20:12 "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee." I suppose that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this command, provided one has parents worthy of respect. Of course, the real reason for this command is that the bible has been used as a tool to condition people to unquestionably obey authority—whether or not the authority is worthy of respect and obedience. By conditioning children to unquestionably respect and obey their parents, this mind-conditioning extends to the church, and from thence, to our "Christian" society and mad presidents who may, one day, drag the whole planet into world war three! Think about this for a moment. We've all read news items about some father who horribly abused his wife and children, making their lives living hells, who sexually abused his daughters, etc., and yet Christianity and Judaism demands that we "honor" and "respect" such a bastard!

This insight aside, Matthew 23:9 bluntly contradicts Yahweh when it teaches Christians that they are not to call anyone "... on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven." Supposedly this is Jesus talking, and since he was supposedly one and the same with Yahweh, who issued the original commandments on Mt. Sinai, then we do have a problem. Which commandment do you keep? Which is right? Certainly the "how-it-could-have-happened" bible thumpers turn flips and jump through hoops with their "original" Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic trying to convince us that, in the case of Jesus' statement, "father" doesn't mean one's own physical father. If that is the case, then why in the hell didn't Jesus just say so? I mean, did he or did he not know how to communicate with the masses? Had he clarified the situation he'd have saved his faithful a lot of time and effort when they argue that he didn't mean what he said!

20:13 "Thou shalt not kill." This has to be the biggest joke going in the whole of the Old Testament/Tanakh! I mean, can anyone really keep a straight face while reading such words supposedly uttered by one of the world's worst homicidal maniacs? The fact is that if you believe that the bible is God's infallible word, then you must lay to his feet the horrific sufferings, deaths and other horrors of all human history, which the bible clearly admits: Isaiah 45:7: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD [Yahweh] do all these things." Amos 3:6: "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD [Yahweh] hath not done it?" Lamentations 3:38: "Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?" Even if you want to argue translation issues here, that is that the old King James English doesn't mean the same now as it once did (which is a favorite fundamentalist argument), then you still have a bible that is one long history of Yahweh killing millions of innocent men, women, children, suckling babes, lambs, and every other critter on earth with the slightest excuse! Read these accounts and look me in the eye and tell me that your god is not a god of death and evil, as his "holy" scriptures boast! Moreover, if the King James Bible isn't reliable, then why is it still the best selling of all English bibles? Does God, or does he not have the power to correct an obvious problem with "his word?" (Rich Deem, in his defensive article "Did God Create Evil—Does the Bible Say So?", argues that the answer lies in a more modern translation. He cites Isaiah 45:7 and uses the New International Version to make his point: "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things." ( www.godandscience.org) To someone desperate to find an answer to a god who brags about creating evil, this might seem a bit soothing—if they don't look too closely. However, when Yahweh brags that he creates "disaster" aren't we really just talking semantics? I mean, consider the somewhat recent Indonesian tsunami "disaster," wherein 294,000 people were washed away. If we believe Isaiah 45 then it was God's handiwork; and if it was, then it was pure evil!

20:14 "Thou shalt not commit adultery." And this from a god who sanctions incest and rape! He sanctions the selling of one's own daughter into sex slavery; he sanctions the kidnaping and rape of helpless females, which he did with the 32,000 Midianite virgins. Now he's got the gall to instruct people about sex outside marriage. Of course the added hypocrisy here is that Yahweh allowed multiple marriage—if you happened to be a male—and he allowed sex with your wife's servant girl/slaves, as he did with Jacob. But the crown in this jewel is when Yahweh manifested himself as a ghost and visited a betrothed Jewish virgin by the name of Miriam, who we now remember as the Virgin Mary, and raped her, thus becoming the son of himself! In the disguise of the "Holy Ghost" he committed both rape and adultery, but, as so many have argued, Yahweh was God and God can do anything he pleases, since as God his actions are never wrong!

20:15 Thou shalt not steal." Here we go again! The bible is one long record of Israel breaking every rule in the book—stealing being at the head of the list—under Yahweh's divine blessing, and yet he lectures us about stealing! Perhaps we can get around this one, as did Yahweh, Moses and crew, by just "borrowing" loot from our enemies!

20:16 "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." Presumably we are being told not to generally lie, whether the incident involves a neighbor or not. Going on that assumption, this command is the biggest indictment against the word of God in existence. Never has any book been so fraught with canards as God's infallible word! Not only does the "word of God" include major contradictions, but it includes numerous bare-faced lies, the majority of which will be forthcoming in later studies!

20:17 "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant [other words for "slaves"], nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's. " Again, the biggest violator of this commandment is Yahweh and his "holy" people. Look at their incursion into Canaan. Here was a land that was fully occupied by hundreds of thousands of people, but Moses and company set out to invade, conqueror and utterly destroy every living man, woman and child in Canaan in order to steal the land from it's owners. Now of course, the argument will be that Yahweh had promised this land to Abraham, therefore the Israelites had every right to do as they did. But if God is all-powerful, as we are assured, then when he dumped Israel into captivity for no apparent reason, why didn't he use the 400 year interval to peacefully clear the real estate of "squatters?" Why allow people to live, work, be born on, die on, and cherish the land as their own when he knew damned well that he had given it away? As to the thing about coveting "thy neighbor's wife", here the Lord goes again with his bare faced gall! He it was who coveted another man's wife, meaning the Virgin Mary, and raped her!

