on their side. It seems quite clear to me that the only thing holding back this conquest was the fear of the people.

Joshua 20, while having no notes in the SAB is an interesting one for reasons that I'll probably delve into more deeply when I go back to the Mosaic Law. The "cities of refuge" are a concept that has to do with the laws in Israel about manslaughter. If a person killed another by accident, they could be protected by going to one of those cities according to the law. There, a person would stand trial instead of being subject to vigilante justice from the victim's close relative, the "avenger of blood".

Joshua 21 contains what is claimed to be an error, but while I think there may indeed be an error here, I think the SAB has misidentified the error. Or, that is to say that the error is not here so much as it is in the parallel passage in 1Chronicles 6. If you look carefully at that chapter, there are two things to note. First, that chapter is not about apportioning the land by tribes, but about listing cities given to the Levites, so the precise locations are not so important. Secondly, and this is the real problem, 1 Chronicles as a chapter names every tribe of Israel except for Dan, which is the tribe mentioned in Joshua 21. I suspect the real error is the omission of Dan's name from the list. Whether that was a scribal error or an omission in the original document (which could have been on purpose, actually) we can't say, choose what you like, or give me another suggestion as many people have done.

Joshua 22 discusses Joshua giving an address to the tribes who had land on the West side of the Jordan, and it turns out that all these years (the conquest took somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 years to finish) these tribes stayed faithful in their promise to stand by the others, and Joshua commends them for this. I myself am rather impressed, as I don't get the impression that there was really a lot of unity among the tribes in general.

Well, It looks like I might be able to finish this book in one more post, we'll see when I get to it.

Achar, the troubler of Israel, who transgressed in the thing accursed. (Joshua 7)

So now we come to the topic of Achan. Yes, the title of this post is a correctly copied verse from 1Chronicles, and I'm surprised this typo was not noted in the SAB, as Bible critics love to point out scribal errors, which this might be, although it could also be a matter of several hundred years' difference in Hebrew dialect. It is notable that achar is the Hebrew word for "trouble", and the names Achan and Achor that are found in this passage are forms of the word.

The first thing noted in this chapter is that the Israelite leaders rip their clothes, fall face down on the ground and put dust on their heads. This is noted as being absurd and intolerant, and I don't know why it was marked with either. This sort of behavior may seem strange to modern readers, but it was common practice in those days, and in fact may still be among modern Orthodox Jews, though I am not sure about that. It's just a way to show extreme sorrow. As for intolerance, I'm stumped as to what that's supposed to mean

Unless it's referring not to the actions of Joshua and the elders, but to the situation they find themselves in that causes them to be upset. God allowed them to suffer their first defeat at the city of Ai because (as it turns out) one person had done something wrong. As I said in my previous post, whatever this "accursed thing" was that Achan stole is not specifically named (unless it's the garment and precious metal mentioned in verse 21, which is possible if not likely), but the language used to describe it indicates that whatever it was, it was something of some pagan significance that he had no right to have in his possession. Why is it such a big deal?

The Apostle Paul said "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," a saying similar to the modern "One bad apple ruins the whole bunch." This is the point of the extremes of Holy war. The people and culture of Jericho had to be completely destroyed, and Achan saving some item he'd taken from the city was simply not acceptable.

In fact, shocking as it seems, it was apparently so very unacceptable that Achan along with his family and possessions were stoned to death and then burned. It's my personal opinion that God decided to have Achan punished so particularly severely in order to make him an object lesson for the rest of the nation. Just as the very first battle they fought in Canaan was won in a particularly spectacular manner to impress upon the people that God was with them in power, so the first transgression was punished in a spectacular manner to impress upon the people that while God was with them, He wasn't going to allow moral compromise.

As for the question of who Achan's father was, that's a simple matter that I've touched on before with other individuals, but I'll repeat here since it's so simple. The word "grandfather" never appears in the Bible. It was customary, whether by culture or by linguistic necessity, for any male ancestor to be called the "father" of a person. Twice in the chapter, Achan is referred to as "Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah". While he is once referred to as the "son of Zerah", this labeling is customary despite the fact that Zerah was actually his great-grandfather (or great-great-great-etc., sometimes genealogies are telescoped).

Thou shalt utterly destroy them (Joshua, Holy War)

Often I try to imagine what the world would be like if the Holocaust had not happened. Six million Jews slaughtered by Hitler's Third Reich, not to mention several million others including Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and the disabled. It was a horrible time in modern history, but one of the things that's perhaps really disturbing about it is that it really wasn't an isolated phenomenon. While it seems to have happened with remarkable frequency and severity to the Jews, history is replete with eras in which one group decided to make a concerted effort to annihilate another. But at the risk of violating the somewhat well-known rule of debating that "The first person to mention Hitler in a debate automatically loses," I'm going to focus on the Holocaust to illustrate a point.

If the Jews had risen up in the early '30s, before the Nazis came to full power, and had killed all members of the Nazi party and any other known anti-Semites, then the Holocaust most likely would not have come to pass. However, in such a preemptive strike, who would have sympathy for the Jews? Although their actions would essentially have been in self-defense, they would probably have been seen as monsters for having killed far less people than the Nazis eventually came to kill. History judges what happened, however, not what would have happened.

