God Convinces Moses to Help – Moses Part IV

Why is it that bible readers think “burning bush” means ‘flaming shrubbery’ instead of ‘giant mass of pubic hair, concealing an inflamed vagina, sore from the burning pain of syphilis or gonorrhea?’

After Moses made a baby with Zipporah, Egypt’s Pharaoh died and Yahweh FINALLY noticed the Hebrews were upset about the situation HE had landed them in by executing HIS seven-year drought plan; miraculously HE also remembered HIS promise to take care of Abraham’s descendants at the same time. Yahweh decided to use Moses as a tool to free the Hebrews from the Egyptians and transport them to Palestine where they could completely wipe out the Palestinian peoples.

To get Moses’ attention, Yahweh turned Himself into a bush and started to shoot out flame. This was an amazing sight to Moses who abandoned his flock of sheep to investigate. Moses needed to see how flame could be coming from the bush and the bush itself did not burn. Once Moses got close, Yahweh spoke out from the center of the bush. He said, “Hey, I noticed the Hebrews are upset about their current situation. I’m a magic bush and will use that magic to bring them to Palestine so they can wipe out the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Pertizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. It’s a great place and once all the current inhabitants are dead the descendants of Abraham will be a great people without peer.”

While Moses was clearly impressed by the bush trick, he didn’t think he was the man for the job. The burning bush taught Moses a cool trick he could use to turn his staff into a snake, but Moses still wasn’t convinced because he had a bad stutter. Then the burning bush got really mad and started to shout. It yelled, “Who made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?” While Moses was thinking this over, the bush said, “Look, you have a brother in Egypt. His name is Aaron. He’s good at public speaking so you can tell him what to say and he’ll do it; and don’t even bring up your problem with the law. Everybody that knew you were a murderer is dead now and they don’t keep good records over there. Seriously; don’t sweat it, you’ll be just fine.”

There was a catch however; that damn flaming bush told Moses it wouldn’t be easy to free the slaves. Moses was going to perform all sorts of wonders to convince the new Pharaoh to release the slaves, but the bush was going to make damn sure that Pharaoh would not release them until after the bush murdered Pharaoh’s son.

Moses got permission from his father-in-law to head down to Egypt and take his wife Zipporah and their son Gershom. Of course on the way to Egypt Yahweh tried to kill Moses in an inn and Zipporah used genital mutilation to scare Him off and everything turned out alright; but that’s another story.

Moral: if the bush is a burnin’ it must be a true bush. You should totally trust it. Also, Yahweh likes to kill people who stay at inns.

Ref: Exodus 3:1 – 4:26

Jews vs Arabs – The fight begins

This one is Truly Educational

After Abram (Abraham) sold his wife Sarai to Pharaoh and got kicked out of Egypt he moved back to the land God gave him for his posterity: modern day Israel. For 10 years his wife Sarai (Pharaoh gave her back when he make Abram leave Egypt) tried to get pregnant but it just wasn’t working out.

If you remember, part of the sale price for Sarai was a bunch of Egyptian slaves. Sarai was using one of these slaves as a personal maid and because she felt bad about not being able to get pregnant she gave her slave Hagar to Abraham so they could make babies. Hagar got pregnant pretty easy and this made Sarai MAD. Sarai beat the shit out of Hagar for getting pregnant and Hagar ran away.

Well, this didn’t work for God who wanted his chosen guy to have lots of babies so he sent an angel to sort things out. The angel found Hagar off by herself and told her she had to go back and just let Sarai keep beating her up as long as necessary so she could give Abram the kid. The angel also told her she had to name the kid Ishmael. Hagar was really used to doing what she was told so went back to Sarai and Abram. She eventually had the kid and like a good girl named him Ishmael (It’s important here to remember that God promised the “Holy Land” to Abraham’s posterity).

The next major event is that God comes down and tell Abram that he has to change his name to Abraham and Sarai has to change her name to Sarah. God tells Abraham that his descendents will be the covenant people of God and God will always like them best. Furthermore, from then on all the males have to have their foreskins removed when they are eight days old as their part of the covenant. A long as they keep cutting off their foreskins God will be good to them. If they don’t chop off the foreskin, God won’t like them anymore. God also mentioned that Sarah was going to have a son.

They have this huge circumcision party where all the family and the slaves do their part for God.

This is pretty unbelievable but after the party Abraham moves his people to a new location and Abraham pulls the “Sarah is my sister” trick again and Abimelech the local king marries her. This is just a little odd because by this time Sarah is 90 years old. In any case, after the wedding God has a little chat with Abimelech explaining the situation. Abimelech does some quick talking and gets God to agree to not kill all his people if he gives back Sarah and pays off Abraham. Once again Abraham makes out like a bandit with tons more animals and slaves and God doesn’t kill Abimelech’s people.

