Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom (Joshua 24)

Here in the final chapter of Joshua, Joshua once again calls the people together for a speech. It may be that this is a continuation of the speech from the previous chapter, or it may be at a later time. While Joshua did say in the last chapter that he expected to die "this day", I have discussed before that the word "day" is often figurative, and not necessarily always a 24-hour period. I suspect that rather than saying he was to die at once, he meant that now that the conquest was complete, a new day was dawning for Israel in which it was to go on without him.

Joshua gives a bit of ancient history, sort of summing up some of the important points of the Bible so far. He reminds the people that back in the time of Abraham's fathers, they lived north of the Euphrates ("the other side of the flood") and worshiped pagan gods. The one true God called Abraham out of that culture to give him a promise that would not be fully realized until the time of Joshua, a over 500 years later. After the passage of years, the growing of the children of Israel into a large nation that was ready to truly possess the promised land, and near-uncountable miracles, God had finally brought this nation into being. Joshua reminds them of all of this, and entreats them to always remember what God had done for them.

Verses 12 and 13 are a reminder of two things, one of which is labeled absurd, and the other unjust. They really go hand in hand, and in a sense, the very point of these is the absurdity and unjustness (from a certain point of view) of the actions. God miraculously caused the very forces of nature, in the form of hornets in particular, to drive out the inhabitants of Canaan, and as a result, there are large portions of the land that they were simply able to take with little or no effort on their part. The only thing just about this is that there were moral reasons of one sort or another for driving out the previous inhabitants; the Israelites weren't reaping the benefits of God driving out the Canaanites because they were somehow such terrific people, just a bit better than the previous tenants of the land. Joshua reminds them of this because they need to remember they are recipients of God's grace, not owners of the land in their own right. If they were to become like those whom God chose to destroy and/or evacuate from the land, they could expect pretty much the same treatment. As I have also said before, this came to pass eventually.

I have addressed the two questions raised in the SAB for verse 14 already, but it's worth a brief revisit here. There exist other entities that people in the world worship as gods, whether they be completely imaginary or some sort of spiritual power. The Bible often acknowledges these entities as "gods" because that's what they are, regardless of their powers or lack thereof. When Joshua tells them to fear the LORD, he is pointing out that all other "gods" are inferior to the LORD, and a wise person will give their respect only to Him.

Can people truly choose to give themselves to God, however? The SAB asks "Do humans have free will?" and this is an important philosophical question that people of all religious beliefs have struggled with. Actually, on a personal note, before I became a Christian, I went through a period of introspection during which I was convinced that free will was an illusion, and surely in a materialistic universe there was no room for free will. Although there are some Christian schools of thought that claim there is no free will, it was Christianity that convinced me that people do have free will, something I still believe despite being a Calvinist. I'm not going to attempt to unpack the issue fully, as it's not an easy issue to deal with, but I do need to address the apparent contradictions.

Honestly, there isn't a uniformity of opinion on this matter at all throughout Christendom, and probably not among Jews, either, but I don't know. My own opinion is that there is no contradiction between free will and predetermination, although it's not easy to explain why. My best attempt is usually something like this: I've got a coin in my pocket. Let's assume, as most people will I think, that free will and random chance exist. That means that the coin can freely come up heads or tails on a toss. There, it came up heads. From now on, the result of that toss is fixed. At the moment I did it, anything could have happened. At the moment you read this, only heads actually did occur. For God, who is omniscient, the future is something He has already seen, so while our choices are as free as the tossing of that coin, if not moreso, God already knows the result. Where is the contradiction? I don't see it. I have no plans to go any deeper into this discussion within this blog, or at least this particular post.

A bit of a discussion ensues wherein Joshua warns the Israelites that while they should serve God, it's not going to be easy. While false gods don't seem to care so much what a person does, the LORD "...is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins." At least in particular where it comes to apostasy, He won't. The SAB comments on this little exchange that it is unjust, cruel and intolerant. I would only agree that it's intolerant, and I've already given my opinion that intolerance from the right point of view is a non-issue. As for unjust, the context seems pretty clear that God is giving them the land, and He expects a certain level of obedience in return. I think that is just. Some Jews have pointed out that in fact, God does not demand worship of Him, but rather prohibits false worship. While most Christians clearly do not feel this way, it as not an uncommon belief among Jews that being an atheist is okay so long as you live a moral life; it's being a pagan and reverting to immoral pagan practices that is the real problem. As for cruelty, well, that's a matter of opinion.