The various tribes and people that lived in the land of Canaan before the Israelites eventually attained complete conquest of the land had some problems of various types that were a danger on numerous levels. Not to say that they were Nazis, but God needed to deal with them. As I said in an earlier exchange, there is probably no explanation that will convince some people who are just going to see mass killing as evil no matter what the reason is for doing it. I'll admit that it certainly strikes me as one of the more unsavory aspects of the Bible, but I do see the justification for Holy War.

Back in Genesis 15, God talks to Abram about the future of his descendants. He tells him that while He's going to give the land of Canaan to them, "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." What does this mean? In some way that God has not explained, because the people of Canaan are quite evil, God intends to punish them, but He is giving them a last chance of about 500 years to clean up their act. Among several points I want to make about Holy War, the first is this: God never sends His people off to war without giving some sort of warning first.

Here in the book of Joshua, as I have already noted elsewhere, the people that the Israelites were coming in to the land to destroy knew about the plagues in Egypt. They knew about the crossing of the Red Sea and the drowning of the Egyptian army. They knew about a handful of battles that were fought during the wilderness wanderings. They knew about the crossing of the Jordan River. Whatever sort of warning God may have given them 500 years previously (which I speculate about, but don't know for sure), God has been sending a clear, urgent message for the last forty years to these people: God's vengeance is coming.

So one might ask, "What is the use of a warning like that?!" Well, compare the forty-year warning that was given to the Canaanites and went unheeded to the forty-day warning given to the people of Nineveh by Jonah: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." Not the most uplifting sermon ever preached, but it had an effect on the people of Nineveh that was highly disappointing to both Jonah and the SAB, apparently:

"So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them."

As a result of this act of mass repentance, there did not follow an act of mass destruction. I suggest that it should be considered a great likelihood that if any of the cities of Canaan had reacted in the manner that Nineveh did, they would have been allowed to remain in the land. It worked for Rahab, after all. The fact is that while the God of the Bible is a vengeful God, He would rather forgive the repentant than inflict suffering on the unrepentant.

Another option that I think few people consider is the possibility that God would have allowed them to simply evacuate. After all, there were a few incidents in their wandering in the desert in which they went to war against a nation that simply wouldn't get out of the way. They would politely ask if they could just pass through on the way to Canaan, and not only were they denied passage, but the nation that they had made the request to decided to fight them just because they were there.

One of the main issues in respect to turning the land of Canaan into the nation of Israel was that the Israelites needed to have the land all to themselves. If they were to take the land, but leave the inhabitants in it, then they would have to deal with the mixing of their culture, which was a new culture that God was building from the ground up. While I once again admit that I don't know so much about ancient history, I am of the understanding that when Persia defeated Babylonia, Persia became very Babylonian; when Alexander conquered Persia, he adopted much of the Persian culture and integrated it into Greek culture; when the Romans overthrew the Greeks, the Greek culture and language remained dominant despite the fact of Roman rule. The Israelites needed to conquer Canaan without becoming Canaanites in the process, and really, the only was they could guarantee that was to make sure there was not a single living Canaanite left in the land.

God repeatedly tells the Israelites that they are not to allow the customs of the people of Canaan to be an influence on their own culture. These people were sexually immoral, practiced human sacrifice, worshiped idols, and were generally violent and unkind. Because the Israelites didn't completely cleanse the land of the former inhabitants, eventually they, too, fell into these practices, which is probably the biggest shame from the point of view that considers Joshua's Holy War a good thing, because in the end they killed thousands if not millions of Canaanites and still fell into the trap that Holy War had been designed to protect them from.

Another thing that Holy War is intended to protect the Israelites from is actually much more closely related to the musings I put forth at the beginning. Case in point: Israel's first King, Saul, was ordered by God to go to war against the Amalekites and totally destroy them. He almost did it, but the notable exception was that Saul took King Agag captive. After all, what difference could one guy make? Well, a few hundred years later, when the Israelites were subject to Persia, there was a man by the name of Haman who devised a plan to wipe out the Jews. Many people compare Haman to Hitler, but Haman wasn't German, he was an "Agagite", that is to say, a descendant of the man Saul failed to kill on God's orders. As I said, history does not judge what would have happened, but I strongly suspect God knows. Yes, Holy War is at times a matter of self-defense.

Something else to be considered as almost a side note, but I think an important one, is that God is not partial. The same way God gave the Amalekites about 500 years to shape up or ship out, He gave Israel 500 years (from the coronation of Saul to the Babylonian invasion was just a tad over 500 years). Eventually, after living in the land for a few centuries and failing to be the nation He wanted them to be, he sent the Babylonians and the Persians to carry them into captivity toward the east. There are some who have done far more extensive studies into the significance of the stretches of time that Israel was in the land and out of it; you might do a Google search on the subject to find a complicated theory on how a handful of verses in the Bible map out a complicated calculation that predicts the reinstatement of Israel as a nation in 1948, but it's out of my scope here. The main point is that while God gave the land of Canaan to the Israelites, and had them kill off the former inhabitants, it was with the understanding that they would strive to make Israel, to borrow a familiar phrase, "one nation, under God."

