Bloody, Bloody, Bloody

Exodus 29 is dripping with blood.  The consecration of the priestly caste, an hereditary caste to be descended from Aaron, is a bloody affair indeed.  The priests anoint the ark cover with blood, splash blood on the sides of it, get blood sprinkled on their garments, their earlobes, their thumbs and big toes.  Doing this for seven days and then regularly in generations thereafter will make the sacrificial altar holy and then Yahweh will come around there to tell the Israelites what to do.  The whole thing is pretty atavistic and bizarre.


The breast and thigh from every sacrificed animal goes to the priests.  The organs and organ fat are burned on the altar and the rest is presumably given back to the presenter to eat.  The consecration of priests is a week-long feast with loads of animals being sacrificed and lots of bread, oil and wine being offered up for the process.

In Exodus 30 the ritual items inventory and user manual continues.  Fragrant incense must be burned every morning on the special incense altar.  Aaron is reminded that the incense altar is only for incense, not for drink or grain or burnt offerings.  Even here, blood must be spilled once a year. Ex.30:10

Once a year Aaron shall make atonement on its horns. This annual atonement must be made with the blood of the atoning sin (or purification) offering for the generations to come. It is most holy to the LORD.”

All these offerings look an awful lot like Hindu and other pantheistic, pagan offerings - the only difference being that they are being made exclusively to one god who detests all other deities.


Not only does the priestly caste get a share of the meat and bread offered at the altar, they also get to levy taxes on the people. (Ex.30:11-16)  It's a flat tax for adults age 20 and over, with the rich and the poor paying the same amount for the "upkeep of the temple".  The people are reassured that paying this money will stop Yahweh from inflicting plagues on them and will atone for their lives, although what the great atonement is for, is not clear.  Maybe it's for the fact that Jacob (Israel) was a jerk who stole his brother's birthright, lied to and tricked his father multiple times and stole his father's blessing.  Maybe it's for the fact that so many of Israel's twelve sons conspired to harm Joseph because he was a favored son, and that, while some of them wanted to kill him, they ultimately decided just to throw him in a ditch and then sell him into slavery and lie about it to their parents.  Or maybe it goes back to Adam and Eve  and Cain and Abel - I'm really not sure but it is depressing.


Ritual hand and foot washing for the priests is prescribed in Ex.30:17-21.  They have to wash their hands and feet before entering the tent of meeting or before approaching the altar "so that they will not die".  Interestingly, Muslims all have to wash their hands and feet before entering a mosque, and I believe it also a part of morning ritual ablutions.   I don't believe this is required of modern Jews or Christians, although observant Jews are supposed to wash hands before eating while reciting a prayer. 


Now for something a little nicer: a recipes for fragrant, holy oil and incense!  Apparently the shekel was both a unit of money and measurement.  The oil and incense are proprietary blends and must not be used on anyone but priests nor anywhere but the temple! Anyone who does will be cut off from the people! (Ex.30:33&38)


Recipe for Holy Oil:

• Liquid myrrh (500 shekels/6 grams)
• Fragrant cinnamon (250 shekels/3 grams)
• Fragrant calamus (250 shekels/3 grams)
• Cassia (500 shekels/6 grams)
• Olive oil (1 hin/gallon/3.8 liters)

Recipe for Holy Incense:
Grind into powder equal amounts of:

• Gum resin
• Onycha
• Galbanum
• Pure frankincense
• Salt

Delightful!

It's ok to kill certain people

Yahweh says you can kill a "sorceress" (Ex.22:18), a poor slob who screws animals (Ex.22:19), people with different religions (22:20), and people who attack or curse their parents (Ex. 21:17).  If you have sex with an unmarried virgin you just have to pay her dowry, if you don't marry her.  Israelites who  desecrate the Sabbath or who do any work on the Sabbath day are to be put to death. (Ex. 31:14-16)

Giving the first-born of sons, cattle and sheep is again mentioned in Ex. 22:29-30.  They should stay with their mothers seven days and on the eighth be given to Yahweh, which I'm guessing means hand them over to the priests for circumcision in the case of humans, and for sacrifice and the skimming of meat in the case of the animals. And because the Israelites are holy, they shouldn't eat carrion torn apart by wild animals.

