An Atheist Explores the Bible Part Seventeen: Everyone has anger issues. Plus golden calves, stone tablets and God's back parts (Exodus 31-35)

Exodus 31-25

Everyone has anger issues. Plus golden calves, stone tablets and God's back parts.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Exodus 31

“And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.”

A short little chapter, this one. God appoints two craftsmen to oversee the construction of the ark and the tabernacle and all the other accoutrements – Bezaleel and Aholiab. There is then a reiteration about keeping the Sabbath, but, who, hold on. V. 14 “Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death”. That seems needlessly harsh. However, the verse continues:” for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.” So, are we talking actual death death here, or are we talking metaphorically dead to his people? Because I think that’s the kind of imprecision that could cause a lot of trouble you know.

Exodus 32

“And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.”

This is the chapter with the Golden Calf, where the Israelites get bored of waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain and demand of Aaron that he makes them some gods to worship. So he makes them a calf out of gold, and they sing and dance around it (possibly naked, it’s ambiguous whether they are naked for the worship or are stripped naked as punishment). Meanwhile, up on the mountain to, God sees this and his wrath waxes hot, and he threatens to destroy them all until Moses points out that he’s just gone to a lot of time and effort to save them from the Egyptians and maybe this isn’t such a good idea. So God relents, and Moses returns down the mountain where he sees what’s been going on and drops his stone tablets in shock.

Aaron, it must be said, gives a really sorry excuse which basically boils down to “They made me do it!”, then the Levites slaughter three thousand people and Moses has to go back up the mountain again where he gives a kind of “buck stops here” talk with God and blames himself for the behaviour of the people, but God tells him to carry on leading them but “plagues” them all the same.

I mean, once again, little harsh with the punishment?  I think it just might be.  Three thousand people slaughtered and unspecified plagues from God. Sheesh. I long for the old fun times with Jacob and his wacky scams.

I understand that this chapter may actually be a version of events involving a clash between worshipers of Yahweh and those of Baal, or Apis, or some other bull/fertility deity, I leave that as an exercise for the reader. I did find it interesting that a human basically has to persuade God to act with wisdom, mercy and patience.

Exodus 33

“And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the LORD talked with Moses.”

Oh, some terrible writing in this chapter. Really, really needed an edit. At the start we are back with God promising to Moses to lead the people into the promised land (of milk and honey), but he can’t appear amongst them because they are “a stiffnecked people”, and the people get upset and take off their ornaments. Then this is told again.

Moses goes into the tabernacle and God appears in a column of flame and talks to Moses, face to face, only not face to face as Moses would die of he saw God’s face. But Moses wants some kind of proof that God will lead his people (apart from, one assumes, the whole pillar of fire, laws engraved on a stone tablet (which YOU broke, Moses), voice on a mountaintop, plagues of Egypt, parting the Red Sea stuff). Yes, apart from that apparently. Moses wants to see God in all his glory, but God points out that this will be too much for him, but that he will show him part of his glory. More specifically his “back parts”. I am shaking my head right now. And sighing.

Exodus 34

“And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.”

Ha-ha! I was only joking around in my comments to the previous chapter about Moses breaking the stone tablets, but here God has a little passive-aggressive dig at him about it as well! The majority of those chapter re-iterates what we’ve already been told, as Moses goes back up Mount Sinai (that’s what, three or four times now?) and God dictates the covenant again, which is, broadly, I’ll give you all this land if you keep the Sabbath and make the right kinds of sacrifices. Oh, and don’t let those foreigners get you involved in their religion. There’s some great material for ranting street preacher types here, e.g. V 16 “And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods”. Just make sure you really put the emphasis on the word “whoring”, like you’re half-growling it.

Also, amusingly, God waxes lyrical about how merciful and gracious and longsuffering He is, but with the addendum that this doesn’t include the guilty. Ahem. Yes, well, this is the merciful and longsuffering God who cursed women to suffer and potentially die in childbirth FOREVER, drowned THE ENTIRE WORLD, destroyed mutual understanding because of a tower, destroyed al l of Sodom and Gomorrah, killed off thousands of innocent Egyptian children with a plague and only a couple of chapters ago was threatening to kill everyone AGAIN. Old Testament God has some serious anger management and self-awareness issues is all I’m saying.

Anyway, if that hasn’t stoked up a hornet’s nest of controversy, onwards. Moses returns after forty days and forty nights up his mountain, and his face is glowing with a kind of holy radiance. Or possibly sunburn from the high altitude. Once again the bad repetitive writing of this section haunts us as Moses does some kind of “now you see me, now you don’t” thing with a veil and it’s kind of hard to work out what’s going on.

Exodus 35

“And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the LORD'S offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all his service, and for the holy garments.”

Now this chapter, although it repeats what’s gone before, does so in a much more euphonious fashion, more in line with the kind of repetition of a folk tale. There’s a lovely meter to the text, which is basically a list of all the materials needed to build the tabernacle and all the other paraphernalia.

It starts with Moses listing all the things that are needed, and ordering all those who have faith to bring them, and then it follows with all the people bringing the stuff, and ends with Bezaleel and Aholiab being given the job of putting it all together. So yes, it’s a list of ingredients but it’s a poetic list of ingredients and for the first time in a few chapters it hasn’t made me annoyed with terrible phrasing. Maybe this was the starting point for a new translator.