Book of Joshua 16-24, Judges 1-15

The Book of Joshua picks back up with the splitting of territories.  Riveting stuff.

I meant to make this reference before, but there's a strong feeling that Book of Joshua inspired a lot of Revelation's imagery, with its emphasis on the number seven and the appearance of Megiddo, which is the source of the word "Armageddon."  Megiddo was a real place, where the apocalyptic battle was supposed to take place.  And as I've stated before, there is plenty of fighting in the chronicles of Moses and Joshua..

Shiloh appears.  I found this remarkable mostly as an extremely amateur American Civil War buff.

"Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land he swore to give their fathers."  This line kind of makes the original Abrahamic covenant sound complete, but of course the whole relationship between God and the Hebrews became very much ongoing, as long as those Hebrews quit being so rebellious...Which doesn't happen very soon.  Just as I was making a note that they were behaving themselves, they stopped that right away.  God gets pretty hot under the collar when they build an altar intended for a purpose other than worshiping him, although Phinehas appears again to explain that it is a communal phenomenon that will help unite them in their common devotion to their Lord.  This appeases him.  No smiting.  Phinehas is the go-to guy when you don't need to know too much about the guy saving the Hebrews' butt.

Joshua in his farewell address summarizes the line of Abraham, skipping just like Exodus to Moses at that point in the history.  Apparently there was just no one worth talking about, or their names were completely forgotten.  Balaam is described as intending to curse rather than bless Israel, and I still hate reading this kind of stuff.  He seems to have come from a separate tradition that was folded into the Moses narrative without anyone realizing it, and only the orthodox view based on his final fate survived full tradition.  In the address Joshua utters the phrase, "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," which you will surely find familiar.

I know I've tried to guess how many generations passed from the time of Joshua to when his story was codified in this chronicle, possibly the first record completed, and I conclude by suggesting that perhaps it was as few as two, as the concluding passages in the book might be interpreted to say.

Judges is very similar to Joshua and may stem from an equally early recording tradition.  More summary can be found here, of the conquests the Hebrews were so fond of performing.  Caleb is mentioned here.  Everything sounds perfectly fine, and then they start making concessions, and that seems to be where things fall apart.  As living memory of the founding fathers fades away, the people stray from God.  So he gives them a series of periodic champions, or judges, to try and put them back in order.

The first judge is named Othniel, and he is the son of Caleb's brother.  The second is Ehud, who has the first of the extended episodes, in which he personally slays the king of an enemy nation.  The king is extremely fat, and Ehud has to plunge his sword deep into the king's belly.  Shamgar operates against the Philistines, who are quickly approaching their most famous biblical hours.  Then there's Deborah, who is described as a prophetess but is clearly a judge.  The highlight of her episode is a a pretty good poem.

The first truly big name among the judges appears next, and it's Gideon.  He frequently has God, or the angel representing him, prove they are who they say they are, which makes him far more brazen than past figures (any of them).  He has to contend with worship of that nasty pagan god Baal, whose followers fully expect him to act in their defense as Gideon threatens smiting.  In opposite of Abraham, who had to talk God into accepting smaller numbers of worthy individuals to save, Gideon argues that he needs fewer men to lead in battle.  Prophetic dreams return to scripture, but not in the guise of Gideon.  He engages in spectacular trumpet warfare, probably something you may remember.

The enemy leaders flee from him much as Darius does from Alexander the Great.  Unlike Darius, however, these guys are eventually slain by Gideon himself.  As soon as Gideon himself dies, the people return to their wicked ways.

One bit of cultural connections is camels wearing the crescent, which remains an Arabic emblem to this day.

Remember the name Abimelech from earlier?  Someone else gives it as spin, as king.  He is the son of Gideon. He faces the same kind of turmoil as the successors of Alexander, everyone spoiling for control and no one capable of filling Great shoes.  Abimelech is no slouch, but he's no Gideon, either.  Even with two of them now, I doubt you remember the name at all.  But he does leave an echo behind.  Like Samson who is to appear shortly, the most famous of the judges, Abimelech finds himself in the position to wipe out a whole mess of his enemies in the midst of one major structural collapse.  He ends up dying in battle, although since he's fatally struck by a woman, the chauvinist asks a male colleague to do him in first, because he doesn't want to go out that way.

Maybe that's why no one knows his (or his predecessor's) name...

