Exodus - The Book of the Whiny

I was much more pleased in reading Exodus than I had been with Genesis.   It was interesting and comforting to read the stories of the plagues of Egypt and the flight of the Israelites from Egypt, but I've got to say, DAMN!  Those Israelites were whiny little buggers!

You would think after all the plagues cast down on the Egyptians by God, while sparing them, that they wouldn't turn from him so easily.  People, I'm sure, claim miracles and acts of God even today, but nothing compared with the acts of God in Exodus.  Moses spoke what would happen before each plague.  So does this merely make him a good fortune teller?  Perhaps, some may have viewed him as so.  The Pharaoh's magicians attempted (and somehow succeeded) at recreating many of these plagues, but even they couldn't perform them all and well before the plague of the first-born came they had given up trying and feared the God of Moses.

When Moses prayed to the Lord for the plagues to end, to disperse, they did.  More magic?  The Israelites did not think so.  They eventually believed Moses (and stopped complaining about him standing up to Pharaoh in the name of the Lord) and after the last plague (Death of the 1st-born and the celebration of Passover) they all left Egypt.  They hadn't gotten far before the plague of the whiny set in (this, however, was not one sent by God, but by the ungrateful people he had just saved from slavery...harsh, I know) and when Pharaoh and his men arrived they reverted back to the old, "Why didn't you just let us be back in Egypt" nonsense.  Terribly ungrateful.

So, again, God works his miraculous acts through Moses and the Red Sea is parted, the Israelites pass through, and (for good measure) God washes the Egyptians away by closing the Red Sea as they attempted to pass.  I know this would be enough to convince me.  Cool walls of water, Lord!

Alas, the whining continued..."we're thirsty...why did you bring us out here to die...blah, blah, blah, BLAH!".  Moses strikes the rock with his staff....WATER!  There you go you ungrateful little gits...it really only seemed to tide them over for awhile...sheesh!

Mount Sinai.  Moses warned the people what to do regardless of how long he was gone...and do you think they listened?  NO!  Moses goes up to get the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments on them from the Lord and to hang out a bit.  He's gone a mere 40 days and 40 nights and what do they do?  They get all nervous and crap and urge Aaron (who was left in charge) to use the gold they had gathered and make a god for them to worship.  And Aaron does!  "This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." (Exodus, Ch 32, 1-6).  So much for Commandment #2.  Aaron needed a serious time out!

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Upon seeing this, God looks to destroy his own people (again...snore!), but is persuaded by Moses not to.  So Moses goes down, chews some booty and then throws the 10 Commandments on the ground breaking them for effect.  Hmmm, perhaps in retrospect not such a good idea?  I mean these people apparently needed some commandments going on.

After a good old fashioned butt chewing we see Moses returning to the Mountain to chill out with the Lord.  We get a bit of a repeat here.  You see, in Exodus it went over the laws the Lord gave Moses, then he goes down the mountain and yells at the whiny, goes back up and we get to hear them all again..yay!  We get lots of laws that I'm delighted are NOT followed today (ahem...slavery....), the description of the Ark of the Covenant (Woohoo...Indiana Jones!), religious rites, priest, and last but not least, the Lord's dwelling, and BOY did he want his crib pimped out!  Not that he doesn't deserve it...he is the Creator of the universe and all...

I've got to admit that I was practically drooling on myself by the time I got through the description of all this.  I'm sure I glossed over what some people would really dig on.  Trying to imagine what all this would look like.  My brain doesn't work that way.  I am rather impressed at the detail of it all.  But let me touch on some of these laws...

No great surprise that women were looked upon as second class citizens in almost every way.  Men can earn freedom...women...suck it!  Sweet!  Glad I'm alive today!  What I did find surprising considering the amount of anti-abortion people that are out there is this:

"When men have a fight and hurt a pregnant woman, so that she suffers a miscarriage, but no further injury, the guilty one shall be fined as much as the woman's husband demands of him, and he shall pay in the presence of the judges.  But if injury ensues, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."  

Well, you get the idea.  Time to get even.  It actually surprised me that nothing was mentioned about killing the person responsible for the death of the child.  Nope.  I'm not encouraging abortion, I'm just a student of the hypocritical.  I suppose that morality comes later or via the New Testament, but I was surprised to not find it here.  Hmmmm....

Another favorite of mine...

"When a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed, and lies with her, he shall pay her marriage price and marry her.  If her father refuses to give her to him, he must still pay him the customary marriage price for virgins."

There's lots of good stuff in there too.  Stuff that people should pay attention to today, for instance:

"You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. You shall not wrong any widow or orphan.  If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry.  My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword; then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans."

If only people would remember this today in our country.  There's far too much molesting of aliens and not giving two hoots for widows and orphans.  Lots of lip service but little by way of actual care.  It's so easy to tell someone, "Sorry, 'bout your damn luck," and another to do what God would have wanted.  Perhaps there should be some crying out to God, although I'm not really down with the whole killing those who are being insensitive bastards.

Now I know I can be a bit sarcastic when reviewing the Books at times, but to be sure, I don't view them with distaste.  No, I just find the ridiculousness of people believing that this is how we should be now a bit silly.  Times change and I'm sure these were all proper at the time.  Very acceptable.  As a genealogist I can look at things in historical perspective, but slavery has ended (at least what most people think of and we won't go into trafficking) so why would we need to follow that bit?  Polygamy...Pah-leez!

The bottom line is that there is plenty good in Exodus (and I'm sure the entire Old Testament...well, OK, maybe not much in Genesis...) and more people should take a peek.  I won't go into the hypocritical slave owners in this country and ask why they would do what they did if they were God-fearing Christians.  It's hard to imagine, but they were stupid...er, I mean, didn't view their black slaves as being human beings and therefore they could do with them as they chose.  I could say some more about that, but why?  The past is past and most people acknowledge that it was wrong.  Those that don't, well, they don't  need to be engaged in conversation...period.

I'd love to hear other people's views on Exodus.  I know that we've got a small group going on the Facebook page, but not everyone has Facebook, and some people may yet join us, so don't forget to comment on the blogsite here too.