So yeah, Holy War is far from a beautiful thing, but my understanding is that God gave many opportunities for the people He set the Israelites on to avoid His wrath. They knew it was coming, they knew that they needed to repent, they had ample time to do it, but they freely chose instead to stand up to God and His people. God wins in the end, though. God always wins, and to refuse to accept that and put your lot in with the enemies of God is essentially suicide.

On top of all of this, something that even I myself had always missed when it comes to the book of Joshua is that the issue of Holy War has application in our own lives today, thousands of years later. The Bible makes it clear that God's wrath is still coming. God will eventually deal with all nations and all individual citizens of all nations. You have the choice to play the part of the Israelites in this scenario or play the part of the Canaanites. Are you going to clean out the sin in your life through the power of God, or are you going to go into the walled city of your pride, shut the doors and think, "When the wrath of God comes knocking, I'll just pretend I'm not here or something." Or maybe you'll be the sort who, when you hear God's people are passing by, will pick up your weapons and go out to attack them? Or maybe you'll be someone like Achan, who will march with the Israelites, but not be as devoted to the cause of righteousness as you appear to be? There are many parts to be played in this drama, a drama that gets played out daily in our modern world in a more abstract, spiritual manner. I hope you'll make the right choice.

The foolishness of God is wiser than men (Joshua 5)

Oh, I gotta tell you, I've actually been looking forward to this one a great deal. The SAB marks Joshua 5 in two places with the "Absurd" icon, and indeed, this chapter is full of weirdness. This is as excellent a place as any to put forward my personal theory on God's modus operandi when it comes to the Jewish people: God wants the Jews to be "weird" so that other nations will notice them, and thus notice God.

As I said before, there was already a certain amount of fame that preceded the Israelites into Canaan. The people of the land heard about the plagues on Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and a handful of battles that had been fought while they were wandering in the desert. Imagine an inhabitant of Canaan hearing about all this.

So those Israelites? The ones who came up out of Egypt few years back? They're headed this way! What's more, the trick they did with the Red Sea? They did it again with the Jordan River! The river just stopped, and they walked across on dry land! And then get this: they set up camp and all the men gathered together and cut the tips of their penises off! I'm telling you, those guys serve a God who is powerful, and apparently friggin' batshit insane!

Seriously, these guys are being watched, I have no doubt, by people from all over the region who want to see what craziness they will do next. These are a people who, along with their God, mean some serious business, and everybody knows it.

This is an important prelude to the whole issue of Holy war, which we are about to start into, and get up to our necks in throughout this book. This bizarre behavior, this series of miraculous events, it's all a way to send a message to the people of Canaan. It's a message that unfortunately very few of them understood, like Rahab did. Time's up for you people, and you now have to choose from three options: repent, evacuate, or die. While it is not my intention at this time to yet delve into the morality of the book as a whole, I think one thing that should be noted is that those nations which came to be destroyed were all forewarned, and as we later see in the case of Nineveh, God spares those who repent.

With all the miraculous happenings that center around the Israelites, however, one might wonder at the sort of "anti-miracle" that occurred to them. Indeed, it took them 40 years to complete a journey that conceivably could have been done in ten days. Now there are various aspects to consider like the fact that with such a large group of people, travel is difficult; everyone is forced to go the speed of the slowest member of the group. Furthermore, one must remember that they had to make a pit stop to pick up the Law, which must have taken some time to write down. That's hardly enough to slow them by a year, much less forty.

I don't like to say things that will come across as insulting to Steve Wells, who strikes me as a very intelligent and dedicated individual for all the work he's done with the SAB, which as I have said, is really quite an impressive body of work that I actually admire. It's no secret that there are a lot of Christians who haven't put half the time into studying the Bible that he has. Still, there are occasional points in the SAB where I wonder what Wells is thinking. Why do the Israelites wander in the desert for forty years? Because God made them do it as a punishment. It's a pivotal moment in the story of the Exodus that you could hardly miss, (and Wells doesn't miss it, but puts the same note on that passage) and it seems it would be difficult to miss the meaning, either. It's neither absurd nor technically flawed that this should have happened; if any of the SAB's icons really should go there, it might be "Cruelty", but there are certainly worse punishments than having to walk around aimlessly for several years.

Another "anti-miracle" that happens in this chapter is that right after the crossing and circumcising, they celebrate the first Passover in Canaan, at which point God ceases to bring them manna, telling them that they have now moved in, and they will eat off of the land as inhabitants.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge (Joshua 4)

Well, I was going to combine chapters four and five, since chapter four only has one note on it, but then I realized that to do it justice, I ought to devote a whole post to that single note. It's one of the odd things about the Bible and people who believe in it to those who are on the outside of that group, a group referred to by some as "God-fearing people".

I thought I had actually already addressed the issue, and actually, it seems I did, back in Exodus right after the presentation of the Ten Commandments. It was there that Moses said that odd phrase (which the SAB did not give a comment concerning, but I did):

Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.

It's this strange admonition on the part of Moses--that seems almost internally contradictory--that really in some ways summarizes the idea of having "fear of the LORD". The whole idea of needing to be afraid of God is that it is a fear that should inspire you to make right moral choices.

