Deuteronomy 10

Moses is like that balding middle-aged former high school baseballer sitting at the local bar regaling the old timers with stories of the year the team won the pennant. The more you listen to him the more you realize that he peaked in senior year.

Wow, I just realized that Moses is the main character in Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days."

But instead of recounting the Big Game for the umpteenth time, Moses retells the story of Making the Ark. It's in Exodus somewhere. Find it there if you really want to read about it again. Long story short: Moses should have measured twice and cut once.

Sometime after that Aaron died, then the Levites were allowed to carry the ark around the desert on sticks made of shittim. You know, this has already been covered.

But what hasn't been covered is this: the Wikipedia entry for the Levites includes a list of the notable descendents of the original clan, a list that includes Maroon 5 singer and The Voice judge Adam Levine. In fact, he appears in a cluster of photos with Levite luminaries Moses, Aaron, Samuel, Yitzhaq ben Amram, and Yitzhaq ben Horowitz. I don't who those last two guys are either, but I bet they're significantly more accomplished Jewish-wise than Adam Levine is.

Moses reminds the Israelites to mutilate the genitals of newborn boys as a way to demonstrate their covenant with the Lord. It's a small price to pay for the God who made the Israelites as numerous as the stars in the sky.

Now according to Wikipedia--again! I know!--there are between 13 and 15 million Jews in the world. (The disparity in figures stems from the controversy over who can rightfully be considered Jewish.) This site claims that the most stars one could count in a dark night sky is 2,000. So technically, Moses' statement is true.

But that's only because Moses had no real understanding of the universe. This site estimates that there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone. Considering there may be more than 125 billion galaxies, you can see that Moses was off by a trillion stars or so. But why would God know that? He only made the entire universe.

Oh, right.

Numbers 34, 35

God must be feeling pretty good about His chances for defeating the Canaanites because He carves up the land before the battle has begun. Now that's chutzpah!

So with that, God declares that the southern boundary of Canaan runs from from the Dead Sea to south of Scorpion Pass, then on to Zin and south of Kadesh Barnea. It continues to Hazar Addar, then on to Azmon, where it joins the Wadi of Egypt. It terminates at the Mediterranean Sea.

The western boundary is the Mediterranean Sea.

The northern boundary runs from the Mediterranean Sea to Mount Hor and continues on to Lebo Hamath, Zedad, and Ziphron, ending at Hazar Enan.

The eastern boundary snakes from Hazar Enan to Shepham. From there it continues on to Riblah, on the east side of Ain, and down to the slopes east of the Sea of Galilee, and across the bank of the Jordan, finally terminating at the Dead Sea.

God then appoints Eleazar and Joshua to divide the land among the nine and a half tribes--evidently two and a half tribes claimed land on the east side of Jordan last chapter, not just two; must have missed that--with input from one member of each of the tribes. Bible-history.com depicts the map like this:

So that's settled, right? God has spoken so everybody's cool with this? It would be preposterous to argue with something so plainly rendered. Anyone who disagrees should speak up now while the floor is open to public comments. No one? We're all good? Excellent. The matter is resolved for all time. Let's move on.

Now that the overall geography has been nailed down, God carves out 48 towns for the Levites to live in, divided proportionately to the size of the each tribe's land; in other words, the larger the individual tribe’s land, the more Levite towns will be founded there. (The Levites, you may recall, are the caretakers of the tabernacle and cannot own any land. One assumes they will rent in the cities.) God also stipulates that each town be surrounded on four sides by pastureland extending from the town a total of 3,000 cubits, which works out to be about 800 acres. But I'm not so good at math; suffice to say, it's seems like a decent amount of land.

Six of the towns are designated as refuges for someone who has killed another person accidentally. Gotta have that, especially these days when it's so difficult not to accidentally kill someone. That happens all the time. The refuges exist to protect the accused from angry mobs, so that the accused may live to stand trial. That's pretty cool.

But those who kill purposefully aren't so lucky. They are put to death without trial. The lesson here is if you ever find yourself accused of murder, it's best to claim it was an accident.

And here's an odd twist: if the accidental killer leaves his city of refuge before being judged, the "avenger of blood"--presumably the one who was most wronged by the death--is allowed to kill him without himself being labeled a murderer. Given the options, house arrest isn't looking so bad.

Also, a murderer can only be convicted under the testimony of two witnesses, not just one. Hear that Law & Order: SVU?

After all that, the important thing to understand is that any bloodshed pollutes the land. The really important thing to understand is that the land can only be made clean again by the blood of the one who shed the blood in the first place.

So the cycle of violence continues.