And so Joshua dies, having been one of the greatest leaders in the history of Israel. He is buried, and shortly thereafter, the bones of Joseph are also buried. (The SAB points out a contradiction as to the nature of Joseph's final resting place, which I actually already addressed in Genesis.) There is something interesting about the fact that these two men were buried at about the same time, as one of them led Israel out of Canaan into Egypt, and the other led them back.

Although the book of Joshua is at times a bit dry, and often an apt example of violence and cruelty in the Bible that seems easy to pin squarely on God, it is also really a great book that people overlook for these reasons, and miss out on the richness of some aspects of it. As the last few months of comments on this book have examined, there are a number of truly deep questions the book raises, and a number of odd examples of flawed people who can be an inspiration to believers throughout history. If a lying pagan prostitute can find faith and lay hold of the grace of God, can't any of us? If a nation of stubborn unfaithful people who had to be sent to wander for forty years in the wilderness can be reconciled with God to become conquerers of powerful nations, what then could we achieve in our lifetimes through the power of God? As Joshua, whose name in Greek would be "Jesus", says to his people and all of us throughout history:

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve...but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

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.

Lest ye corrupt yourselves (Exod. 22:20 et al, idolatry, apostasy, blasphemy)

There is a lot to be said actually for this one verse, which encapsulates a number of issues. Some of them I have addressed at length previously, such as the matter of polytheism. Most of the issues were at least touched on in this post, but as I mentioned there that there ought to be a future post that would delve more deeply into it, I think this is finally the time for it. While Exodus 22:20 is really referring to a specific aspect of improper worship, I'm going to try and cover all major aspects here.

First and foremost, serving as a foundation for all the other issues here, is the issue of why one should worship God at all. Many people have given suggestions over the years, and it's hard to say which might be convincing to any individual. A common theory is that as creations of God, we should worship the creator. I haven't read any philosophical works of Christian existentialism, but since this line of reasoning is reminding me in many ways of Sartre, I wonder if this is what is meant? When an individual creates a thing, the thing has as its very reason for being service to its creator. There is an assumption that since God created us, He has a right to dictate our purpose in life. The idea that that purpose is worship of God is a secondary assumption that is built on a more complicated religious framework; a deist might agree that the Creator has a purpose in mind for us, but not necessarily agree that the purpose is known. As a person who believes in the Bible, though, one can read the Bible to get glimpses of what the purpose might be.

While many theists believe the fact that God is our creator is enough reason for Him to deserve worship, they will be quick to point out that that is not the only reason, nor even the primary one. While God will from time to time point out the fact that He is the creator of everything that exists, He is far more interested in reminding people of things he has done since creation. In the Ten Commandments, He doesn't mention creation, but instead points out that He is "...the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." God's primary reason that He gives for worshiping Him is His acts of salvation. He saved the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, He brought them out of their exile in Babylon/Persia, and in the end, He sends a Messiah to save them and the whole world from their sins. Why give allegiance and worship to God? Because He's constantly looking out for the well-being of the people He created. As Jesus said in John 10:10,

"The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

The "thief" is, in this context, anyone who claims to have a person's best interests in mind, but really means to take away every good thing that God has given them or promised them in the future. (And no, this does not mean the O.T. prophets, as is implied in the note on verse 8.) It's a very common theme throughout the Bible that following anyone other than the one true God will lead to a loss of prosperity, happiness, life and salvation.

So, once one accepts the idea that following the God of Israel is a good thing, then come the guidelines.

Avoiding idolatry? This is not actually a specific matter of worshiping a false God; there is an idea involved here that as pagan nations surrounding Israel filled their temples with statues that represented their gods, the Israelites might be tempted to do the same thing. Actually, they did. In Exodus 32, there is the famous story of the golden calf. In the story, note that Aaron does not give the calf a funny name and make up a god, they're all taking this statue as being a representation of the deity that brought them out of Egypt! The problem with idolatry is that once God is represented by a hunk of metal, He gets mentally reduced to a hunk of metal, and who has respect for a hunk of metal? This is actually a common theme in many religions, including Hinduism* in some ways, surprisingly: the idea that the deity is so vast and powerful that He/She/It cannot be reduced to a mere representation, but must be left abstract. The Israelites quickly lose their moral focus once God is brought down to a finite representation before them. It should be noted that despite the SAB note in the beginning of that chapter, the only thing Aaron told them to do was give up their earrings. (Not that Aaron is at all faultless here; Moses and God put a lot of the responsibility on him. I'm sure I'll need to address that chapter in specific later on.)

