Phinehas Kills the Adulterers – How killing people stops God from killing other people

Holy crap, could Jehovah be any more of a prick?

After Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt but before they made it to the “promised land” they had a lot of contact with different groups of people. When they were in Shittim (no, I did not make up that name) they started to do some really crazy stuff like have sex with the local women, eat their food, and worship their gods.

As you might expect, Jehovah was not pleased. He told Moses to take the heads off his people and hang them in the sun so He wouldn’t be mad anymore. Since this made perfect sense to Moses, he gave the order that every man who participated in the worship of local gods should be executed. Just the men though. You have to be careful to always kill more men than women so polygamy works out better.

After the whole worshiping the wrong gods thing was sorted through the use of capital punishment, things managed to get even crazier. This Hebrew guy named Zimri had the audacity to hook up with a Midianitish woman named Cozbi (remember that Moses’ wife was from Midian, damn hippocrate) and actually bring her around so the other Hebrews could see that a Hebrew man and Midianitish women were together and not ashamed of it. Well, this level of audacity got Jehovah so worked up that he started killing random Israelites using disease (one of God’s favorite toys).

Fortunately for the Lord’s people, a discerning gentleman named Phinehas worked out that Zimri’s relationship with Cozbi was the cause for the plague. Phinehas grabbed a Javelin, walked into their tent, and killed both of them, making sure he stabbed Cozbi through the stomach just in case she was pregnant. Of course this stopped God from killing random bystanders, but not before 24,000 of them died.  --  I learned in church the reason Zimri and Cozbi had to die to stop the plague was because they were committing adultery. It turns out that was about 2,000% bullshit. Nowhere in the biblical account is adultery mentioned. They totally had to die because Cozbi was from a different cultural background: God is such a racist bastard.  --

After God called off his bacteria that had been killing the Israelites he had a little chat with Moses: “Well, you’re sure lucky that Phinehas killed Zimri and Cozbi; otherwise I was going to completely wipe out the Hebrew race. Now you’re going to have to make war against the Midianites and wipe them off the face of the earth because it’s totally their fault I had to kill so many of my people using plague.”

When I read these stories, I can’t help but think it’s usually much better to not be part of God’s chosen people. It seems the more attention God gives you, the greater his need to fuck with you.

Ref: Numbers 25