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Just a short note to ask for your patience while I get a new, cleaner look to the place. The IT department here is a not quite technically savvy fellow, so let's give him some space. Thanks!

Exodus Pt. 7. A Few More Laws

 

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The Ten Commandments Was 

Just a Warm-up

Welcome back. Sorry if you've been anxiously waiting for the next installment, we're coming up on a whole bunch of material that, to be honest, I've found to be a bit of a slog. Also, I have a couple of other books I'm reading right now that are rather difficult to put down, and although I'm only about halfway through each of them I can recommend both.

• Gator Country, by Rebecca Renner, is at once a true crime tale and a personal examination of her beloved home state of Florida. The writing transports you to the wilds and the places that used to be even wilder, and introduces you to people who are very much of the land where they live.
• The Great Abolitionist, by Stephen Puleo, brings us the life of a truly remarkable man who should occupy a whole lot more space in our history books. Charles Sumner usually gets a brief mention as the victim of a brutal caning on the floor of Congress in the 1850's, but his life up to that point and then subsequent to that horrific act of violence perpetrated by a South Carolina representative name of Preston Reed, tells of a remarkable man who bravely, stubbornly, single-mindedly battled against slavery, the Original Sin of the United States of America. This story, in particular, is resonating with me as I come across reference after reference in the Old Testament to the accepted, seemingly Endorsed by God, practice of one person owning another. 

    And that leads us to Chapter 21, which immediately follows the Ten Commandments and the warning against climbing altar steps.

    The subtitle of Chapter 21 is..."The Law concerning Slaves", and I've got to tell you, it is disturbing, especially as these laws are supposed to have come directly from Ol' Yahweh his own darn self. Here's a sample, referring to the proper etiquette to follow when a Hebrew slave has served his seven years and is eligible for parole:

    4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's and he shall go alone.

    Which means that if a male slave gets married during his period of servitude, his family belongs to the "master" and the slave has to choose between his own freedom and keeping the family together. If he wants to stay with his wife and kids he gets his ear pierced with an awl and he's stuck as a slave for life. Nice.

    Another thing that comes to mind here is that these rules are aimed at the gentry in possession of Hebrew slaves, in other words persons who could very well be members of the same congregation as their masters and overlords. What about imported slaves, or slaves that have been raised in agnostic or Unitarian households? Does the seven year indenture not apply? Does anything go as far as disposition of spouses and offspring? I suppose we might find more slave related material later on, but for now this seems like pretty slim contract material. 

    Verses 7-11 deal with daughters being sold by their fathers and how things should be arranged if the purchaser either decides she's not quite what he had in mind, or he's going to pass her on to one of his sons. Somehow within these few verses, the female slave's title morphs into "wife", although this comes up in a passage about the rights she should retain if Dad Master or Son Master makes additions to the harem. For the umpteenth time, women are presented as mere possessions here in the Old Testament, quite the demotion from their original promised title of "partner" given in Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 18. If Eve had known what her sex was in for she may have decided to remain a rib.

    But let's move on.

    The chapter continues with "The Law concerning Violence". Here we get what seem to be a few random scenarios of someone whaling on somebody else followed by the consequences or lack of consequences deemed appropriate by God. There are a number of acts that, according to The Word of God, warrant the death penalty.

• Striking a person mortally.
• Unless it wasn't premeditated, then the perpetrator can flee to a place designated by God. Altars are mentioned, but there is no caution about going up the steps and the view accorded to those below.
• Striking ones father or mother.
• Kidnapping.
• Cursing ones father or mother. Yep, that'll get you the death penalty, so watch your mouth.
• When a slaveowner strikes a slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately.
• But if the slave lingers for a day or three before succumbing to his or her wounds, "there is no punishment: for the slave is the owner's property."

    We have some lesser punishments for other very specific scenarios.

• Striking a person with a stone or fist to the point that the victim is confined to bed results in no penalties outside of an obligation to pay for "loss of time, and to arrange for full recovery." This is, of course, dependent upon the victim recovering and being able to walk around outside "with the help of a staff."
• Anyone injuring a pregnant woman and causing a miscarriage is only liable for whatever financial compensation the woman's husband thinks is reasonable. If the attack on the woman results in injuries beyond miscarriage, then we get the famous "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe".
• And if a slave owner puts out the eye of a slave that slave gets to go free. Same deal if they knock out one of the slave's teeth. It is nice to see the humanity coming forward here, isn't it?