What of apostasy? God puts out a lot of warnings against the Israelites ever turning to other Gods, setting penalties on people who do so or encourage others to do so. Later on, when they take the Promised Land, they drive out all the occupants for numerous reasons, the main one probably being that they are pagans. Well, that's more of a straightforward matter of what I was talking about above; while the true God gives "life, and...more abundantly," other so-called "gods" have either nothing to offer or they have destruction. I'm not completely certain, but it may certainly be the case that God is more likely to punish apostates than infidels. It's one thing to simply not know that the God of Israel is the one true God, and another to know this and willingly turn away. I think that this may be what Paul is talking about in Romans 2, and Jesus hints at a few times. If you know the right thing to do with regards to God, and refuse to do it, how can you stand in comparison to those who were essentially ignorant of the truth, but did the right thing anyway?

The topic of blasphemy is a tough one, because it has many different layers to it, perhaps more so in Judaism than in most other religions. As demonstrated with a humorous effect in the movie Life of Brian, even saying God's name out loud was considered blasphemy, and to this day, observant Jews will not say "the Name" as they refer to it. Why? Because God is considered so great, so majestic and so holy that it simply is not possible to utter His Name with enough reverence to measure up. Now the more modern Christian notion of taking the Lord's name in vain meaning referring to God in a flippant matter, or worse, using "God" or "Jesus" as a curse word, seems downright tame in comparison to the Jewish approach. But indeed if God is so very Holy that even angels are hesitant to look at Him, His Name ought to be treated with a great deal of respect, far more than even those who consider themselves His followers give it. I talked a bit about how especially in the Bible, a person's "name" was synonymous with their reputation, and who could have a higher reputation than the Creator of the universe and Saviour of humanity?

Anyway, as I have suggested in other places on a handful of other issues, it may be in a large part the case that by God's very nature and His Holiness that what in our original verse sounds like a threat is merely a statement of fact. "Have respect for the law of God or face dire consequences!" may be in a theological sense equivalent to "Have respect for the law of gravity or face dire consequences!" It simply naturally follows.

(*Contrary to outside appearances, Hinduism is, at its root, a monotheistic religion. All of the different deities worshiped in South Asia are in some sense considered to be in actuality manifestations of a singular higher power known as "Brahman".)

Her witchcrafts are so many? (Exod. 22:18 et al., witches)

A girl I briefly dated in college with whom I was friends for quite some time used to always say of the Salem witch trials, "Why is it that people always say that it's a shame that these women were falsely accused of being witches? Does that imply that if any of them were actual witches (which a few of them may have been) that would make it morally acceptable to kill them?" It was a rhetorical question in her view; of course it would not be morally acceptable. I think when it comes to the Bible, these questions need to be given some more comprehensive treatment.

Exodus 22:18 simply reads "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." However, the issues brought up are far from simple. There are two terms here that need to be explored: "witch" and "live". The latter turns out to be the most simple. It may be that the command here is not to kill a witch so much as to cast her out of the community in some manner. The Hebrew verb here may actually have to do with prosperity rather than physical life, implying that if there is a woman offering some sort of service termed as "witchcraft", then you should not solicit her. (While the term is not used there specifically, King Saul solicits a woman who "hath a familiar spirit" to help him in 1Sam. 28. It seems pretty clear that this was a bad idea.) While the possibility exists, (and note that the way in which she should be killed is not specified) it is likely that the intention here is that witchcraft be a capital crime. Either way, be it "kill witches" or "ensure witches do not prosper", there's clearly a command here to be prejudiced sharply against them.

Having already discussed capital punishment, I therefore turn to a discussion of the term "witch". Even in modern English, the term is rather vague. Judging by the pop culture phenomena of "Harry Potter", "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" and "The Wizard of Oz", witches are human-like (but somehow not quite human) individuals that have the ability to change reality around them by waving sticks at things. While this particular idea of what witches are like is probably not, nor has ever been, realized in the non-fictitious world, the truth is that witches do exist.