Here at the end of Joshua 4, this moment at which God brings up the topic is right after He has performed a fantastic miracle for the people of Israel as a final warning both for the Israelites and the people of Canaan with whom the Israelites will soon be coming into contact. In my opinion, this is just the period on the end of a warning that God has been speaking to the people of the Middle East for about forty years. The warning is essentially: God's judgment is heading this way, don't you dare fail to take it seriously.

This all goes way back to even before the Exodus, actually. Back when God first promised the land to Abraham and his descendants in Genesis 15, He told Abraham that there was an appointed time for the Hebrew people to return from Egypt "...for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." The people of Canaan were given over 500 years to shape up or ship out, so to speak, and they refused to change their ways because they didn't "fear the LORD". But I'm veering into a subject for a few posts from now, let me get back on track...

"Should we fear God?" the SAB asks, calling it contradiction. I say there is no contradiction. The answer is a resounding "Yes!" None of the verses given in the "No" column of that page explicitly says that we should not fear God. I suppose the intention is to suggest that the concept is implied in 1 John 4:18, and maybe a case could be made for it, but I tend to think that the real issue is that John does not make clear the object of fear in that verse. (I could be wrong; Greek is a subtle, nuanced language, and I've been wrong about such things before.) I think it is as Moses said, that having fear of the LORD casts out fear of anything else.

Still, the non-believer often looks on the idea of "fear of God" as a distasteful thing. In a sense, I agree; at least with the concept as they no doubt are understanding it. There's an ugly side of religion, even (and perhaps especially) Christianity, wherein people are motivated to belief in God chiefly due to the fact that they've been convinced that not believing in Him will lead to a hearty smiting, if you will. "Why do you follow Jesus?" we ask an imaginary believer, who responds, "Well, I don't want to end up swimming in a lake of fire with little red demons poking me in the ass with pitchforks!" That kind of belief, while it might indeed save a person, is not pretty. It is my belief that the best kind of faith is a faith built on a foundation of love. Perhaps the best illustration I can think of is that for me, to not be a Christian would be something like spitting in the face of my mother. While even she, in her own imperfect way, gave so much of her life for me and my sister, God in His absolutely perfect way, gave His entire life for me. The only fear in that love is the fear that I would take lightly the gift of His blood shed on the cross. For most Jews, the feeling is essentially the same, without the cross part.

Yet there is fear, as I have said, the Bible admonishes repeatedly that we should fear God, that fearing God is good for us, that it leads to wisdom, righteousness and salvation. What of that? As I said in my post about Moses, at least one modern version of the Bible renders a translation of "reverential fear". This is the real key to understanding the concept, whether the translation is technically correct or not. It is part and parcel of proper fear of God that, unlike something such as fear of spiders that makes one recoil and pull away, this fear is such that makes one draw closer. True, genuine and fully understanding fear of God realizes who and what God is, knows that running away is not an option, sees that God is a being of love and compassion (even at the root of fearsome things that He does such as send His people to wipe out a handful of nations from the land of Canaan), and grows closer to God in reverence, awe and respect.

In C. S. Lewis' novel The Horse and His Boy, part of the Chronicles of Narnia, there is a scene where a talking horse named Hwin meets God, who in that fictional world is personified by a great and ferocious Lion named Aslan. At first, she is scared, but then, while her fear does not go away, it changes subtly and she approaches Him to say,

"Please, you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else."

As is so often that case, I think Lewis encapsulates it well. The fear of God is indeed fear, but in a way that is not at all ugly.

My own father, interestingly enough, only spanked me once in my entire childhood, and it actually made me respect him all the more. The pain was nothing; I don't even remember it. What I do remember was his look of disappointment because I had done something that was wrong and I knew it. I feared my father, but not because he was going to hurt me. He never spanked me before, nor after, and when he did it, it took me by surprise. I was afraid of him; afraid of being a disappointment. And this fear was not because I thought he would reject me if I disappointed him, but actually because I knew he would not. That's the kind of fear that one needs with God.

So Moses the servant of the LORD died there (Joshua 1)

I realized over the weekend that there was good piece of advice I've given many people over the years that I'm not taking for myself. If you try to work your way through the Bible from beginning to end, you're probably going to come to one or more parts that are boring and/or difficult, and you'll find it hard to proceed. I've always told people that if you're trying to read the Bible, it's good that you eventually read the whole thing, but you shouldn't let yourself get caught up in something excruciating to read, such as the first few chapters of Leviticus, which are description after description of procedures for dealing with sacrificial animals. Likewise in the New Testament, if you read Matthew first, and then proceed to Mark, you might get the feeling that you're reading the same book twice, as the two are very, very similar. (I think I've decided that when I eventually move to the New Testament, I'll start with Luke and include comments on parallel matters in the other two synoptic Gospels. We'll see.)

Anyway, the Mosaic Law is a tough slog, and not as easy to write on as I'd hoped, but in the spirit of moving on with my blog a bit, I'm skipping forward to Joshua. I haven't thought for a long time that I'd go straight through, but it was tough to drop a book midway through it. I will go back to Exodus and finish the books of Moses, but for now, I need something fresher.