Then Sarah actually does have a son and they name him Isaac. Well, now that Sarah has her own son she doesn’t want Hagar’s kid hanging around anymore so she tells Abraham to get rid of her. Abraham isn’t too keen on the idea of getting rid of his son but God tells him it’s ok so he gaves Hagar a bottle of water, a loaf and bread, and sends her off into the desert with her son.

The reason this is SUCH a problem is that God promised Canaan (Israel, Gaza, West Bank) to Abraham’s descendents. Because Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away he then had two separate groups of descendents. The Jews are convinced they own the region through Sarah and Isaac. The Arabs are convinced they own the region through Hagar and Ishmael. Because the deed to the land comes from God both groups are unwilling to change their position and are going to just keep on killing each other. Yay. Nice move God.

Secret to bliblical success: 1. get married 2. sell wife 3. have God kill people 4. get wife back 5. repeat steps 2-4

Note:  The more traditional viewpoint of Islam is that they are supposed to share because they are all Abraham's decendants. The more traditional viewpoint of Judeaism is that the Arabs get none of it because Abraham sent away Ishmael. Over time the view of the Islamic world has been shifting toward a more radical solution: genocide.

What's interesting to me is that both groups can't even consider the idea that the biblical account of Abraham's family may not be entirely accurate. In fact, I'm pretty sure the Arabs had no idea they were decended from Ishmael until after Muhammad, about 1400 years ago. Also, there is absolutely zero evidence outside of the biblical and Quranic accounts that any of the Abrahamic tradition is true.

Ref: Genesis 16-17 and Genesis 20-21

David and the Foreskins – A tale of inappropriate touching

Just like history class, but shorter

King David’s life is pretty thoroughly chronicled in the bible, from before he killed Goliath by throwing a rock at him, to his death. This tale takes place after the rock-throwing incident but before David becomes King.

At this time David is a war leader of the Israelites and works for King Saul. His main job is to kill Philistines. Because David is super sexy and extra good at killing people the Israeli people really like him. They like him more than the king which is a problem because King Saul doesn’t like competition. So God sends an evil spirit upon Saul who then throws a couple of javelins at David trying to not only kill him, but also pin him to the wall. Well, David dodges the javelins and this really freaks out Saul who figures this could only happen if God had decided to no longer like Saul, but like David instead. So naturally Saul moved David out of the palace and made him the captain of a fighting force of 1000 men.

The obvious solution is that David must die now, since God likes him. Saul had already figured out he couldn’t kill David so he tried to foist it off on the Philistines. Saul told David he could marry his daughter Merab (Saul’s daughter, not David’s) if he would just fight some more against the Philistines, figuring that eventually David would die. Well, this didn’t work. David didn’t die. To get even with David for not dying, Saul married off his daughter Merab to someone else.

Saul’s next move was to tell David he could marry a different daughter, Michal. Well David was pretty sure he didn’t have enough money to buy one of the King’s daughters but that was ok. You see, the King’s messengers told David all he would need to do was bring the king 100 Philistine foreskins. Saul was sure this would get David killed and he could go back to being God’s favorite.

I don’t know what the hell was wrong with Saul. He must have forgotten about David’s 1000 fighting men. Anyway, they pretty easily went over to Philistine, killed 200 men and cut off their foreskins. David took the foreskins and gave them to Saul who then gave David his daughter Michal in trade as promised.

Now this story proves how cool David was. You see, when someone asks David for 100 foreskins, he brings them 200. Go foreskins!

Ref: 1 Samuel 18

Moses’ Wife Saves the Day – Even God doesn’t let angry women with sharp rocks near his junk

I'm Extracting the Gems

So Moses is living as a shepherd in Midean, and one day God shows up and tells Moses he has to get over to Egypt and convince Pharaoh to let the Israelites move away. Moses isn’t cool with this at first because he is convinced that Pharaoh is WAY tougher than God; also, Moses is on the run from the Egyptian police who are after him on charges of aggravated assault and homicide.

God spends some time convincing Moses that He is actually tougher than Pharaoh and reassures Moses than due to an unusually high turnover rate in the Egyptian police department, nobody works there anymore that remembers Moses’ criminal past. So Moses goes and asks his father-in-law (Jethro) permission to head over to Egypt so he can do what the magic voice tells him.

Jethro says it’s ok, so Moses takes his wife (Zipporah) and son and they head off toward Egypt. On the way they stop at an inn and for some reason that I don’t understand, God meets Moses at the inn and tries to kill him. Zipporah notices that God is trying to kill Moses, so she grabs a sharp rock and cuts the foreskin off her son’s penis (like you do when God tries to kill your husband). Zipporah throws the foreskin on the ground by Moses’ feet and says, “Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.”

God is pretty busy trying to kill Moses but he still manages to notice there is a genital mutilation party going down in the inn, and books it straight out of there before Zipporah gets any more ideas. Once God is safely out of the picture, Zipporah apologizes to Moses for calling him a bloody husband and explains it was because she had to use a rock to cut up her son’s penis.

Hurray for Zipporah who managed to stop God from killing her husband so he was still able to do God’s chores.

Ref: Exodus 4:1-26