Then there was Tola who judged for 23 years, then Jair who judged for 22.  Syria is mentioned.  Philistines come round again.  Another interesting lost figure is Jephthah, who was initially rejected as meaningless in the grand scheme, and so he gathers around him other "worthless fellows," only for the lot of them to be recuited, via begging, to help the Hebrews catch a break.  He consents.  He later goes so far as to massage their ego by explaining in extremely favorable terms the history of their conquests.  Jephthah has a tragic ending, however, when he strikes a bargain with God and the payment he comes to regret is sacrificing the first person he sees when he returns home.  That person ends up being his own daughter, which begins a tradition when she's allowed to bemoan never having made a life for herself, and then becomes a burnt offering.  Which kind of beggars the question of why earlier God had to make such a point of saying this was an abomination pagans practiced.

Anyway, Jephthah in all judged for 6 years.  Elom followed for 10, Abdon for 8.  The Philistines come round again!  And then a man named Manoah receives a visit from the angel of the Lord, who like Abraham before him and later for two lucky ladies in the New Testament, learns that his barren wife will give birth after all.  The resulting child's name is Samson.  Samson grows up and is a clever guy, wanting a Philistine bride so he can have something to complain about later.  His whole career as a judge is recorded at 20 years.  David Maine has one of his several exceptions works of fiction based on biblical episodes I've now reached in my readings centered around Samson, called appropriately enough The Book of Samson.  Maine also has The Preservationist (concerning Noah) and Fallen (the best of them; featuring Adam, Eve, Abel, and Cain, told in reverse).  He doesn't paint Samson in the best of lights, you should know...

Deuteronomy 26-34, Book of Joshua 1-15

I was just wondering, because God goes to great lengths to explain that bad things would only happen to his people if they strayed from him,why it is that Exodus begins by explaining that the bondage in Egypt happened because of a regime change after the time of Joseph.  Just something to think about.

Deuteronomy continues the the job of summarizing what has come before, and finally gets around to reintroducing the significance of Joshua, making a heavy case for him.  I'll have more on that in a moment.

I'd also like to make mention of the fact that God says the ark of the covenant needs to be plastered.  I don't think that was mentioned previously, when God was being incredibly specific about all that.

There's another song that reads like a psalm, with an emphasis on the Rock, which is I think the second time the idea is mooted in the books of Moses.  In Christianity, Jesus famously rechristens Simon as Peter because it means the Rock, which he intends to build his church on.  Peter is a Joshua figure, by the way.

There's mention that the Hebrews void of counsel may be something of a breach of contract, which may explain what happened to them in Egypt, because that was a significant breach in the Genesis lineage.  I've been bringing that up regularly.  This may have something to do with explaining what befell Balaam, a prophet who failed to sway a people in the direction of God.  God doesn't like that sort of thing.

Moses dies, and Deuteronomy ends by noting that there has been no prophet like him since.  There are plenty of other prophets that follow in the Old Testament, but at later times, and of course Christians have Jesus as the new Moses.

The Book of Joshua may be a continuation of Deuteronomy just as Acts is a continuation of the Gospel of Luke.  Didn't I say something like that previously?  At any rate it's a clear distinction from the way other some of the other books chronicling Moses present themselves.  God is still active, but he's not the God who spent all his time building a culture with rules.  He's more like the God who believes in war and conquest above all else, which to be fair Moses also experienced, but not quite to this heavy extent.

Another difference in perspective is the phrasing of what happened to the Red Sea after the flight from Egypt.  Here it's described as melting, several times.  Tradition, and earlier narratives, have it as being parted.  There's a clear difference.  I stated previously that perhaps the later books of Moses were written sooner than the earlier ones.  This difference may be a sign of things not being solidified yet.  Who looks to the Book of Joshua for information concerning the flight from Egypt anyway?

It may also be worth noting that there's a city called Adam, and it doesn't reference the first man in the passage at all.  Possibly indicates where the name came from, or what it inspired, much as the name Eve is described in Genesis itself as having in itself significance beyond being the name of the first woman.  So another indication that Book of Joshua, like Deuteronomy, came first, and Genesis was solidified later, like a Hollywood prequel.

One bit of continuity is the ending of God providing manna.  However, no mention of quail, which is far less famous, and perhaps for this very reason.  He seemed to provide it for the first time twice anyway.