Not that Joshua is easier. As a matter of fact, Joshua and Judges are two of the most difficult books to deal with apologetically, in my opinion. Joshua is the story of a massive genocide of the people living in Canaan, and there's no denying it, only examining it to understand whether there might be justification. Judges, on the other hand, is a book filled with more violence and sex than any other book of the Bible, and in fact probably more than most modern mainstream books. If any part of the Bible needs critical examination and questioning, it's these two books.

Before we get into the issue of genocide, however, the first issue that comes up is a bit of confusing prophecy that the SAB points out. Immediately after Joshua takes command of the nation of Israel (as a military commander more than a prophet like Moses), God tells Joshua,

"Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you."

The implication is clear; God is promising unfettered victory. Move in and crush every nation between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and it's all going to be a piece of cake, right?

Well, it turns out not to be, eventually. The SAB points out many passages where the military campaigns of Joshua failed, and for a long time afterwards, the Israelites simply were not victorious. Eventually, by the time of Solomon, they pretty much had it all, but the words here suggest an easy and pretty quick victory with virtually no setbacks, and that did not come to pass. Why? What does this say about the prophecy in these verses?

Well, there are a couple things that one could say about this, and one of them is a look into the immediate context, actually. Within the same speech, in verse seven, God says

"Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper withersoever thou goest."

I suggest that if one looks at this verse, one may see that God is actually giving Joshua and the Israelites a conditional promise. Let me deal with the second part first: God is only going to make them prosper when the people of Israel are doing their best to follow the laws of Moses. Do what God says, and you prosper. Don't do what God says, and all bets are off. We actually see this more explicitly in the second battle of the conquest of Canaan, in which they initially lose because somebody stole something that they weren't supposed to touch.

But note that God is first of all ordering Joshua and the Israelites to be "very courageous". This is actually incredibly important! It relates to the issue that is often raised of God's omnipotence or lack thereof. God is sending the Israelites into Canaan to conquer it, but while God has the ability to simply wipe these people off the face of the earth like He did with Sodom and Gomorrah, He wants the people to do the legwork on this. Once again, the promise says,

"Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you."

See my added emphasis? God is willing to give them conquest over any part of the land that they're brave enough to go to. The answer to the question of "Can God do anything?" is pretty much, "Yes, God can do anything, but there are some things God will not do for one reason or another." In the case of Joshua's military campaign, and the years of fighting after Joshua was gone, God was only willing and "able" to help those that stepped up and showed their faith in God's promises and took what God had promised to them. As far as I am aware, most Biblical scholars are of the opinion that Joshua's campaign was ultimately a failure not because God couldn't follow through, but because the people just ran out of steam and stopped trying. Jesus didn't heal people in His hometown not because He lacked the power to heal, but because unbelieving people simply didn't turn to Jesus for healing. It's a tough issue that far wiser people than I have pondered, but personal faith is an essential part of a relationship with God on many levels and in many ways.

Last note: For those of you reading this who are not fairly familiar with the story that has come before, I am a bit sad for having skipped ahead if only for the missing of the great irony in verse 17. The Israelites promising Joshua that they'd follow him just the same as they followed Moses is not really a heartening promise.

The LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues (Exod 7:14-10:29)

Okay, let me give an overview of the plagues before I hit on specific points. There are a number of different ways to look at the plagues, and it may be that all of them are right, actually. On face value, they are miracles that God enacted on the land of Egypt through Moses to show his power and punish Pharaoh and his people. Symbolically, it's been said that each of the plagues corresponds in some way to one of the pagan gods of Egypt, and is used by the God of Israel to mock the ancient Egyptian religion. Scientifically, it is possible to see the plagues as all being a series of events that logically follow from one another as unusual, but fully natural events. It's important to note that not all miracles need be something supernatural, simply highly unusual.

The other thing that is interesting about the first nine plagues is the thematic way in which they are presented. In many ways, they occur in three groups of three. The first, fourth and seventh plagues are announced to Pharaoh by Moses "in the morning" while the third, sixth, and ninth have no warning at all given to Pharaoh, and in the absence of that warning, also omit the phrase "Let my people go, that they may serve me..." which appears with all the others.

As far as being natural phenomena, what may be occurring is some extreme weather that is causing some strange occurrences. The fact that Moses knows ahead of time that these odd things are going to happen is what is key about it. The Nile floods, bringing an abundance of red silt, which makes the water appear to be blood-like. Seven days later, these polluted waters lead to the frogs of the Nile being driven out onto the land. After the frogs die, their piled up dead bodies bring lice (or perhaps "gnats"?). By this time, the flood waters would have receded, and pools of stagnant water near the river would breed flies. All of these flies may have carried the anthrax bacteria, which caused sickness of livestock, and later, boils on the skin of the Egyptians. By this time, several months would have passed, and it would be the season in which hail would fall, destroying some of the crops. The remaining crops would be eaten by locusts blown in from the east, and later the winds would shift, driving away the locusts, but bringing in sand storms which would plunge large areas of the country into darkness. Now some people would rather see these plagues as entirely supernatural, and indeed, they may have been, but this is one possible understanding of them.

