Numbers

This book in the Bible holds a lot of significance to me.  As I read through the Bible for the first time many years ago, I still hadn't lost all of my faith yet.  However, this is the book that sealed the deal.  I closed my book in tears and ended up putting the Bible down for about six months because I was so disgusted and heartbroken with it, and refused to be involved with this religion.  So I would like to approach this book with a level of sobriety and austerity to effectively portray this book and my reactions as accurately as I can.  I would also like to deviate from my habit of disproving and debunking for the sole purpose of demonstrating the Bible's depiction of who and what God really is.   Perhaps you'll come to a different conclusion.  Let's press forward.

The Calm Before The Storm

In the beginning of Numbers, God tells Moses to take a census of all the fighting men that were able to serve in the army, totaling out to 603,550 Israelites.  There were also some separation between the tribes depending on their tasks God has designated for them; for example, God wanted the Levites responsible for the care of the tabernacle of the Testimony, and anyone else that came near it other than the Levites were to be put to death.  There are special vows to be taken and more animal slaughter to consecrate yourself to God and making absolutely sure the camp is pure.  Basically, God is buckling down and keeping his poop in a loop hard core, so you know something is up.

God has a funny habit of adding in random issues that don't exactly fit among the rest of the situation.  This particular funny situation is about unfaithful wives.  Basically, if a husband has a suspicion that his wife is cheating on him, she is to go before a priest and drink this "bitter water" that the priest puts a curse on.  The curse states that:

If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse, it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell and her thigh waste away, and she will become accursed among her people.  If, however, the woman has not defiled herself and is free from impurity, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.  (5:27&28)

Let's think about that.  The priest gives the woman some "bitter water" to drink, and if she's guilty she'll become infertile and sick.  Gee, that doesn't sound like poison and a set-up for failure at all.

On top of that, they definitely didn't forget the details on how to handle the opposite end of the spectrum.  Anyone ever hear the rumors of how the Bible is sexist?

The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.  (5:31)

Another interesting tidbit is something that God mentions for the first time.  He says,

Also at your times of rejoicing - your appointed feasts and New Moon festivals - you are to sound the trumpets over your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, and they will be a memorial for you before your God.  I am the Lord your God.  (10:10)

Okay, we know the appointed feasts: the Feast of Unleavened Bread,  Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year.  But what the hell is a New Moon festival?  Like we're just supposed to know this, right?  Well, I've dug up a little bit of research on what this could possibly be, but nothing that I've found is certain.

• The New Moon festival is a memorial of God's creation of the heavenly bodies, and keeps people in remembrance of his calender month by month.  [1]
• The New Moon festival is a symbolic festival celebrating how God works and operates according to patterns and cycles.  [2]
• The New Moon festival is a Jewish festival that celebrates the start of the Hebrew month by preserving the ancient custom of reciting a blessing on the Sabbath preceding the new moon, in which fasting and mourning are not allowed.  [3]
• The New Moon festival is a celebration among many neopagan religions with a variety of different symbolic meanings attributed to a vast number of ancient pagan beliefs.  One of the more common beliefs is that of the Triple Goddess; Maiden, Mother, and Crone, attributed to the phases of the moon.  [4]

The Terrors of God

 Here's where some of the horrific incidents begin to occur.  In the beginning of chapter 11 it says,

Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord, and when he heard them his anger aroused.  Then fire from the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.

Shortly after, the Israelites became hungry and the manna (bread) that God rained down tasted disgusting and they couldn't eat it.  They began crying to Moses, and God started getting pissed.  Moses was irritated because he felt that God wasn't helping him out at all.  He said,

I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me.  If this is how you are going to treat me, put me to death right now.  (11:14&15)

So God felt bad for Moses and decided to help him out by appointing a handful of elders to lighten Moses' burden a bit.  Furthermore, God decided to help Moses by sending in a bunch of quail to feed the Israelites.  Everybody was ecstatic and gathered a bunch of them up and cooked like nobody's business.  But get this;

But while the meat was still between their teeth and before it could be consumed, the anger of the Lord burned against the people, and he struck them with a severe plague.  Therefore the place was named Kibroth Hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had craved other food.  (11:33&34) 

Yeah, God helps Moses out by tricking them and killing a bunch of his people.  That's the loving benevolence of the lord for ya.