The bible itself proves that there has never been a more hypocritical set of "laws" at any time in human history, than the ten commandments—even if the ancient Jewish scribes did purloin portions of them from the Code of Hammurabi (which predate the ten commandments by 500 years) during their sojourn in Babylonian captivity: "Around 1750 B.C.E. the Code of Hammurabi, one of the oldest known legal codes, was cast in stone in Mesopotamia. This remarkable stone exists today in the Louvre museum in Paris. The code has elements of contract law, various human rights, and was considered so fundamental that they even applied to the king. The code included prohibitions against lying, theft, and murder, which are so universal that there are few cultures without them. Roughly a thousand years later, Yahweh, the tribal god of the Israelites, is claimed in Biblical lore to have created a list of commands on stone tablets for Moses to give to his people. Perhaps the writers of the Torah coveted the power of the Babylonian stone tablets and created a story about stone tablets of their own in response. Upon returning to his people, Moses found his followers worshiping a golden calf and in a dramatic huff he smashed the tablets and they were never mentioned again. (Yahweh clearly didn't foresee the event nor did he use a more suitable material for the tablets, such as diamond coated titanium.)" (Source: www.christianitymeme.org)

The rest of Exodus

If you're still hanging on, then let's keep plugging along and polish off the rest of Exodus by turning to chapter 21, where (unfortunately) we find that Yahweh isn't finished rattling off commands. In fact, before all is said and done some he heaps up some 613 new laws on the newly-freed slaves! (Some freedom! No wonder they complained that they had it better in Egypt!)

Now keep in mind that these 613 weren't voluntary laws; they weren't suggestions; break one and Yahweh's true servants were ready to drag off the offender to the nearest rock pile for a good old fashioned rock festival!

It is true that the majority of these were somewhat piddling, but some were anything but. For instance Exodus 20:2 outlines Yahweh's plan whereby wealthy Israelites could buy poor ones. The "good" part of the plan is that the bondage was to last only six years. On the seventh year the slave was to be set free. But, in a ploy that is more in keeping with a crooked used car salesman than a god who tries to pass off himself as benevolent, the Lord says that if the slave married and produced children while in service, then the wife and the children could not leave with the freed slave. If the newly freed man found this unacceptable, then he could stay, but in doing so he'd have to remain a slave for the rest of his days ... and ... and ... his master would take him to a public place and drill a hole in his ear as a symbol of his lowly status! Some choice! The man could leave his family in chains and go free, or he could bind himself for the rest of his days to a slave master! If he chose the former the slave master was still in the $$$ since he had the wife and kids to work and/or sell—thank you very much Lord God!

Speaking of slavery it is in this chapter that we learn that a father has the right to sell his daughter into bondage to whichever old pervert had enough sheckels. I guess the lesson here is 1) not to be born a female; or 2) hope to god you had a loving father who wasn't in need of ready cash!

In case you're tempted to make excuses for Yahweh then you should be aware that this God-ordained trafficking in human flesh is strengthened in Leviticus 22:10-11 and in 25:39. And you should be aware that the Lord is a respecter of persons, since Exodus 25:44-46 makes a distinction between Israelites and non-Israelites. The former could be redeemed from bondage, but the latter were perpetual slaves, meaning that they and their descendants could remain the property of a master's descendants "forever". In this way Yahweh created endless generations of slaves: Leviticus 25:44: "Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever."

If some want to use that old standby excuse that the advent of Jesus did away with all those "Old" Testament laws, we have the New Testament books of Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22, 1 Timothy 6:1, Titus 2:9-10, and 1 Peter 2:18 to back up God's ot position on buying and selling human flesh. And now you know why Christianity championed the world's slave trade!

There are a host of other "wise" pronouncements from Yahweh in chapter 21, such as verse 10 where we find Yahweh giving his stamp of approval on bigamy. The famous "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" thing is chapter 21, although not quite the way most people think. This law actually says that if your temper gets the better of you and you knock out your male or female slave's eyeball, then you must set them free as compensation. Of course, if you beat the poor mutt black and blue, break a few ribs and tear out their hair, then it's no big deal since they are your property—thus saith the Lord!

This same principle is outlined in 21:20 where it speaks of a master who beats to death a slave. The Contemporary English Version reads: "Death is the punishment for beating to death any of your slaves." So far, so good, but the real nature of our loving Yahweh is revealed when, in verse 21, he adds: "However, if the slave lives a few days after the beating, you are not to be punished. After all, you have already lost the services of that slave who was your property." In other words, to hell with the horribly abused slave! To hell with the injustice of slavery! The lost income during his or her recuperation is more than punishment for the cruel bastard who inflicted the injuries and suffering! Can you say "Massa Yahweh" here?

Now that we know that slavery is just fine with the Lord, we can move on to Exodus 22:16 where we find Yahweh explaining that if a man seduces an unmarried woman, then he had to make her an "honest woman" by offering to marry her. Here one finds the origin of an unspoken societal rule that has seen the ruination of many young girls. The girl who "loses her honor" by yielding sexually to a lover is forever tainted—she's damaged goods—a whore! Moreover, in time the rule was tightened to say that even if she marries her lover, she's forever tainted! Certainly it's unfair but it's nothing compared to the next holy command.

