1 Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.Another iconic plant arrives in the biblical nursery: the burning bush.
2 And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
3 And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
4 And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.
5 And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
6 Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.
7 And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;
8 And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
9 Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.
10 Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.
11 And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?
12 And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.
13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?
14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
15 And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.
16 Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt:
17 And I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.
18 And they shall hearken to thy voice: and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him, The LORD God of the Hebrews hath met with us: and now let us go, we beseech thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God.
19 And I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go, no, not by a mighty hand.
20 And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go.
21 And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians: and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty.
22 But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.
It's curious that God designates certain places as holy ground. I wonder if the special properties of this prime real estate are ever explained.
Much as Moses was asked "who-the-f-are you to be judge and jury" in the last chapter, this time around, he asks God "what's so special about me?"
God doesn't really answer, except to explain that he'll stick close with Moe. And then he leaves him with a rather weak proof of his own Supreme existence, straight out of Descartes and Popeye, "I YAM WHAT I YAM."
One would think that this "evidence" would be a tough sell. But here we are.
In verse 18, the notion of sacrificing to the Lord reappears. It's unclear what kind of sacrifice is intended, but the previous sacrifices were animal and, nearly, boy slaughter.
God promises to use all his wonders to smite Egypt. Since he created the entire universe, I'm not sure why he doesn't take care of this in a nanosecond. Perhaps he has a flair for the dramatic.
In the final verse, it seems that "spoil" means rob or ruin. It appears that God wants the Hebrews to bankrupt the Egyptians by borrowing and not returning their bling.
7 comments:
So many cartoon characters --
Did Jethro have a twin sister named...no, I won't go there.
Who the hell were the jebusites? Were they followers of our jebus?
I AM THAT I AM sounds like Popeye's theme song...
Why does gawd mention Moses father, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob each time? Is there some problem with another gawd-pretender who can be identified as false by forgetting the litany? Gawd sez it in :6, :15, :16.
Yes, why doesn't gawd stop Egypt from enslaving the jews? And are we to expect "shock and awe" to convince Pharaoh to let Moe's peeps leave?
Just asking...
Jethro. Definitely Jethro. Not Reuel?
It says Reuel later. That's the documentary hypothesis again. Gets everywhere.
Anyway, Jethro is a Kenite. That's "Ken" as in "Cain", as far as scholars are concerned. The Kenites may have been where Yahweh worship came from in the first place.
"I am that I am" - That's not actually what it says. It says "YHWH", which may mean "I am that I am", or it may not; no-one really knows, its a bit of a mystery. "YHWH" is called "the tetragrammaton" (because it has 4 letters), and is a big thing in Judaism.
The vowels are missing (that's not odd, vowels aren't important in biblical Hebrew anyway). As a mark of respect, Jews refuse(d) to say "YHWH" (or whatever it was in full), so the vowels just got lost. They used to say "adonai" instead, and wrote the vowels of adonai inbetween the letters of YHWH as a reminder; that's Yahowah = Jehovah (which is where the word comes from). But that's not what the word was, its just because English writers didn't understand why those vowels were there. Scholars now think "Yahweh" is more likely as the original word. Cognate with "Yah", a Canaanite God - of the untamed seas (fight with Leviathan anyone?) - who was the arch enemy of the god commonly named Baal (isn't Baal that god portrayed as evil in the Bible? cough.)
By the way, it says "YHWH" in loads of places, not just there. Everywhere else its translated as "the LORD" (note the 4 capital letters). On the other hand, when it says "God", its translating "El". That's the same "El" that became "Al-lah" ("word of God") in Arabic. "El" is awkward - it has three meanings; "(THE) God"; "(a) god"; "the God named El". The last refers to the chief Canaanite God.
Co-incidence?
Well, lets take a look at Psalm 82 - in the Hebrew so that we don't miss things that get lost in translation. Psalm 82: El declares that his sons - the other gods - are condemned to be mortal. Bet you never noticed that before.
Then there's Psalm 29 - in the Hebrew - a request for the "sons of El" to ascribe qualities of greatness to Yahweh.
Jebusites:people from Jebus.
Jebus:old name for Jerusalem. Allegedly.
They had leaders like Melchizedek="[zedek] is king". And Adonizedek="[zedek] is prince". I haven't translated zedek there. It can be translated as "law". Or it can be left alone as "Tzedek" [the Tz is there in the Hebrew]; Tzedek was a Canaanite God. That's not odd, the Jebusites were Canaanites after all.
