Yahweh’s Wonders – “Thunder bolt and lightning very very frightening me”

Why did Yahweh work so hard to impress Pharaoh if He was just going to use magic to make sure Pharaoh wasn’t impressed? Because He’s an exhibitionist.

When Moses and Aaron went to visit Pharaoh the second time, Aaron turned his staff into a snake to impress Pharaoh. Of course Pharaoh wasn’t impressed and called in his personal magicians who also turned their rods into snakes. Because Aaron’s snake was a Yahweh snake it was tougher than the average snake and ate all the magician’s snakes. Unfortunately for the slaves, Yahweh “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” to make sure he didn’t get all worried and let the slaves go.

The next day Yahweh told Moses to tell Aaron to touch the river water with his magic snake rod. This turned the river to blood and all the fish died. This was pretty impressive, but again Pharaoh’s magicians duplicated the feat and Yahweh did his heart hardening bit so the slaves had to stay.

The next trick was frogs. Moses told Aaron to summon about a bazillion frogs. These frogs got everywhere. They covered the entire country. Then, the magicians duplicated the feat and made things even worse! Finally Pharaoh got fed up and asked Moses and Aaron to ask Yahweh to get rid of the frogs, promising that as soon as the frogs were gone the Hebrew slaves would all be released. Once the frogs were gone though, Yahweh hardened Pharaoh’s heart and the slaves had to stay.

They repeated this exact pattern for lice, and then for flies. After Pharaoh reversed his promise for the flies Moses and Aaron started to sing the part they knew of Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, because who doesn’t love that song, I mean really? Even more surprising was the fact that Pharaoh joined in.

Moses: But I'm just a poor boy and nobody loves me.
Aaron: He's just a poor boy from a poor family, spare him his life from this monstrosity.
Moses: Easy come easy go will you let me go?
Pharaoh: Bismillah no we will not let you go.

Aaron: Let him go.
Pharaoh: Bismillah no we will not let you go.

Aaron: Let him go.
Pharaoh: Bismillah no we will not let you go.

Moses: Let me go.
Pharaoh: Will not let you go.

Moses: Let me go.

Pharaoh: Never! Never let you go.

Moses: Let me go, never let me go ooo. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh mama mia, mama mia, mama mia let me go. Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me - for me - for me



Queen: Greatest Hits



While you would think performing Queen’s music a cappella would solve any property dispute, not even such joyful sounds could overcome Yahweh’s persistent hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. Even after Aaron and Moses killed all the Egyptian cattle, gave the Egyptians boils, made fire rain down from heaven, caused a plague of locusts, and made everything dark for three days, Pharaoh just couldn’t shake that heart hardening. Oh well.

Moral: no amount of singing or magic can overcome a hard heart once Yahweh gets involved.

Ref: Exodus 7 - 10

King David Numbers the People of God – Jehovah is an asshole

I don’t understand how I used to read these and think they were OK

One day Jehovah was angry with the Israeli people. Of course this happened really frequently but this time was special because Jehovah was feeling particularly dickish and wanted to make sure another of His abhorrent acts was documented. To this end He went to have a chat with King David. Jehovah said, “I command you to obtain a proper count of the people of Israel and Judah.” This seemed really reasonable to King David because he knew that Moses had once obtained a similar count as reported in Numbers Chapter One.

So King David did as he was commanded and told the supreme commander of the Israeli forces (Joab) to obtain a count. Joab thought this was a little crazy and said, “Ok, I’m sure Jehovah will increase the number of your people 100 times and I pray you live to see it, but I don’t get why you insist on counting them.” Of course Joab’s concern was ignored and the people were counted. This count took nine months and twenty days. At the end of this time Joab reported that King Davids army of fighting men numbered 1,300,000.

After David received the final count his heart told him he had sinned by doing as the Lord commanded. Jehovah then told his Prophet Gad to have a chat with David. Gad went straight to the King’s palace and said to David, “Ok, here’s the deal. God is mad at Israel because you did as He commanded. Because you are the King, God says you get to choose the punishment. There will be seven years of famine, you must flee from your enemies for three months, or there will be three days of pestilence.

King David didn’t care for the idea of running from anyone so he said, “Ok then. Let’s go with one of the god-sent things. Either of those will be just fine, just make sure that I don’t end up having to flee from mere mortals.” This was just what Jehovah wanted when he commanded David to number the people, and He immediately sent a disease-carrying angel. After the disease killed 70,000 men in the countryside the angel started toward Jerusalem. Before it got there though Jehovah decided He wasn’t really all that mad anymore and told the angel to stop killing people.

Because Jehovah didn’t want anyone to think he was going soft he gave King David a really complicated set of instructions to stop the plague. First, David had to buy Arunah the Jebusite’s threshing floor. Then, David had to build an altar to the Lord there. Finally, David was to make burnt offerings and peace offerings. Once this was finished, Jehovah officially stopped killing people.

Moral: Don’t forget to NEVER, EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES trust the Christian God. He is a total prick that will command you to do something and then kill a whole bunch of innocent people if you do as you are told and kill you if you disobey.

Ref: 2 Samuel 24

Jehovah Delivers Quail – When Jehovah does quail, He REALLY does quail

Please don’t tell me you actually expected this story to have a happy ending

After the Israelites left Egypt they wandered in the wilderness for a really long time. While they were out there Jehovah gave them magic food every night called manna. This manna stuff would just show up on the ground and the Israelites would gather it up every morning. Now, manna is pretty great but if you never, ever, eat anything else it gets pretty old.

Eventually the Israelites started to complain that they wanted meat to eat. They didn’t just stop there though. They went really nuts and actually said, “We miss the awesome food we used to get in Egypt. There were cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. It was so great.” As you might imagine, Jehovah heard his people bitching about the food and got all kinds of crazy upset. Hopefully you’ve learned by now that you wouldn’t like Jehovah when he’s angry. He has a tendency to Hulk Smash™ things.

For whatever reason with the meat deal Jehovah briefly broke character and didn’t just kills tons of people outright. Instead he told Moses, “Alright then. If those whiny bitches want meat I’ll give them meat. I’ll give them so much meat for the next month that it will come out their noses. They’re going to hate meat so much they really will wish they were dead.”

Moses thought that sounded crazy and said, “Really? Look Jehovah; I have over 600,000 people here. Just how do you think you’re going to get that much meat? What, are you going to completely empty the ocean or something?” Jehovah was pretty tolerant of Moses’ sass for some reason and just replied, “What, do you think I’m becoming less powerful or something? Just wait and see if I can deliver or not.”

Of course Jehovah did deliver. That night he caused a magic wind to deliver quail. Not just a few quail of course. He lay down a layer of quail three feet thick for a day’s journey in every direction. For two days the people gathered quail and then got down to the business of eating them. Now this is where Jehovah went back to being good old Mr. Reliable. While the people were eating the quail Jehovah slapped them with a deadly plague as punishment for complaining.

Moral: the ancient Israelites were retarded. I mean; how many whiners does Jehovah have to annihilate before you figure out that complaining just gets you killed?

Ref: Numbers 11

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