Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible

by David Plotz

  So God gets a little more insistent: “I will be with you.” This isn’t good enough for the lawyerly Moses, who now wonders what he should tell the Israelites about who sent him. “They ask me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?” God, moving into thunder-andlightning mode, declares, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh,” which is usually translated, Popeye-like, as “I am that I am.” Clearly getting peeved at Moses’s hesitation, God repeats the whole exhortation, even more emphatically, “I have declared: I will take you out of the misery of Egypt to . . . a land flowing with milk and honey,” etc.

  But does this satisfy Moses? Of course not. He complains: “What if they do not believe me and do not listen to me?” So God tries the David Blaine method, turning Moses’s rod into a snake and causing white scales to appear and disappear on Moses’s hand. Moses, changing tactics, now moans that he can’t go because he’s a poor speaker, “slow of speech and slow of tongue.” If any other human being bedeviled him so, God would have given him a smiting and found a substitute, but He merely rebukes Moses: “Who gives a man speech? . . . Is it not I, the Lord?” This still doesn’t deter the vexatious prophet. (If he lived today, this is the point when Moses would be showing God two doctors’ notes diagnosing chronic fatigue syndrome.) Moses groans, “Please, O Lord, make someone else Your agent.” After all this whining and rebuffing, the Lord has had enough: He finally becomes “angry with Moses,” and Moses agrees to do his bidding.

  But here’s the key point: Moses gets what he wants. At Moses’s urging, God appoints Moses’s brother, Aaron, to speak for him. Moses’s back talk actually endears him to the Lord, just as Abraham’s sass about Sodom and Gomorrah impressed Him. The Lord has no use for lumpish yes-men. His truest favorites so far—Abraham and Moses, as well as Jacob and Joseph—don’t back down from Him. At the bush, Moses is incredibly, maddeningly frustrating. But he also asks all the right questions about his mission; he plans for every contingency; and he negotiates a better deal for himself. That’s the kind of prophet I want on my team.

  Back to Egypt: Aaron and Moses pay a visit to Pharaoh, and at first request merely that he allow the Israelites a few days off for a camp meeting in the wilderness. When the negotiations falter, Moses and Aaron increase their demands, eventually insisting that Pharaoh liberate the Israelites. As Pharaoh resists, Moses begins inflicting plagues on the Egyptians.

  Curiously, the most compelling characters in the drama of the plagues are not Moses, Aaron, or Pharaoh, but Pharaoh’s anonymous sorcerers. I am fascinated by these guys. We are introduced to them when Moses and Aaron first visit Pharaoh. To impress Pharaoh, Aaron throws down his rod and it turns into a snake. The cocky sorcerers toss down their rods, which turn into snakes, too. But then Aaron’s snake gobbles theirs up. God 1, Sorcerers 0.

  The sorcerers, of course, don’t learn their lesson. Aaron and Moses begin delivering plagues, and the sorcerers keep thinking they can trump God. When Moses and Aaron turn the Nile to blood, the sorcerers do “the same with their spells.” Aaron and Moses cover Egypt with frogs. The sorcerers do “the same with their spells.” Moses and Aaron bring lice. But the sorcerers, their powers waning, can’t conjure up lice. (That’s really lame. Even I could conjure up lice: I would just drop by my daughter’s first- grade classroom and rub a few heads.) A couple of plagues later, the sorcerers’ defeat is total. Moses afflicts the Egyptians with boils. The sorcerers, summoned to work their counter- magic, don’t even show up: they can’t, because they’re covered with boils. The increasing feebleness of their dark arts makes for great black comedy—and hilariously effective testimony for God’s power. The sorcerers are the gangster’s dumb sidekicks, they’re Hitler’s generals, they’re the cringing flunkies who do every tyrant’s dirty work, and it’s wonderful to see them meet the deserved misfortune of fl unkies everywhere.