Many passages in Genesis and Exodus entreat people to be kind to strangers, foreigners, widows and the fatherless.  These must have been vulnerable populations then, as they are now, only moreso.  The caveat is that these strangers have to abide by the rules of the Yahwehist society, including male circumcision, strict idol-free monotheism, and obeisance to the priestly caste.  Ex. 22:28 exhorts the people not to curse the ruler of their people, another attempt to keep the peace among a population clearly prone to complaining.

Laudably, there are also passages which tell people not to be unfair to their enemies.  I assume that this means other Yahwehists whom they happen not to like.  There are a lot of common sense "be nice, be fair" edicts. "Don't take bribes now, I will retaliate against your wickedness!"

Then Yahweh tells them that an angel will guide them to their promised land and that Yahweh will smite all their enemies.  Moses goes back up the mountain with Aaron and 70 elders and Moses gets the law from Yahweh, comes down and tells it to the people who accept it on the spot.  Moses then writes it all down. (Really? With what?  These are nomadic people.)

The covenant is confirmed with a creepy blood ritual involving young bull's blood being smeared on 12 pillars and sprinkled all over the people after Moses read them the book of the covenant.  Half of the blood was put in bowls for some reason.  Yuck.  The book of the covenant at that time probably wasn't as long as the present-day Pentatech (5 books of Moses), but I'm thinking it was the material from the Ten Commandments through the last laws in Exodus 23.

After the blood-fest, Moses, Aaron and 70 elders got to go up the mountain and for the first time actually see Yahweh himself, who was on a pavement of lapis lazuli, and party with him.  Then Yahweh asked Moses to go back up to the mountain yet again, so that Yahweh can give him tablets with the law (I thought Moses had already written them out) and this time Moses went alone with his "aide" Joshua.  They spent six days and nights up there and then there was a fire on top of the mountain, or the volcano erupted.  Moses then spent 40 days and 40 nights up there.

Where was Moses's wife all this time? Did she go back to Midian with her Dad or stay with Moses and the Israelites?  I forget.

Blood, Clay, Man, Dust and the Plagues of Egypt

Exodus's plague of "blood" (Ex.7:14-22). In Biblical Hebrew the words for 'man' and 'red' and 'blood' and  'ground' or 'soil' or 'clay' come from the same root: a-d-m

Man: אָדָם
Soil/Clay/Ground: אֳדָמָה 

Blood: דם

Red:  אדום

It sounds likely to me that the Nile ran red with clay or iron, if the plague of blood or red even happened at all.  In Exodus it is Yahweh telling *Aaron* (not Moses) to wave his magic wand over the water.  I'm guessing that once the waters were contaminated, the frogs didn't want to be in there either, hence the plague of frogs.  All the dead frogs must have attracted a lot of gnats and flies.

In Exodus 8:26, Moses says that the sacrifices of the Hebrews would be detestable to the Egyptians, and that they would stone the Hebrews if they knew of them.  I wonder what was so detestable?  Did the Egyptians not make animal sacrifices or were the Hebrews doing something else?  This is unclear. 

 ²⁶ But Moses said, “That would not be right. The sacrifices we offer the LORD our God would be detestable to the Egyptians. And if we offer sacrifices that are detestable in their eyes, will they not stone us? ²⁷ We must take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God, as he commands us.” 

In Exodus 9,  the Egyptian livestock die, presumably from drinking contaminated water.  The Hebrews' livestock allegedly did not die, suggesting a different water source, or perhaps different types of livestock.  The plague of boils sounds like plain old bubonic plague.  Moses finally gets his chance to wave the magic wand when it comes to the plague of hail.