Reaching The Promised Land

Now we get to the real exciting part of this book.  In chapter 13, the Israelites finally reach the outskirts of the Promised Land, Canaan.  God told Moses to send twelve leaders into the land to explore it for forty days and come back with a report.  When they returned, they brought along with them a cluster of grapes and some pomegranates and figs.  They showed them to the Israelites as a sample of just how flourished Canaan really is, saying that it indeed was flowing with milk and honey.

But the men who had gone up with him said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are... The land we explored devours those living in it.  All the people we saw there are of great size.  We saw the Nephilim there.  We seemed like grasshoppers in their eyes."  (13:31-33)

Wait a minute.  The Nephilim?  You remember what the Nephilim are; the hybrid offspring of angels and humans from Chapter 6 in Genesis.  But I thought when God created the Great Flood, everything on earth drown except those on Noah's Ark, right?  Well how in the hell did the Nephilim get here?  I'll tell ya how.  God didn't kill everything on earth by the Great Flood, that's how!  Makes you wonder just how "great" it actually was, being that that part of the story was exaggerated, for sure.

Well, after the Israelites heard this report from the twelve scouts, they became fearful and depressed, saying, "If only we had died in Egypt!  Or in the desert!"  Only a couple of people disagreed: Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb.  Then God became angry because they feared the Canaanites instead of believing that God could help them (although you could hardly blame them after all the shit God put them through already) but Moses begged for God to forgive them.  Then God says,

I have forgiven them, as you asked.  Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth, not one of the men... will ever see the land I promised on oath to their forefathers.  No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it.  (14:20-23)
But you - your bodies will fall in this desert. Your children will be shepherds here for forty years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, until the last of your bodies lies in the desert... For forty years... you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me against you.(14:32-34)
They will meet their end in this desert; here they will die. (14:35)

So God's idea of forgiveness is slaughtering thousands more just for being afraid.

God then struck down ten of the twelve scouts with a terrible plague and killed them.  (The surviving two were Joshua and Caleb.)  Moses told the Israelites what God had said about killing them off.  But then,

Early the next morning they went up toward the high hill country.  "We have sinned," they said.  "We will go up to the place the Lord promised."  (14:40)

Thinking that if they confessed their sins and put their faith back in God, then God would forgive them and be with them as they entered the Promised Land; the Israelites entered Canaan with high hopes and spirits, only to be completely slaughtered by the people living in Canaan.  God ignored the fact that they had come to their senses and handed them over to their enemies.  They never made it to the land of milk and honey.  They never made it to the Promised Land.

This is where I put the Bible down for six months.  I was so sick and brokenhearted after reading this, I couldn't bear it.  I thought to myself, I can't believe this anymore.  Even if this god is real, I want nothing to do with him.  Even if Heaven and Hell exist, I'd rather perish in Hell than serve this thing in Heaven forever.

Well, heartbroken or not, we move on.

More Terrors and Trickery of God

While they remained stranded in the desert, they noticed a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day.  They incarcerated him until they consulted Moses to figure out what to do with him.  God told Moses to kill him, so the whole assembly took the man outside the camp and stoned him to death.

Okay, so why did this happen?  Well, let's notice that this event took place on the Sabbath day.  Remember, we're not supposed to work on the Sabbath day.  It's supposed to be a day of rest.  "Work" also consists of picking up firewood so you don't freeze to death on the harsh cold desert nights.  (At least that's what I gathered.  I can't figure out why else somebody would be picking up sticks.)