Exodus 22:18 commands all good God-fearing people not to "suffer" a witch to live! For thousands of years that one little verse, which has no elaboration, has been used to torment, torture and murder untold numbers of men, women and children who were different. Ironically, more than once Exodus 22:18 was used by Christians against Jews (whose leaders made up this crap) because superstitious Christians didn't understand ritual Judaism and thought they had "witches" in their midst. (For some disturbing insight into this history, see this author's booklet, For the Love of God.)

As any seasoned bible reader knows, there are some areas of God's word that are best left alone. Certainly no minister would dare preach on them in a church service. I never did when I was regularly pounding a pulpit. But that was a long time ago and nowadays no such hesitation enters my thinking when it comes to bible study. So notice if you will Exodus 22:19, where we find Yahweh's first prohibition against people having sex with animals.

To me this is another instance of blatant hypocrisy since it was Yahweh himself who introduced humans to the concept of bestiality when he forgot to make a human mate for Adam in the Garden of Eden and brought numerous animals to Adam to "try out"! Since God sees everything, we must assume that Yahweh & Co. watched the show as their newly-made man porked a variety of animals. I say this because how else would Yahweh know that none of the raped critters were fit to be Adam's mate?

That Yahweh has a kinky preoccupation with bestiality becomes obvious when he goes on a tirade against sinning Israel and likens "her" to a whore and details how her lovers had horse- and donkey-sized penises which they use to satisfy Israel's ravenous sexual appetite! Since you're guaranteed never to hear this read out in church, let's cover it here: Ezek 23:19: "Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. 21 So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled."

Come on! Talk about explicit X-rated stuff here—I mean, in small bible-belt Southern towns in the past books have been burned for having less sexually explicit insertions than this! Israel, who is really a man but who is married to Yahweh who calls his "bride" a "her", is a whore who likes lovers with abnormally large dongs who can spew gysers when they orgasm!

Now this isn't the only place where Yahweh warns Israel about doing it with farm animals. In Leviticus 18:23 we read: "Also you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion." This is strengthened by Deuteronomy 27:21: "Cursed is he who lies with any animal.' And all the people shall say, 'Amen.'"

I'm reminded here of that old saying that where there is smoke there must be fire. All these warnings must mean that ancient Israel couldn't be trusted alone with their livestock! Why else would this law be here? If there was no problem, then what sick mind would have included such graphic warnings in its holy book?

Exodus 22:20: "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed." Now here's a verse that's sure to knock out the competition! No need for talking reason here, just stone to death anyone who dares question your theology and, presto, you're top dog on the block! It was a formula that did its work well, which is why Christianity came to dominate Europe.

Exodus 22:22: "Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child." The book's composers should have added "unless you happen to buy the widow and orphan at auction!"

Exodus 22:28: "Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people." After all the crap and threats about worshiping foreign gods, Yahweh turns around in this verse and commands his people not to insult the gods! Of course this ties into the ten commandments where Yahweh commanded that one was not to place other gods before him, which clearly means you could have them, just not place them in higher regard than Yahweh. But hold on! In Exodus 23:23 the Lord turns around and commands that we cut down and destroy the gods of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and the Jebusites. It would seem that one needed a good lawyer to survive in ancient Israel!

As we've noted this doublespeak is something of a trademark in the Old Testament. Exodus 22:29-30 is an infamous example: "Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me. Likewise shalt thou do with thine oxen, and with thy sheep: seven days it shall be with his dam [old English for mother]; on the eighth day thou shalt give it me." In case this went over your head, the Lord is talking human sacrifice here!

'Let's recall the story in Genesis wherein Abraham was commanded by Yahweh to sacrifice his only legitimate son as a burnt offering to the Lord. (See this author's Genesis: In the Beginning!) As any good preacher trying to cover his ass will argue, God never had any intention of actually allowing old Abe to slit Isaac's throat; it was just a "test" to try his obedience. Balderdash! (To be polite, I thought I'd use that word instead of "bullshit!")

History amply shows that human sacrifices were a part of ancient Hebrew worship rites, as Yahweh's bloody holy record shows. We all know that he regulary demanded tons of animal sacrifices, barge-loads of fresh blood, as well as the annihilation of whole towns as atonements for those who had slighted him. But the story goes way beyond that. Just a little digging reveals a deity who often places his chosen ones in impossible situations so that he may exact punishment. And when that isn't sufficient, he lies to his people to bring about the desired results.

We find an example of this in Ezekiel 20:25-26, wherein Yahweh is royally peeved at Israel. To get his revenge, he boldly admits: "Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good and judgments whereby they should not live; And I polluted them in their own gifts in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord."

Did you catch that? Yahweh himself gave Israel laws that would bring about their destruction! And he forced them to sacrifice in fire their own children so that they would know he was Yahweh! I mean, it's what I've been saying since the Genesis study: in the holy bible one is dealing with a homicidal maniacal deity—a psychopath!

Ezekiel 20:25-26 tells us that Exodus 22-29 means what it says, which is that a man was to sacrifice as a burnt offering his firstborn son to the Lord!