  Except for the trouncing of the sorcerers, however, the plagues don’t speak well for God. In fact, this is the most disturbing story in the Bible so far—even more troubling than the Flood. The ten plagues basically go like this. Moses and Aaron unleash a plague. Pharaoh promises to let the Israelites go if God will lift the plague. The plague ceases, and Pharaoh immediately reneges, so that another plague is unleashed. The mystery, of course, is: why does Pharaoh renege? Exodus tells us the answer: he reneges because God has “stiffened his heart.”

  Why would God keep hardening Pharaoh’s heart so that He can inflict yet another monstrous plague? Why would God prolong the Egyptians’ suffering? God tells us why. Listen carefully:

  For I have hardened his heart . . . in order that I may display these My signs among them, and that you may recount in the hearing of your sons and your sons’ sons how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed My signs among them—in order that you may know I am the Lord.

  In other words, God is causing the plagues so that we can tell stories about the plagues. He’s torturing the Egyptians so that we will worship Him. What kind of insecure and cruel God murders children so that His followers will obey Him, and will tell stories about Him? This is the behavior of a serial killer. (Also, how about that euphemism “displayed My signs”? You call them “signs”; I call them “plagues.”) Yes, Pharaoh is a monster, and the Egyptians are brutal taskmasters. They deserve to be punished. But what’s upsetting is that God takes delight in their suffering. He even performs the last and worst plague—the slaying of the firstborn—Himself. He wants the plagues to persist and worsen, so that we will tell stories about them. And lo and behold, 3,500 years later, that’s exactly what we do every Passover.

  chapter 14

  How stupid is Pharaoh? Egypt has been pummeled by frogs, vermin, lice, cattle disease, hail, and other plagues; it has lost all its firstborn males (the plague that finally leads to freedom for the Israelites); its gods are manifestly impotent against the wrath of our God. But that doesn’t deter the idiotic monarch from pursuing the Israelites across the Red Sea.

  (I just used my Bible to smash a bug on my desk. That’s bad, isn’t it?)

  The crossing of the Red Sea was the Torah passage I recited at my bar mitzvah, back in 1983, so once upon a time I could even read this story in Hebrew. All I can remember now is that my bar mitzvah speech concerned the geo graph ical debate over the actual location of the Red Sea. I studied maps showing potential crossing routes, and felt very proud at my daring choice of subject. (Twenty-five years later, I feel slightly dopey, since most scholars now agree that there was no exodus from Egypt, because the Israelites were never there.)

  As I was poring over the maps, my thirteen-year-old self missed the real drama of this chapter: God’s ongoing desire to exalt Himself through murder. Before the Egyptians are drowned in the sea, God tells Moses exactly what He is going to do. Moses will part the sea with his rod, and the Israelites will walk through. Then God will “stiffen the hearts” of the Egyptians so that they pursue, and God will drown them. God says, “I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his warriors, his chariots and his horse men.” Or, to put it more truthfully: “I will gain glory through killing Pharaoh and all his warriors, his chariots and his horse men.” The moral problem isn’t that God drowns the Egyptians. The Egyptians are wicked, and war is ugly. The problem is that God enjoys it.

  chapters 15–17

  A woman! There’s a woman! For the first time in ages a living, breathing female appears. Moses’s sister “Miriam the prophetess” leads the celebratory singing and dancing when the Israelites cross the sea. Thank goodness for a woman who’s not trying to cuckold her husband, defraud her son, or scam the king; a woman who’s not merely a wife to be mentioned in passing or a daughter tacked onto the end of a long list of sons.

  Moses leads the Israelites into the wilderness. It’s day one of their forty-year trek, and yet they’re already complaining that they’re thirsty and the only available water is bitter. We’re a grumbling people, aren’t we? Freedom after 430 years of captivity, and nothing to do but grouse. When the Egyptian army pursu
ed them, the Israelites griped that they would rather have stayed slaves in Egypt than die by the sea. Now they’re fussing that they’re thirsty. God gives Moses a piece of wood that cleans up the water—the world’s first Brita filter. Then the Lord reminds them that they’re His Chosen People, and if they follow His laws and behave, they will be free of all the diseases that plagued the Egyptians. This is a resonant moment: His people suffering, God helps them, and lets them know that He will always be there for them.