Well, considering all this death that has been happening and since the Canaanites destroyed those who came into the land, three men (namely one in particular named Korah) rose up and tried to talk Moses into stepping down from leadership.  They stood up for the rest of the Israelites, saying that they are as holy as possible.  Then they said to him,

Isn't it enough that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey to kill us in the desert?  And now you also want to lord it over us?  Moreover, you haven't brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey or given us an inheritance of fields and vineyards.  Will you gouge out the eyes of these men?  (16:12-14)

Then Moses got pissed and told God not to accept any of their offerings, and meanwhile he told the men that they and their followers were to present incense in the Tent of Meeting the next day, so God could use it as some sort of tracking device for each individual.  Without knowing the reasons why (being that God and Moses were scheming against them) they did as they were told.  Now that God knew whose incense belonged to whom (although that in and of itself was kind of funny because God is supposed to know everything already, right?) God told Moses to separate himself from the rest of the assembly.

...and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, with their households and all Korah's men and all their possessions.  They went down alive into the grave, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community.  At their cries, all the Israelites around them fled, shouting, "The earth is going to swallow us too!"  And fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men who were offering the incense.  (16:32-35)

The next day, the Israelites became upset and told Moses that he was responsible for the death of the Lord's people.  Then God got mad and killed 14,700 people from a plague.  (16:41-50)

A little while later, the Israelites were dying of thirst, so God told Moses to smack a rock and let the water come out.  And he did.

But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them."  These were the waters of Meribah, where the Israelites quarreled with the Lord and where he showed himself holy among them.  (20:12&13)

This ultimately led to Aaron's demise shortly thereafter, because he "didn't obey God's commands at the waters of Meribah".  (20:22-29)  What exactly did Aaron do?  Well, beats the fuck out of me.  There are a couple of ideas, but none are remotely conclusive.   [5]

In the beginning of chapter 21, the Canaanites decided to kill and capture some of the Israelites.

Then Israel made this vow to the Lord: "If you will deliver these people into our hands, we will totally destroy their cities."  (21:2)
In cliffnote b of my Bible, it states that the Hebrew term for "destroy" refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them.

In my notes that I scribbled in the pages, I reiterate by saying "bargaining to gather souls".

Some time later, the Israelites were traveling again, and again, they were starving and dying of thirst and all they had left was this detestable food, so they started complaining to Moses again.   Only this time Moses didn't didn't feel like asking God for help, and God didn't feel like helping on his own accord.  Instead, God sent venomous snakes among them and a bunch of Israelites died.

Balaam

Here's a seemingly useless story that I want everybody to file away.  Just trust me.  So, there's this king of Moab (a city next to where the Hebrews camped out after some traveling) and he heard of all the cities they've destroyed lately - you know, after God killed a bunch of his own people - and the king was scurred.  So he asked this guy Balaam, who specialized in spiritual shit, to place a curse on the Israelites.  Balaam agreed to venture out the next morning to the Hebrew camp to place that curse, until an angel came to him and said,

"You must not put a curse on those people, because they are blessed."  (22:12)

So Balaam was like "Alright" and pretty much did everything that the angel of the Lord told him to do from that point on.  Balaam even went on to make some oracles and spoke against his king, advising him not to fuck with the Israelites or their God.  Ultimately, even though he wasn't much of a man of God and wasn't even a part of God's people, he was a good dude who did what God told him to do for that quick minute and went about his merry way afterward.  (Chapters 22-24)

One Last Terror

There's a point where the Israelites "indulged in sexual immorality" with the women in Peor and started worshiping their gods.  God wanted Moses to take the leaders of those people and kill them and expose them in brought daylight, and then God sent a plague among everybody, and 24,000 Israelites died then too.  (Chapter 25)

Miscellaneous

Now this is some bullshit.  God tells Moses to go up this mountain and take a good look at Canaan, the Promised Land, that he's going to give to the Israelites.  After he sees it, he finds out that God is actually going to kill him before they cross the Jordan River into Canaan.  So he'll never get to see the land that God promised to deliver the Israelites to.  After all this, after taking them out of Egypt and all those years of crossing the desert, Moses will never see the land of milk and honey.  Then Joshua was appointed to succeed Moses.  Ain't that a bitch?