If you want more evidence that Yahweh demanded and accepted human sacrifices, then all you need do is turn to Numbers 31:25-29: "And the lord spake unto Moses, saying, Take the sum of the prey that was taken, both of man and of beast, thou, and Eleazar the priest, and the chief fathers of the congregation: And divide the prey into two parts; between them that took the war upon them, who went out to battle, and between all the congregation: And levy a tribute unto the Lord of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep: Take it of their half, and give it unto Eleazar the priest, for an heave offering of the lord."

Did you catch that? The Lord's "tribute" was one out of 500 of both "persons" and animals, and these were to be given over to the high priests and presented as an "heave" offering of the LORD, or Yahweh!

A heave offering (Hebrew: terumah), was the possession of the priests and was a sacrifice which was heaved (lifted) above the altar, as opposed to being waved around it, during the slaughter. If edible, the heave offering could be eaten by the priest and his family. If there is any doubt that the "heave offering" was a bloody sacrifice, read Exodus 29:26: "And thou shalt take the breast of the ram of Aaron's consecration, and wave it for a wave offering before the LORD: and it shall be thy part. 27 And thou shalt sanctify the breast of the wave offering, and the shoulder of the heave offering, which is waved, and which is heaved up, of the ram of the consecration, even of that which is for Aaron, and of that which is for his sons."

What this means is that Lord's human tribute in Numbers 31:25-29 was to be cut into pieces and heaved around his altar—not unlike the ancient Aztecs of South America!

While we're at it, we can recall the story of the Midianite slaughter in Numbers 31.

By order of Yahweh, the Midianites, who actually were cousins to the Israelites—both peoples being descended of Abraham—were butchered down to the suckling babe. The exception was some 32,000 virgin girls who were handed over for an Israelite rape-fest. As I discussed in my booklet, For the Love of God, it was after this episode that 32 virgin Midianite girls were given to the priests of Israel as human sacrifices for Yahweh. Certainly ministers of the Lord are loathe to admit that their god was no different than the gods of the Canaanites. They argue that this verse cannot be interpreted as human sacrifice, despite what we've just read in Numbers 31. But the weight of evidence is against them. One piece of that evidence is in the story of Jephthah and his young virgin daughter.

In Judges 11:29-40 we read about Jephthah, who, if he was given a victory over the Ammonites, vowed that he would offer as a human sacrifice to Yahweh the first person who came out of his house. Now the very fact that Jephthah made such a vow proves that human sacrifice was a way of life for the worshipers of Jehovah, which is a point never mentioned by your average Sunday-morning preacher. It also tells us something else about dear old Jephthah. My guess is that his wife was customarily the first one out the door to greet him on his return home, which might explain his making such a vow. This aside, God gave Jephthah his victory and looked on approvingly as his henchmen sliced up twenty towns full of men, women, children and suckling babes. Upon his return, Jephthah's virgin daughter was the first one to come out of his house to meet him, which caused old Jephthah great misery.

What did Yahweh do? Did he remind Jephthah of the ten commandments, which clearly state that it is a sin to commit murder? No. Did Yahweh remind Jephthah that he did not punish children for the folly of their parents? No. Did Yahweh at least feel generous towards Jephthah for butchering twenty towns full of people in his name—telling him to just forget his vow, spare his daughter and slop a few hundred gallons of sheep's blood on his holy altar instead? No. Our god of mercy and forgiveness, who had looked on approvingly as Jephthah and his butchers sliced up all those people and their unoffending babies, held Jephthah to his vow and watched as the young virgin girl was offered to him as a human sacrifice!

We can add to this the tale in 2 Samuel 21:1, 8-9, 14, when Yahweh admitted that he was cursing Israel with a famine because he was still peeved with King Saul for slaughtering the Gibeonites. Never mind that it was Yahweh who had installed Saul as king; never mind that Yahweh could have prevented the slaughter, but instead sat idly by and watched from the comfort of his heavenly throne. No! Again Yahweh wanted blood and instructed King David to hand over Saul's seven sons to the Gibeonites to be sacrificed to him. Once they were dead, Yahweh lifted the famine and all was well. One might also ponder the coincidence that in this tale King David ridded himself of seven potential threats to his throne! (It was the custom of ancient kings to kill off all potential rivals when ascending their throne.)

There are the brief mentions of human sacrifices on Yahweh's altar in 1 Kings 13:2: "And he cried against the altar in the word of the LORD, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith the LORD; Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee." In 2 Kings 23:20: "And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars, and burned men's bones upon them." In 2 Chronicles 34:1-5: "Josiah ... did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord ... And he burnt the bones of the priests upon their altars."

And let us not forget the most famous human sacrifice of all: Jesus Christ! In that tale God the Father bled his own son as a sin offering! This example alone makes the command in Exodus 22:29-30 speak for itself. Indeed the question is completely clarified in verse 30 when we read that the first born males of oxen and sheep were to be given over to Yahweh for sacrifice!

And so, the bible is clear that in the days of Moses the first born male of a family was to be gutted on the altar of the Lord!

To be expected, elsewhere in "God's Word" we find a contradiction to all the above: Jeremiah 7:22 is a classic example of this: "For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices."