While the term "witch" is used informally by many as an epithet for a woman who is ugly and/or spiteful, in a more technical sense, the term still refers more specifically to a person (more commonly female, but not always) who either practices magic in some unspecified manner, or more likely a practitioner of the religion known as Wicca. For those not familiar, Wicca is:

A polytheistic Neo-Pagan nature religion inspired by various pre-Christian western European beliefs, whose central deity is a mother goddess and which includes the use of herbal magic and benign witchcraft. (American Heritage Dictionary)

So which of these witches is the sort that is supposedly to be killed? While I think we can rule out the sort that is simply fitting of the epithet, it's worthwhile to note that the supposition that many have is that many of those who were killed in the Salem witch trials were of this type. (I don't like the way she looks/acts, so I'll call her a witch and let the authorities handle it.) I am going to assume the Bible however is not referring to this sort of person.

So this leaves two possibilities which are not necessarily distinct. Although Wicca as we know it today did not exist in those days, there no doubt were similar pagan religions, and magic, be it of the showy, supernatural sort or simply some sort of "herbal magic" could easily have existed at pretty much any time in history. What would make either of these wrong?

Well, the pagan one is easy. If I have talked about religious intolerance in the Bible before now, I don't recall, but this is as good a place as any to address it. As I've said in my other blog, here in America, we have a nation that promises by its Constitution certain freedoms, including freedom of speech and religion. I'm all for it. Despite being a "fundie" who will be among the first to tell you that I believe Jesus offers the one and only path to the salvation of your soul, I am glad to share this nation with atheists, pagans, Muslims and even Scientologists. But that's not what ancient Israel was all about. While we here are trying to build a society from a variety of cultures that will strengthen each other through diversity, God's aims in creating Israel was to have a nation that would be uniformly existing for the sole purpose of glorifying Him. Now that brings up other philosophical issues that libraries of books no doubt have been written about, this is the Bible, and this is God speaking to His people, and within that context, God is free to say essentially "My way or the highway!"

As I said in the post on capital punishment, there are essentially three things you could be killed for in Israel: murder, sexual impurity, and improper religious practice. The third category exists because especially in this case, God is trying to create a new religion more or less from scratch. His people have lived in the midst of pagan nations, well, since forever. Abraham lived among pagans in Ur, and he moved to Canaan where he lived among other pagans. His great-grandchildren, the sons of Jacob, moved to Egypt and spent 400-odd years there among yet another pagan society. Now that they are finally big enough to be their own nation and they are (supposedly) about to have their own land, God is demanding a cleansing. Many Biblical scholars have noted that there is a parallel in these stories to the concept of Baptism, a Jewish ritual that of course was taken up in a big way by Christians. This is a fresh start for the nation, and God has them pass through the waters of the Red Sea, drowning the Egyptians. God is washing the pagan-ness out of these people, and He wants them to stay clean.

As for magic, God simply doesn't want people to depend on any power other than Him. This may also be related in a more direct way to paganism, of course, but there is certainly a sense in which God is warning them away from anything supernatural that is not God Himself, because it is very likely something evil.

I hope this is coming across clearly enough. I've been stalling on this one not because it's a difficult one per se (in the way that the abortion and capital punishment posts were), but in such a small verse, there are some big issues to deal with, and I've spent far too much time mulling it over in my mind, and probably overcomplicated it in the end. I hope that's not entirely the case.

The plague shall not be upon you to destroy you (Exod 11)

Before the final and most brutal of the plagues, we take a side trip into some instruction God gives to prepare for it. In many ways, the nine plagues that came before were just preparation for this one, which has great significance in the Bible as a whole, some of which is revealed in the next few chapters, and some of which is revealed in the New Testament (if you believe in the N.T., of course; most Jews would certainly not.)

Brief mention is made here of the plundering of the Egyptians, but I won't address it here since the SAB does not. Suffice it to say I will revisit it in the next chapter, and I already touched on the subject back in chapter 3.

So, to the main objection that the SAB brings up for this chapter: "These verses [11:4-6] clearly show that the mass murder of innocent children by God (see 12:29-30) was premeditated." This is an odd statement for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it's largely right on the mark. Pulling it apart from back to front, I first want to note that it would be theologically sound to say that everything God does is "premeditated". Since God is supposedly all-knowing, everything that He has done or ever will do was already planned before time itself even existed (as much as that's a meaningful thing to say, but you get the idea I'm sure). As far as "innocent children", that's a difficult issue to address, although I tried to in part in an earlier post. Aside from the issues talked about there, it might be noted that it may not necessarily be only children, whether that be a plus or minus. Then there is the most important issue, the key question of whether this truly qualifies as either "mass" or "murder".