Then the Israelites went and conquered the Midianites from Peor, and man they conquered the shit out of them.  They killed the women that weren't virgins and children, they even killed Balaam.

Have you allowed all the women to live?  They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the Lord in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the Lord's people.  Now kill all the boys.  And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.  (30:15-18)

Hold on a minute.  Wasn't Balaam a good guy who did as he was told and blessed the Israelites instead of cursing them like his king told him to do?  For one thing, this is the first contradiction in the Bible that I've noticed.  For another thing, if, hypothetically, this wasn't a contradiction, then isn't it kind of funny that a single man is able to effectively curse God and his people?  Something to think about.

Later, in chapter 13, the Israelites came to Moses saying that they wanted to build pens for their livestock and cities for the women and children.  But they wanted to arm themselves and prepare for war against Canaan.

Then Moses said to them, "If you will do this - if you will arm yourselves before the Lord for battle, and if all of you will go armed over the Jordan before the Lord until he has driven his enemies out before him - then when the land is subdued before the Lord, you may return and be free from your obligation to the Lord and to Israel.  And this land will be your possession before the Lord.  But if you fail to do this, you will be sinning against the Lord; and you may be sure that your sin will find you.  Build cities for your women and children, and pens for your flocks, but do what you have promised.  (32:20-24)
When you cross the Jordan into Canaan, drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you.   Destroy all their carved images and their cast idols, and demolish all their high places. Take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land you possess.   (33:51-53)

As we approach the end of the book of Numbers, right before they enter into Canaan, Moses reiterates some of the major laws they need to keep in mind, like not to marry any of the women from a different clan and what not.  But there are some other interesting ones.

• Six of the towns you give the Levites will be cities of refuge, to which a person who has killed someone may flee.  (35:6)  It states later only if the killing is accidental.
• The avenger of blood shall put the murderer to death when he meets him.  (35:21)
• But if the accused ever goes outside the limits of the city of refuge to which he has fled and the avenger of blood finds him outside the city, the avenger of blood may kill the accused without being guilty of murder.  The accused must stay in the city of refuge until the death of the high priest; only after the death of the high priest may he return to his own property.  (35:26-28)
• Do not pollute the land where you are.  Blood-shed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it.  Do not defile the land where you live and where I dwell, for I, the Lord, dwell among the Israelites.  (35:33&34)
  
  No... God is against bloodshed?   Who'da thunk it?

Before we end this book, I would like to point something out real quick.

The Israelites set out from Rameses on the fifteenth day of the first month, the day after the Passover.  They marched out boldly in full view of all the Egyptians, who were burying all their firstborn, whom the Lord had struck down among them; for the Lord had brought judgment on their gods.  (33:3&4)

Stop!  Rewind!  So... that definitely didn't say anything about false idols.  That was specifically talking about other gods.  Let's think back to Exodus.  Remember how Pharaoh's priests were able to match much of the magic tricks that Moses was able to perform?  Perhaps that was the power of their gods.  Thinking again back to Balaam (assuming you want to believe the story that he actually disobeyed God and put a curse on the Israelites which caused them to be defiled by the Moabites - who worship the god of Peor) and the ability he had to place a curse on God and his people by the power of his god.  Is God really the one and only all powerful God?  I would like everyone to keep this in mind as we move forward through the Bible.


1. http://www.studiesintheword.org/celebrating_the_new_moon.htm

2. http://www.dadsdayoff.net/newmoon.html

3. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/411855/New-Moon

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Goddess_%28Neopaganism%29

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meribah#The_Death_of_Moses_and_Aaron