Now who are we supposed to believe; the men who composed Exodus, or the ones who composed Jeremiah? Both can't be right!

Moving along, to Exodus 23:17 we find Yahweh commanding that "Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the LORD God [Yahweh Elohim]." Here you clearly see that Yahweh had no real interest in females. Only males interest Yahweh, as his holy book makes abundantly clear! (See this author's booklet Jehovah Finally Comes Out of the Closet for more details on this aspect of God's nature.)

Eventually Yahweh finished with this round of lawmaking, and in a fitting ritual, Moses took the blood of a sliced up ox and sprinkled it on the people of Israel. (Exodus 24:8) Of course, if we buy the numbers of supposed Israelites recorded in the exodus, then it would have taken oil tankers full of blood to have sprinkled the millions of assembled people with blood!

Exodus 24:9: "Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: 10 And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. 11 And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink."

I don't know about you, but it gets very tiring to find endless biblical contradictions in the face of all those Sunday-morning bible thumpers who talk about the "harmony" of God's word! Here we read that a crowd of 74 Israelites saw Yahweh standing on sapphires, while elsewhere in the bible we are told that no man can see God and live! Exodus 33:20: "There shall no man see me, and live." John 1:18: "No man hath seen God at any time." John 6:46: "Not that any man hath seen the Father." 1 Timothy 6:16: "Whom no man hath seen nor can see." 1 John 4:12: "No man hath seen God at any time."

Now which is it? Either you can see God and live, or you cannot!

Exodus 25 finds the Lord in the building trade. What is somewhat amusing is that he tells Moses to mention to the children of Israel that they should give voluntary offerings to make his new tabernacle—thus setting a precedent for generations of priests and ministers to extract voluntary offerings for just about everything under the sun. (This brings to mind Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage USA theme park, which was a Christian answer to Disneyland, and all those voluntary offerings for which Jim Bakker went to prison when his embezzlement was discovered.)

The joke here is that no sane Israelite would have told Yahweh to bugger off when he asked for donations. They had ample evidence of his vindictive retaliations when slighted, so the idea that Moses was asking for a voluntary offering is absurd!

To make sure the lesson of "voluntary offerings" is not lost on Christians, we have the somewhat out-of-place story in Acts 5 of Ananias and his wife Sapphira, who were members of the Early Christian church.

Supposedly A & S announced to one and all that they would sell some land and donate money to the work of the Lord. But after the transaction they held back some of the money. To be expected the Lord was not amused, and after Peter accused him of lying to the Holy Ghost, struck him dead: "Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?" (Acts 5:2) Peter points out that Ananias had every right not to sell the land at all or to do what he wanted with the profits, but by telling a lie—by saying that he was donating the entire amount—he had slighted the Holy Ghost. Three hours later his wife enters and tells the same lie, and she too drops dead! Moral of the story: When it comes to the church, give till it hurts or suffer the consequences!

Most of the details of Exodus 25 are pure boredom—something like curling up in a warm bed with a cup of tea and reading an architect's blueprint. But in verse 17 we find instructions for making something called a mercy seat of pure gold adorned with two golden angelic creatures (cherubim). 20: "And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be."

Although they may have not known about Deuteronomy 5:8, one wonders how the composers of Exodus could have forgotten about chapter 20 verse 4 wherein they had written these words: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."

Now folks, without doubt cherubs are included in this prohibition, and religious salesmen of all stripes have been trying to explain this blatant inconsistency ever since lay men and women learned to read and started flipping through the pages of the bible! In other words, Yahweh ordered Moses to violate his own command, which, under Israelite law, means that Yahweh was a candidate for a rock festival!

I'm sure the response of most can be summed up in the words of Yvonne DeCarlo, who played Moses/Charlton Heston's wife Sephora in the Ten Commandments: "can a man judge God?" You bet Yvonne! A man—or woman—not only has a right but a responsibility to judge anything or anyone put before him/her as truth. And when something is presented as "divine truth" the responsibility becomes deadly serious!

Okay. Chapter after chapter we are treated to the decorations of not only the tabernacle, but the robe of the high priest. Now in case one is tempted to yawn while reading about little golden bells on priestly hems, never forget that religion is a business—a big business—and whoever wrote Exodus was no sluggard! He knew that success is in the packaging!

If you want to sell the crowd, then first deck out your priests like clowns and make your churches look like palaces. This will get their attention and you can then sell them bottled horse urine if you want. This works in any circumstance. You want to entice a group of young men to fight and kill for you? Deck them out in flashy uniforms and create little bits of ribbon and fancy metal as rewards, and they're primed to drink in your speeches about God and country. Like lambs to the slaughter they do your bidding!

There is one point I'd like to make here: If Christians want to truly follow the commands of their savior, Jesus Christ, then they should build all their churches to the specifications in Exodus. Likewise they should deck out their priests like Israelite elders. I say this based on verse in Matthew 4:4 wherein Jesus commands his followers thus: "But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." "Every word" of God would include the details of Exodus 25 etc., which means we shouldn't be seeing the faithful flocking to all those stone and wooden structures with steeples and spires! They should be flocking to tabernacles to watch high priests ritually slaughter animals and sprinkle blood on the congregants!