So, let's look at specifics. The SAB essentially asks how the magicians are able to turn the Nile into blood when it's already turned. Well, I would assume, as most people seem to, that the magicians found some water elsewhere and turned that water into blood. Later, we see that the magicians can likewise create frogs. I have no idea as to how they were able to differentiate their frogs from Moses' frogs. Perhaps they pulled them out of hats like rabbits? That might explain why they were unable to replicate the gnats (lice?), as I imagine it's a hard trick to pull gnats out of a hat. At this point, as the SAB notes, the magicians give up trying.

In the midst of the plague of flies, we have one of a handful of exchanges between Moses and Pharaoh. Moses explains that the Israelites are commanded to go out into the wilderness to make some sacrifices, and at this point, Pharaoh says okay, but we find out that he's lying. (Later, during a similar exchange, Moses tells Pharaoh that he knows Pharaoh is lying, but will make the plague go away anyway.) The SAB poses the question, "Did God command the Israelites to make burnt offerings?" I think this is an odd question for two reasons. One, it seems to be hardly different from "Does God desire animal sacrifices?" which is posed elsewhere. Two, in the verse where it is first asked in the SAB, there is no mention of "burnt" offerings. The possibility of contradiction is probably well worth mentioning, as it's an important point for believers to note, in my opinion, but I think these are not two separate points. Anyway, I stand on my response to the other question here.

Now this is not the first time I've seen it pointed out that in the fifth plague, all the cattle die, then they die again later twice. Well, you've got to read carefully. Here, and more explicitly in verse 19, there is a warning given that any cattle left outside will die. Although it's certainly not made clear, one might safely assume that some people brought their cattle indoors to spare them. The phrase use here that "all the cattle of Egypt died" is intended not so much to be a statement of totality, but a contrast to "but of the cattle of the children of Israel died not one." Oh, and if the SAB will keep this note, it might be considered to add the "Contradiction" icon, as I'm assuming that's the point.

The last note that seems to be worth responding to (I think I've addressed all the other major ones already) is the Absurdity icon labeling verse 10:5. I'd just like to point out that I recall as a kid reading "On the Banks of Plum Creek" (I think it was) by Laura Ingalls Wilder (you know, "Little House on the Prairie"?), in which Laura describes an event much like this that happened in her childhood right here in the Midwest. Severe plagues of locusts really do cover the ground almost completely. Here's a picture I found on Google from 2004.

At the end of the ninth plague, Pharaoh tells Moses to go away, never come before him again on pain of death. Moses points out truthfully that indeed, Pharaoh will never see him again.

Technorati tags: anthrax Bible Biblical interpretation blood boils darkness Egypt Egyptians Exodus flies frogs Genesis gnats God hail Israelites Judaism justice Laura Ingalls Wilder lice Little House on the Prairie livestock locusts miracles Moses murrain Nile River Pharaoh plagues religion sacrifices Skeptics Annotated Bible slavery Torah will of God

That all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel (Exodus interlude)

So what is the reason that God gives for deciding to go through such a complicated and difficult process to save the Israelites? Part of it is given here in chapter six, and we see a bit more of it explained in chapter seven. There's a twofold point to all of this, and both parts of it are similar:

Exod. 6:7 "...ye [Israelites] shall know that I am the LORD your God..."
Exod. 7:4 "And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD..."

I suppose someone might call it "showing off", and in a sense, they'd not be far from the truth. God doesn't just want to rescue the Israelites, He wants to rescue them while taking the time to drive home a point to everyone involved. Sure, God could have just forced Pharaoh to change his mind about the Israelites, and they could have just walked away, but what would be the result? Aside from the fact that God is forcing someone to change their mind (something that I think is against His basic nature), there is no justice in it, and no lesson for anyone to learn. What lesson should they learn?

Here's a pretty good analogy, I think. Suppose it was God's will for me to get a Master's Degree in Mathematics (something I've been considering pursuing lately). I could check out a college that offered a good program, get accepted, pass the courses, and earn my degree, with all of those actions proceeding smoothly and easily from one moment to the next because God paved the way for me. After it was said and done, I probably wouldn't think to thank God for the series of everyday miracles that brought me there. On the other hand, if I was reluctant to go back to school, and God firmed my resolve not to, I would say with surety, "I'm not going back to school." Then God could strike me with some sort of awful disease, make me lose my job, and have my car stolen. I might ask, "God, have I made a wrong decision? If you want me to go to school, I don't understand, because I need $22,700 dollars to pay for my expenses, and I just don't have it!" The day after praying this, a check arrives in the mail from the IRS for exactly $22,700 saying that they discovered a mistake on some of my previous tax returns. (Not likely, as I've never made enough to pay that much in taxes, I'm pretty sure.) Then I would enroll in school and my disease would clear up, I'd get a new, better job, and my stolen car would be found. "Wow," I'd say, "clearly God is trying to tell me something."

God is trying to tell somebody something here. He's sending a clear message to Pharaoh, Moses, the Israelites, the Egyptians, and a number of neighboring nations that will all see these bizarre miracles. Message? You'd better take the God of Israel seriously.

