Numbers: The rest

The Israelites often say that they're "on the way to the land of milk and honey" or that God has promised them a "land of milk and honey".

Margaret Starbird says "In Sumerian poetry, milk and honey are symbolic of the erotic secretions of male and female partners… So the epithet "milk and honey" conveys the joyful spirit of conjugal harmony, fruitfulness, and well being in the language of symbol. This is the land where the people live "happily ever after…. A land of milk and honey is a country filled with nature's bounty. It is a land where children are nurtured, widows consoled, foreigners made welcome, and arts and letters, music and dance are encouraged."

The Edomites will not let the Israelites pass through, even when they offer to pay. The people of Arad attack them.

Okay, God gets mad at the people again, for reasons I didn't quite catch. He sends "fiery serpents" among them that make the people sick. So the people beg Moses to do something about it. Moses appeals to God, who tells him to

Yahweh said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard: and it shall happen, that everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live
(21: 8)

Two things- one, what happened to the rules about not appealing to graven images? Does it not count this time? Also, this is kind of, well, magic…imo. And two, this snake curled around a pole is the international symbol for "doctor" or "hospital".

They find a well and sing about it.

There's a story about Balaam and his donkey, which is just so trippy.


Balaam said to the donkey, "Because you have mocked me, I wish there were a sword in my hand, for now I would have killed you."
The donkey said to Balaam, "Am I not your donkey, on which you have ridden all your life long to this day? Was I ever in the habit of doing so to you?" He said, "No."

Apparently, Balaam is this guy who is being coerced into betraying Israel. Then God has his donkey talk to him and this proves to Balaam that God is really real. So when Balaam is taken up to the high place to curse Israel, he says How shall I curse whom God has not cursed? How shall I defy whom Yahweh has not defied?

23:24
Behold, the people rises up as a lioness, As a lion he lifts himself up. He shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drinks the blood of the slain."
24:9
He couched, he lay down as a lion, as a lioness; who shall rouse him up? Everyone who blesses you is blessed. Everyone who curses you is cursed."

The KJV says "as a lion and as a great lion" which doesn't work for me. I like the other translations, that use both lion and lioness, because it seems more true to the nature of God. I once read an article on HuffingtonPost where the author was complaining about the image of the Abrahamic god.

He compares gods to the animal kingdom and says "Is God like some kind of lion, who sends a lioness out to do his bloodthirsty work for him?" I guess this guy's never read his bible. Imagery of God as a lion abounds throughout the bible. God's "dirty work" is frequently done by his "presence" which is sometimes interpreted as being female. And you know… Ishtar's symbolic animal is the lioness, as is Sekmet's. Of course, C.S Lewis also chose to make his Godish character a great big lion, and in "The Lion King" the lion is well, king of the animals. In Africa, and the Middle/Near East, there are plenty of other huge, dangerous animals around. But only the lion has the grace and elegance combined with power that make the animal seem royal.

According to wikipedia, "the lion is referred to 130 times in the Bible"



24:17
I see him, but not now. I see him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob. A scepter will rise out of Israel, and shall strike through the corners of Moab, and break down all the sons of Sheth.

Many Christians take this to be a prophecy about Jesus. However it can also be a prophecy about Bar Kokhba's revoltThe article even theorizes that this might have been what originally encouraged the schism between Jews and Christians- an argument over which man was the real Messiah.

(there's a few verses in chapter 24 that I'm just skipping right over because I find them a little worrying, but I don't have the time to get into them right now.)

It seems like the whole issue with the other nations might have been one big misunderstanding. The Hebrews/Israelites are basically homeless, but they need to be protected. So they form a national army that just happens to include every able bodied male over age 20. They're crossing the desert, looking for a place to settle. But all these other countries see is a gigantic, mobile army of fierce desert people who are rumored to have a powerful war god, and their tribal chiefs are renowned sorcerers who humiliated Egypt (which, as I said before, was the most powerful nation in the area). All these nations are living on the verge of war constantly, and now here's this new group that has appeared almost out of nowhere and are marching across the land. Thousands and thousands of them.

I left my parent's church because the pastor preached a sermon using some of the verses in this chapter (although mostly from the far harsher Deuteronomy) and used it as a diatribe against "sinners" and non Christians... yeah... I think that Westerners especially see these stories as not being real, so when you use rhetoric like that you're not really talking about people who really exist. I mean, after all, Canaanites don't exist anymore, they magically walked off the face of the earth one day in BCE to be replaced by people who apparently came down off some kind of spaceship?

These incidences are about a specific group of people in a specific time and place. They're not universal orders for the entire world for all time. The Israelites at first attempt to pass through peacefully, but the neighbors (according to this story) aren't having it. It seems like war is almost unavoidable in these cases. That's not true of the people who tend to point to these verses as justification for war today.

The people are starting to see their neighbors as "The Other". Dangerous, alien, and a threat. They'll fight over anything and God keeps egging them on.

Sure, "defend the land". But even among "the chosen", there are many groups and many colors of skin, many languages, many cultures. The right to live in that "promised place" is not the sole right of one tiny sub section of the population. That'd be like saying that only African Americans from Atlanta, GA deserve to have civil rights. The Edomites are seen as The Other in the story, yet they're actually the descendents of Esau, Jacob's twin. The descendants of Ishmael are also seen as The Other, yet they're of the blood of Abraham too.



Numbers 23-34

While in Moab, the Israelite men begin to indulge in immoralities with the Moabite women. They worship "Baal of Peor" (it seems that there are different Baals?)

And… God tells Moses to kill them. A man marries a Midianite woman and is killed for it. Wasn't Moses married to a Midianite? I'm getting a really mixed message about racism, and this vigilante justice is setting an unpleasant precedent.

"If a man dies and leaves no sons, turn the inheritance over to his daughter."

After that random interlude, they go to war with the Midianites. God tells them that they must kill everyone except the virgin girls, who they can take for themselves.

The Ruebenites and the Gadites don't feel like crossing the Jordan to go to war, so they decide to remain behind. But first Moses scolds them and convinces them to fight in the war, and it's decided that they’ll fight, then they can go back to their settlements.

33:52-56,
peak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye are passed over Jordan into the land of Canaan;
33:52 Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places:
33:53 And ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein: for I have given you the land to possess it. 33:54 And ye shall divide the land by lot for an inheritance among your families: and to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance: every man's inheritance shall be in the place where his lot falleth; according to the tribes of your fathers ye shall inherit.
33:55 But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.

That's horrible.

But then God says he doesn't want any bloodshed in the land!

"'So you shall not pollute the land in which you are: for blood, it pollutes the land; and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him who shed it.

So, against war but pro war, against death penalty but all for the death penalty. Don't have wars or murders on God's land or we'll have to kill you.