  But does that stop the Israelites from bellyaching? Nope. Just a few verses later they’re complaining of hunger and chastising Moses for taking them out of Egypt, where at least they had plenty to eat. Again, God delivers, supplying manna to feed them, and even a double portion on Friday so they don’t need to collect on the Sabbath. When a few of the Israelites try to gather manna on Saturday anyway, God explodes at Moses: “How long will you men refuse to obey My commandments and My teachings?”

  But the Lord keeps delivering the manna. This gets at the central drama of Exodus. God, who hasn’t hesitated to rub out other doubters, idolaters, and sinners (Sodomites, Lot’s wife, Pharaoh, etc.), is patient with the Israelites, and tolerant of their distrust. Over and over, God tries to persuade His obstinate, suspicious, doubting Chosen People to put their faith in Him. Over and over they disappoint Him, but He tries again. God’s understanding of human weakness and His persistent hope that we can overcome it are a powerful argument for faith.

  chapter 18

  A fantastic chapter masquerading as a boring one. Moses’s father-in-law Jethro watches Moses at work and sees that he wastes all day settling petty disputes. (He’s the Jimmy Carter of prophets.) Appalled by the drain on Moses’s time and energy, Jethro sits Moses down and tells him he can’t do everything by himself. Jethro advises that he must deal only with the big things—issuing laws and ruling on the largest disputes. All minor matters should be resolved by magistrates selected by Moses. These judges, Jethro advises, should be capable, God-fearing, and incorruptible. Jethro proposes several layers of judges: some to preside over small groups of people, and others for groups of thousands. Jethro, in short, designs the first judicial system, and it’s a superb one. It’s largely independent; it’s well-organized; it has clear lines of authority and even an appellate system. Is it any wonder that Jews are the world’s great lawyers?

  chapter 20

  The Ten Commandments. Or at least I think it’s the Ten Commandments. I came up with nine, ten, and eleven commandments, depending on how I counted the first few verses. Does “You shall not make yourself a sculptured image. . . . You shall not bow down to them or serve them” count as one commandment (no graven images) or two? And are those instructions themselves merely a subset of the First Commandment “You shall have no other gods besides Me”? By counting the combination of no “sculptured image” and no bowing down as a single commandment and counting “no other gods” as a separate one, I managed to get ten.

  Forgive me for being 3,000 years late in noticing this, but the commandments, the last six in par tic ular (honor your parents, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t covet) pretty much cover the basic rules for a functioning society. What is more striking is what the commandments are not. In the popular mind, the Ten Commandments are a guide for moral living, rules that teach us how to be good. But they don’t. They teach nothing about morality. The commandments are designed for keeping order. They concern how we act toward each other so that society functions. They don’t try to create goodness. Except for “Remember the Sabbath” and “Honor thy father and mother,” they don’t tell us what we should do; they tell us only what we mustn’t do.

  I’m confused by the first two commandments, because they appear to acknowledge the existence of other gods. “You shall have no other gods besides Me” and “You shall not bow down to them or serve them.” For a book that supposedly invented monotheism, the Bible sure has a lot of other gods. Did the Israelites believe that Baal Co. were genuine supernatural beings but were second-raters and charlatans compared with the Lord? Or did they think these other gods were just figments, delusions imagined by the stupid Philistines and Amalekites? To ask it another way: Were the Israelites polytheists who believed their God trumped all the others? Or were they monotheists who thought all the other gods were imaginary? Exodus is not clear on this, but as I read the book, especially the commandments, they seem to be polytheists who thought they had picked the top god.

  In a way, you might say that the book of Exodus is the story of how the Israelites discovered monotheism. After a 430-year breakup, God and His people are finally back together. They’ve committed to each other. They’ve moved in together: God is literally traveling with them. It’s like a marriage. They have finally agreed to stop seeing other people (or gods) and be faithful to just one.