A pastor friend of mine wrote a very good essay on this subject that I read years ago, and it's a shame it's not online, at least as far as I know, since he goes much more in to detail on this matter than I ever could. Although we do indeed see a lot of large groups of people being killed in various moments throughout the Bible, there are a few things we can note about these occurrences. First of all, God gives a warning. In this case, we have a series of nine incredible plagues that occur over the course of several months. The plagues are always predicted by Moses, explained to be the work of God, and do not have an effect on the Israelites. As a result of this, many of the people of Egypt are sitting up and taking notice of what's going on. While Pharaoh continues in a state of denial about God's will and God's power, many others aren't so stupid. As I said in my last post, it seems quite likely that people started doing what they could to avoid the plagues and save their crops and livestock, if possible.

This leads to the second point, which is that God always gives a way out. In this case, the way out is announced in the next chapter: put blood on your doorposts and God will spare your house. If you read these chapters carefully, you will see that God is not saying He's going to kill all of the Egyptians and spare all of the Israelites; He says He's going to kill those who refuse to follow His simple instructions and spare those who do follow them. To a Christian, this is a clear foreshadowing of the message of the Gospel: a person here was saved from the wrath on Egypt by the blood of a lamb's sacrifice, while in life, a person is saved from the wrath on sin by the blood of the "Lamb of God". To a Bible believer of any religious bent, however, this instruction has significance because it shows God is merciful enough to make an escape clause for His wrath. In every case throughout the Old Testament where large groups of people were destroyed either by plagues or an army due to the will of God, there was always a warning, and always a way far an individual to escape the fate of the group as a whole.

That being said, all the people of Egypt had to do to save themselves and their children was sprinkle some blood on their doors. I have little doubt that there were many people who did so. Imagine this allegory: You meet up with a man who claims to have a message from God to you. He says, "Get out of your house, or you will die." You'd be right to be skeptical. But suppose he said, "Tomorrow it will rain on your house, but not the house of your neighbors," and the next day a little cloud blew in and rained only on your house. The next day, the same thing happened with snow, then hail, then it was struck by lightning, then it was overrun with ants, then your power went out for no discernable reason, etc. Each time, the man said it would happen the next day, and it did, nine times. Then the man said, "Tomorrow, your house will be hit by a meteorite, and nothing will be left but a smoking crater. I suggest you get out." Would you get out? Would you get your family out? Your possessions? I sure would.

One might complain though that I am wrong, and it's illustrated by the phrase that the SAB points out for different reasons: "...the LORD doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel." Surely this is saying that God wants to arbitrarily hurt the Egyptians and spare the Israelites, right? I don't think so. As I read the Bible, there is often a distinction made, and an important one, between a country and its people. God deals with them in different ways, and is much more forgiving towards individuals than a country in general. The "difference between the Egyptians and Israel" is not about individual people, but about differences in cultures, societies, and religious beliefs. Call it intolerant if you want, and I won't deny it, but God is saying that He will show favor on those that believe in Him, and not on those who do not. In the original Hebrew, there is no difference between the word used for "Egypt" and "the Egyptians" in this passage, and verse seven probably would have been translated differently if I'd been in charge of the KJV. But I'm not of course.

So last point the SAB makes is a very good one to take note of, as it's central to this idea. God actually wanted Pharaoh to say no to Moses?! What the heck? you might ask. The book of Exodus is about the beginning of the nation of Israel, and it's this nation that God has chosen to be his representatives on earth in a special way. Egypt and Israel lie at the joining point between three continents, perhaps the only continents that were settled by (relatively) modern civilizations. God is getting ready to set up Israel in its appointed place, and to start them off, He is using Egypt as an example for the other nations. Everyone in the Middle East will come to know of these plagues and what happened when a kingdom dared to try and stand in the way of God and His chosen people. The first nine plagues were Egypt's warning, but the tenth plague is a warning to the nations that would come into contact with the Israelites over the next forty-plus years as they moved out of Egypt and into Canaan.

God gave Egypt a warning, and a way out. The only thing Pharaoh had to give up was his pride.