Exodus 29 gives us a lot of hoopla about animal sacrifices, which boils down to people bringing animals and bread offerings to the priests who then give Yahweh the animal's guts, while they barbeque the prime rib and sop up the gravy with the bread.

Really! Does it take a rocket scientist to see who wrote this tripe? Let's see: the offerings are for God, but the priests eat it. All that "voluntary" offered gold and silver was for God, but was used for garments and living accommodations for the priesthood.

Put into those words it sounds ludicrous, but you know what? By the hundreds of millions people are still buying into this formula of salvation. Even though they are taught that God owns the universe, they still feel that they must give monetary offerings to their church so that God's ministers can drive BMWs, fly about in private jets and vacation on the Mediterranean with their secretaries. Go figure!

Oh, while in chapter 29 we find a strange little command in verse 20: "Then shalt thou kill the ram, and take of his blood, and put it upon the tip of the right ear of Aaron, and upon the tip of the right ear of his sons, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great toe of their right foot, and sprinkle the blood upon the altar round about." To make Aaron & Company "holy" Moses had to smear fresh blood on their right ear, their right thumb, and on their right big toe!

Come on: could anyone reading this ever imagine going to church every week and watching some minister of the Lord cut an animal's throat, drag out its guts, hack and slice to pieces various limbs and watch him splash blood all over the place? Actually, since these laws were given forever then you really should be seeing this every single week at your corner church, cathedral or synagogue!

Now if the Israelites thought they were going to get away with giving the priests a few miserable sheep and goats, they had another thought coming. The Jews who wrote Exodus had learned their trade in Babylon and it was not for nothing that the Babylonian religious system was the richest in the ancient world!

In Exodus 30 the Lord got down to hard finances! 30:11: "And the lord spake unto Moses, saying, 12 When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the lord, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them. 13 This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the lord.... 16 And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the lord, to make an atonement for your souls."

There you have it! Just like today, salvation can be purchased for a price! It's always been that way in religion, and as long as there are men of God on the loose, it always will be so, thus saith the Lord!

Exodus 31:17 gives the reader another dose of Sabbatarianism: "It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed." What the composer failed to explain was why the omnipotent Lord needed to rest and be refreshed from his work. (See this author's Genesis study for a discussion of the Sabbath.)

Now we come to Exodus 32, which has to be one of the most ridiculous stories in the whole bible! Page after page we are told fabulous tales how the Israelites witnessed wondrous miracles and horrible destructions, and yet we are to believe that they rebelled against Yahweh because Moses stayed too long on Mt. Sinai!

"And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we
wot not what is become of him."

Well, I "wot not" what passeth for brains in Christians and Jews if they can believe this tale! Would any of you, having recently dealt with the deity outlined in the Exodus tale, risk inciting this notorious murderer to anger by doing the very thing he has just told you will bring on his vengeance? Okay. So let's believe the Israelites were idiots and take this at face value.

Up on Sinai Yahweh told Moses what the people were doing, which should have come as no surprise since he would later brag to his prophets and priests that he creates all evil: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the lord do all these things." (Isaiah 45:7) "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the lord hath not done it?" (Amos 3:6) And let us not forget that Ezekiel 20:25-26 says that Yahweh gave the Israelites "statutes that were not good and judgments whereby they should not live." In other words, from the outset Yahweh made it impossible for Israel to follow his commands, which would necessarily bring about his wrath!

To cement this fact let's notice Isaiah 6:8: "Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. 9 And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. 10 Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed." Yahweh is bragging here that he shuts off the brains of his people so that they could not understand and so that he would not have to show them mercy!

The New Testament clarifies this when Jesus boasts the same formula in Matthew 13:14-15: "And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them." Here we have God's plan boldly laid bare: he blinds people to his truth so that he can kill off damned near the whole planet in the Great Tribulation of Revelation!

We get a taste of his future genocidal plans when, in verse 10, he tells Moses to stand back while he murders every single Israelite: "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them, and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."

As an alternate plan, Yahweh tells Moses that of him he will raise up a great nation, thus forgetting his promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Goodness! If that was to be the outcome of this tale, then the Lord—who knows everything—could have prevented a lot of death and destruction and just made Moses a great nation while he was dwelling in Jethro's tents a few dozen chapters before! But praise be that one of the two on Mt. Sinai had his wits about him!

Moses disobeyed Yahweh's express command when he told him to "let Me alone". Apparently the Lord was too damned mad to notice Moses' slipup, and started to calm down as Moses pleaded for the doomed Israelites in verses 12 and 13: "Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever."

First notice that even Moses recognized that what Yahweh is proposing is "evil", thus backing the above quoted scriptures in Isaiah and Amos that show God the author of both good and evil. (For more insight here, see this author's booklet, Satan: the Lies, the Myths, the Human Tragedy.)

At any rate, in verse 14 we find the Lord "repenting" of the "evil which he thought to do unto his people." The problem here is that Yahweh's actions directly contradict Malachi 3:6: "For I am the lord, I change not." It also contradicts 1 Samuel 15:29: "And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent."

So, which is it Lord? Do you or do you not change? You repent in the Moses tale, and then in verse 35 of 1 Samuel—just six verses below where you declare that you are not a man that you should repent, we find these words: "the lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel."

