Numbers 9, 10

God receives a Google alert telling Him that it's Passover, which, you may recall, is a holiday that celebrates the day God killed innocent children so that His favorite people could finally escape the clutches of the Pharaoh whose heart God hardened against the Israelites even though he really, really wanted to let the Israelites go a few plagues before all the children were killed. But you know, it's certainly no worse than celebrating Columbus Day.

As soon as Moses reminds everyone it's Passover, a couple of guys show up to say that they poked a dead body with a stick, which means they're unclean and unable to celebrate Passover. Uncharacteristically, God is cool with them celebrating anyway but takes pains to remind anyone who would rather go out with their friends to the movies instead of staying home with the family that if they miss Passover they will be banished from the camp and have their cell phone taken away for the week and won't be able to drive the Beemer for a month.

When Moses erects the tabernacle tent for Passover, a cloud descends over it. All day the tent is covered by a cloud; all night, it's sheathed in fire. God tells Moses that when the cloud moves the Israelites should follow it, and when the cloud stops, they should stop too. So that's what the Israelites do. Sometimes the cloud stays put for a day, sometimes a month, sometimes a year. Sometimes the cloud moves for days on end. The Israelites just follow right along.

During one of the long periods of either mind-numbing boredom or frantic wandering, the Lord gives Moses a little craft project: He wants Moses to make a two silver trumpets.

"Wouldn't it be better to make a GPS so we could find the Promised Land already?" Moses asks.

I'm not sure what kind of metal worker Moses is, but God wants each horn to be made of one solid piece of silver. Sounds difficult to me, especially with the rudimentary tools available in the desert. Maybe it would be a better idea for God to just make the trumpets himself and give them to Moses.

Regardless of who makes the horns, Aaron, not Moses, is in charge of blowing them. If Aaron blows both horns at once, that means everyone must congregate at the tabernacle. If he blows one horn, that means only the heads of the twelve tribes should come. Blowing an alarm call means the tribes on the east should move out, but two alarms means those on the south side should move out. Blowing an alarm is also the attack signal, so everyone has to really pay attention or a quarter of the camp might leave town just as the rest of the camp is being attacked.

Aaron should also blow the horn when he's glad, when he's sad, at the beginning of the month, and over burnt offerings. If he blows the horns correctly then God promises to forever save the Israelites from their enemies. I guess Aaron should have invested in some trumpet lessons.

God decides it's time to get a move on and marches His people through the wilderness for three days. All of their things have to be packed up, which I'm sure takes a while, and the chest containing the ark of the covenant is placed at the head of the procession. During the march, a man named Hobab decides he'd rather not go after all. Moses is astonished. Why wouldn't Hobab want to aimlessly follow a cloud through the desert?

"If thou go with us...that what goodness the Lord shall do unto us, the same will we do unto thee," Moses says to Hobab, trying to convince him to stay.

Hobab looks around at the hundreds of thousands of people marching through the desert, tired, sweaty, hungry, sand filling their shoes, dragging along animals used primarily as sacrifices even though everyone is hungry, and says, "Eh. How much longer can we continue to walk in the desert," and decides to stay.

Bad choice Hobab. Bad choice.