    No mentions about road rage or spousal abuse or schoolyard bullying or political assassination or mugging or...you get the picture, there are some gaps.

    Next we have a lot of rules about what happens when livestock are involved. Sometimes the punishment extends only to the beast in question, but sometimes the owner is held liable too. If you or your neighbors have any oxen inclined to mischief, I suggest you read up in Exodus, Chapter 21, verses 28-36, just in case. It just might save you from being stoned. The being pelted with rocks until you're dead kind of stoned, not the Cheech and Chong kind.

And that is all we have time for today. We need to do a Costco run and I need to get some guitar practice time in if I'm going to stand any chance of getting my fingertips nicely calloused.

*From our tour of the Louvre. If you know the name of the sculpture, please let me know. I just liked his enthusiasm.

    

Exodus Pt 6

 

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Sinai and The Ten Commandments

So I am in the middle of rereading--for the umpteenth time--Chapter 20, because of course that is where you can find The Ten Commandments, when an alert pops up on my phone about the verdict coming in soon in the Trial of He Who I'll Not Give The Satisfaction of Mentioning By Name. I have to say that any serious studying came to a temporary halt as I, along with darned near everyone else, waited for the news, wondering if in fact the law would somehow apply to someone who has managed to avoid any meaningful consequences his entire life. By golly, do you think it is any sort of coincidence that these thirty-four guilty verdicts came down at the very same time I was preparing this installment, the one that focuses close attention on the Basic Rules as Handed Down by God His Own Darn Self?

    I think not.

    Or maybe so.

    But that's not what we're here for, now is it?

    We're here for Exodus, Chapters 19 and 20, so let's get to it.

    After Moses' father-in-law Jethro heads back home to Midion--I think that's his home base, but I can't find it in my notes--the Israelites do some more desert wandering, and as we catch up with them at the beginning of Chapter 19, they have been trekking and checking their Rand McNally atlas for exactly three months and are currently camped out in front of Mount Sinai, trying to invent GPS, or SatNav, depending on which branch they happened to be on the Babel tree.

    Moses hears God call him to the top of the mountain, so he heads on up to see if maybe they can get a bit of variety in their diet, the fine and flaky mannon not being a tremendous hit with the toddlers, or those with IBS. God reminds Moses that he is the one who calls the meeting and establishes the agendas and what is on the slate now is what he sees as a real need to establish some basic rules and regulations concerning human behavior, which, from what we've seen so far seems to be a pretty good idea. He tells Moses he will present the specifics in three days, and in the meantime he wants everyone to wash their clothes and make sure not to get too close to the mountain, because if they do he'll have to kill them. So Moses tells the people to do laundry and "do not go near a woman", which isn't exactly the same as don't touch the mountain, but maybe he misheard God's instructions.

    On the morning of the third day all heck breaks loose around Mount Sinai. Billowing smoke, trumpets blaring, thunder and lightning, you name it. Moses tries to say something to God and God answers him back in thunder. A really impressive show for the people, who are all thinking this was definitely worth the trouble of washing their clothes, but maybe not yet sure about the three kanoodle-free nights. Maybe there will be fireworks.

    Moses goes up the mountain and God tells him, again, that if anybody else follows they will die. He likes his privacy. Moses says the people understand and they've all got clean robes on, and as far as he knows there hasn't been any hanky-panky, and God reminds him that last one was Moses' idea, not his, but he admires the initiative. He then says, you know what, Aaron can come up. Aaron's an okay guy. But that's it, none of those other priests. Anybody else comes up and there'll be trouble.

    And then God clears his throat, grabs the podium firmly on both sides, and, as Chapter 20 gets underway, "spoke all these words."

    No, I'm not going to give you all of the words. That's why you're getting your Bible info with me, because you want the abridged version. The section that follows is where The Ten Commandments appear, and surprisingly, at least to me, they are not presented in a bullet point format.

1. ...you shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make for yourself an idol. (There's more, with specifics about under water and such, but the part that caught my eye was this...) "for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments."
3. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God...
4. Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. (He goes on a bit, but that's the core.)
5. Honor your father and mother.
6. You shall not commit murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (by which I'm hoping the Hebrew for neighbor means everyone, but I'm not the scholar here.) And finally, this next one is kinda long but I am going to give it to you in it's entirety.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

    That number Ten is a bit of an eye opener, don't you think? Or maybe not so much, since we've already been presented with abundant evidence that women don't count for much as actual human beings in the Old Testament so far.

