Yahweh: Baby Killer - Moses Part VII

If you kill enough babies, you can accomplish anything.

Once Yahweh finished showing off his cool plagues he finally got down to business. He had Moses have Aaron tell all the Israelites to steal (borrow without intent to return) a whole bunch of jewels, gold, and silver from their Egyptian neighbors. Once the Hebrews got their hands on all the riches they could gather/steal, they had to kill a whole bunch of baby sheep and paint the door frames of all the Hebrews. Then they had a big party and ate a whole bunch of lamb and unleavened bread.

That night Yahweh wandered around killing the firstborn of every household that didn’t have a bloody door frame. Of course I’m not sure if Yahweh couldn’t tell the difference between Hebrews and Egyptians, or He just really wanted blood all over the place, you know, for decoration and stuff. In any case, because Yahweh is a god, He was able to visit several hundred thousand households and kill all sorts of kids. He also got all the firstborn cattle.

Once the Egyptians noticed all the death, including Pharaoh’s heir, Pharaoh had Moses and Aaron pulled out of their beds and taken to his palace. He told them to take the Hebrew slaves and leave the country before all the Egyptians ended up dead. Of course this was what the Hebrews had been waiting for, so they took all the riches they looted from the Egyptians and booked it out of there. As far as I know, they are the only foreign group to ever live in Egypt for 430 years and eventually outnumber the ‘native’ population without leaving a single shred of evidence for future scholars to discover. Once you start to work with Yahweh, everything becomes miraculous.

Moral: when it comes to baby killing, sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands: if you’re a god.

Ref: Exodus 11 - 12

Note: I would really like someone to explain to me how the Egyptians and Hebrews lived side by side for 430 years without losing any of their racial identity if they started to mingle soon after the first Hebrew arrived (Genesis 41:45). The original Hebrew population in Egypt was only seventy individuals, many of whom were already 50% Egyptian by their mothers. You think that in 430 years seventy people grew to 600,000 adult men (Exodus 12:37) and probably 900,000 women and children without any additional Egyptian contributions?

The current rate of population growth requires modern medicine and super progressive agricultural techniques. It is higher than the population growth 4,000 years ago. If we assume the 70 original super baby-hungry Hebrews managed today’s rate of global population growth, they would have numbered 7,730 individuals after 430 years if they had not mixed with the Egyptians. For them to arrive at a final exodus population of 1,400,000 ‘Hebrews’ they must have been genetically 99.5% Egyptian.

Of course the Hebrews could have done it easily if they managed to equal the highest population growth rate ever observed anywhere on the planet at a time when the annual world population growth was close to zero. I have a hard time believing they could achieve near 0% infant mortality, close to zero losses due to childhood illnesses and produce enough much food to sustain growth if they spent most of their day making bricks and didn’t have modern irrigation, farm equipment, or health care.

Good thing that with God, all things are possible.

The Hebrews in Egypt – Moses Part I

Apparently Hebrews are a lot like rabbits.

After Joseph of the Technicolor Dream Coat relocated his extended family to Egypt they were super rich and multiplied like crazy. However, as the centuries came and went they lost their ties to the royal family and their protected status. Then they were just numerous, prosperous, and not Egyptian. After the Hebrews started to outnumber the Egyptians, Pharaoh decided he was concerned the Hebrews would side with an invading enemy and things would go poorly for Egypt. To solve this, all the Hebrews were pressed into government service and assigned taskmasters. Now, I’m obviously missing something here because I’m not sure how forced labor was going to keep the Hebrews from fighting against the government. Apparently nobody in Egypt watched the 1960 film Spartacus. If they had, I’m sure they would have realized that maintaining a slave class to perform all the manual labor leads accomplished gladiators named Kirk Douglas to lead slave uprisings.



Kirk Douglas as Spartacus

Pressing the Hebrews into slavery didn’t help Pharaoh feel any better. He noticed that the worse the Hebrews were treated, the more babies they had. I don’t know why he was surprised. If you take all electronic devices and reading material away and force people to stay indoors after dark; suddenly there is nothing to do in the evenings but have sex.

To solve the population growth problem, Pharaoh told all the Hebrew midwives to kill the baby boys right as they were being born. This was a really, really stupid idea for a couple of reasons. First: in a society that practices polygamy the men aren’t the limiting factor for population growth, the women are. I’m sure there were plenty of Hebrew men who were really excited by the prospect of surplus young women. Second: the Hebrew midwives didn’t want to kill the Hebrew babies. It didn’t take long for Pharaoh to notice the number of baby boys didn’t decrease, so he called in the Hebrew midwives and demanded to know why the babies weren’t being killed. The midwives were clever and came up with a clever lie. They said, “Well, the Hebrew women deliver really fast. By the time someone manages to summon a midwife, the baby has already been born.”

Finally Pharaoh came up with a sound plan to kill the babies. He charged all the citizens of Egypt with the responsibility of throwing baby Hebrew boys into the river. That worked a little better than birth canal abortions and represented significant progress toward achieving Pharaoh’s dream of seeing fewer Hebrew boys.

Moral: Pharaoh didn’t understand how babies are made.

Ref: Exodus 1

Note: wouldn’t it be nifty if there was any physical evidence that Egypt ever had a huge workforce made up of slaves?

Saul Doesn’t Kill All The Animals – It’s the same as witchcraft

You know, because what God says really isn’t all that important anyway

In the first book of Samuel chapter 15, Jehovah told King Saul that he needed to take his army down to Amalek and kill all the men, women, children, babies, oxen, sheep, camels, and asses (1 Samuel 15:3). Saul was very happy to help Jehovah lay down a little more genocide so he gathered together 210,000 fighting men and headed to Amalek. The Hebrew army handily dispatched the Amalekian army and killed all the women, children, and babies before moving on to the livestock.

Here’s the thing though: Saul’s army didn’t kill ALL the animals. The very most healthy and beautiful ones were kept alive so they could be sacrificed to Jehovah. The silly Hebrews figured that since Jehovah was always telling people to kill super attractive animals on stone altars and burn their blood He would like some Amalekian animal blood too. They also took the King of Amalek captive instead of killing him. Jehovah immediately noticed that Saul didn’t do what he was told so He sent his prophet Samuel to have a chat with Saul.

Samuel showed up at the Hebrew army camp and Saul rushed over to tell him how wonderfully the genocide went, praise the lord, and all that. Samuel looked around and said, “Um, so what’s with all the sheep and oxen then?” Saul very patiently explained how after the army finished killing the babies, they were super happy and wanted to kill some of the pretty animals and feed Jehovah the blood. You know, to repay Jehovah’s kindness in letting them kill all those babies.

Samuel was clearly annoyed that Saul didn’t even seem to understand how he failed to do what Jehovah wanted. Samuel carefully controlled himself and said, “Saul, do you really think Jehovah would rather have burnt animal blood than have people do what He says? Listen stupid, Jehovah ALWAYS wants obedience first. If you don’t do exactly what Jehovah says you are guilty of rebellion against God, which is exactly the same bad as being a witch!”

Saul didn’t like the sound of that and said, “Oh no! I have sinned! Please forgive me so I can return to the worship of my god.” Of course that was too little too late and Samuel simple said, “Because you rejected your God’s will, you have now been rejected from being king!” Then Samuel demanded to see the king of Amalek and cut him up into little pieces.

Saul and Samuel never saw each other after that, and Jehovah said He was sorry He ever made Saul king.

Moral: if you don’t kill ALL the animals, you’ll make God regret giving you the responsibility to commit genocide.

Ref: 1 Samuel 15