Another lost heroic woman of the Old Testament is the harlot Rabah, who was a citizen of a Jericho who like Lot was the one good person living there, providing shelter for Joshua's scouts and thus securing her and her family's survival in the most famous conquest of the book (she reads like a preview of women in the New Testament).  But there are more.  Many more.  There was certainly war and conquest elsewhere, but here it's so jubilant and almost the whole point entirely, as if it's the template for what is described in earlier instances.  God does tell Joshua how to do it, but again, that's a marked difference between the interactions God has with his chosen representative and all the covenants and social outlines he spent his time reiterating in previous books.

There is a link, however, with the God of Genesis, insofar as Joshua making at least one deal with citizens of a land the Hebrews approach, even though it quickly degenerates into even more war.  That's what Abraham was famous for, a little like the Solomon of his day, a wise ruler (except for tricking people into thinking his wife was his sister).

Jerusalem is mentioned for the first time.  It is one of five kingdoms that attempt to unite against the Hebrew hoard.  Gaza is mentioned, too.  God points out the Philistines to the aging Joshua.  We met them in Genesis, but things didn't end well then, and they will only get worse later.

As if in confirmation of my observations, the Book of Joshua provides another summaries of Moses' conquests.  Here Balaam is mentioned again, this time as a soothsayer.  It may be entirely possibly that God's previously inexplicable crusade against the magical kind of all variations is a reaction to other relationships he's tried to make that failed, unlike with Abraham and his descendants.  You fail, like Balaam, and you become dead to him, an abomination.  He demands success above all else.  Obedience is about as important to him as human life in general.  He tests and tests, and if you fail, he smites you.  The end.

Caleb is finally referenced again!  At this point he has become another Esau or Lot, someone whose story has branched off from the main record that is the Bible.  It is no doubt very likely that people at that time had a lot more stories.  I'm beginning to wish I had access to those, too.  I like these lost figures like Balaam and Caleb, who begins to sound, in the Book of Joshua, almost like a classic Greek warrior.

The Jebusites, one of several tribes routinely referenced in the books of Moses as antagonistic to God's wishes for his people, are referenced as occupying Jerusalem "to this day," another indication that the memory as of the composing of this book was probably fairly recent.  They also read like the predecessors of today's Palestinians.

Numbers 21-36, Deuteronomy 1-5

It strikes me as I'm reading, the deep and perhaps hidden significance of the serpent in Old Testament lore.  In Genesis the serpent was always interpreted to be the Devil in disguise, tempting Eve into enacting original sin, cursed by God ever after to wriggle on its belly, and there are other passages about this sorry fate.  And yet in Exodus God also has Moses and Aaron turn the staff trick of transforming it into a serpent, and the image returns in Numbers in an equally famous episode that the medical establishment later adopted, of serpents that God had sent against his continually mischievous people and then the one he asks Moses to place upon a staff to cure them.

So which is it?  Are serpents representations of evil, or are they perhaps after all agents of God?  The Old Testament is littered with God testing his people, who are constantly failing (except Abraham with his near-sacrifice of Isaac, which seems to be the defining point for the foundation of Judaism).  Maybe this whole time we've been misinterpreting the serpent in the garden.  Maybe God always intended man to become aware of his regular duties, which he'd already been given anyway, to be lord and master of the earth much as God is Lord of everything else (and man).  God has a terrible time accounting for all the ways mankind disappoints him, including his own chosen people, and spends a lot of time smiting them in the early books.  He could have just as easily done the job the first time, but didn't.  Sometimes failure is permanent, but the larger point is that God is constantly testing mankind.

And his agent that first time was a serpent.  Put aside the curse he levels against it.  He continues using serpents in the books that follow.  I'm not trying to upend theology here, but these things keep coming to me.  (Don't smite me!)

Anyway, Numbers gets a ton more interesting with the introduction of and narrative that follows Balaam for a while.  There's this whole story of this prophet who exists entirely outside of the Hebrew lineage, an independent phenomenon in direct communication with God.  His whole story is how he gets out of having to condemn the Hebrews as they continue their journey toward the promised land.  It's like the Bible suddenly splits off into an entirely new story filled with its own mythology, right in the middle of the Moses arc.  His own lord and master is displeased each time Balaam reports what God has told him, that he keeps evading the prospect of taking out the Hebrews.