    

    Moses then goes down to the people and tells them it's all okay and that God just wanted to make sure they are afraid of him so they'll behave themselves.

    God then gives Moses instructions about the sort of altar he likes and also tells him not to go up the steps of any altar because them people might be able to look up his robe.

    And this concludes our time with the Ten Commandments. If you're into Rules and Regulations, stay with us, because before too long we're going to have several gazillion coming your way.

Be nice to each other, okay?

    

    

Exodus Pt 5

 

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Manna, Water, and the

Father-in-Law Chimes In

or

What is an Omer?

Welcome back. I hope you had a good holiday weekend and took time to remember what Memorial Day is all about. Now back to Moses and Aaron and the other million or so Israelites on their journey to the Land of Milk and Honey.

     When last we checked in with the travelers, at the end of Chapter 15, they were lounging around the oasis at Elim, enjoying all that a dozen springs and seventy palm trees could provide in the way of rest and refreshment. Chapter 16 finds them in the Wilderness of Sin (sounds ominous), which is located somewhere between Elim and Sinai, and once again everyone is getting anxious about provisions.

    Moses turns to God for guidance and God has a solution that, as always, has a catch or three attached. God will arrange for bread in the morning and meat in the evening, but the Israelites must make sure they only take what they need for one day and not stash any away for later, except on the sixth day when they should gather enough for two days, because on the seventh day they're not supposed to do any gathering as that should be set aside as a "day of solemn rest".

    Although God promises both bread and meat, most of the material presented is devoted to the bread, or as it came to be known, Manna. I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason the protein isn't mentioned more often in this familiar story is because, well, here's what it does say...

Verse 13: In the evening quails came up and covered the camp

    Share that with a Sunday School class of adolescent girls and the reaction is bound to be one of absolute horror. "They ate quail? But they mate for life and they're soooooo cute!!!"

    Back to the bread. Verses 13 and 14 continue with...

and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp.  14When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground.

    That fine flaky substance is, of course, what is destined to be the carb part of the Israelites complete and balanced diet for a good long time. But when it is first presented to them they have no idea what to do with it. Moses has to explain that it "is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat". In other words this manna from heaven shows up not as something fresh out of the oven, ready for a dab of butter and some berry preserves, but as an unfamiliar raw material to be scraped up off the ground and then worried into some sort of recognizably edible form. Kind of like the extreme cooking version of a technical challenge on the Great British Baking Show. While the people are standing around, eyeballing what must have looked like the grounds outside a King Arthur flour factory after an explosion, Moses also spells out God's Ration Card Plan. They will be allowed one omer of fine and flaky per person per day, except on the sixth day when two omers is the ration.

    There is no mention about any limitations on the number of quail to be served up each evening. For all we know it is simply "See what you can catch." Like Mrs. Lovett and the neighborhood cats.

    But at this point I just want to know what an omer is. So I keep reading, and sure enough, at the end of the chapter I get the answer.

36 An omer is a tenth of an ephah.

    Which should have satisfied me, but I found I was handicapped with a lack of knowledge concerning ephahs. And so...

    Today I have devoted my five minutes of research to the terms "omer" and "ephah". Here is what my five minutes rendered.

According to Wikipedia an omer is:

• A unit of dry measure also known as an isaron. Okay. Let's keep going.
• An omer is one tenth of a ephah. Already knew that from previous reading. However, it is nice to know that...
• An ephah is the same as 72 logs. Well, that doesn't really clear things up for me.
• A log is the same as a Sumerian mina. Good lord.
• A mina is 1/60th of a maris. I am beginning to think Wikipedia is not going to be my go-to source.
• Ah! an omer is the same as 12/100ths of a maris. No, that doesn't get me anywhere.
• But then we factor in the notion that a maris is the same in dry measurement as the quantity of water which is equal in weight to a light royal talent, or 8.0 US gallons, whichever comes first. And we're still in the dark about what size bucket the Israelites needed to haul their manna.
• But it does mean that an omer, which if you'll recall is what we're really interested in here, is the same as 0.98 US gallons. Now we're getting somewhere!
• Unless you look in the Jewish Study Bible of 2014, where it is 0.61 US gallons. That's a pretty big difference, percentage-wise.
• To sum it all up, Wikipedia also says that the Traditional Jewish definition of an omer is the equivalent of 43.2 chicken eggs.
• And my five minutes is up. An omer is an omer is an omer. Let's just leave it at that. Sometimes five minutes of research just makes things more confusing.