Now, people ask (as the SAB does in Exodus) whether it's worth killing children to make this statement. It's a question worth asking, no doubt. In my view, the answer to that is, you have to look at the big picture. We, as living beings, are afraid of death. Why? Well, if you don't believe there is an afterlife (or if you believe the afterlife is something generally unpleasant), then there is a sense of loss in having a loved one die. If, however, you believe that there is such a place as Heaven, and specifically that all children who die go there (I may have mentioned this common Christian belief in an earlier post, I'm not sure...), then while killing hundreds, nay thousands of Egyptian children is cruel to the parents of those children, we have no reason to believe that the children themselves suffered in any way. So we are only left with the question of whether the parents deserved to be punished.

I remember reading a bit of an essay by Jean-Paul Sartre several years ago in which he addressed from an entirely atheistic point of view the idea of responsibility of citizens of a nation for the actions that nation takes as a whole. (I probably don't remember it so very well, and I've not read Sartre extensively, so forgive me if I get his ideas not quite right; in the end, I'm making my own point, but isn't a bit of namedropping fun?) Essentially, it doesn't really matter what sort of government you live under--although perhaps in a democracy, you participate more than would those living under a monarchy--if your government commits some atrocity, you are, in part at least, responsible. Don't like the war in Iraq? Too bad, U.S. citizens, your government is waging it in your name. Lived in Germany during the Third Reich? If you stood passively by as millions were gassed in concentration camps, their blood is on your hands as much as the Nazis. The fact is that Pharaoh systematically tried to kill off the Jews, and he wasn't overthrown by an outraged citizenry. The Egyptians were responsible for the deaths of those Israelite children, and the time was about to come upon them when they would receive the comeuppance for it.

Was it cruelty, or was it justice? It's all speculation, and in a sense, it's only God's place to judge. As for myself, though, I see the strong possibility that this was a righteous act on God's part, despite the personal distaste I may have for the result.

Why stand ye here all the day idle? (Exod 5)

The SAB has no notes on chapter 5, but I think there are a few things here that deserve comment. First of all, I've always thought it interesting that Moses' initial demand is not that Pharaoh set the people free, but only to let them go for a few days to freely practice their religion outside of Egypt. At least, that's what it sounds like when I read it. If this is indeed true, then I wonder if Moses is lying to Pharaoh, or if perhaps the intention was just to ask for a little bit at first rather than come right out and ask for it all. If Pharaoh had said yes, would they have come back after three days?

Pharaoh has nothing of it, though, whatever it is that they're asking. Instead, he decides to enact some cruelty on the Israelites by saying essentially, "If you slaves have time enough to waste my day with ridiculous demands, you're clearly not working hard enough," and he gives them more work. This is actually another place where I wonder if we're only getting part of the story, as Pharaoh claims of Moses, "ye make them rest from their burdens." Is he talking about the three or six days off they'd get if he gives in to Moses' demands, or is he making something up, or is there something going on behind the scenes where the people stopped working that day, and they're standing around waiting to hear what response Moses gets? I suppose that the scene later in the chapter in which "the officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh" points to them not really knowing what's going on, and therefore, it's not the latter. Still, it could be a matter of a few Israelites hanging around Moses; he had at least Aaron with him, and it seems reasonable speculation that they might have had a small entourage.

Anyway, the people get angry with Moses, and instead of accepting him as their savior, they accuse him of making their lives worse, which after all, he did. And Moses asks God essentially the same question that so many skeptics ask: Why does all of this have to be done the hard way? And in Chapter 6, God gives the only answer we ever really get, like it or not.

Jesus saith unto them, I am (Exod 3)

Having just addressed the issue of the proper name of Moses' father-in-law in my previous post, I can turn to the big issue here that the SAB overlooked in this chapter: How the heck can a bush be burning and yet not consumed? That goes against the known laws of physics and chemistry! Pardon me, this should be a short post, so I thought I might as well throw in some sarcasm to point out that I'm never quite clear how Bible skeptics pick and choose which miracles to accept and which to doubt. For instance, as a peek ahead, I see in chapter 14 that parting the Red Sea is left without comment, but having the wheels fall off the Egyptian chariots is considered absurd. Perhaps Steve Wells is commenting on the Lord's great love of slapstick comedy? Actually, the SAB does comment on the burning bush, but merely to remark that it's absurd that God would speak through it. I'm not sure why this would be, aside from the fact that sometimes I think it absurd that God would bother to speak with us at all.

While there aren't a lot of notes in the SAB to respond to for this chapter, there are a number of notable things in this dialogue between Moses and God. For one thing, Moses is clearly not happy to be sent back to Egypt, and keeps coming up with excuses not to do it, but God convinces him to do it. The other notable thing is the exchange in verses 13 and following, in which God identifies Himself as "I AM". It's of course fairly widely believed that God's name in the Old Testament, which is rendered in the Hebrew something like "YHVH", is derived from a form of the phrase "I am", which is similar in form.

On verse 16, the SAB poses the question, "Has anyone ever seen God?" I responded to this in a previous post, and while I admit that answer may not be highly satisfying for many, it's about all I've got. Maybe I'll expand on it sometime. (Or maybe I already did in another post, and forgot since then?)

