Deuteronomy 9

It's the big day! The day the Israelites have been praying for for forty years. That's right, it's time to enter the Promised Land! Hot damn!

But first there's the pesky little problem of the people who already live there. Moses does his best Knute Rockne impersonation to pump up his team.

"Hear, O Israel, thou art to pass over Jordan this day," Moses says, "to go in to posses nations greater and mightier than thyself..."

"Um, coach?" asks an Israelite.

"...cities great and fenced up to heaven. A people great and tall, the children of the Anakims, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, 'Who can stand before the children of Anak!'"

"Um, Moses?"

"Understand therefore this day," Moses says, "that the Lord they God is He which goeth over before thee as a consuming fire he shall destroy them...so shalt he drive them out and destroy them quickly."

"Oh," the Israelite says. "So if God planned on killing everyone himself, why did he make such a big deal about the  Reubenites and Gadites not wanting to cross the River and fight?"

Moses is glad that someone spoke like an idiot; it gives him an excuse to tell everyone the real reason God is gifting them Canaan, and it ain't because the Israelites are sooooo special.

"Not for thy righteousness or for the uprightness of thine heart dost thou go to possess their land," Moses says, "but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee."

Take that you lousy good-for-nothing chosen people! You're only worthy of such primo real estate because the current inhabitants are completely morally debased! Moses then call the Israelites "stiffnecked," which, according to a cursory Google search, means "stubborn" or "unyielding"--not exactly the words I'd use to describe almost a million men, women, and children who have followed a dark cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night and who have eaten nothing but pigeons and sandy sky-bread for forty years.

Gullible. That's the word I'd use. Stupid, too.

To drive home the unworthiness of the Israelites, Moses again reminds everyone of all the terrible ways they have disappointed God over the decades--two words: golden calf--and recounts the begging and pleading and bowing and scraping he had to do to make God forgive everyone.

Man, that Moses is such a drama queen.  

This focus on how rebellious the Israelites have been makes me wonder: why they follow the Lord at all? If they rebel against God at every turn even though He is obviously in their lives, affecting their lives every day, giving them food, protecting them from their enemies, and, even now, about to lead an army and destroy untold number of people just so they can have a decent place to retire, why not just go all the way and either convert to another faith or discard religion altogether? They're more than halfway there already. Really, why do they even bother?

Exodus 33, 34

As Mo and Co. commence their search for the land of milk of honey and a solid Wi-Fi hotspot, God promises to get rid of all the clans that currently occupy the land ahead of the Israelites' arrival. From the looks of current events, He's not having much success on that front.

The merry band stops for a while and Moses pitches the tabernacle tent, which must take him all afternoon. Inside the tabernacle, Moses gets a visit from the smoky pillar and he begs the Lord to let him see His face. God defers, saying that like Medusa, anyone who looks directly upon His face would surely die. Moses insists; God says nope. They argue back and forth until God comes up with a brilliant compromise: If Moses crams himself in a rock cleft, then God will walk by, cover the cleft with His hand, and then remove His hand once he passes, giving Moses a clear view of His backside.

"How is that a compromise, exactly?" Moses asks.

“The compromise is that I don’t smite you for wanting to look upon me, Moses,” God says.

But before Moses can check out God's booty, the Big Man wants Moses to make a couple of stone tablets to replace the ones he threw at the golden calf and meet Him on Mount Sinai in the morning. That's where God decides to deliver to Moses a slightly different version of the Ten Commandments. These aren't the kind of commandment that trip easily off the tongue and look great illegally chiseled on a courthouse wall. They are, considering the wackiness that has occurred since the previous commandments were destroyed, concerned less about the social contract and more about jealousy, food, and oxen. Again with the oxen! I tell you, oxen must have some great agents to get such plum placements in the Bible.

So here's the lesser-known 10 Commandments Redux:

1. God is jealous, so don't worship any other god.

2. Don't make any molten gods. (I wonder what inspired that?)

3. Eat unleavened bread for six days.

4. Something to do with sacrificing the first born male ox and sheep, but when it comes to sacrificing the first-born ass just skip it and kill a lamb instead.

5. Don't work on the Sabbath.

6. Everyone should appear before the Lord three times a year.

7. Don't mix leaven with blood.

8. Don't leave the Passover sacrifice until the next day.

9. Offer to God the first fruits of the season.

10. Don't cook a kid--that's a baby lamb--in his mother's milk.

It took Moses 40 days and nights to scribble down these words, and you just know that when he was heading down the mountain he was thinking, "Those fuckers better have behaved themselves. I don't want to smash another perfectly fine if slightly less impressive Ten Commandments."

To his delight, Moses finds that the Israelites were able to hold it all together for a little over a month. But there is one problem. (It's the Bible folks, there's always gonna be a problem.) Seems that Moses' T zone is totally oily and his face is shining like greased up bodybuilder. You'd think that after traveling in the desert for years with each other--with no running water or toilets or deodorants or food that doesn't fall from the sky--oily skin would be the least of your worries. But Moses is so embarrassed that he wears a veil to cover the shine, which he only removes when communing with the lord. The Israelites huddle outside the closed-door meeting, and the only sound they can make out is God sniggering and snorting at Moses' slippery skin. "I can see my face in your skin," God taunts. "Too bad you're not allowed to see mine!"

