Moses Floats

Old Testament
Book Two: Exodus
Israel Enslaved in Egypt
Chapter 1: Pharaoh orders all male newborn Israelis drowned
Chapter 2: Moses floats
Chapter 3: God approaches Moses with a job offer
Chapter 4: Moses reluctantly accepts the job, then God tries to kill him

Wow, God really gets Exodus off with a bang! I knew that Exodus was primarily a book of rules, including the ten commandments, and I was expecting it to be really boring. I think that is still coming, but it starts out with the same excitement as the stories in Genesis, with an addition: God has gone from being a genocidal maniac to a homocidal psychopath! This time it's personal.

I got something else wrong about this story as well. I knew that Moses was found in the reeds by the side of the river in a basket. Actually, I don't think it's me that got this story wrong, I think this is the story that most people know about Moses. The conventional wisdom, as I understand it, is that Moses was an orphan, abandoned by his mother and found floating, left to die, on the banks of the Nile.

But that's not what happened at all. First, Joseph died, and then the Pharaoh died, and the new king didn't know anything about Israel. And they were thriving so much the Egyptians became worried that they would rise up and take over Egypt, so they enslaved them. It's a little odd that somehow the story of the biggest famine and economic success in the history of Egypt somehow was never told to the new king, but hey, this story is real, so that must be true.

The Egyptians beat the Israelis regularly, but the Israelites continued to get stronger. So the new king got drastic, and told the Hebrew midwives, of which there were two, to kill all male-born Israelis. The midwives couldn't do this. The king got mad, and the midwives told him that Israeli women have babies so quickly that the midwives never get there in time! (That explains why there are only two midwives!) They said, "Hebrew women were not like Egyptian women. When they were in labor they gave birth before the midwife could get to them" (Exod. 1.19). That can only mean one thing. Remember the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" "Big vagina" episode with Mo Collins and the cell phone? The king believes them, and God rewards the midwives for their dedication. As reward, God gives the midwives homes of their own. Just note that--what power God does in fact have--he can give the midwives anything they want. He just gives them homes and families, like that, a snap of his fingers. Just keep that in mind when we are reading about Israel wandering through the desert for FORTY YEARS. Ask yourself, why?

So, here's what really happened to Moses. The king ordered all the male Israeli babies killed. One of the Israeli women hid her baby from the Egyptians. Another baby born out-of-incest--"A descendant of Levi married a Levite woman who conceived and bore a son" (Exod. 2.1). The child's sister put the baby in a basket in the Nile, then hid to see what would happen. Pharaoh's daughter found it. (She was bathing in the river while her slave girls watched--another very scintillating scene.) Everyone in the bible is conniving. God likes you more the more conniving you are. The child's sister immediately sprang out of the bushes and said, "shall I find a Hebrew wet nurse for the baby?" And Pharaoh's daughter said yes, so the sister took the baby back to its mom! That's hardly a harrowing story of rescue and holy intervention. When the boy got older Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and named him Moses. (The note thinks the name might be related to Rameses: Ra (king?) Moses.)

Then there's another random story about what dicks the Israelis are. Moses sees an Egyptian beating some Israeli slaves. So Moses kills the Egyptian. Then the Israelis threaten to tell Pharaoh about it! So Moses has to run away, and he runs away to Midian. "Now, the priest of Midian had seven daughters!" (Exod. 2.16). Stop salivating. Unfortunately Moses only gets one of them.

Bible lesson on picking up women: You have to hang around down by the well. When the hot shepherdess girl comes to water her sheep, help her with it. Nothing turns on a shepherd girl like helping her with the water. You will get in her pants in no time. The amazing thing is, if you help her with the water, her dad will give her to you rather than chasing after you with a shotgun. It's another unrealistic thing about the bible. If shepherd girls were really this easy, there'd be a hundred guys milling around the wells every day waiting to help with the water. But that never happened.

The girl Moses gets is named Zipporah, and she gives him a son, whom he names Gershom.

Chapter 3 and 4 are when God hires Moses to go talk to the Israelites and lead them out of Egypt. I'll talk about it more later. It's a funny story, because Moses isn't the brightest bulb in the pack. I think if Jacob was Owen Wilson, Moses was maybe Mike Tyson--marble-mouthed and dopey. He told God that he couldn't speak good, he couldn't tell the Israelis what to do. Anyway, more on that, the long and short of it is that Moses enlists the help of his brother Aaron.

One more aside on this story before I get to the best part of this section. Remember Moses moved to Midian, right? He ran away from Egypt and settled in Midian? Moses is tending to his father-in-law's flocks. (His father-in-law is named Jethro, by the way.) So he takes the flocks to "Horeb, the mountain of God" (Exod. 3.1). This is where God hires Moses. God tells him to go get the Israelis out of Egypt, and then bring them here and they will all worship--this is the mountain where Moses gets the ten commandments. What I want to point out is that it takes the Israelis FORTY YEARS to go for this walk that apparently takes Moses a couple days to do!

Anyway, here's the passage I want to share with you. Moses reluctantly takes the job, and starts back to Egypt. What happens next is too insane for me to recount. You have to read it for yourself. Now remember, God had just hired Moses and told him to go to Egypt to talk to Pharaoh and get the Israelis. The very next paragraph: "During the journey, while they were encamped for the night, the Lord met Moses, meaning to kill him, but Zipporah picked up a sharp flint, cut off her son's foreskin, and touched him with it, saying, 'You are my blood-bridegroom.' So the Lord let Moses alone. Then she said, 'Blood-bridegroom by circumcision" (Exod. 4:24-26). There is so much insanity packed into those few words it's difficult to unpack. God has obviously completely lost it. He follows Moses and tries to kill him! Wtf?! And what is his wife's brilliant idea? Here, let me take the opportunity to cut off the end of our son's penis--that will distract God. Well, I guess it would. It is a common tactic for avoiding attack: act completely insane--pee in your pants, hit your head against the wall, jump up and down. Be more crazy than your assailant, and it will freak him out. It worked, and the Lord leaves Moses alone. But that's not the end of the story. Zipporah must have really gone insane with the insanity of cutting off her son's penis like that, because she even plays with the foreskin--this is the foreskin that she just cut off the baby's penis--she touches the foreskin to the baby's face! Then, after God has left, she is still maniacally mumbling to herself, "blood-bridegroom by circumcision, blood-bridegroom by circumcision."

The note is wonderfully understated: "this obscure passive"--obscure indeed. This obscure passive, the note says, is apparently "a fragment from a once independent tradition." The note says that the name "Moses" did not appear in the "MT" (that is some ancient source text--I haven't been able to find what MT stands for yet). They add the name Moses when they include this story in the present context. The note says that is the reason it appears to be Moses who is threatened. That's great: the only way they can claim that God is not a raging lunatic is to claim that God did not write the bible.

I used to think the giants in chapter 6 of Genesis were the craziest thing in the bible, but I think this passage tops it. I can't get the image of the gore of that scene out of my mind! God the raging homicidal maniac, and the only way to stop him is to mutilate your own son. That's drama!

--bibletoenail


Future Topic:
Moses and the burning bush. --Exod. ch. 3
Moses' way with words. --Exod. ch. 3
Why Pharaoh is hard-hearted. --Exod. ch. 4