The final verse has a very interesting foreshadowing--well, actually, it's more than foreshadowing, isn't it? The verse says that essentially, the Hebrews are going to steal a lot of stuff on their way out of Egypt. Is this a right thing to do?

First of all, I'd like to examine the words used here, both "borrow" and "spoil". "Borrow" is a word both in English and the original Hebrew that indicates that whatever they take is going to be asked for first. These women are not going to simply go over to their neighbors and take stuff, they're going to ask. However, the sense of "borrow" that implies it will eventually be given back certainly does not apply. Whatever they take when they go, they're certainly keeping.

As for the word "spoil", I think the true meaning of this word in Hebrew will illustrate the real point of God's will here. While there is definitely a sense intended of "spoil" in the more usual fashion of taking by force and leaving in ruin (and indeed, even the NIV translates this word as "plunder"), I think it interesting that this word in no other place in the Bible (besides the two passages quoted in Exodus) is translated "spoil". It is far more likely to be translated as "deliver" or "recover", the implication being, in just about every case, that someone is taking something away because in reality, they have it coming to them.

The Israelites served the nation of Egypt as slaves for about 400 years, and this is just their way of getting "back pay" if you will. It's like the concept of "reparations" that's been discussed from time to time here in America, which I think is a good idea in theory, but at this time in our history, difficult to put into practice. For all those people in our nation's history who used the Bible to justify their right to own slaves, it's a damned shame that none of them seemed to pay much attention to Deuteronomy 15:12-14, in which it is made clear that a slave was only to be owned for six years, at the end of which he was not only to be released, but paid liberally for the six years of service you received from him. Most people seem to miss this vital aspect of Biblical slavery, which makes it very different from our modern understanding of the practice.

(Note: On the SAB page on slavery, I notice that Deut. 15:9-10 is quoted, but that particular verse is not actually about slavery, but about loaning money. In that context, the "year of release" while yes, also being the year of release from slavery, is actually the year of release from debt, and God is saying, "Don't think you'll get out of having to take care of the poor just because you suspect they'll never pay you back.")

I will bring them again also out of the land of Egypt (Gen 50)

So, Jacob is dead, and his last request is to be buried back in the Promised Land. It's interesting that for so many of these forefathers, despite the fact that they had little or no ties to the land of Canaan personally, they wanted to be buried there, both to be with their forefathers and with their ancestors that they assumed God would bring back there sometime in the future. Joseph mourns for his father, but then he requests to Pharaoh that he and his family be allowed to take the body back to Canaan to be buried at Machpelah.

In much of this exchange, there are hints at an unsteady relationship between Joseph and Pharaoh that foreshadow what is to come. After all, Joseph was put into a position of prominence from out of prison precisely because he was useful to Pharaoh. Joseph must be very careful to promise Pharaoh that he will indeed come back and not stay in Canaan, the land of his birth. The accompaniment of Egyptian servants along the way may be partially out of respect for Joseph's high position, partially for the purpose of protection of the Israelites, and partially out of protection of Pharaoh's interests: to see to it that Joseph and his brothers (who are also on Pharaoh's payroll) return when they are done. Also, they leave their children behind.

Jacob is indeed buried at Machpelah, as the text says repeatedly. The SAB points out that Stephen claimed Jacob was buried in Shechem. Yeah, this is a contradiction, but I think there are a couple things that could be said about it. First of all, Stephen's speech in the book of Acts is a speech, and I don't know that the Bible would be required not only to be correct in every detail, but that every character in the Bible never make a mistake either. Surely there are many places in the Bible where prominent people say things that are quite mistaken. (Peter is famous for this, of course.) Secondly, Stephen is not so much making an outright error as telescoping the details of the story, since Joseph, and probably his brothers as well were buried in Shechem. This mixing of the two parts of the stories is no doubt the source of the error Stephen does appear to make about who bought the grave. In any case, this is not at all the first time we've run up against problems with Stephen's Acts 7 speech, nor will it be the last; just remember he's telling the condensed version of the Old Testament, and he's going to gloss over the details quickly.

After the funeral is over, Joseph's brothers get worried once again that he will take revenge on them, and they tell him that Jacob had commanded that they be forgiven. Jacob is never actually seen making this speech, so you might wonder whether they made it up. It doesn't matter, though, as once again, Joseph assures them that he believes it was all part of God's plan.

Joseph lives to be 110 years old (apparently not an absurd age for the SAB, whose threshold for absurd age lies somewhere between 123 and 137, I may do more research on this) and to see his great-grandchildren. I just realized that I misread an issue from chapter 48 that comes up here, but my response is the same: these prophecies about being brought back to the Promised Land (here, here and here) are not personal prophecies to be fulfilled in the lifetimes of these people, but point to the future Exodus centuries later. Jacob, Joseph, and the other patriarchs all died in Egypt, but God brought the twelve tribes of Israel back to the land in the end.

And the end this is. Genesis begins with the creation of life, and now ends with the death of this prominent patriarch of Israel. The Bible moves on to a new chapter in the history of that nation, and I will take a break.