    Back to our story and the heck with the bothersomely vague details. The people are hungry, God arranges for regular deliveries of Bisquick and small poultry provided the people abide by his rules and regulations concerning gathering, consumption and storage.
There are attempts by some to circumvent the rules, which makes God angry, which makes Moses angry, which results in a stern warning to all involved. Everyone gets with the program and the march continues.

    In Verse 31 we do get an interesting additional bit of info about this manna. Just another one of those tangents we should be getting used to by now.

...it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.

    Which does make it sound more appealing than the "fine and flaky" description given earlier.

    And then we end the chapter with...

35 The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a habitable land; they ate manna, until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.  36 An omer is a tenth of an ephah.

    Think about that. Forty years wandering around, most likely in circles because why else would it take so long to travel something under four hundred miles? Maybe we'll find out later, because after Exodus we have three more books that, as far as I can tell, take place during this forty year span. I'm just stuck on the idea that for forty years those folks had a diet of nothing but coriander flatbread and quail. That may have something to do with their unimpressive pace.

    I know we already looked at verse 36, but I wanted to put it in context for you. As if that would help either of us.

    Let's move on to the next chapter, shall we?

    Chapter 17 is pretty short and deals with just a couple of unrelated incidents. In one, there is another water shortage and this time Moses solves it by making water come out of a rock. In the other, someone or some group (it's not made clear) called Amalek attacks the wanderers and Moses sends Joshua out to fight him/them. Moses, along with Aaron and a buddy by the name of Hur, is watching the fight from the top of a hill and he is obliged to hold his staff up high in order for Joshua to get some sort of home court advantage. That's what it says. Problem is, the staff gets a bit heavy after a while, and so Aaron and Hur come to the rescue by getting Moses a rock to sit on and they each grab a hand to help him keep the staff aloft, so it all turns out okay. We are, however, left with this rather troubling bit at the end of the chapter...

The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.

    Kinda makes a person curious to know more about this Amalek person/tribe/benevolent society, doesn't it? Should we be looking out for him in our own neighborhood?

    But now we turn in Chapter 18 to Jethro, father of Zipporah, father-in-law to Moses, grandfather to Gershom and Eliezer. Zipporah and the kids have been sent to live with grandpa while Moses is on his camping trip, but apparently the invitation isn't for an open ended sort of stay and Jethro shows up at the Israelite camp with daughter and grandsons in tow to deliver them back into Moses' care. While he is there, Jethro notices that everyone brings every concern, every grievance, every little complaint directly to Moses and it is beginning to wear the man down. So before he leaves, Jethro advises Moses to choose some reliable men, give them authority over not so major sorts of issues, and focus his attention on the Big Picture. Like why it's taking them forty years to cover a relatively modest amount of ground.

*A photo from our trip to Alaska way back in I forget what year.

A Short Note of Despair

Or, As Cervantes Said: Forewarned is Forearmed

I made the mistake of looking ahead in my reading, just to get an idea of what Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy have in store for me and...Holy Moses, but it does look like grim reading. Rules, rules, nothing but rules, with a bit of gratuitous violence thrown in here and there. I will have to figure out how best to approach these books because my initial response was "Get me out of here!" and that would be breaking my promise to myself and to you to forge ahead. 

I will say this: What a world it must have been back then for all of this to be considered necessary. As screwed up as the 21st century undoubtedly is, life back then must have been absolutely bonkers.

Anyway, we still have something like thirty-four chapters of Exodus to explore before we even get to Leviticus. You will be happy to know that most of those thirty-four chapters are filled with instructions on how to properly construct a tabernacle and all of its necessary components.

In the meantime, I hope both of my readers here have a lovely Memorial Day weekend. I will be taking the time off the blog in order to practice and then play "Taps" at 3:00 PM Monday out on the front porch as part of "Tap Across America". If you play an instrument, pick it up and join me.