Of course we know the real problem here is that the Moses tale is the invention of men. There was no Moses on Mt. Sinai. No commandments carved in stone. No need to argue with a vengeful deity about saving Israelites. This fairy tale was invented to scare the ignorant masses, as it has indeed done for countless generations. However we shall persevere since the end of the book is in sight.

Well, praise God Moses got off Sinai alive, and praise God he saved the wayward Israelites in the process—well, sort of.

When Moses got to the camp and saw that the people were hooping it up in the nude, he was so peeved that he broke the two tablets of stone containing the ten commandments—earning for him a place in history as the first Israelite to break all ten commandments at once! (I couldn't resist that comment!) But busting up Yahweh's law wasn't enough for our Egyptian hero.

Apparently old Moses had absorbed a little more on Mt. Sinai than just building instructions for his new church: he had inherited Yahweh's taste for bloody vengeance. In the next reel Moses sets the sons of Levi on their brethren: 27: "And he said unto them, Thus saith the lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour."

I guess old Moses must have been hearing voices, because we never read anything about Yahweh telling him on Sinai to hack his fellow Israelites to pieces for dancing naked! Anyway, the Levites did as Moses commanded, and murdered about 3,000 of their fellow countrymen.

As usual, Yahweh couldn't just forgive someone and let a matter drop after 3,000 sliced up corpses. In verse 33 he tells Moses that he'll blot out those who've sinned from his book, which we must assume is his book of life. In verse 35 we read: "And the lord plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made." Given his past record, we can be sure that Yahweh's "plague" meant he had a lot more deaths planned!

Now, I don't mean to be a pickminsky here, but what the hell about old Aaron? I mean, as high priest it was he whom Moses left in charge; it was he who immediately agreed with the people when they complained that Moses had disappeared; it was he who instructed them to take off their gold jewelry which he personally smelted and fashioned into the golden calf; it was he who burned offerings before the idol; it was he who proclaimed a day of nudity and horseplay (32:25). But, brother Moses forgave him when he offered a lame excuse and Aaron came through this whole thing unscathed as he stepped over the corpses of some 3,000 dead offenders—and he escaped the the plague the Lord, in his wrath, later sent!

As in so many other instance in the bible, once again we read how the real culprits go scot-free while God kills everyone and everything else in sight! (David comes to mind here when he numbered Israel and Yahweh went on a killing binge to "punish" David!)

Okay. We're now in Exodus 33 which is mostly filled with boring detail. However, in 33:11 we are told that Yahweh spoke to Moses "face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." Just two buddies out on the town on a Saturday night! I've no problem with that concept if we hadn't already read that no one can see God's face and live! On the other hand, this is one of those infamous times when the bible slaps the reader in the face since it tells us in almost two dozen places about men of God who've seen Yahweh's face and lived!

They are: Genesis 12:7 "And the lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the lord, who appeared unto him." Genesis 17:1: "And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him...." Genesis 18:1 "And the Lord appeared unto [Abraham] in the plains of Mamre." Genesis 26:2: "And the lord appeared unto [Abraham] and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of." Genesis 26:24: "And the lord appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not." Genesis 32:30: "And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." Genesis 35:9: "And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padanaram, and blessed him." Genesis 48:3: "And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz in the land of Canaan." Exodus 3:16: "The lord God ... appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you." Exodus 4:5: "That they may believe that the lord God ... hath appeared unto thee." Exodus 6:3: "And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob...." Exodus 24:9-11: "Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel ... They saw God, and did eat and drink." Numbers 14:14: "For they have heard that thou Lord art among this people, that thou Lord art seen face to face." Deuteronomy 5:4: "The Lord talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire." Deuteronomy 34:10: "And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." Judges 13:22: "And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God." 1 Kings 22:19: "I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left." Job 42:5: "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee." Psalm 63.2: "To see thy power and they glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary." Isaiah 6:1: "In the year that King Ussiah died, I saw, also, the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up." Isaiah 6:5: "For mine eyes have seen the King, the lord of hosts." Ezekiel 1:27: "And saw ... the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward...." Ezekiel 20:35: "And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face to face." Amos 7:7: "The lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand." Amos 9:1: "I saw the Lord standing upon the altar: and he said, smite the lintel of the door, that the posts may shake." Habakkuk 3:3-5: "God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran .... He had horns coming out of his hand."

Well, which is it? Which part of the bible do you believe here? Now don't answer too soon here because beginning in Exodus 33:18 we find Moses asking Yahweh if he can see him face-to-face—not an unreasonable request since the Lord had shown his face to just about every other man of God before that time! But Jehovah would have none of it and told Moses a blatant lie when he answered that no man could see his face and live! However, as a consolation prize Yahweh offered to show a portion of his body in a fleeting second, although he first put Moses in a "clift of the rock" and covered his face with his holy hand while passing by—removing it long enough for Moses to glimpse his "back parts."

Those words "back parts" are translated from the Hebrew word "kabod" which also is translated as "liver" elsewhere in the bible. According to page 8 of Jonathan Kirsch's book, The Harlot By the Side of the Road, sometimes "kabod" idiomatically refers to the male reproductive organ! Given all the sexual perversity recorded in the bible, that last meaning has my vote, since it certainly is in keeping with Yahweh's true nature! (See this author's booklet, Jehovah Finally Comes Out of the Closet!)