Unfortunately, his narrative ends abruptly, we switch back to Moses, and the next and last time he's brought up Balaam is summarily executed as a collaborator with the enemy, even listed as a villainous presence who actively conspired against the Hebrews.  There's apparently even something about it in Revelation.  The guy's whole reputation is entirely slandered, even though he clearly was working the opposite of how he ends up being perceived, and to make it all the worse, probably no one outside of devoted scholars are even aware today that he ever existed.  Not cool.  So that's another way my ruminations on the Bible will deviate from the record.  Balaam represents an important development in the history of God's interaction with mankind.  He's confirmation that God didn't just pal up with Abraham and his descendants.  And another way in which Moses kind of ended up doing his own smiting along the way, when God failed to do it himself.

There's an interesting phrase to be found here, "son of man," that is associated with repentance, which is another thing later Christians could probably call their own from the earliest books even though they mostly seem concerned with the prophetic later ones.

The classic pagan god Baal is referenced for the first time, as are Hebrew judges, which becomes important later, notably in the books of Judges.

A man named Phinehas manages to talk God out of another round of smiting, which puts him on a certain kind of level with Moses, who managed the fete earlier (and himself then proceeded to smite in the same righteous manner).  This seems significant.  His name, however, has since been forgotten.  Making a note of it here all the same.

Jericho is referenced for the first time.

A second census is carried out, now that a considerable amount of smiting has occurred..  God is also asked to consider women as capable of inheriting property, which he grants.  So that's another positive indication for women in the face of a number of other examples that don't paint them in such favorable light.

Joshua is officially deemed Moses' successor.  God outlines the holy days.  The Judaic tradition of holy war continues, presaging the Crusades and much of what Islam has become.  The exiles start to settle down, which initially causes God discomfit, but he decides to play along.  Canaan, the promised land, is identified as such.  High priests are referenced for the first time, another thing Christians will definitely recognize.

Deuteronomy, the fourth book of Moses and fifth of the Old Testament, begins with something Numbers had done in a different way, recapping the journey to this point.  The Deuteronomy version highly favors the most favorable Judaic interpretation of events.  It also comes in the form of a great speech on the part of Moses, who had initially beggared God to ask for someone else (i.e. Aaron) to do the talking because he was a poor public speaker.  Here he has no problem at all, and seems to relish the role.

The descendants of Esau and Lot are encountered, who are not part of the Hebrew exiles from Egypt.  They are part of separate traditions.  Imagine a Bible that includes their stories as well, or even Balaam's.

The most striking element now seems how easily war-like and conquer-happy the Hebrews are at God's behest.  They sound like Alexander the Great, or Attila the Hun, that sort of phenomenon.  They fight and beat everyone, and assume their territory for their own, a small (relatively speaking) scrappy band of warriors always good for a fight.  You could easily make a movie about Moses and do almost nothing but warfare.

The ten commandments are referenced again, specifically as a covenant.  My interpretation of them will continue to be in the air.  The familiar ones end up being reiterated, in case you'd forgotten, although at that point are not spoken of in relation to a covenant.  God, as I will argue for now, seems far more interested in emphasizing the way to worship him than the moral codes that dominate the latter of the traditional ten commandments, some of which he goes to great lengths to interpret given specific circumstances again and again, such as murder.

That is all for now.

Numbers 1-20

Numbers, the third book of Moses, fourth overall in the New Testament, takes its name from the fact that God asks Moses to conduct an census of all the Hebrews he's led out of Egypt.  Each of the twelve tribes of Israel (descendants of Jacob's twelve sons, in other words) are counted.  For the record, Judah's family was the most productive in the fruitful-and-multiplying business, with Dan coming in second.  Joseph's was a comfortable middle-of-the-pack performer.  Levi's brood is not counted, though, since the Levites are quickly tapped as the keepers of the first temple, God's switch in exchange for the strict tithing of all first-borns he'd previously called dibs on.

I'd just like to say it's amazing what a little time will do.  Sure, the twelve tribes had a significant role in Jewish history, but in Genesis you'd hardly know that any of the brothers besides Joseph would have had a positive role to play at all.  They sold him to Egypt, after all, and tried to convince their father that he was dead.

Then again, the Hebrews after Egypt were not exactly ones to appease God or refrain from grumbling.