But then, when King David (in the Book of Samuel) takes over from the Jebusites, and conquers Jerusalem. Suddenly there's this priest "Zadok", and a priesthood descended from Zadok. Odd that. Solution: Zadok=Tzedek. So really there's this old Canaanite god, and a temple, the Jews become monotheist and change Zadok into a priest [ironic really, being reduced to a priest of your own temple].
SCIENCE PROVES GENESIS 1:1
Science says and maintains that, ‘for anything to happen and/or come into being, five things must be and/or occur’: 1) TIME, 2) FORCE, 3) ACTION, 4) SPACE, and 5) MATTER. In fact, this is one of the very few consensus that most all Science can agree on. So let’s see if that "general consensus" of Science can also agree with THE Written WORD of GOD [“The Bible”]:
(TIME) “In the beginning . . . ”
(FORCE) “ . . . GOD . . . ”
(ACTION) “ . . . created . . . ”
(SPACE) “ . . . the Heavens . . . ”
(MATTER) “ . . . the Earth.”
Written another way, it would look thus:
“In the beginning (of TIME) GOD(’s FORCE)
created (thru HIS Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent ACTION)
the Heavens (in all the upper SPACE)
And the Earth (as well as all other MATTER).”
Ergo, "Ats" would do well in an attempt to, FIRST, disprove Gen. 1:1 before venturing into the 'uncharted waters' of Exodus; why try to eat meat, when you've yet been unable to digest "the milk of THE WORD of GOD"???
Nehemiah,
My goal isn't to disprove the Bible chapter by chapter, though I do point out its many inconsistencies and dubious lessons.
I hold with those who argue that the burden of proof is upon the proponents of fantastical claims, rather than on the beholder.
The fact that the Genesis creation story fits a mad-lib format is, frankly, not a very compelling argument.
The following fits as well:
(TIME) “Six thousand years ago . . . ”
(FORCE) “ . . . Joey from the neighborhood. . . ”
(ACTION) “ . . . coughed up . . . ”
(SPACE) “ . . . the Heavens . . . ”
(MATTER) “ . . . the Earth.”
Can you disprove the Joey theory?
Nehemiah,
"The WORD" in the context you use it appears to refer to John 1:1-3. What you fail to realise is that its not "word" but "Logos", in the original Koine Greek. "Logos" does mean word, but it also refers to a concept, known as Logos, in Greek philosophy. It is the concept of Logos that absolutely all early christian sources regard the biblical passage as referring to. And that passage isn't really an attempt to explain the beginning of the world, but is in fact a direct attack against Arianism - that's why there is no nativity scene in the Gospel of John.
The phrase "the heavens" really just means the sky. In the Vulgate - the main version of the bible in western christianity from the 4th century until about the 14th century when it was translated into the vernacular (English/German/Etc.) - the Vulgate uses the word "caelum", where in English the translation is "heavens", but "caelum" just means sky, and was adopted into English as the word "ceiling"; the ancient concept of "heavens" was of a giant dome - a ceiling - and does not refer to an infinite expanse of space.
And actually, science believes in 11 dimensional objects ("p-branes") existing in 32 dimensional space (the modern version of "string theory"), and Force doesn't come into it, force just arises as a CONSEQUENCE. To put it another way, with your claim that Force=God, then God would just be a side effect of space, not the other way around.
And if you knew anything about special relativity, then you'd know that force and matter are the same thing, as are time and space, and that action is really just a functional (sic.) of matter/force and distance (dA = integral (d4L/dS4 dS)). In fact, time is exactly the same thing as space if you measure it in units of ic, where c is the speed of light and i is the square root of minus one (this making time into space is called the "wick rotation"). And taking that into account really fucks up your little argument.
You could equally say that it fits the format of
(LOCATION) "In the beginning . . ."
(PERPETRATOR) " . . . GOD . . . "
(ACTION) " . . . created . . . "
(VICTIM) " . . . the Heavens . . . "
(OBJECT) " . . . the Earth."
thus proving the accuracy of Clue. Because
(LOCATION) "In the library . . ."
(PERPETRATOR) " . . . Mrs Peacock . . . "
(ACTION) " . . . killed . . . "
(VICTIM) " . . . Mr Body . . . "
(OBJECT) " . . . with the dagger."
13-14 - Moses asks God what he's supposed to say when they ask who sent him. God replies "Just say it's me". That's it?!? That's the proof? I don't think that would hold up in court.
Of course, we're also just supposed to believe that's really a burning bush that didn't burn.
Post a Comment