At any rate, this little aside seems to reinforce the notion that Yahweh will not show his face to mortal man, which he indeed forcefully states, even while it flies into the face of those two dozen other scriptures that tell us otherwise!

Of course, outside the confines of Judaism Yahweh had no problem with being shy, as this Canaanite/Phoenician coin in the accompanying illustrations shows. The fact is that the ancient Israelites were in fact Canaanites who had never left their native land, and their ancient religion was that of their child-sacrificing neighbors until the whole mess was cleaned up by enterprising Jewish priests during the Babylonian Captivity. We reviewed this history in my booklets Where Christianity Really Got Its Old Testament and Genesis: In the Beginning! But I take no credit for this since I have relied on the archeological work of experts like Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein, whose book The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts has shattered most of the mythology surrounding the Old Testament.

Coming to chapter 34, right out of the gate we find Yahweh replacing the tablets of stone, which, if you will recall, Moses smashed out of anger. We are told that the Lord would personally write them, but in verse 27 we find that it was Moses who actually did the deed. Which is it? Which scripture is telling the truth?

Exodus 34:6 proves that Yahweh does have a sense of humor: "And the lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The lord, The lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth."

Talk about blatant lies (or sarcasm)! Do you ever wonder if the guys who wrote this bilious crap ever bothered to edit their material? Come on for god's sake! Show me one instance when anyone could apply the above stated attributes to Yahweh! Unless quick-tempered vengeance, genocide, lies, theft and every petty vice known to man may be somehow translated as "merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth", then we've just read one of the worst portions of the bible in Exodus 34:6!

But hold on! We're not finished here! In then next verse the Lord just keeps on his lying binge: 34:7: "Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation."

Talk about double speak! Right after reading about Yahweh having to be talked out of killing off all Israel for something his servant Aaron had done, and as a consolation prize killing 3,000 Israelites and untold numbers in a later plague, he's trying to convince us that he is a forgiving, merciful god! However, before that lie is cold he turns around and negates the statement by saying by no means will he forget when someone transgresses against him—and will even punish the person's grandchildren! Quite an admission considering that Yahweh's idea of "punishment" is murder on a national scale!

To be expected, the holy one of Israel forgets all this when he declares in Deuteronomy 24:16 and Ezekiel 18:20 that he doesn't punish children for the sins of their fathers.

I know you'll be tired of reading this question, but I'm not going to let it pass without asking: which assurance do we believe? Both can't be right!

The rest of chapter 34 sees more laws, one of which in verse 26 prohibits eating cheeseburgers—if you happen to be an Orthodox Jew! That little aside was just as well since we are told that Moses had to fast for 40 days and nights while the Lord rambled on with his lop-sided, ambiguous, hypocritical pronouncements up on Sinai. We can only suppose that somehow Yahweh supernaturally sustained the world's most famous law-giver for 40 days without water since that deprivation would kill all but a camel!

Chapter 34 winds down in verse 32 with another mention that Moses received the ten commands on Mt. Sinai, which as we all know is backed up by Cecil B. DeMille and Charlton Heston. However, 1 Kings 8:9, 2 Chronicles 5:10 and Malachi 4:4 contradict the authorities and tell us that it was on Mt. Horeb that Moses received the ten commandments! Which is right?

Chapter 35 begins with a physical impossibility if you believe that millions of Israelites left Egypt in the Exodus: Moses brings "all" the children of Israel together in one spot to speak unto them! How could millions of people gather close enough to Moses to hear him speak?

Let's just assume they did via a miracle. Now what do you suppose Moses told them? Again he reminded them about the Sabbath day and threatened them with death if they violated it. In other words, Moses reiterated a point in favor of the church's dictatorial powers over the masses. Over the coming millennia this scripture was used by civil governments to punish people for working on the Sabbath and for failing to attend the government-sanctioned church services where they were required to pay money to the priest!

Exodus 37 continues discussing the tabernacle. The one point standing out from the rest is the question of who made the Ark of the Covenant? In Deuteronomy 10:1-3 we find that Yahweh commanded Moses to make the ark, which he did. But in Exodus 37:1 we find someone named Bezaleel made the thing! Which is it?

Rolling right along to chapter 38 we find more of the same until we come to 38:26. Here we again discover the number of Israelites supposedly trampling along in the wilderness: 603,550 men over the age of 20 years. Although we've covered this in detail at the beginning of the study, let me again point out that this would mean that the total population of Israel had to number into the millions, which renders many of the tales we've covered in both this and the Genesis study impossible!

Well, thank God that the last two chapters are more of the same crapola about tabernacle services. I, for one, could not take much more of the "holy" book of Exodus!

As for you, dear reader, I'll close this by stating that it is not my desire to talk you into or out of anything. My only wish is to inspire people to think for themselves and not let a priest, minister or rabbi do it for them. If any of what I've written here makes sense, then take that and build on it. If in the end it's found wanting, then chuck it. But whatever you do, please do so because you've made an informed decision based on all the available evidence!

Copyright © 2007 by Darrell W. Conder, Port Townsend, Washington. All Rights Reserved.