Speaking of the temple keepers, they seem to have been presaging Samson in God's edict that they not cut their hair.  He'd already requested his people not round their beards or trim their sideburns, but this is going a step further.  It didn't give the Levites superpowers, and they were allowed to shorn themselves without consequence eventually, but the idea that those closest to God were also the hairiest clearly was one that had some legs to it.

A lot of Numbers also reiterates things previously experienced in the other books, which can sometimes be a little confusing.  Either that or some of the same grumbling and near-smiting occur again.  There's a new one with a fire that consumes property until Moses prayed, but there's also the return of quail, or perhaps its debut.  There are also many cultural rules outlined.

The best numbers in Numbers, weirdly enough, read like a preview of the later Twelve Days of Christmas, twelve days in which gifts are presented to bless the budding temple.

Some additional early prophesying occurs with the otherwise obscure figures of Eldad and Medad, which leads to more grumbling and eventually the premature death of Miriam, the wife of Aaron, who is exiled for a week by way of penance for her role in this latest round of discontent.  Aaron himself does not so long after.

Somewhat related, but God officially declares that Moses and all his generation will not see the promised land for themselves because of their continued wickedness (Moses not so much because of his wickedness, but because he couldn't possibly live long enough to usher the next generation; he remains a humble and awesome dude).  God appoints Joshua and the less famous Caleb as the succeeding stewards.

God swallows up a couple of negative nellies into the ground, straight to Sheol (Hell) to prove he still has a few tricks up his sleeve, and fear tactics remain one of his favorite past-times.  It doesn't quite stick, however, and so he unleashes a massive plague on his people.

The Nephilim are mentioned again, but are still not actually explained.

Numbers continues.

Exodus 16-30

Hey, so did you know Moses was married and had kids?  No?  Well, that's another of the marked differences between Exodus and its predecessor Genesis.  The remarkable thing is that Aaron, although less famous, still has about equal billing, as I've suggested before a lot like an improved Jacob/Esau situation.

Another thing I haven't mentioned yet but keeps coming up is the significance of repeated numbers.  Here, besides all the sevens and forties that stretch back to Genesis, is the emphasis on three, which is another thing the New Testament borrows (actually, all three numbers, although the three days bit is easily the most important one).

As the action picks up, the Hebrews have commenced with their bellyaching and Moses discusses this with God, who comes up with the idea of manna, which also supports his seven day pattern.  Less famous are the quails that serve as dinner with equal regularity as the appearance of the manna in the early morning hours.  Then they grumble about water and God gives them that, too.

And then they go to war, the episode that involves Moses holding his arms up and then having them propped up so his side prevails.  This marks the first references to Joshua, who will eventually become his successor.  As I was saying, in Genesis, Joshua would have been his son, or at least have been introduced earlier or at any rate less randomly.  Then comes a good bit revolving around Jethro, the father of Moses' phantom wife.  What follows is basically the institution of the priestly order, at least as Christians would understand it.

Then God scares everyone by appearing as thunder and lightning, and then what is supposed to be the Ten Commandments.  Except maybe slightly later in Exodus they're reduced only to the first ten in terms of general importance, because although those are certainly the first and featured, there follow many more.  Many more.  In fact, some of them appear to be clarifications for some of the first ones you know already, all sorts of rules governing what constitutes acceptable (!) murder and what doesn't, for instance.  Actually, the whole thing is like setting up the basic rules of a society, like the pillar inscribed with the code of Hammurabi, which predates Moses by some five hundred years.  (The Bible, incidentally, is first codified perhaps a thousand years or so after its initial events take place.  So the things we know from roughly the time of the Dark Ages is the kind of memory the Jews would've sustained until making an official account of it.)

And then God gives Moses incredibly (incredibly) detailed instructions for the famed ark of the covenant (or, the title object from Indiana Jones's first adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark).  In a sense, this is an echo from another ark entirely, but again, incredibly detailed.  Noah's ark did not come with nearly these many instructions, although to be fair it was only meant to have two of every creature and not God himself within it.  This also serves as the foundation of Jewish temples and Christian churches, even down to the necessary vestments to be worn by the priests or rabbis within them.

And, certainly, God bless anyone who has the fortitude to read through all of it.  Although again, these passages also clearly allude to other gods besides God Almighty, the Lord as acknowledged even by God himself.  When he calls himself a jealous god, now you know why.