  When He’s commanding against idolatry, God says: “For I the Lord your God am an impassioned God”—other translations have the more vivid “jealous God”—“visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generations of those who reject Me, but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep My commandments.” Let’s ignore the paradox of this, i.e., if I keep the commandments but my children don’t, shouldn’t they be protected by that thousandth- generation rule? What I am struck by is God visiting the guilt of the parents on the children. It’s obvious why God would threaten it: there is no better way to discourage straying from the fold than instilling the fear that such straying will destroy your own children. Even so, this seems pretty unfair. I had always thought that we all get our own clean slate, a life that we can make or ruin on our own. It’s alarming to think that we may not, that God is holding my sins against Jacob and Noa, and my parents’ sins against me. (I wonder if my parents kept any false gods at home that they never told me about. I hope not.)

  chapters 21–22

  The fun part of the Bible skids to a halt, and the Lord gets down to the dreary business of governing. It’s like that scene at the end of The Candidate, when Robert Redford, having finally won the election, says, “What do we do now?” Freed after 430 years, the Israelites have their “What do we do now?” moment. Up to this point, the Bible has been a cracking good adventure story, a Judean Robert Ludlum. Now it turns into a how-to manual. This isn’t to say there aren’t great tales to come—there’s that golden calf—but I suspect they’ll be more sporadic. This also isn’t to say that the rest of Exodus is boring. It isn’t. But it’s a different kind of read.

  The Ten Commandments are God’s constitution—concise, magnificent, beautifully written, but a bit stronger on the ideals than the practicalities. So now God follows up with the detailed laws and regulations needed to enforce the commandments in daily life. Thou shalt not kill—that’s pretty clear. But what happens if someone does kill? What if someone kills accidentally? What if someone kills a cow? Or a fetus? You see how this can get pretty complicated pretty quickly.

  So, how does the Lord begin? With slavery, of course—verse after verse about how long a Hebrew slave must serve his master, who owns a slave’s wife and children, what happens to a girl whose father sells her into slavery, and so forth. I know, I know: our modern ideas about slavery don’t apply. This was an ancient, tribal culture; slavery didn’t mean the same thing back then; the Israelites were practically abolitionists by the standards of the time; etc. Even so, isn’t it disheartening that slavery is so central to God and His people that His laws address it first?

  Once we fi nish with slavery, it becomes clear that God is a hanging judge. His punishment for intentional killing is death. Punishment for kidnapping: death. Punishment for idolatry: death. Punishment for striking a parent: death. Punishment for insulting a parent: death. (Hmm. Not sure I agree with that one—though it would cut down on the temper tantrums.) Punishment for bestiality: death. On the other hand, if you seduce a virgin, you only have to pay off her fami
ly. I don’t understand how modern liberal Catholics, Jews, and Protestants can use the Bible to justify their opposition to capital punishment. If there is one thing God truly believes in, it’s a good old firing squad.

  These laws reveal more about the daily lives and concerns of our ancestors than the plot-heavy biblical stories. The laws depict the Israelites as obsessed with property rights and particularly focused on the health of their livestock, on which their economic prosperity depended. (“If someone’s ox hurts the ox of another, so that it dies, then they shall sell the live ox and divide the price of it; and the dead animal they shall also divide.”) The specifi city of the rules also indicates a very law-abiding, and thus orderly, society—one in which law insulated people against arbitrary power.

  Exodus 21, verse 22 is a law with some tricky modern implications. If a man pushes a pregnant woman and she miscarries, but is not otherwise hurt, then the offender only pays a fine to the victim’s husband. So according to Exodus, killing this fetus is merely a property crime requiring only financial compensation, not a murder. If you’re pro-choice, this might seem to prove that the Bible considers abortion a categorically different kind of deed from murder. But of course it’s not that simple: pro-life and pro-choice groups roundly disagree about how to translate the verse. Pro-choicers read it in the way I just described. Pro-lifers insist that it’s referring not to “miscarriage” (the word in my translation), but to a premature birth in which the infant survives.