At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. (Exod 2)

Ack! I can't seem to ever get back to this, I've been so busy lately, and yet I feel like I've gotten very little done in my personal life. (And then Blogger.com was experiencing some difficulties for a while.) I can relate being busy in this way to the story, though. I gotta admit I've often wondered at the amount of busy-work God gave Moses. Most of what's accomplished in this book and the ones following seem like they could have been done much simpler and faster than they were, but no dice. I guess God has his reasons for it, though, and perhaps we'll get into some of them.

So, the background for our story having been set up, we now introduce the baby who will grow up to be our main character in the next few books: Moses. The SAB points out that the story of Moses' childhood bears a strong resemblance to that of Sargon the great, an old Babylonian king. As the link provided points out, however, such stories are actually very common, and not just in a literary sense, but perhaps in a very real sense. Note that Pharaoh's daughter, upon discovering the child, immediately realizes that he's a Hebrew baby; it may have been not so uncommon for Hebrew women to do this sort of thing in the days of Moses' childhood.

Actually, in a more general sense, I've heard many pastors make the claim about stories in other religions that are similar to the stories of the Bible that, "Satan is good at making counterfeits." The idea behind this belief is that when you hear about a pagan god who was born of a virgin, or a Babylonian king who was set float in a basket, or the Buddha who, having been born into a royal family, forfeited his earthly kingdom to begin a new religion, the similarities are actually deceptions to distract people from the truths of the Biblical accounts. If you believe in the supernatural, this explanation makes a lot of sense, actually, although it's not necessarily true. If you don't believe in the supernatural, then it hardly matters, but perhaps you can see the logic in it, or at the very least why it's an appealing explanation. In any case, it's not unheard of for two different important historical personages to have similarities in their life stories, is it? (For instance, the second and third U.S. Presidents both died of natural causes on July 4th, 1826, the 50th anniversary of American independence. Sounds mythical, but it's apparently true. Go figure.)

Anyway, Moses is raised among the Egyptian royalty, but it seems despite what the movie Prince of Egypt (I highly recommend it) would tell us, he did know where he came from. Thus, in his adulthood, he one day killed an Egyptian slavemaster, and hid the body. Yes, Moses was a murderer, and the fact that he was the chosen deliverer of Israel didn't make it less of a sin. Afraid once he realized that the murder wasn't a secret as he had hoped, Moses fled the country. Now the SAB calls this a contradiction with a later verse, but I think it's a matter of time scale. At this time in the story Moses feared Pharaoh, but later on, when he knew he was on a mission from God, that fear evaporated. Indeed later in his life, Moses is very bold in standing up to Pharaoh.

After fleeing into the wilderness, Moses meets up with the daughters of the priest of Midian, named here as being "Reuel". The SAB points out a contradiction here that is actually one I've heard a few times, that being that Moses' father in law keeps being called by many names. I have both the standard interpretation of what's going on here, and my own viewpoint that I came up with just the other day. The standard interpretation is that "Jethro" (which is certainly the correct name) also at times went by the name "Reuel", and that "Hobab" is actually Moses' brother-in-law. This latter point indicates that while Judges 4:11 is either an actual mistake or at the least, badly written, the problem with Numbers 10:29 is that the SAB only quotes the verse in part. The full clause that begins that verse reads, "And Moses said unto Hobab, the son of Raguel the Midianite, Moses' father in law,..." Now "Raguel" is actually "Reuel" in Hebrew, and I have no idea why the KJV spells it different in this verse, and unless there is someone out there reading this who knows Hebrew better than I do and knows why it must be otherwise, I think it's more than reasonable to assume "Moses' father in law" refers to "Raguel the Midianite," and not the preceding.

My own theories I put forth as possibilities are as follows. Note that "Reuel" means "friend of God". I believe that it is a possibility that Reuel is not just another name that Jethro occasionally used, but his priestly title. The other possibility goes back to the recurring theme in the Bible that the term "grandfather" is never used. It may be that at the time Moses comes to Midian at first, Reuel is the high priest, and these young women are actually Reuel's granddaughters. Years later, when Moses returns to Egypt, Reuel has died, and Jethro is now the high priest, having inherited the position from his father Reuel. I think any of these three explanations is sufficient to explain this issue, apart from Judges 4:11, which is a mystery to me.

The last issue brought up in this chapter is whether or not God "respects" anyone. Aside from my response to this issue in general in a previous post, I would like to say here that there may be another intended meaning of this word in the original Hebrew. If you look at what the word means, it seems that what's happening is that God is turning His full attention to their plight.