Moses then tells his people all the wonderful things God has commanded them to do. The Israelites try to pay attention, they really do, but they are distracted by the sun reflecting off the oily sheen on Moses' face. Embarrassed, Moses immediately pulls down the veil. I know that his stuttering issue has made him overly sensitive, but really Moses, the veil is just drawing more attention to the skin thing, don't you think? Now everyone's imagination is going wild wondering what's wrong with Moses. Is he an Elephant Man? Does he have gin blossoms? An eyebrow ring? A face tattoo? Could be anything. They’re so busy talking they completely miss the recitation of the New Ten Commandments, which explains why no one was ever heard of them until now.

Exodus 30, 31, 32

Moses is running out of paper to write all of these instructions down, but God isn't done yet. He wants Moses to make something else: an altar for burning incense. I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say it's made of shittim wood and is--of course--slathered in gold. Aaron is to burn sweet incense--duh--in the incense altar whenever he meets with God in the tabernacle.

The children also have some work to do, because everyone over 20 owes half a shekel as "a ransom for his soul unto the Lord," which is to be used for the general upkeep of the tabernacle. That gold isn't going to buy itself, people. Every Israelite, rich or poor, owes the same amount, which really makes the ransom a regressive tax. No wonder conservatives love the Bible so much.

Moses also has to make a small basin out of brass for Aaron and his sons to wash their hands and feet in before entering the tabernacle. Then he has to concoct a smelly oil and basically go on an anointing jag, smearing the stuff on absolutely everything: the tabernacle, the ark, the table, the candlestick, the altar for the burnt offerings, Aaron himself and his sons. Moses might as well just fill a tub and flea dip everything in sight. It would be quicker.

But there's a catch: if anyone makes counterfeit oil or smears the OG oil on a stranger, he will be exiled forever. The punishment seems out of proportion to the crime, but hey, it's the Bible.

Moses also needs to make a perfume, which I assume will be spritzed inside the tabernacle to mask the stench of burned ram's horns and dyed badger skins that have been baking in the desert sun. And don't even think about spraying some on passersby in Macy's or you'll be exiled too.

But before Moses leaves the mountaintop, God gives him the Ten Commandments written on two stone tablets and reminds him of the most important commandment of all: keep holy the Sabbath. "If there's one takeaway from all of this, Moses, it's don't forget about me," God says. "Got it? I'm numero uno, right? Forget that and you're toast. Comprende?"

"You got it," Moses says. "Everyone knows that you're the boss. Who could ever forget that?"

Here's what Moses didn't know: while he was on the mountaintop for 40 days and nights, the Israelites were getting a tad antsy. Without their leader and his God around they went--bear with me; I'm going to get a bit technical here--"batshit crazy." They approached Aaron with their desire to simply create some new gods to fill the 40-day-long void they've been living through. Aaron, having served as the mouthpiece for Moses and the chief magician behind the plaques, and after having seen what God can do to those who oppose Him, loses his mind and thinks that this is an excellent idea.

Aaron commands the people to give him the jewelry they had "borrowed" from the Egyptians before they escaped to the desert, which he melts down and casts into a golden calf  for everyone to worship. He even builds it an altar for the idol. Wait until you see the expression on Aaron's face when he learns about all the awesome clothes he would've gotten to wear if he hadn't just royally pissed of the one true God!

God, as you may have learned from the countless times He's said how psychopathically jealous He is, is just a little miffed about the golden calf. Moses, amazingly, is able to talk God off the ledge, but when he himself sees the people dancing naked around the graven idol he throws the stone tablets at them and grinds the golden calf into a fine powder, pours water over it, and forces everyone to drink it, Jim Jones style.

Aaron, in a manner befitting most people when they get caught making graven idols, claims that he really had nothing at all to do with that thing, what is it? A calf? How did that get here? "Hey," Aaron says, looking a lot like Gilbert Gottfried, "you know the Israelites, am I right? They're up to mischief all the time! They gave me their gold and I threw it in the fire and it came out looking like a calf. Can you imagine such a thing?"

Moses, still peeved, stands by the gates of the camp and demands to know who among them is on the side of Lord. Only the sons of Levi step up. So Moses has really one choice, which is to have the sons of Levi kill three thousand people who worshipped the idol. Three thousand! He then goes back up the mountain--for a much shorter period, I'm sure--and begs God to forgive the people, and if He can't find it in Himself to forgive everyone then He should feel free to simply punish Moses for everyone's actions. Uncharacteristically, God declines Moses' kind offer of misplaced punishment and decides to just plague everyone who worshipped the idol instead. Not sure how many that is, considering that they were just murdered.

  

God finishes up by telling Moses to get back to what's left of the Israelites and continue following the angel of God through the desert, because it's totally going great so far.